"You have just been released, I presume?"
"Not precisely. It was ten days ago . . . if you can call it release."
"So long ago as that? Then I should say it was somewhat premature. But for that very reason I must not keep you standing longer." He held out his hand. "Will you shake hands with me?" And, as Aymar coloured and hesitated, he added "—if you feel that you can do so, after the confession I have just made you. Apart from that, there is no reason, is there, why you should not take my hand?"
He had gone again—into that curious mist. But Aymar felt his grasp, returned it, and heard him say, "I have never been so sorry about anything in my life as about this business—I would offer you my arm to the inn, but it might not, in the future, do you any good if we seemed to be on terms of intimacy. But get your friend, I beg you, to give you a glass of wine at once . . . I wish you—your sword again!"
Then Aymar himself was walking carefully up the inn garden.
"It was worth it," he said a few minutes later to Laurent in the deserted dining-room, trying to smile. "He has told no one—will tell no one now. And he was kind—wonderfully—gave me advice . . . even shook hands with me. . . . Yes, incredibly kind."
Laurent drew a long breath of relief. "But after all, you are L'Oiseleur! And what was the Moulin Brûlé to this?"
Aymar stared at the wine-glass he had just emptied. "But I got more out of the interview than I bargained for; something that I think I would rather not have had, after all."
"Not Colonel Richard's handshake, surely?"
"No. Colonel Richard's avowal."