Mordaunt sat and smoked as one lost in thought. Finally, after a long silence, he looked up and spoke.
"Why this sudden hurry to dissolve partnership, Bertrand?" he asked, with his kindly smile. "Is it this Rodolphe affair that has unsettled you? Because surely it would be wiser to wait and see what is going to happen before you take any decided step of this sort."
"Ah! It is not that!" Bertrand spoke with a vehemence that sounded almost passionate. "It is nothing to me—this affair. It interests me—not that!" He snapped his fingers contemptuously. "No, no! The time for that is past. What is honour, or dishonour, to me now—me who have been down to the lowest abyss and who have learned the true value of what the world calls great? Once—I admit it—I was young; I suffered. Now I am old, and—I laugh!"
Yet there was a note that was more suggestive of heartbreak than of mirth in his voice. He applied himself feverishly to extracting a letter from an envelope, while Mordaunt sat and gravely watched him.
Suddenly, but very quietly, Mordaunt rose, strolled across, and took the fluttering paper out of his hands. "Bertrand!" he said.
The Frenchman looked up sharply, almost as if he would resent the action, but something in the steady eyes that met his own altered the course of his emotions. He leaned back in his chair with the gesture of a man confronting the inevitable.
Mordaunt sat down on the edge of the writing-table, face to face with him. "Tell me why you want to leave me," he said.
There was determination in his attitude, determination in the very coolness of his speech. It was quite obvious that he meant to have an answer.
Bertrand contemplated him with a faint, rueful smile. "But what shall I say?" he protested. "You English are so persistent. You will not be content with the simple truth. You demand always—something more."
"There you are mistaken," Mordaunt made grave reply. "It is the simple truth that I want—nothing more."