"Ciel!" Bertrand jumped in his chair as if he had been stabbed in the back. "You insult me!"
Mordaunt's hand came out to him instantly and reassuringly. "My dear fellow, I never insult anyone. It is not my way."
"But you do not believe me!" Bertrand protested. "And that is an insult—that."
"I believe you absolutely." Very quietly Mordaunt made answer. The hand he would not take was laid with great kindness on his shoulder. "I happen to know you too well to do otherwise. Why, man," he began to smile a little, "if all the world turned false, I should still believe in you."
"Tiens!" The word was almost a cry. Bertrand shook the friendly hand from his shoulder as if it had been some evil thing, and almost with the same movement pushed his chair back sharply out of reach. "You should not say these things to me!" he stammered forth incoherently. "I do not deserve them. I am not—I am not what you imagine. You do not know me. I do not know myself. I—I—" He broke off in agitation and sprang impetuously to his feet.
With a gesture half-hopeless, half-appealing, he turned and walked to the window, as if he could no longer bear to meet the level, grey eyes that watched him with so kindly a confidence.
There fell a silence in the room while Mordaunt, still sitting on the writing-table, deliberately finished his cigarette. That done, he spoke.
"Don't you think you had better tell me what is the matter?"
Bertrand jerked his shoulders convulsively; it was the only response he made.
Mordaunt waited a few moments more. Then, "Very well," he said, without change of tone or countenance. "We will dismiss the subject. If you really mean to leave me, I will accept your resignation in the morning, but not to-night. If—as I hope—you have thought better of it by then and decide to remain, nothing further need be said. Will that satisfy you?"