"Not altogether, Monsieur. I came to be near—Well! we are never too old for that—Is it not so?" He said it quite simply, quite as a matter of course, the tones of his voice as monotonous as any he had yet used—just as he had spoken of poor Channet in the morgue with the water trickling over his dead face.
"Oh, then, even at fifty you have a sweetheart!" I blurted out with a sudden twist of my probe. I felt now that I might as well follow the iniquity to the end.
"It is true, Monsieur."
"Is she pretty?" As long as I was dissecting I might at least discover the root of the disease. This remark, however, was not addressed to his face, but to a crumb of ashes on the cloth, which I was trying to remove with the point of a knife. He might not have answered, or liked it, had I fired the question at him point-blank.
"Very pretty—" still the same monotone.
"And you love her!" It was up to the hilt now.
"She is the only thing I have left to love, Monsieur," he answered, calmly.
Then, bending over me, he added:
"Monsieur, I do not think I am mistaken. Were you not painting along the river this morning?"
"Yes."