The hunter bowed his assent.
"Well, be it so," the count went on; "you are still the same man you were fifteen years ago."
"Are we not referring to that very period now?" Valentine said with a smile.
"Ah!" the count exclaimed, striking the arm of his butaca, "you see that you understood me."
"Did I say the contrary?"
"Why, then, do you demand——?"
"Because it must be so," the hunter said dryly.
"Be at rest, for I will repeat your own words."
"I am listening."
"You remember, I suppose, a cold winter night, in the bedroom of my house at Paris?"