"Oh, only that Deschamps has suddenly grown quite extraordinary in his manner. You know what absolute friends we were?"
"I know," she nodded. "Have I not been horribly jealous of you two at times, sitting correcting exercises in that dreadful school in the evening, and thinking of you two men talking away together without anyone to interrupt?"
Man-like, Basil Gregory did not quite appreciate the underlying feeling in this remark.
"It has simply kept me alive," he went on, "and kept hope burning within me to be with Emile Deschamps. You see, our invention is just as much his as mine. We have worked it out together as if with one mind. Our interests are absolutely identical."
"But I don't exactly understand what has happened, Basil."
"His manner has absolutely changed ever since last night, when we had quite an adventure, he and I."
"An adventure?" she asked quickly. "And what was that?"
In reply Basil told her the whole history of the fantastic night. He told it well, warming to the work as he did so, and she saw the picture unfold itself—the queer, bird-like little men, the huge workshop with its strange implements, the welcome hospitality.
"And then," he concluded, "it turned out that they were hereditary makers of the roulette wheels for the gambling at Monte Carlo. They have made them for ever so many years, and they were just employed upon the last wheel of all on that very night. They are going to resign their position. They have made sufficient money upon which to live, and a young nephew of theirs, who gambled at Monte Carlo with money that was not his own, and afterwards committed suicide, has disgusted them, very naturally, with the whole thing."
Ethel's reply amazed him.