"Your name?"
"Yes; you'll call yourself Leonard Carlotti, that's all. 'Tisn't a big job. What harm can it do you? Straight off, you've no more convictions. They won't hunt you out, and you can be as happy as I should have been if this bullet hadn't gone through my magazine."
"Oh Christ!" said the other, "you'd do that? You'd—that—well, old chap, that beats all!"
"Take it. It's there in my pocket-book in my greatcoat. Go on, take it, and hand yours over to me—so that I can carry it all away with me. You'll be able to live where you like, except where I come from, where I'm known a bit, at Longueville in Tunis. You'll remember that? And anyway, it's written down. You must read it, the pocket-book. I shan't blab to anybody. To bring the trick off properly, mum's the word, absolutely."
He ponders a moment, and then says with a shiver "I'll p'raps tell Louise, so's she'll find I've done the right thing, and think the better of me, when I write to her to say good-by."
But he thinks better of it, and shakes his head with an heroic effort. "No—I shan't let on, even to her. She's her, of course, but women are such chatterers!"
The other man looks at him, and repeats, "Ah, nome de Dieu!"
Without being noticed by the two men I leave the drama narrowly developing in this lamentable corner and its jostling and traffic and hubbub.
Now I touch the composed and convalescent chat of two poor wretches—"Ah, my boy, the affection he had for that vine of his! You couldn't find anything wrong among the branches of it—"
"That little nipper, that wee little kid, when I went out with him, holding his tiny fist, it felt as if I'd got hold of the little warm neck of a swallow, you know."