"Really? . . . Is it you? . . . I do not recognize you."
"You don't recognize Prince Paul Sernine?"
"No . . . everything is different . . . the forehead . . . the eyes. . . . And that is not how the . . ."
"How the newspapers represented the prisoner at the Santé?" he said, with a smile. "And yet it is I, really."
A long silence followed, during which they remained embarrassed and ill at ease.
At last, he asked:
"May I know the reason . . . ?"
"Did not Geneviève tell you? . . ."
"I have not seen her . . . but her grandmother seemed to think that you required my services . . ."
"That's right . . . that's right. . . ."