"Elaine!" was all he could utter.
That night he took train for Paris, to call on Barrèze the manager of the Odéon Theatre.
There he fixed up an arrangement by which Barrèze would send to Elaine, in the guise of payment for the uncompleted work she had done for him, a substantial sum of money. It was a temporary expedient only, but it would serve Rivière's purpose.
Then he proceeded to Nîmes to attend the trial of the youth Crau.
CHAPTER XXX
HEIR TO A THRONE
The liner "Claudia" was ripping her way eastwards through a calm Atlantic, like shears through an endless length of blue muslin.
An unclouded morning sun beat full upon the pale cheeks and delicate frame of Larssen's little twelve-year-old son, alone with his father on their private promenade deck. The contrast between the broad frame of the shipowner and the delicate, nervous, under-sized physique of his boy was striking in its irony. Here was the strong man carving out an empire for his descendants, and here was his only son, the inheritor-to-be. Neither physically nor mentally could Olaf ever be more than the palest shadow of his father, and yet Larssen was the only person who could not see this. He was trying to train his boy to hold an empire as though he were born to rule.