"I pity you, Monsieur l'Abbé! No doubt you have long prayers to recite—especially if you have not finished your breviary!"
"You are mistaken," answered the abbé, with a slight smile: "I am dispensed from a certain number of religious exercises!"
"A fig for you, my fine fellow!" said Fandor to himself. "The deuce is in if I do not catch you out over one of your lies!"
The little abbé was seated on a chair attending to his nails.
Fandor walked to the door, explaining:
"I have a horror of sleeping in an hotel bedroom with an unlocked door!... You will allow me to turn the key?"
"Turn it, then!"
Locking the door, Fandor drew the key and threw it on to the priest's lap.
"There, Monsieur l'Abbé, if you like to put it on your bedside table!"
Fandor's action had a purpose. Ten to one you settle the sex of a doubtful individual by such a test. A man instinctively draws his knees together when an object is thrown on them: a woman draws them apart, to make a wider surface of the skirt for the reception of an article and thus prevent its fall to the ground.