“Emilio!”
He shrugged his shoulders, lifted his hands, his eyebrows. His whole being seemed as if it were about to mount ironically towards heaven.
“You don’t understand. I repeat it.”
Artois spoke quietly, but there was a sound in his voice which caused his frivolous companion to stare at him with an inquiry that was, for a moment, almost sulky.
“You forget, Doro, how old I am.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“You forget—”
Artois was about to allude to his real self, to point out the improbability of a man so mental, so known, so travelled as he was, falling like a school-boy publicly into a sordid adventure. But he stopped, realizing the uselessness of such an explanation. And he could not tell the Marchesino the truth of his shadowy colloquy in a by-street with the old creature from behind the shutter.
“You have made a mistake about me,” he said. “But it is of no consequence. Look! There is another goose coming.”
He pointed with his cane in the direction of the chatterers near the kiosk.