“In my dossier you read a sorry history, madame.”
“In your dossier I read the tragedy of a gentleman.”
“Do you know,” said I, “that I am now a performer in a third-rate travelling circus?”
“I think that is very sad,” she said, sweetly.
“Sad? Oh no. It is better than the disciplinary battalions of Africa.”
Which was simply acknowledging that I had served a term in prison.
The color faded in her face. “I thought you were pardoned.”
“I was—from prison, not from the battalion of Biribi.”
“I only know,” she said, “that they say you were not guilty; that they say you faced utter ruin, even the possibility of death, for the sake of another man whose name even the police—even Monsieur de Mornac—could never learn. Was there such a man?”
I hesitated. “Madame, there is such a man; I am the man who was.”