“I was going to you,” Hazelton acknowledged.
They stared at each other scrutinizingly, each measuring the other with dawning distrust. Each waited.
“Let us go to the Rotonde,” Hazelton suggested.
They talked of other things, each waiting for the other to begin. Hazelton had the most resistance; he had flipped a penny as to whether he should go to seek De Vilmarte, but De Vilmarte had made his decision with anguish. It was he who finally said:
“You know—about the matter of the picture—my mother is quite frantic about my success. She is failing—”
“Toc!” cried Hazelton. “My poor wife has to go to the hospital.”
“Nothing to do, I know,” said De Vilmarte, looking away diffidently, “but for one’s mother—”
“But for one’s wife,” Hazelton capped him, genially. “An aged mother and a sick wife, and a joke on the world shared between two friends— What will a man not do for his sick wife and for his aged mother!”
A little shiver of cold disgust ran over Raoul. For the first time he felt a vague antipathy for Hazelton, his neck was so short and he rolled his big head in such a preposterous fashion.
They said good-by, Hazelton’s swagger, De Vilmarte’s averted eyes betraying their guilty knowledge that they had bought and sold things that should not be for sale.