“Why waste words in dramatic phrases?”—It was Fontenoy’s voice. “You couldn’t go away! That is for me to do—that is the only thing I can do!”
The noise made by the dancers and the pianist filled the eavesdropper’s ears. But as the musician grew more merciful he caught the words another voice was saying—Elena’s voice—sounding as though it came from a long weary distance....
“Perhaps you are right. Oh, money! money! For people like us, who know what it means in our lives, what a horror to be without it!”
Shame of his spying overtook Robledo, driving out the curiosity which had for a moment controlled him. If these two people had sought one another out, it was for him to respect their secret. Anyway the mystery would be short-lived. Perhaps it would not last through the evening....
Going back to the dining room, he found Federico there, still engaged in conversation with his new acquaintance, an old gentleman who displayed the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, and looked like a retired government functionary.
Federico had at last terminated his extensive description of Fontenoy’s enterprises, and the old gentleman was saying,
“I haven’t the slightest doubt whatever of your friend’s integrity, but I should think twice before putting any money into his schemes. It strikes me that he takes unnecessary risks, that he invests his funds too far from home. Maybe everything will be all right, at least as long as he holds the confidence of the share-holders. But I am not so sure that even at the present moment he isn’t losing it. And on the day when the share-holders decide that they want figures and facts instead of fine hopes, on the day when Fontenoy has to show just where he stands in his business, well, on that day, I am not so sure.... I am not so sure....”
CHAPTER IV
THE warm spring-like day, coming in mid-winter, delighted Robledo as he left his hotel after a hurried breakfast. It was late and the waiters, the only occupants of the dining room, had not proved inspiring company. And all the while he had been sleeping and eating, a filmy, sun-saturated mist had been hovering, a golden caress, over Paris....
“It’s good to be alive this morning,” he thought, as he wandered through the Bois feasting his eyes on the olive-browns of its winter coloring. At dusk he made his way back to the Boulevards. He would dine, he decided, and then look up the Torre Biancas, and ask them to come out with him to some place of amusement.