Brent’s eyes lit up.
“Now—how did you find that out?”
“I don’t think I ever found it out, mon ami. It’s the sort of thing I always knew. I suppose my mother gave it me. And yet, half the world never finds it out, and dies grumbling.”
Brent looked at her as though he had discovered a miracle.
“Extraordinary!—I always knew it—somehow, but the people I happened to live with did not believe in that sort of foolishness. I suppose my wife was an unhappy woman; she was always wanting something she had not got and she was always wanting the wrong thing—something that meant money. Well, of course, it fell on me.”
She gave him a look that was like a sympathetic caress.
“What a fool! And so——?”
“I smashed. Then, of course, she hated me. I was a failure—according to her ideas. If I had had a little pity, I might have got up again; but I did not get any pity. A man does like to have his head stroked, you know. Then the war came, and I got away.”
He drank his coffee and Manon refilled his cup.
“How did you manage it?” she asked.