He was
evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it
was, might take him out of the slough and land him on higher and
better ground.
"Yes, you are right. And so you came to Suresne to be quiet."
"Not altogether, Monsieur. I came to be near--Well! we are never too old
for that--Is it not so?" He said it quite simply, quite as a matter of
course, the tones of his voice as monotonous as any he had yet
used--just as he had spoken of poor Channet in the morgue with the
water trickling over his dead face.
"Oh, then, even at fifty you have a sweetheart!" I blurted out with a
sudden twist of my probe. I felt now that I might as well follow the
iniquity to the end.
"It is true, Monsieur."
"Is she pretty?" As long as I was dissecting I might at least discover
the root of the disease. This remark, however, was not addressed to his
face, but to a crumb of ashes on the cloth, which I was trying to remove
with the point of a knife. He might not have answered, or liked it, had
I fired the question at him point-blank.
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