His effect upon Bertrand was little short of magical.  Sitting there beside him with the wasted wrist between his fingers, and his green eyes gazing at nothing in particular, there was little about him to indicate a remarkable personality.  Yet the drawn look passed wholly away from the sick man’s face, and he leaned back among his pillows with a restfulness that he had been very far from feeling a few seconds earlier.

“So you are reading all about the Rodolphe affaire,” Max said presently.

“It is Mr. Mordaunt’s own report,” Bertrand explained.  “It interests me—­that.  I feel as if I heard him speak.”

Max grunted.  He had asked no question as to the circumstances that had led to Bertrand’s departure, and Bertrand had volunteered no information.  It had been a closed subject between them by mutual consent.  But to-night for some reason Max approached it, warily, as one not sure of his ground.

“When do you hope to see him again?”

A slight flush rose in Bertrand’s face.  “Never—­it is probable,” he said sadly.

“Ah!  Then you had a disagreement?”

Bertrand looked at him questioningly.

Max smiled a little.  “No, it isn’t vulgar curiosity.  Fact is, I came across my cousin Jack Forest to-day.  You remember Jack Forest?  I’ve been dining with him at his club.  We hadn’t met for ages, and naturally we had a good deal to say to one another.”

He paused, gently relinquishing his hold upon Bertrand’s wrist, and got up to pour something out of a bottle on the mantelpiece into a medicine-glass.

“Drink this, old chap,” he said, “or I shall tire you out before I’ve done.”

“You have something to say to me?” Bertrand said quickly.

Max nodded.  “I have.  Drink first, and then I will tell you.  That’s the way.  You needn’t be in a hurry.  You were going to tell me about that disagreement, weren’t you?  At least, I think you were.  You have been rash enough to trust me before.”

“But naturally,” Bertrand said.  He handed the glass back with a courteous gesture of thanks.  “And I have not had cause to regret it.  I will tell you why I disagreed with Mr. Mordaunt if you desire to know.  It was because he found that he had been robbed, and that I”—­he spread out his hands—­“was the robber.”

Max stared.  “Found that you had robbed him!  You!”

Bertrand nodded several times, but said no more.

“I don’t believe it,” Max said with conviction.

Bertrand smiled rather ruefully.  “No?  But yet the evidence was against me.  And me, I did not contradict the evidence.”

“I see.  You were shielding someone.  Who was it?  Rupert?”

At Bertrand’s quick start Max also smiled with grim humour.  “You see, I know my own people rather well.  I’m glad it wasn’t Chris, anyway.  Then she had nothing at all to do with your quarrel with Trevor?”

“Nothing,” Bertrand said—­“nothing.”  He paused a moment, then added, with something of an effort, “But I had decided that I would go before that.  Mr. Mordaunt did not know why.”