their relation was more a matter of politeness than of warmth of
feeling; and by her manner, and by the tones of her voice, she had
always made him sensible of the distance which socially lay between
them. Gratitude is a charge upon the inheritance which the second
generation is apt to repudiate.



"This adventure," Derville began after a pause, "brings the one
romantic event in my life to my mind. You are laughing already," he
went on; "it seems so ridiculous, doesn't it, that an attorney should
speak of a romance in his life? But once I was five-and-twenty, like
everybody else, and even then I had seen some queer things. I ought to
begin at the beginning by telling you about some one whom it is
impossible that you should have known. The man in question was a
usurer.

"Can you grasp a clear notion of that sallow, wan face of his? I
wish the _Academie_ would give me leave to dub such faces the _lunar_
type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt rubbed off. His hair was
iron-gray, sleek, and carefully combed; his features might have been
cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this
money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with
scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak
of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips
that you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and
shrunken old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind
of a gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never
flew into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether
he had grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had