You are willing to lend me money without security--that's enough to make me feel thirty again, and I'm fifty--I'm fifty," he added, as though with an attempt to show her that she could not think of him in any emotional way; though the day when his flour-mill was burned he had felt the touch of her fingers comforting and thrilling.
"You think Jean Jacques Barbille's word as good as his bond ?" he continued.

"So it is; but I'm going to pull this thing through alone.
That's what I said to you and Maitre Fille at his office.

I meant it too--help of God, it is the truth!" He had forgotten that if M.Mornay had not made it easy for him, and had not refrained from insisting on his pound of flesh, he would now be insolvent and with no roof over him.

Like many another man Jean Jacques was the occasional slave of formula, and also the victim of phases of his own temperament.

In truth he had not realized how big a thing M.
Mornay had done for him.