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I resumed:

“What made you tell me this story … to which you have often alluded in my presence?”

“What made me …?”

He drew my attention to a woman, still exceedingly handsome, who was passing on a young man’s arm. She saw Lupin and bowed.

“It’s she,” he whispered. “She and her son.”

“Then she recognized you?”

“She always recognizes me, whatever my disguise.”

“But since the burglary at the Château de Thibermesnil,[D] the police have identified the two names of Arsène Lupin and Horace Velmont.”

[D] The Exploits of Arsène Lupin. IX. Holmlock Shears arrives too late.

“Yes.”

“Therefore she knows who you are.”

“Yes.”

“And she bows to you?” I exclaimed, in spite of myself.

He caught me by the arm and, fiercely:

“Do you think that I am Lupin to her? Do you think that I am a burglar in her eyes, a rogue, a cheat?… Why, I might be the lowest of miscreants, I might be a murderer even … and still she would bow to me!”

“Why? Because she loved you once?”

“Rot! That would be an additional reason, on the contrary, why she should now despise me.”