Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/283

Rh "You! You! What are you saying?"

"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."

The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under him, and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed, whom he loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him thus.

He stammered out:

"You are surely not going to play me false—you?"

Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old fellow.

"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and I am going as medical officer on board a Transatlantic passenger boat."

"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make a living!"

"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in the world."

Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There is nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of all things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came here to be with you. It is wrong."

Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give ,