Although they did not belong entirely to each other they had come to employ those familiarities in language which accompany a mutual passion. Nearly every morning they wrote notes to each other, a single one of which, would have been sufficient to prove Theresa to be Hubert's mistress, and yet she was nothing of the kind. But whatever the detail over which the young man's memory lingered, he always found that she had not opposed any of the marks of tenderness which he had asked of her. However, he had never ventured to imagine anything beyond clasping her hands, her waist, her face, or resting, like a child, upon her heart. She had with him that entire, confiding, indulgent abandonment of soul which is the only token of true love that the most skilful coquetry cannot imitate. And in contrast with this tenderness, and serving to heighten its sweetness still more, each scene in this idyll had corresponded to some painful explanation between the young man and his mother, or some cruel anguish on finding Madame de Sauve in the evening with her husband. The latter, in reality, paid no attention to Hubert, but Madame Liauran's son was not yet accustomed to the dishonouring falsehood of the cordial hand-shake offered to the man who is being deceived. What mattered these trifles, however, since they were going--he to join her, and she to wait for him in the little English town at which they were to spend two days together? Was it to Hubert or to Theresa that this idea had occurred? The young man could not have told. André de Sauve was in Algeria for the purpose of a Parliamentary inquiry. Theresa had a convent friend who lived in the country, and was sufficiently trustworthy to allow her to give out that she had gone to see her. On the other hand she affirmed that the position of Folkestone, on the way from Paris to London, made it the safest shelter in winter, because French travellers pass through the town without ever stopping there. At the mere thought of seeing her again, Hubert's heart melted in his breast, and, with a quivering impossible of definition, he felt himself on the point of rolling into a gulf of mystery, of intoxicating forgetfulness and felicity. CHAPTER IV