It might have been thought that he was questioning himself the better to assure himself of his own sincerity. He again repeated, "I believe it," looking at Armand as he had never ventured to look at him in his life before. His eyes no longer expressed anything of that awkward timidity which in all arguments caused Alfred to feel beaten beforehand, even when he was right a hundred times over. "And it is because you are my friend," he went on, "that I came to you to-day. Armand, you see in me the most unhappy of men." The other raised his head, which, as though to pour some more tea into a cup that was already half full, he had bent down beneath his friend's gaze. He looked straight at the loyal man whom, in that very room on the eve of the first assignation, he had in thought held so cheap. Chazel had allowed his eyeglass to fall. His clear eyes showed the very depths of his soul. In them there was legible pain, so terrible and so genuine that it rendered touching and tragic a situation which, at any other moment, Armand would have considered very ridiculous--that, namely, of a deceived husband suffering from suspicion of the deception in the presence of the very man who has deceived him. No, it was simple, naked human suffering--that real suffering which grips your vitals like the shriek of a passer-by when crushed by a carriage at a street-corner. Armand suddenly felt this sympathy of humanity, then immediately afterwards a secret feeling of uncomfortableness at the thought that he was himself the cause of this visible suffering; and he listened to Alfred, who continued speaking.