Although this birth of jealousy on Alfred's part, and the evidence of his deception towards herself were facts of weighty importance to her security, what chiefly concerned her at that moment was to ascertain how her lover had defended his love--their love--and she asked him: "What did you say to him yourself?" "If I alone had been involved," returned Armand, "you can understand that I should not have resorted to subterfuge in the presence of such loyalty. In short, I have wronged him, he has a right to every reparation, and I should have felt it a great relief to offer him such; but you were implicated, and I gave him my word that there had never been anything but the relations of friendship between us." He paused for a moment, and then went on with visible irritation. "As it has never been our custom, neither his nor mine, to have two such words, one true and the other false, he believed me, and for the moment he is quieted." She listened to him and looked at him, while he himself looked at the fire, his elbows upon his knees, and his chin on his hands. She was asking herself: "If we were driven to such an extremity would he love me sufficiently to go away with me, to give me all his life and to accept mine?" She was silent, absorbed in the expectation of that which was to follow, and which she could not yet foresee. On his part, he employed his last phrase in continuation. "He is quieted--for the moment," he repeated, and he emphasized the last three words. "But our relations will be rendered very difficult ones. You see, when a man is not suspicious, everything that should serve as a proof against, serves as a proof for. When a man is suspicious, the contrary happens. Am I right?" He was embarrassed by the silence in which she continued to look at him. Leaning back in her easy-chair, her hands extended on the two arms of it, her lips parted, she watched, panting as it were, for a gleam of tender emotion on her lover's face. She read on it nothing but the dry reflectiveness with which men set forth the data of a piece of business. His voice especially--that voice whose slightest tones she knew, the voice which always made its way into the remotest chambers of her heart--ah! that voice had a cruel, almost metallic harshness. Well! 'twas another episode to join to the tale of her prolonged martyrdom, the torture of a living creature chained to a dead soul wherein that which caused her to writhe in anguish did not awake so much as a vibration. Nevertheless, to this question, "Am I right," she replied in a voice choking with anxiety: "It is possible; you are a better judge of such matters than I am." Then with an effort: "And what conclusion do you draw?" "First promise me," replied Armand, "that you will not take ill what I am going to say to you. Be persuaded that I shall never have any object in view but your own interest. You do not doubt this?"