He spoke now with a passionate seriousness. At any time Olivier would have been surprised at the intensity of this openly avowed interest, for he knew Pierre to be very undemonstrative. But now, agitated as he was, the sincerity of his friend surprised him still more, stirred him more deeply. He looked at him again. He perceived an expression that he had never before seen on the face he had known from childhood. In a sudden blinding flash of overpowering intuition, he understood. He did not grasp the entire truth as yet. But he saw enough to stun him. "Does he love her?" he asked himself. The question sprang into being in his mind suddenly, spontaneously, as though an unknown voice had whispered it in him in spite of himself. The idea was too unexpected, too agonizing, for a reaction to fail to follow instantly. "I am mad," he thought; "it is impossible." And yet he felt that it was beyond his strength to question Pierre about the way he had made the acquaintance of Madame de Carlsberg, about their trip to Genoa, about the life he led at Cannes. Such inability to lay bare the truth seizes one before certain hypotheses which touch the tenderest, most sensitive part of the heart. He replied simply:-- "Perhaps you are right. I was only going upon hearsay." The conversation continued without any further mention of the Baroness Ely's name. The two friends spoke of their travels, of Italy, of Egypt. But when the spirit of observation is once aroused, it is not soothed to slumber by a mere act of the will. It is like an instinctive and uncontrollable force working within us and around us, in spite of us, until the moment that it has satisfied its desire to know. During the long promenade, upon their return, during and after dinner, all Olivier's powers of attention were involuntarily, unceasingly, painfully concentrated upon Pierre. It was as though there were two beings in him. He joked, replied to his wife, gave orders about the service. And yet all his senses were upon the _qui vive_, and he discovered signs by the score that he had not noticed at first, absorbed as he had been by the joy of revisiting his friend, and then later by his thoughts about himself and his destiny.