Indeed, as they both knew too well, there were more serious things than kisses and loving words to occupy that stolen half-hour. They had to tell each other all--all they knew--and each became a little wiser. Hélène knew that General Ratoneau had actually asked for her, and that her father had refused to listen; thus realising that her mother was deceiving her, and also that for some hidden reason the plan seemed to Madame de Sainfoy still possible. Angelot, even as they sat there together, realised vividly that he was living in a fool's paradise; that his love's confession to her mother had made things incalculably worse, justifying all the stern treatment, the violent means, which such a mother might think necessary. "She means to marry her to Ratoneau," he thought, "and she will do it, unless Heaven interferes by a miracle. Uncle Joseph is my only friend, and he cannot help me--at least--if I do not act at once, we are lost." He lifted Hélène's fair head a little, and its pale beauty, in the dim gleam from the open window, seemed to fill his whole being as he gazed. He drew her towards him and kissed her again and again; it might have been a last embrace, a last good-bye, but he did not mean it for that. "Will you come with me now?" he said. "Yes!" Hélène said faintly. "Are you afraid?" "No"--she hesitated--"not with you. I can be brave when I am with you--but when you are not here--" "They shall not part us again," Angelot said. "But how are we to get out?" Though her lover was there, still holding her, the girl trembled as she asked the question. "I can unbar the door," he said. "Come to the top of the stairs and wait there till I whistle; then come down to me." This seemed enough for the moment, and the wild fellow had no further plan at all. To have her outside these prison walls, in the free air he loved, under the trees in the starlight, to make a right to her, as he vaguely thought, by running off with her in this fashion--that was all that concerned him at the moment. Where was he to take her? Would Uncle Joseph receive them? Such thoughts just flashed through the tumult of his brain, but seemed of no present importance. Angelot was mad that night, mad with love of his cousin, with the desperate necessity which needed to be met by desperate daring. Hélène followed him, trembling very much, to the top of the stairs. "You have a candle there? Fetch it for me," he said.