It was true that the pulse in his wrist was hammering hard beneath the priest’s fingers, but somehow M. des Graves did not think of fever. Never in his life had he seen Louis so bereft of his usual airy composure, nor heard him make such a speech, which was the last kind of utterance one would have expected from him. Was it all due to his physical condition? The strange scene at the end of supper rose up again before his mind. Like a wise man he said nothing, but kept the hot hand firmly in his own cool grasp. And for perhaps two ticking minutes by the clock Louis said nothing either, but lay staring at the foot of the bed. Suddenly he flung himself over on to his side. “Father. . . ” It was to the priest as though, after many years of acquaintance with a pleasant lighted window, hung over with a fine and impenetrable curtain, some one had suddenly pulled aside the veil, and for the first time a living countenance had looked out from the unsatisfying glow. It was Louis’ decently buried self which came and looked out at him in that moment, and it was not at all light and gay like the house in which it lived, for in the eyes which held him so fast M. des Graves knew the face of a soul in need. He was afraid to speak or move. “Father, I wonder if——” What was it that the eyes asked so insistently of him? He was ready to give anything to answer them. With Louis’ hand—clenched and rigid—between both his own he bent nearer, and said in a voice full of comprehension and gentleness: “You want me, Louis?” Suddenly the eyes wavered, the hand in his own lay limp. Louis drew a long breath between set teeth, then he turned away his head. “Perhaps it would be better to go to sleep—if I can,” he said faintly. To whatever disclosure it was the broken prelude, the moment was gone, perhaps for ever. But even if it had been the priest’s way to attempt to elicit unwilling confidences—and the Poles were not further apart than he and that practice—he would have known better than to attempt it with his present companion. His taciturn cousin would have been no more difficult subject. The claim for help was withdrawn half uttered; it was the bitterest disappointment to him, but all that he said was: “Would you like me to read to you, Louis? Perhaps that might send you to sleep.” The Vicomte was regaining his usual self, deeply shaken though it had been. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Yes, I should like it.” “What shall I read to you, then?” enquired the Curé, not without a thought of the interrupted conversation downstairs. But that could wait. “I will be ill for a long time if you are going to nurse me, mon père,” observed Louis parenthetically. This time the look in his grey eyes was very pleasant to see. “Surely you have . . . some book or other in your pocket. Read me some of that; I don’t mind what it is.” And with a mischievous twitch of the mouth he settled himself for Saint François de Sales.