M. des Graves knew this, and sympathised with all his heart. And, as the monotonous days dragged on, he was touched, even to admiration, by the Vicomte’s unwearied good temper and courtesy towards himself. He gave him, in return, much of his time, and, having always tended to assume in the young man a side for which other people—including Louis himself—never gave him credit, he would often talk to him of subjects near his heart. Louis had a curious faculty of understanding. But Louis himself had a subject not to be discussed with anybody. Never again, since that evening of fever and weakness, had he been tempted to speak of Lucienne to the priest. His secret and hers must remain inviolate. He thought of her constantly. She was dearer than ever now that the sea lay between them. He could see her in the English autumn; he could even see her in the future—the uncertain future—here at Chantemerle, its mistress, when he himself would be far away fighting under an alien flag. And in the past. . . . But to think of that was madness. He had held her in his arms and had let her go. The sting of the thought sent him out on the long lonely rides to which he was becoming more and more addicted—rides in which the peasants sometimes saw him galloping like one possessed, and which brought Saladin home in a state to horrify the stable-yard. For the old conflict had all to be fought out again between passion and honour, love and conscience, his duty and his desire. And yet, though time and separation had fanned his love into a more ardent flame, would he have done differently if he had his chance again? He could not bring himself to say so. This seemed strange to him. He did not know that loss and sacrifice, besides intensifying, had purified the fire, and that the heavy price which he had paid to keep his shield in this one thing at least unstained, had come back to him in other ways. Besides, it was not a purely abstract question. Nothing of the sort ever is. Sometimes Louis thought to himself that if he had the spirit of a man he would go over to England even now at the eleventh hour and claim her. What kept him back? Not, assuredly, the difficulty of getting out of the country. . . . No, it was the thought of Gilbert, of that undemonstrative and reliable kinsman, who held such odd social views, who was so lacking in geniality, who could be so actively unpleasant, whose high moral standard was quixotic and irritating, whom he heartily respected and for whose good opinion he was almost ashamed to find how much he cared. The discovery that he really loved his cousin Louis never consciously made.