And he must reply to her so much the more clearly, because four or five times already he had almost betrayed himself as to Madame Dammauville, and if she had let his explanations or embarrassment pass, his hesitations or his refusal, without questioning him frankly, certainly she was not the less astonished. Should he appear before her with short hair and no beard, it would be a new astonishment which, added to the others, would establish suspicions; and logically, by the force of things, in spite of herself, in spite of her love and her faith, she would arrive at conclusions from which she would not be able to free herself. Already, five or six months before, this question of long hair and beard had been agitated between them. As he complained one day of the bourgeois who would not come to him, she gently explained to him that to please and attract these bourgeois it was, perhaps, not quite well to astonish those whom one does not shock. That overcoats less long, hats with less brim, and hair and beard shorter; in fact, a general appearance that more nearly approached their own, would be, perhaps, more agreeable. He became angry, and replied plainly that such concessions were not in keeping with his character. How could he now abruptly make these concessions, and at a time when his success at the examinations placed him above such small compromises? He resisted when he needed help, and when a patient was an affair of life or death to him; he yielded when he had need of no one, and when he did not care for patients. The contradiction was truly too strong, and such that it could not but strike Phillis, whose attention had already had only too much to arouse it. And yet, as dangerous as it was to come to the decision to make himself unrecognizable, it would be madness on his part to draw back; the sooner the better. His fault had been in not foreseeing, the day after Caffie's death, that circumstances might arise sooner or later which would force it upon him. At that moment it did not present the same dangers as now; but parting from the idea that he had not been seen by any one, that he could not have been seen, he had rejoiced in the security that this conviction gave him, and quietly become benumbed. The awakening had come; with his eyes open he saw the abyss to the edge of which his stupidity had brought him. How strong would he not be if during the last three months he had not had this long hair and beard, which was most terrible testimony against him? Instead of taking refuge in miserable makeshifts when Phillis and Nougarede asked him to see Madame Dammauville, he would have boldly held his own, and have gone to see her as they wished. In that case he would be saved, and soon Florentin would be also.