A half hour passed in this way. She continued to work with the same assiduity, and I was still beside her, saying little and sighing involuntarily. Suddenly the door of the salon opened; it was Monsieur Gerval, one of Eugénie’s most persistent suitors, who often played and sang with her in the evening. This Gerval was a good-looking fellow and very agreeable; so that he was one of those whom I detested most heartily. I am sure that I changed color when he came in; I instantly felt an enormous weight settle down upon my chest. While Monsieur Gerval went to pay his respects to Madame Dumeillan, I walked quickly to the corner of the room where I had placed my hat; for I did not propose to stay a minute longer; I wished that I were a hundred leagues away; I was angry with myself for having come. I already had my hat in my hand and was on the point of leaving the room without a word to anyone, when a hand clasped mine, pressed it gently, and detained me; at the same moment Eugénie, for it was she, said to me in a tone which I had never before heard from her lips: “Why are you going away? To pass a fortnight without coming and then go away like this! Really, I can’t understand you. What have we done to you here, that you should stop coming?” I stood like a statue. That soft voice, in which there was reproach and affection at the same time, that hand which still held mine, and those eyes which looked into mine with a fascinating expression--all those things startled me, but also caused me a thrill of happiness hitherto unknown to me. One must have loved truly to understand all that I felt at that moment. I squeezed her hand frantically, and it returned the pressure; then she gently withdrew it, still looking at me. All this was the affair of a moment, but that moment decided the rest of my life. Eugénie loved me; she had read my heart, and I felt that I could not live without her, that Eugénie henceforth would be all in all to me. I thought no more about going away. Eugénie returned to her seat and Gerval came to speak to her; but I was not jealous any more, Gerval had ceased to be offensive to me; it had required only an instant to change the whole current of my thoughts. I returned to Eugénie’s side. While talking with Gerval, she succeeded in looking only at me. The young man suggested to her that they should sing together. She looked at me again, and seemed to ask me if that would be agreeable to me. I added my entreaties to Gerval’s. She consented to go to the piano, but on her way there she passed close to me and our hands met. When she sang with Gerval a duet in which two lovers sing to each other of love, her eyes addressed to me the words that she sang. Ah! when two hearts understand each other, there are a thousand ways of proving it.