“My poor friend.... Soon you will be saying the same of George.” “But one becomes resigned, slowly. And yet one didn’t ask so much of life. One learns to ask less ... less and less.” Then she added softly: “And of oneself, more and more.” “With ideas of that kind, one is almost a Christian,” said I, smiling in my turn. “I sometimes think so too. But having them isn’t enough to make one a Christian.” “Any more than being a Christian is enough to make one have them.” “I have often thought--will you let me say so?--that in their father’s default, _you_ might speak to the boys.” “Vincent is not here.” “It is too late for him. I am thinking of Olivier. It’s with you that I should have liked him to go away.” At these words, which gave me the sudden imagination of what might have been if I had not so thoughtlessly listened to the appeal of passing adventure, a dreadful emotion wrung my heart, and at first I could find nothing to say; then, as the tears started to my eyes, and wishing to give some appearance of a motive to my disturbance: “Too late, I fear, for him too,” I sighed. Pauline seized my hand: “How good you are!” she cried. Embarrassed at seeing her thus mistake me, and unable to undeceive her, I could only turn aside the conversation from a subject which put me too ill at my ease. “And George?” I asked. “He makes me more anxious than the other two put together,” she answered. “I can’t say that with him I am losing my hold, for he has never been either confiding or obedient.” She hesitated a few moments. It obviously cost her a great deal to say what follows.