“Oscar told me you lunched together the other day. He was so loud in your praise, that I suppose what you chiefly did was to listen to him.” (She smiled sadly, as she said these words.) “If he confided in you, I have no desire not to respect his confidences ... though in reality I know a great deal more about his private life than he imagines. But since I got back, I can’t understand what has come over him. He is so gentle--I was almost going to say--so humble.... It’s almost embarrassing. He goes on as if he were afraid of me. He needn’t be. For a long time past I’ve been aware that he has been carrying on.... I even know with whom. He thinks I know nothing about it and takes enormous pains to hide it; but his precautions are so obvious, that the more he hides, the more he gives himself away. Every time he goes out with an affectation of being busy, worried, anxious, I know that he is off to his pleasure. I feel inclined to say to him: ‘But, my dear friend, I’m not keeping you; are you afraid I’m jealous?’ I should laugh if I had the heart to. My only fear is that the children may notice something; he’s so careless--so clumsy! Sometimes, without his suspecting it, I find myself forced to help him, as if I were playing his game. I assure you I end by being almost amused by it; I invent excuses for him; I put the letters he leaves lying about back in his coat pocket.” “That’s just it,” I said; “he’s afraid you have discovered some letters.” “Did he tell you so?” “And that’s what’s making him so nervous.” “Do you think I want to read them?” A kind of wounded pride made her draw herself up. I was obliged to add: “It’s not a question of the letters he may have mislaid inadvertently; but of some letters he had put in a drawer and which he says he can’t find. He thinks you have taken them.” At these words, I saw Pauline turn pale, and the horrible suspicion which darted upon her, forced itself suddenly into my mind too. I regretted having spoken, but it was too late. She looked away from me and murmured: “Would to Heaven it _were_ I!” She seemed overcome. “What am I to do?” she repeated. “What am I to do?” Then raising her eyes to mine again: “You? Couldn’t _you_ speak to him?” Although she avoided, as I did, pronouncing George’s name, it was clear that she was thinking of him. “I will try. I will think it over,” I said, rising. And as she accompanied me to the front door: “Say nothing about it to Oscar, please. Let him go on suspecting me--thinking what he thinks.... It is better so. Come and see me again.” VII OLIVIER AND ARMAND IN THE mean time Olivier, deeply disappointed at not having found his Uncle Edouard, and unable to bear his solitude, turned his thoughts towards Armand with a heart aching for friendship. He made his way to the Pension Vedel.