It was for this reason that Olivier, far from helping Edouard’s joy by telling him with what eagerness he had come to meet him, thought fit to speak of some job or other which he had had to do in the neighbourhood that very morning, as if to excuse himself for having come. His conscience, scrupulous to excess, cunningly set about persuading him that he was perhaps in Edouard’s way. The lie was hardly out of his mouth when he blushed. Edouard surprised the blush, and as he had at first seized Olivier’s arm and passionately pressed it, he thought (scrupulous he, too) that it was this that had made him blush. He had begun by saying: “I tried to force myself to believe that you wouldn’t come, but in reality I was certain that you would.” Then it came over him that Olivier thought these words presumptuous. When he heard him answer in an off-hand way: “I had a job to do in this very neighbourhood,” he dropped Olivier’s arm and his spirits fell from their heights. He would have liked to ask Olivier whether he had understood that the post-card which he had addressed to his parents, had been really intended for him; as he was on the point of putting the question, his heart failed him. Olivier, who was afraid of boring Edouard or of being misunderstood if he spoke of himself, kept silent. He looked at Edouard and was astonished at the trembling of his lip; then he dropped his eyes at once. Edouard was both longing for the look and afraid that Olivier would think him too old. He kept rolling a bit of paper nervously between his fingers. It was the ticket he had just been given at the cloak-room, but he did not think of that. “If it was his cloak-room ticket,” thought Olivier, as he watched him crumple it up and throw it absent-mindedly away, “he wouldn’t throw it away like that.” And he glanced round for a second to see the wind carry it off along the pavement far behind them. If he had looked longer he might have seen a young man pick it up. It was Bernard, who had been following them ever since they had left the station.... In the mean while Olivier was in despair at finding nothing to say to Edouard, and the silence between them became intolerable. “When we get opposite Condorcet,” he kept repeating to himself, “I shall say, ‘I must go home now; good-bye.’” Then, when they got opposite the Lycée, he gave himself till as far as the corner of the Rue de Provence. But Edouard, on whom the silence was weighing quite as heavily, could not endure that they should part in this way. He drew his companion into a café. Perhaps the port wine which he ordered would help them to get the better of their embarrassment. They drank to each other. “Good luck to you!” said Edouard, raising his glass. “When is the examination?” “In ten days.” “Do you feel ready?” Olivier shrugged his shoulders. “One never knows. If one doesn’t happen to be in good form on the day....”