“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” I asked him. “Oh, nowhere particular. I always seem most in a hurry when I have nothing to do.” We took a few steps together, but without finding anything to say to each other. He was certainly put out at having been met. _Nov. 12th._--He has parents, an elder brother, school friends.... I keep repeating this to myself all day long--and that there is no room for me. I should no doubt be able to make up anything that might be lacking to him, but nothing is. He needs nothing; and if his sweetness delights me, there is nothing in it that allows me for a moment to deceive myself.... Oh, foolish words, which I write in spite of myself and which discover the duplicity of my heart.... I am leaving for London to-morrow. I have suddenly made up my mind to go away. It is time. To go away because one is too anxious to stay!... A certain love of the arduous--a horror of indulgence (towards oneself, I mean) is perhaps the part of my Puritan up-bringing which I find it hardest to free myself from. Yesterday, at Smith’s, bought a copy-book (English already) in which to continue my diary. I will write nothing more in this one. A new copy-book!... Ah! if it were myself I could leave behind! XIV BERNARD AND LAURA _Il arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie, d’où il faut être un peu fou pour se bien tirer._ LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. IT WAS with Laura’s letter, which Edouard had inserted into his journal, that Bernard’s reading came to an end. The truth flashed upon him; it was impossible to doubt that the woman whose words rang so beseechingly in this letter was the same despairing creature of whom Olivier had told him the night before--Vincent Molinier’s discarded mistress. And it became suddenly evident to Bernard that, thanks to this two-fold confidence, Olivier’s, and Edouard’s in his journal, he was as yet the only one to know the two sides of the intrigue. It was an advantage he could not keep long; he must play his cards quickly and skilfully. He made up his mind at once. Without forgetting, for that matter, any of the other things he had read, Bernard now fixed his attention upon Laura.