“I am listening,” said Vincent. But at that, Passavant immediately protested, as if the impatience were Vincent’s, and not his own: “Goodness me! What a hurry you’re in! Between this and Paris there’s time enough surely.” Passavant was particularly skilful in the art of fathering his own words--and anything else he preferred to disown--on other people. He made a feint of dropping his subject, like an angler who, for fear of startling his trout, makes a long cast with his bait and then draws it in again by imperceptible degrees. “A propos, thank you for sending me your brother. I was afraid you had forgotten.” Vincent made a gesture and Robert went on: “Have you seen him since?... Not had time, eh?... Then it’s odd you shouldn’t have asked me yet how the interview went off. At bottom, you don’t in the least care. You don’t take the faintest interest in your brother. What Olivier thinks and feels, what he is, what he wants to be, never concerns you in the least....” “Reproaching me?” asked Vincent. “Upon my soul, yes. I can’t understand--I can’t swallow your indifference. When you were ill at Pau, it might pass; you could only think of yourself; selfishness was part of the cure. But now.... What! you have growing up beside you a young nature quivering with life, a budding intelligence, full of promise, only waiting for a word of advice, of encouragement....” He forgot as he spoke that he too had a brother. Vincent, however, was no fool; the very exaggeration of this attack showed him that it was not sincere and that his companion’s indignation was merely brought forward to pave the way for something else. He waited in silence. But Robert stopped short suddenly; he had just surprised in the glimmer of Vincent’s cigarette a curious curl of his lip, which he took for irony; now there was nothing in the world he was more afraid of than being laughed at. And yet, was it really that which made him change his tone? I wonder whether the sudden intuition of a kind of connivance between Vincent and himself.... He assumed an air of perfect naturalness and started again in the tone of “there’s no need of any pretence with you”: “Well, I had a most delightful conversation with young Olivier. I like the boy exceedingly.” Passavant tried to catch Vincent’s expression (the night was not very dark); but he was looking fixedly in front of him. “And now, my dear Molinier, the service I wished to ask you....” But, here again, he felt the need of marking time, something like an actor who drops his part for a moment with the assurance that he has his audience well in hand, and wishes to prove that he has, both to himself and to them. He bent forward therefore to Lilian, and speaking in a loud voice as if to accentuate the confidential character of what he had been saying, and of what he was going to say: “Are you sure, dear lady, that you aren’t catching cold? We have a rug here that’s doing nothing....”