He was no longer absorbed by the exclusive worship of a woman. A wild longing to live several lives at one and the same time seized upon him. Voluptuous and heroic thoughts came and went quickly, and gained the mastery over him in turn. Swiftly his mind reviewed his experiences of the past. He lived again through his friendship with Marcel, and that crossing of the desert, where perhaps, in solitude and danger, in intense hardship and struggle, he had learnt the supreme lesson as he realised the meaning of courage and unfaltering will. And the thought of the brother brought him to that of the sister. From the beginning of the evening he had put thoughts of Paule away from him. A few minutes ago he had succeeded in forgetting her entirely. Why had she come into his mind now, and why had this exalted music so untoward an effect? He tried to banish her image rudely, though not without regret. “Oh,” he thought, “if only she were as lovely as Isabelle.” And again his eyes followed the line of the neck and shoulders whose almost luminous surface magnetised him. He gave no thought to the injustice and impropriety of the comparison. And yet he admitted with a secret joy: “_She_ has finer hair. Those black waves of hers must reach to her knees.” Isabelle turned to smile at him. “_She_ has finer eyes,” he said to himself again. But those eyes of which he thought looked reproachfully at him and he clearly interpreted their expression. “Why do you treat me with so little respect?” the faraway Paule seemed to murmur. “Have I tried to lead you on by flirting with you as she does? Have I ever forgotten my dignity or modesty in your presence? If you do not love me, leave me in my lonely peace. Do not degrade my pure youth by making a mere pleasure of my memory. But if you do love me,--yes, if you love me,--why do you not find strength in your love to resist temptations which, for all you know, may ruin the whole course of your life. Come to me unfettered and proud. May I never read degradation in your eyes! I do not know if I am the more beautiful, but I love you, with a love that this woman can never know....” Jean Berlier was no longer one of those men who go through life with blinders on their eyes, unable to see the broad fields of man’s daily labor which border the narrow path of their own passions. Once he had looked only to his own immediate desires. Now he saw his life fully and saw it whole, and from its source and its development he read the presage of its future. Thus considered, love took on a new aspect. In the place of mere gratification of the senses he put the charm of minds that think together and that inward strength which springs from peace at heart and the quiet life of home; in the place of the brief, violent transports of passion, he put the instinct of the continuity of the race.