While he was thinking how he could manage to see the girl whom he considered his fiancée with all the obstinate perseverance of a man of action, his friend, Jean, got up. “I want to say good-bye to your mother before I go,” he said. “Wait a minute,” replied Marcel, also rising. And suddenly making up his mind to speak, he added, almost in a whisper: “Listen; I _must_ see Mademoiselle Dulaurens. You can help me. Will you?” The two men were united by a strong friendship. The one had thrown into the relationship the tender indulgence of an elder brother, the other the warm admiration of a younger one. Both gave to it the dignity which distinguishes brotherly love. By degrees they had drawn from it an incentive to nobler feelings. It gave them also that peace which is born of mutual trust and similarity of nature and tastes. But they did not confide much in each other. Therefore Jean was surprised to hear his friend tell his secret, though he had long since guessed it. A discreet observer, he had uneasily followed the domestic drama which was being played at La Chênaie, and had been a witness to Madame Dulaurens’s desperate efforts to champion the cause of Armand de Marthenay as a suitor for her daughter’s hand. Knowing Marcel’s concentrated strength and pride, he was more interested in this passion whose violent despair frightened him, than in the slight diversion that his own love affairs gave him. He knew what this wild desire to take part in the Sahara expedition meant, this feverish need for activity, this new ambition which had suddenly stirred his friend. But Marcel never betrayed himself. There must, therefore, be some weighty reason to make him decide to speak, and that was why this question alarmed his friend. Hiding his thoughts, Jean asked: “Can’t you go to La Chênaie? There is nothing simpler.” Marcel turned on him an eager, penetrating look. “You know very well that I cannot,” he said. After a moment’s silence he continued: “Nevertheless,--I must see her.” “To elope with her?” said Jean with his subtle smile, as if he were trying for the last time to turn the affair into a joke. But he received only a disdainful answer. “Look at her well and you won’t talk that way. I must see her before leaving for perhaps many years. Her happiness and mine are both at stake. If it were only a question of time, I could go away without looking back, taking my sorrow with me. She wants to be sure of the future, she wants to know that it belongs to her securely. She can be my wife, if she wishes it. I only ask her to have the courage to wait.” “That is the hardest thing,” said Jean, who had no illusions about Alice’s character. “It is the easiest.” “Yes, for you, who are used to dangers and obstacles. But for her?” “But if she loves me?” asked Marcel simply, and in so quiet a tone that no suspicion of conceit could be read into his words.