He restrained himself, however, and, with a pretense of wanting to keep on good terms with the magistrate, came and sat down beside him: "You must forgive me, sir," he said, "for insisting in what may appear to you an indiscreet fashion. But my conduct is explained not only by such sympathy or feeling as I entertain for Mme. Essarès at a moment in her life when she is more lonely than ever, a sympathy and feeling which she seems to repulse even more firmly than she did before. It is also explained by certain mysterious links which unite us to each other and which go back to a period too remote for our eyes to focus. Has Mme. Essarès told you those details? In my opinion, they are most important; and I cannot help associating them with the events that interest us." M. Masseron glanced at Coralie, who nodded. He answered: "Yes, Mme. Essarès has informed me and even . . ." He hesitated once more and again consulted Coralie, who flushed and seemed put out of countenance. M. Masseron, however, waited for a reply which would enable him to proceed. She ended by saying, in a low voice: "Captain Belval is entitled to know what we have discovered. The truth belongs as much to him as to me; and I have no right to keep it from him. Pray speak, monsieur." "I doubt if it is even necessary to speak," said the magistrate. "It will be enough, I think, to show the captain this photograph-album which I have found. Here you are, Captain Belval." And he handed Patrice a very slender album, covered in gray canvas and fastened with an india-rubber band. Patrice took it with a certain anxiety. But what he saw on opening it was so utterly unexpected that he gave an exclamation: "It's incredible!" On the first page, held in place by their four corners, were two photographs: one, on the right, representing a small boy in an Eton jacket; the other, on the left, representing a very little girl. There was an inscription under each. On the right: "Patrice, at ten." On the left: "Coralie, at three." Moved beyond expression, Patrice turned the leaf. On the second page they appeared again, he at the age of fifteen, she at the age of eight. And he saw himself at nineteen and at twenty-three and at twenty-eight, always accompanied by Coralie, first as a little girl, then as a young girl, next as a woman. "This is incredible!" he cried. "How is it possible? Here are portraits of myself which I had never seen, amateur photographs obviously, which trace my whole life. Here's one when I was doing my military training. . . . Here I am on horseback . . . Who can have ordered these photographs? And who can have collected them together with yours, madame?" He fixed his eyes on Coralie, who evaded their questioning gaze and lowered her head as though the close connection between their two lives, to which those pages bore witness, had shaken her to the very depths of her being.