At last he said simply: "I am thinking of my sister. If I were killed ... or if she were to die!..." He lingered for a few minutes, sitting beside me in the grass. There was a hallowed silence.... Friendship, the purest of manly sentiments, revealed itself to me in force.... I was the one to suggest he should go; he needed his sleep. We pressed hands again. "Mind you sleep, Michel." "Good-night, Claude...." He went away. I leaned my forehead on my arm, and tried to get to sleep, but my face was burning. What strange tumultuous thoughts besieged me. I caught myself repeating: "Victor, my poor Victor!" But this time something was rent asunder. A veil fell. The artificial atmosphere in which all my joys and sorrows had been deadened for so long was dissipated. My man's heart began to bleed. I became conscious of my grief. Without diminishing it I could now compare it, without blasphemy, with that other, into which the death of my mother had formerly plunged me. A double regret, identical, I felt in its essential point, for these two beings were of my blood, my nearest relations, a little of myself. Part of my life and future were buried with them. I understood now what an irrecoverable part my brother had played in my life. I had loved him when a child, and my childhood would never be renewed. Our gaze and our minds had awakened to the same things. A thousand memories were ours, ours alone. O Victor, I remembered the grace of your eighth, your tenth year. Our wild games in the big house at Tours, and in the summer holidays in the big garden at Emberménil. I admired you and adored you, my strong elder brother, who never abused your strength, who used to consent to being the "horse," out of your turn very often, so that I might hold the reins. When you brought friends home you did not like me, the youngest of the band, to be "ticked," and when I was "it" too long, you let yourself be caught on purpose. I could remember my brother leaving for La Flêche as clearly as if it had been yesterday. I was inconsolable. I was seven years old, and in my unhappiness I refused to eat any pudding for a whole week! I was just beginning to write. With a great effort I managed to cover a page for him every week. When he came back at Christmas, looking very smart in his new uniform, how delighted, how overjoyed I had been. And then, little by little, we had drifted apart. My brother! I had not really known him! I never should know him. Oh, the anguish of that thought. The fault had been on my side, for he in his affection had made many advances. The hope of putting an end to the misunderstanding between us never left him. Even quite lately certain words of his showed his fondness for me. But I had always repulsed him--he was shy, in spite of his handsome energetic appearance--by my arrogance and coldness.