With only a slight touch on his knee she sprang to her feet. Réal stood up too. “He can do nothing to me,” he mumbled. “Don’t tell him anything. Nobody can guess what he thinks, and now even I cannot tell what he means when he speaks. It was as if he knew a secret.” She put an accent into those words which made Réal feel moved almost to tears. He repeated that Peyrol could have no influence over him, and he felt that he was speaking the truth. He was in the power of his own word. Ever since he had left the Admiral in a gold-embroidered uniform, impatient to return to his guests, he was on a service for which he had volunteered. For a moment he had the sensation of an iron hoop very tight round his chest. She peered at his face closely, and it was more than he could bear. “All right. I’ll be careful,” he said. “And Catherine, is she also dangerous?” In the sheen of the moonlight Arlette, her neck and head above the gleams of the fichu, visible and elusive, smiled at him and moved a step closer. “Poor Aunt Catherine,” she said.... “Put your arm round me, Eugène.... She can do nothing. She used to follow me with her eyes always. She thought I didn’t notice, but I did. And now she seems unable to look me in the face. Peyrol too, for that matter. He used to follow me with his eyes. Often I wondered what made them look at me like that. Can you tell, Eugène? But it’s all changed now.” “Yes, it is all changed,” said Réal in a tone which he tried to make as light as possible. “Does Catherine know you are here?” “When we went upstairs this evening I lay down all dressed on my bed and she sat on hers. The candle was out, but in the moonlight I could see her quite plainly with her hands on her lap. When I could lie still no longer I simply got up and went out of the room. She was still sitting at the foot of her bed. All I did was to put my finger on my lips and then she dropped her head. I don’t think I quite closed the door.... Hold me tighter, Eugène, I am tired.... Strange, you know! Formerly, a long time ago, before I ever saw you, I never rested and never felt tired.” She stopped her murmur suddenly and lifted a finger recommending silence. She listened and Réal listened too, he did not know for what; and in this sudden concentration on a point, all that had happened since he had entered the room seemed to him a dream in its improbability and in the more than lifelike force dreams have in their inconsequence. Even the woman letting herself go on his arm seemed to have no weight as it might have happened in a dream. “She is there,” breathed Arlette suddenly, rising on tiptoe to reach up to his ear. “She must have heard you go past.” “Where is she?” asked Réal with the same intense secrecy. “Outside the door. She must have been listening to the murmur of our voices....” Arlette breathed into his ear as if relating an enormity. “She told me one day that I was one of those who are fit for no man’s arms.”