"You have my promise, madame." "Thank you, thank you, monsieur. A presentiment tells me that this good resolution will bring us happiness. Besides, reasoning entirely from what we now know--" "Good Heavens, madame, I should be only too thankful to be able to hope!" "And I think we have good reason to hope. In the first place, if Michel and Florence loved each other,--it is useless to mince words,--if they were lovers, there is nothing to prevent them from living as man and wife in some quiet country village, or even here in Paris, the place of all others in which one can live in seclusion, and according to one's liking." "But these adjoining apartments, is it not more than likely that they communicate with each other?" "But what possible object could there be in this secrecy,--these precautions so utterly foreign to Michel's and Florence's character?" "Why, to prevent scandal, madame." "But if they changed their names and declared themselves man and wife, how could there be any scandal? Who would discover the truth? Who would have any interest in ferreting it out?" "Why, sooner or later, you or I, madame." "All the more reason that they would have changed their names if they had felt that they had anything to fear, for so long as they kept their names, was it not comparatively easy to find out their whereabouts, as we have discovered for ourselves? Besides, monsieur, if they had wished to conceal themselves effectually, couldn't they have done it just as easily as they have managed to conceal the greater part of their existence,--for they spend most of the time away from home, you know." "And it is that very thing that puzzles me so! Where do they spend this time? Where were they going this morning? Florence, who could seldom be induced to leave her bed by noon, has been getting up before four o'clock in the morning for four years. Think of it!" "And Michel, too. It is certainly astonishing." "To what can we attribute this change?" "I do not know, but the change itself is a very favourable indication. It leads me to think that Michel has at last overcome the apathy and indolence which were so fatal to his welfare, and which have caused me so much suffering." "You reason very sensibly, madame. If Florence is no longer the indolent creature who regarded a drive as entirely too fatiguing, and the slightest pleasure trip as positive martyrdom, if the life of privation which she has led for the last four years has transformed her, how gladly will I forget and ignore the past! How happy my life may still be! But, hold, madame, what I fear above all things now, is that I shall be such a fool as to hope at all." "Why do you say that?" "You have some reason to hope, madame; for you, at least, have been loved, while Florence has never known a spark of love for me."