Vain reasoning! That supreme sacrifice had not triumphed over inexpiable resentment. And in the excess of suffering caused by that silence, now evidently final, Landri looked at Valentine, who was looking at him. In her travelling costume she was very slender and youthful. Her fathomless eyes expressed such boundless devotion! Her fragile grace seemed to appeal so for protection! And, drawing her to him, he held her long in a close embrace, with the sensation that he could still live, for her and through her. Strange mystery of memory! While his lips were pressed upon his dear wife's, he remembered M. de Clavier's remarks concerning those exiles who leave their city, "carrying their gods with them." In his imagination he heard the "Émigré's" loud, clear voice saying those words in his room at Saint-Mihiel.--Suddenly--was it an illusion?--he thought that he heard that voice, in very truth, speaking in the corridor. "Listen!" he said, grasping Valentine's arm. "Some one is coming. Why, it's he!" "It is he!" she repeated, turning pale; and, as some one knocked at the door, "I will leave you alone. It's better so." And, on the threshold of the adjoining room, she turned, with her hand on her heart, to repress its throbbing: "I told you to hope." She had hardly left the room when the door opened and, behind the bell-boy, appeared the form of the Marquis de Claviers. Aged even more in the last two months, his face more haggard and more hollow, he was more than ever the Seigneur, the man of lofty lineage, who, wherever he goes, is a Master. He was profoundly moved at that moment, when he was taking a step so directly contrary, it seemed, to his recent attitude; but he found a way to maintain, in his whole person, that species of haughty bonhomie which was characteristic of him. He saw Landri, and simply, without a word, held out his arms. The young man responded to that gesture, which betrayed such deep affection, and they embraced, as if they were still in those days when, as they rode together through the forest of Hez, they believed themselves of the same blood, offshoots of the same trunk, a father and son who might differ in ideas, but who were bound together by a chain as indissoluble as their own persons. A father and son! They had not ceased to be so in heart, and in that moment of passionate impulse, after they had forbidden themselves to show their affection during so many days, they listened to naught save that heart.