She had assumed, as she said these few words, a very gentle but very firm expression. Her voice had dwelt with especial force on the word "friend," which she repeated thrice. It was a reminder of a very hazardous and very fragile engagement. Thousands of such engagements have been entered into, since passionate men, like Landri, are able to respect those whom they love, and since women secretly enamored, like Valentine, dream of reconciling the emotions of a forbidden affection with the strict requirements of virtue. The rare thing is not that one suggests and the other accepts the romantic compact of friendship without other development, but that the compact is adhered to. Absolute, almost naïve sincerity on the part of both contracting parties is essential, a sincerity which excludes all trickery on his part, all coquetry on hers. There must also be a voluntary separation of their lives, which does not permit too frequent meetings. He who says sincerity does not always say truth. One may maintain sincerely a radically false situation, may obstinately abide by it through mute rebellions, through secret and long-protracted suffering, through hidden anguish, like that the memory of which quivered in the young man's reply:-- "A friend!" What bitterness those soft syllables assumed in passing through those suddenly contracted lips! "I knew that, at the outset of our conversation, you would shelter yourself behind my promise. I knew that you would anticipate the sentences that I wish to say to you, and that you would not allow me to say them. God is my witness, and you, too, madame, are my witness, that I have done everything to maintain the absolute reserve which you imposed as a condition upon the relations between us.--Let me speak, I deserve that you should let me speak!" he implored, at a gesture from Valentine, who had half risen. He put such mournful ardor into that entreaty, that she resumed her seat, without further attempt to arrest an avowal which her woman's tact had foreseen only too plainly during these last days. Accustomed as she was to control herself, her constantly increasing pallor, her more and more rapid breathing, disclosed the agitation aroused in her by the voice of him whom she had pretended to look upon only as a friend, and who continued: "Yes, I deserve it. I have been so honest, so loyal in my determination to obey you! Anything, even that silence, was less painful to me than to lose you altogether. And then, I had given you such good reason! I have reproached myself so bitterly for that madness of a few minutes, three years ago! That I had confessed to you what I ought always to have hidden from you, since you were not free, crushed me with such profound remorse! Every day at Saint-Mihiel I pass the wall of the garden where that scene took place. Never without seeing you again, in my thoughts, as I saw you after that mad declaration, abruptly leaving me and going back to the house, without looking back.