I always seem most in a hurry when I have nothing to do.”

We took a few steps together, but without finding anything to say to each other. He was certainly put out at having been met.

Nov. 12th.—He has parents, an elder brother, school friends.… I keep repeating this to myself all day long—and that there is no room for me. I should no doubt be able to make up anything that might be lacking to him, but nothing is. He needs nothing; and if his sweetness delights me, there is nothing in it that allows me for a moment to deceive myself.… Oh, foolish words, which I write in spite of myself and which discover the duplicity of my heart.… I am leaving for London to-morrow. I have suddenly made up my mind to go away. It is time.

To go away because one is too anxious to stay!… A certain love of the arduous—a horror of indulgence (towards oneself, I mean) is perhaps the part of my Puritan up-bringing which I find it hardest to free myself from.

Yesterday, at Smith’s, bought a copy-book (English already) in which to continue my diary. I will write nothing more in this one. A new copy-book!…

Ah! if it were myself I could leave behind!

XIV : Bernard and Laura

Il arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie, d’où il faut être un peu fou pour se bien tirer.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

It was with Laura’s letter, which Edouard had inserted into his journal, that Bernard’s reading came to an end. The truth flashed upon him; it was impossible to doubt that the woman whose words rang so beseechingly in this letter was the same despairing creature of whom Olivier had told him the night before—Vincent Molinier’s discarded mistress. And it became suddenly evident to Bernard that, thanks to this two-fold confidence, Olivier’s, and Edouard’s in his journal, he was as yet the only one to know the two sides of the intrigue. It was an advantage he could not keep long; he must play his cards quickly and skilfully. He made up his mind at once. Without forgetting, for that matter, any of the other things he had read, Bernard now fixed his attention upon Laura.

“This morning I was still uncertain as to what I ought to do; now I have no longer any doubt,” he said to himself, as he darted out of the room. “The imperative, as they say, is categorical. I must save Laura. It was not perhaps my duty to take the suit-case, but having taken it, I have certainly found in the suit-case a lively sense of my duty. The important thing is to come upon Laura before Edouard can get to her; to introduce myself and offer my services in such a way that she cannot take me for a swindler. The rest will be easy. At this moment I have enough in my pocket-book to come to the rescue of misfortune as magnificently as the most generous and the most compassionate of Edouards. The only thing which bothers me is how to do it. For Laura is a Vedel, and though she is about to become a mother in defiance of the code, she is no doubt a sensitive creature. I imagine her the kind of woman who stands on her dignity and flings her contempt in your face, as she tears up the bank-notes you offer her—with benevolence, but in too flimsy an envelope. How shall I present the notes? How shall I present myself? That’s the rub! As soon as one leaves the high road of legality, in what a tangle one finds oneself! I really am rather young to mix myself up in an intrigue as stiff as this. But, hang it all, youth’s my strong point. Let’s invent a candid confession—a touching and interesting story. The trouble is that it’s got to do for Edouard as well; the same one—and without giving myself away. Oh! I shall think of something. Let’s trust to the inspiration of the moment.… ”

He had reached the address given by Laura, in the Rue de Beaune. The hotel was exceedingly modest, but clean and respectable looking.