mind upon the affairs of his house, and had allowed himself to
meditate as little as might be possible. But the misery, the agony,
had been then present with him during all those hours,--and had been
made the sharper by his endeavours to keep it down and banish it
from his thoughts. Now, as he went out from Madame Faragon's room,
having finished all that it was his duty to do, he strolled into the
town, and at once began to give way to his thoughts. Of course he
must think about it. He acknowledged that it was useless for him to
attempt to get rid of the matter and let it be as though there were
no such persons in the world as Marie Bromar and Adrian Urmand. He
must think about it; but he might so give play to his feelings that
no one should see him in the moments of his wretchedness. He went
out, therefore, among the dark walks in the town garden, and there,
as he paced one alley after another in the gloom, he revelled in the
agony which a passionate man feels when the woman whom he loves is
to be given into the arms of another.

As he thought of his own life during the past year or fifteen
months, he could not but tell himself that his present suffering was
due in some degree to his own fault. If he really loved this girl,
and if it had been his intention to try and win her for himself, why
had he taken his father at his word and gone away from Granpere?
And why, having left Granpere, had he taken no trouble to let her
know that he still loved her? As he asked himself these questions,
he was hardly able himself to understand the pride which had driven
him away from his old home, and which had kept him silent so long.
She had promised him that she would be true to him. Then had come
those few words from his father's mouth, words which he thought his
father should never have spoken to him, and he had gone away,
telling himself that he would come back and fetch her as soon as he