"What a stranger you are becoming, my friend!" she said aloud, with a
forced smile. "One never sees you now."
"Why, I have been poorly," he replied, in his amiable way. "Yes, I assure
you I have been ailing a little."
He, ailing! She looked at him with maternal anxiety, quite upset. And,
indeed, however proud and lofty his figure, his handsome regular face did
seem to her paler than usual. It was as if the nobility of the facade
had, in some degree, ceased to hide the irreparable dilapidation within.
And given his real good nature, it must be true that he
suffered--suffered by reason of his useless, wasted life, by reason of
all the money he cost his impoverished mother, and of the needs that were
at last driving him to marry that wealthy deformed girl, whom at first he
had simply pitied. And so weak did he seem to Eve, so like a piece of
wreckage tossed hither and thither by a tempest, that, at the risk of
being overheard by the throng, she let her heart flow forth in a low but
ardent, entreating murmur: "If you suffer, ah! what sufferings are
mine!--Gerard, we must see one another, I will have it so."
"No, I beg you, let us wait," he stammered in embarrassment.
"It must be, Gerard; Camille has told me your plans. You cannot refuse to
see me. I insist on it."
He made yet another attempt to escape the cruel explanation.
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