She trembled at the name, but she did not reply, neither did she attempt to impose silence on her indiscreet confidant.
He resumed, in a more sprightly tone—
"Do you think that one doctor can keep anything from another? I do not speak much, and I am, perhaps, looked upon as seeing less. People are apt to say—'Oh, M. Delange has only eyes for cards; you need not mind him.' They are wrong. T can see beyond my game, and I make my little mental notes. I subject my neighbours to a moral auscultation, though I appear only to be marking the king. The day on which I had the honour of being introduced to you, and of becoming acquainted, in your drawing-room, with M. Desrioux, I saw at once that my confrère was sincerely attached to you. On the following day I discovered that he was not absolutely indifferent to you; but, to be perfectly open and leave nothing unexplained, I must also admit that on the day when you left France you had no idea of the strength of your affection for him. If it had come home to you, you would not have accepted MM. de Morin and Périères as your travelling companions. You knew that they were éprise with you, and it would have been repugnant to your delicacy of feeling to have allowed them to become more, and at the same time hopelessly so. It was only by degrees, later on, by reason of separation, absence, the exchange of letters, and the receipt of news, that you found out the strength of your attachment, as well as that, in all probability, it was ever on the increase."
Pensive, and with her nature stirred to its innermost depths by what she had heard, she continued to preserve absolute silence. She had, it is true, with reluctance, and almost, fearfully, confessed all these things to herself, but it was the first time she had been told of them by anyone else.
She listened to everything the Doctor had to say without interruption, without any appearance of a desire that he would be less explicit and more considerate, and the sad smile which hovered about her lips seemed to say—
"Be perfectly open. Your words hurt me, but I must listen to them. I must open my eyes resolutely to my position; and you appear to have realized it more completely than I have. Say on then, and if, after you have said all, you can apply your healing art to me, you will be doing me a real service, I assure you."
M. Delange, for his part, derived encouragement from the silence, and continued in the same calm, brotherly tone, but slightly moved, withal, against his will.
"This love," he resumed, "which you have unknowingly brought with you, is weakening you and wearing you out. You would fain tear it out of your heart, but you lack the power so to do. At times you are tempted to reproach MM. de Morin and Périères for not making you forget him who is away, and yet if you yield for a moment to the pleasure of their society—and it is pleasant—you are at once assailed by the fear that you are wanting in truth towards that other one. You return, as it were, to him in all humility and submission, and then comes a sudden apparition of your husband looming in the distance, in the unknown land whither our steps are bent. You want to find him, duty beckons you on, and his memory is dear to you; but you shudder at the thought that your heart is no longer your own, and that it is impossible for you to give it to him. There, my dear Baroness, I have told you all that you could tell me; I am a queer confidant, for it is I alone who have been speaking all this time. I asked you to let me know your secrets; you have kept them to yourself, and I have narrated to you my own discoveries. Not that I regret in the least either my indiscretion or my garrulity, since they have taught you to know me and to see in me a devoted friend, a brother anxious for your welfare. You will no longer keep me at a distance; but, when you find your troubles too heavy for you to bear, you will summon me to your aid and open out your heart to me. And in that way alone can you alleviate your distress."
He was silent, and she, equally mute, got up and, in token of friendship, took the Doctor's arm. In this way they returned to the encampment and soon gained the nearest tents. When she reached her own, Madame de Guéran turned towards M. Delange, and held out her hand, as if to say—
"I forgive you for the boldness of your speech. You have shown yourself my friend, and I am glad to know that it is so."