"Yes, and your wife."
"It was Jacob Hartrich who suggested that you might have met with a disappointment in love or friendship. I disputed it, in the belief that had it been unhappily so you would have confided in me. I am glad that I was right. Shall I continue?"
"Yes."
"The banker, who entertains the most kindly sentiments towards you, based all his conjectures upon a certain remark which made a strong impression upon him. You told him you were weary of the gaiety and the light and bustle of cities, and that it was your intention to seek some solitude where, by a happy chance, you might rid yourself of a terror which possessed you. I can understand your weariness of the false glare of fashionable city life; it can never for any long period satisfy the intellect. But neither can it instil a terror into a man's soul. That would spring from another and a deeper cause."
"The words were hastily spoken. Look upon them as an exaggeration."
"I certainly regard them in that light, but they were not an invention, and there must have been a serious motive for them. It is not in vain that I have studied your character, although I feel that I did not master the study. I am subjecting you, Christian, to a kind of mental analysis, in an endeavour to arrive at a conclusion which will enable me to be of assistance to you. And I do not disguise from you that, were it in my power, I would assist you even against your will. Our friendship, and my age and more varied experience, would justify me. I do not seek to force your confidence, but I ask you in the spirit of true friendship to consider--not at present, but in a few days, when your mind is in a calmer state--whether such counsel and guidance as it may be in my power to offer will not be a real help to you. Do not lightly reject my assistance in probing a painful wound. I will use my knife gently. There was a time when I believed there was nothing that could happen to either of us which we should be unwilling to confide each to the other, freely and without restraint. I find I am not too old to learn the lesson that the strongest beliefs, the firmest convictions, may be seriously weakened by the occurrence of circumstances for which the wisest foresight could not have provided. Keep, then, your secret, if you are so resolved, and bear in mind that on the day you come to me and say, 'Edward, help me, guide me,' you will find me ready. I shall not fail you, Christian, in any crisis."
Almer rose and slowly paced the room, while the Advocate sat back in his chair, and watched his friend with affectionate solicitude.
"Does this lesson," presently said Almer, "which you are not too old to learn, spring entirely from the newer impressions you are receiving of my character, or has something in your mind which you have not disclosed helped to lead you to it?"
It was a chance shot, but it strangely hit the mark. The question brought forcibly to the Advocate's mind the position in which he himself was placed by Gautran's confession, and by his subsequent resolve to conceal the knowledge of Gautran's crime.
"What a web is the world!" he thought. "How the lines which here are widely apart, but a short space beyond cross and are linked in closest companionship!" Both Christian and himself had something to conceal, and it would be acting in bad faith to his friend were he to return an evasive answer.