"Is your arm hurting you?"
"No, thanks. . . . Laurent, come back to bed."
Laurent dug his fingers into the sand. "I was abominably rude to you this evening," he said with a gulp.
"It was, I daresay, deserved. At any rate, you succeeded in getting me here."
"Well, go to sleep again," murmured Laurent.
"I will, if you will tell me why you are sitting out there."
There was a long pause, filled by the sea. Laurent had just made up his mind to one course of action—and now, suddenly, he was weighing the opposite. Why not? It was more honest, fairer to him. And there was so much in the voice, though it was even and unemotional, that tore his very heart.
"I am sitting here," he said at last slowly, "because I was thinking about you. Because the last few days I could not help . . ." He leant forward, clenched his hands between his knees, and said in a rush, "Aymar, what did you say to M. Perrelet that night?"
In the darkness Aymar observed quietly, "It is that, then. I thought so. God knows what I said! At any rate, M. Perrelet did not like it." He gave a desolate little laugh. "Am I responsible to you also?"
"I never meant to ask you," said Laurent, fighting down his misery. "You know what I have always thought about it all. . . . And after that ramrod, too . . ." A sound like a sob escaped him. "You must tell me something, Aymar. I'm . . . I'm too bewildered to go on in the dark any longer."