A little later he was knocking at the aumônier’s door. M. Chassin, barely entered himself, opened it. His face lit up when he saw who stood there.
“My dear boy, I am glad to see you! Come in!”
Roland still hesitated. “Are you alone, mon père?”
“Absolutely, my child. Come in!” He almost steered him in. “Now sit down, and we will have a talk. I was hoping that you would come.”
But Roland would not sit down. In his young mind he was afraid, if he did that, of being led into saying more than he wanted to say. He did not know how much he ought to reveal. As a matter of fact he hated saying anything at all about what he had seen, but, bewildered as he was, he felt that the Abbé had better be told something.
Standing there by the bed, he began at the end. “I . . . I ventured to tell the officer of the guard that no one was to approach M. le Marquis to-night except through you—because of his wound,” he said.
“Excellent! Very good indeed!” said the priest, and he clapped him on the shoulder. Roland wondered a little why he seemed so elated; to him, fresh from that scene with his leader, it did not seem quite decent.
“You are perhaps going to see him now, mon père?” he hazarded.
“God forbid, my son! If ever a man’s privacy should be respected, his should be at this moment . . . if you have done what I prayed you might be doing!”
“But, Monsieur l’Abbé,” besought the perplexed and almost unhappy Roland, “what is it that I have done? What is it all?”