Thérèse turned and looked at him reproachfully. She thought him cruel, hard. He was trying to befriend her after his own fashion, but she found it difficult to believe. There are sore places in our hearts which others touch all unconsciously, and when the pain darts through us we feel as if they must know something of what they are doing.
“They were bitter words,” she said, her voice faltering. ”‘I renounce for ever my country, and the friends I left there.’”
“Bah!” said M. Deshoulières, irreverently.
The girl flashed round upon him.
“You do not know Fabien!”
“Who were his friends?” he asked, without noticing her little outburst. And then Thérèse glanced shyly at him, and calmed down. Here was his best friend if this man would only understand. But he was terribly prosaic, he would not understand. His questions travelled relentlessly along the great dusty high road of facts, while her thoughts danced away from them into sweet little flowery meadows, river-banks, a sunny dream-land of what might, have been, what might be yet. In spite of her trouble, an irrepressible smile quivered on her lips, which would have puzzled the doctor, had he seen it. She answered demurely that the only two of whom she knew were a certain Léon Fauchet, whom she believed to have entered the army; and Claude Lamourette, who went out to China within a few weeks of Fabien’s departure.
It was all unsatisfactory, provoking. Even the doctor’s impatient spirit was forced to acknowledge that nothing could be done for the present. His hands were tied by the terms of the will, he could only wait and trust that such little strings as he had set going would some day tug M. Fabien Saint-Martin into Charville.
Without any particular reason for the feeling, he disliked him heartily, but, nevertheless, it was to be hoped he would come and deliver them from this tangle of perplexities. There was no more to be said about Fabien in this interview, but Thérèse’s future remained to be settled. M. Deshoulières fidgeted and fussed on his chair.
“Is this house agreeable to you? Would you like to stay?” he said at last, shooting out the words quite suddenly. Thérèse, who had been the one most troubled in the conversation, grew self-possessed when she found her own prospects under consideration.
“Do you mean, like to live here?” she asked. “It would do as well as any other place.”