“Tell your friend what it is, Rouletabille. Speak out. Relieve your mind. Tell me the secret that is killing you. I would tell you anything.”
Rouletabille looked down and steadily into my eyes. Then he said:
“You shall know all, Sainclair. You shall know as much as I do, and when you do, you will be as unhappy as I am, for you are kind and you are fond of me.”
Then he straightened back his shoulders as though he had already cast off a burden and pointed in the direction of the railway.
“We shall leave here in an hour,” he said. “There is no direct train from Eu to Paris in the winter: we shall not reach Paris until 7 o’clock. But that will give us plenty of time to pack our trunks and take the train that leaves the Lyons station at nine o’clock for Marseilles and Mentone.”
He did not ask my opinion on the course which he had laid out. He was taking me to Mentone, just as he had brought me to Trepot. He was well aware that in the present crisis I could refuse him nothing. Besides, he was in such a state of mental strain that even if he had wished it, I should scarcely have left him. And it was not hard for me to accompany him, for we were just beginning our long vacations, and my affairs were so arranged that I felt entirely at liberty.
“Then we are going to Eu?” I inquired.
“Yes: we will take the train from there. It will scarcely take half an hour to drive over.”
“We shall have spent only a little time in this part of the country,” I remarked.
“Enough, I hope—enough for me to find what I am looking for.”