Hiding his thoughts, Jean asked:
“Can’t you go to La Chênaie? There is nothing simpler.”
Marcel turned on him an eager, penetrating look.
“You know very well that I cannot,” he said. After a moment’s silence he continued:
“Nevertheless,—I must see her.”
“To elope with her?” said Jean with his subtle smile, as if he were trying for the last time to turn the affair into a joke. But he received only a disdainful answer.
“Look at her well and you won’t talk that way. I must see her before leaving for perhaps many years. Her happiness and mine are both at stake. If it were only a question of time, I could go away without looking back, taking my sorrow with me. She wants to be sure of the future, she wants to know that it belongs to her securely. She can be my wife, if she wishes it. I only ask her to have the courage to wait.”
“That is the hardest thing,” said Jean, who had no illusions about Alice’s character.
“It is the easiest.”
“Yes, for you, who are used to dangers and obstacles. But for her?”