"About this war.... But, no, as a professor, you're exempt, aren't you?"
He understood her fears and, as he was unable to reassure her by confessing his secret intentions, he did not enlighten her further:
"Yes," he said, "I'm exempt."
"Still, you spent some time in the reserve?"
"Only at the government offices. And that's where we serve in time of war."
"Oh," she said, "that's all right, that's all right!... Else I should have been very anxious.... You see, the mere thought that you might be fighting ... that you might be wounded ... oh, it would be horrible!"
She drew him to her with a sort of violence that delighted Philippe and kissed him as he had longed to be kissed. He was nearly saying:
"Do you understand, mother darling?... Do you understand what I was trying to do, the other day? Thousands and thousands of mothers will be made to shed tears.... Great as our private troubles are, they will pass. Those which begin to-morrow will never pass. Death is irreparable."
But why waste words? Did not his mother's emotion prove him absolutely right?