Irresolution proved the stronger. He went up to his study again without having made a fresh attempt. There was a lull for a few minutes, such as succeeds to acute crises. It was one o'clock in the morning.
"I will go to sleep," he said to himself. "When I awake it will be time enough to make up my mind."
As was usual with him, he arranged a few papers, carefully covered up the fire to avoid accidents, and was almost tranquil as he got into bed. But scarcely was he there before his anguish began again, more torturing than before. The avenue in the Jardin des Plantes again extended its vault of naked branches beneath which Helen and Armand passed along. What were they saying to each other? The well-known voice uttered again the fatal syllables, "Since yesterday!" Ah! Liar! liar! the deceiver!
Once more the necessity for action pressed in its inevitableness upon this purely speculative nature. His thoughts distributed themselves again into two groups.
"Either they love each other or they do not love each other. If they do?—If they do not?—How can I find out? From her? From him?"
The thought of coming to an explanation with De Querne presented itself abruptly, and as this thought, while satisfying the need for acting, deferred the action for several hours, Alfred began mentally to muster all the arguments that told in its favour.
Such an explanation would not involve any of the drawbacks which must follow a conversation with Helen. If Armand and she did not love each other, everything would remain as it was, since she was in ignorance of her husband's suspicion and of the step that he had taken. If they were in love with each other, he would extort the acknowledgment of the fact more readily from the loyalty of his friend. The latter at least had not lied to him. Could he have replied otherwise than as he did to Helen's phrase, that simple phrase that was so terrible to himself, Alfred: "How have you been since yesterday?" To receive the young man with these words was tantamount to a prohibition to speak.
Again, there are suspicions respecting which one friend has no right to keep silence towards another. If he, Alfred, were to learn that Armand had harboured an insulting distrust of him in his heart without speaking of it, would he not feel deeply wounded? Would he not consider such silence an unwarrantable affront? Well, then, he would not offer this affront to De Querne. He would go to him with open hand and heart, and show him all his trouble. Such a step had further in its favour the fact that it would involve practical results. He might ask his friend to come to the Rue de La Rochefoucauld less frequently. If he were mistaken in his distrust, and if the real cause of Helen's grief had been confided to Armand, he might speak of it without indelicacy on that occasion, in the course of the conversation.
During the whole of that long night he turned this plan over and over, and in the end it impressed itself upon his will. Towards morning, he fell into that dark overwhelming sleep which follows upon excessive deperditions of nervous energy. Upon awaking, he again found himself face to face with his resolution of the night before; he foresaw, unless he acted, a day worse than that horrible night, and at nine o'clock he was ringing at Armand's door, not without a thrilling of his whole heart, yet with decision. These abstract souls, to whom action is so repellent, are capable of energy, provided this energy be sustained by reasoning, just as impassioned souls derive their force from blind impulse, and arid souls from a clear perception of self-interest.
Many days had gone by since Chazel had entered the rooms in the Rue Lincoln. The valet who answered his ring, an old servant of the De Querne family, was the same who formerly used to come to the school to take Armand away for his holidays. The few words that this man uttered when asking about his master's old companion with the familiarity of former days, brought real comfort to Alfred. He experienced an awakening of memories that to him was equivalent to an impression of friendship.