"No; it is beyond your power and mine."
"Odile loves you? Yes, of course she loves you. Then you will be very strong."
Jean made a movement of weariness.
"Do not try, Lucienne. Let us go back."
"I beseech you. Tell me at least how you came to love her? I can understand that. We said we would tell each other more than the names. You have only me to whom you can speak your mind without danger."
She was making herself out to be humble. She was even humiliated by her secret happiness. She renewed her request, was affectionate, and found the right words to describe Odile's stately beauty, and Jean spoke.
He did it because his need to confide to some one the hope which had been his—a hope which was still struggling not to die. He told of the Easter vigil at Sainte Odile and how he had met the young girl on Maundy Thursday in the cherry avenue. From that, each helping the other to recall happenings, to fix dates, to find words, they went back into the past, up to long-ago times when their parents were not at variance, or at least when the children were ignorant of their dissensions or did not perceive them, when in the holidays Lucienne, Odile, and Jean might believe that the two families, united in intimate friendship, would continue to live as important land-owners, respected and beloved by the village of Alsheim.
Lucienne did not realise that in calling up these pictures of the happy past she was not calming her brother's mind. He may have found pleasure in them for a moment, hoping to get away from the present, but a comparison was immediately drawn, and his revolt was only the more profound, arousing all the powers of his being, against his father, against his sister, against that false pity behind which Lucienne's incapability of sacrifice was hidden. Soon the young man gave up answering his sister. Alsheim was getting nearer, and was now a long outline broken here and there. In the calm evening the Oberlés' house raised its protecting roof amid the tops of the trees, still bare. When the park gates, closed each day when the workmen left, were opened for the two pedestrians, Jean slipped behind Lucienne, and, making her go on, said, in very low, ironical tones:
"Come, Baroness von Farnow, enter the house of the old protesting deputy, Philippe Oberlé."
She was going to make a retort, but an energetic footstep scrunched the gravel, a man turned into the avenue round a gigantic clump of beeches, and a resonant, imperious voice, which was singing in order to appear the voice of a happy man without any regrets, cried: