“Go to bed at once,” she shouted, in a rage, because she felt how unjust she was to the child.

Edgar went without a word. He was dreadfully sleepy and felt only in a blur that his mother had not kept her promise and that somehow or other he was being treated meanly. Yet he did not rebel. His susceptibilities were dulled by sleepiness. Besides, he was angry with himself for having fallen asleep while waiting.

“Like a baby,” he said to himself in disgust before dropping off to sleep again.

Since the day before he hated himself for being still a child.

CHAPTER VI
SKIRMISHING

THE baron had passed a bad night. It is rather vain to attempt to sleep after an adventure that has been abruptly broken off. Tossing on his bed and starting up out of oppressive dreams, the baron was soon regretting that he had not seized the moment. The next morning when he came down he was still sleepy and cross and in no mood to take up with Edgar, who at sight of him rushed out of a corner and threw his arms about his waist and began to pester him with a thousand questions. The boy was happy to have his big friend to himself once more without having to share him with his mother. He implored him not to tell his stories to her, but only to himself. In spite of her promise she had not recounted all those wonderful things she had said she would. Edgar assailed the baron with a hundred childish importunities and stormy demonstrations of love. He was so happy at last to have found him again and to be alone with him. He had been waiting for him since early in the morning.

The baron gave the child rough answers. That eternal lying in wait, those silly questions—in short, the boy’s unsolicited passion—began to annoy him. He was tired of going about all day long with a puppy of twelve, talking nonsense. All he cared for now was to strike while the iron was hot and get the mother by herself, the very thing it was difficult to do with this child forever inflicting his presence. For the first time the baron cursed his incautiousness in having inspired so much affection, for he saw no chance, on this occasion at least, to rid himself of his too, too devoted friend.

At any rate it was worth the trial. The baron waited until ten o’clock, the time Edgar’s mother had agreed to go out walking with him. He sat beside the boy, paying no attention to his chatter and even glancing through the paper, though every now and then tossing the child a crumb of talk so as not to insult him. When the hour hand was at ten and the minute hand was just reaching twelve, he asked Edgar, as though suddenly remembering something, to do him a favor and run across to the next hotel and find out if his cousin, Count Rosny, had arrived. Delighted at last to be of service to his friend, the unsuspecting child ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, careering down the road so madly that people looked after him in wonder.

Count Rosny, the clerk told him, had not arrived, nor had he even announced his coming. Edgar again made post haste back to bring this information to his friend. But where was his friend? Nowhere in the hall. Up in his room perhaps. Edgar dashed up the stairs and knocked at his door. No answer. He ran down again and searched in the music-room, the café, the verandas, the smoking room. In vain. He hurried to his mother’s room to see if she knew anything about the baron. But she was gone, too. When finally, in his despair, he applied to the porter, he was told the two had gone out together a few minutes before.

Edgar waited for their return patiently. He was altogether unsuspecting and felt quite sure that they would come back soon because the baron wanted to hear whether or not his cousin had arrived. However, long stretches of time went by, and gradually uneasiness crept upon him. Ever since the moment when that strange, seductive man had entered his little life, never as yet tinged by suspicion, the child had spent his days in one continual state of tension and tremulousness and confusion. Upon such delicate organisms as those of children every emotion impresses itself as upon soft wax. Edgar’s eyelids began to twitch again, and he was already a shade or two paler.