that he was going to the station. The
train for Paris left in twelve minutes, time enough for me to pack my
things pell-mell into my valise and hurriedly to pay my bill. The same
carriage which was to have taken me to the Chateau de Proby carried me to
the station at full speed, and when the train left I was seated in an
empty compartment opposite the famous writer, who was saying to me, "You,
too, deserting Nemours? Like me, you work best in Paris."

The conversation begun in this way, might easily have led to the
confession I had resolved to make. But in the presence of my unexpected
companion I was seized with an unconquerable shyness, moreover he inspired
me with a curiosity which was quite equal to my shyness. Any number of
circumstances, from a telegram from a sick relative to the most
commonplace matter of business, might have explained his sudden departure
from the chateau where I had left him so comfortably installed the night
before. But that the expression of his face should have changed as it had,
that in eighteen hours he should have become the careworn, discouraged
being he now seemed, when I had left him so pleased with life, so happy,
so assiduous in his attentions to that pretty girl. Mademoiselle de
Russaie, who loved him and whom he seemed to love, was a mystery which
took complete possession of me, this time without any underlying
professional motive. He was to give me the key before we reached Paris. At
any rate I shall always believe that part of his conversation was in an
indirect way a confidence. He was still unstrung by the unexpected
incident which had caused both his hasty departure and the sudden
metamorphosis in what he himself, if he had been writing, would have
called his "intimate heaven." The story he told me was "per sfogarsi," as
Bayle loved to say; his idea was that I would not discover the real hero.
I shall always believe that it was his own story under another name, and I
love to believe it because it was so exactly his way of looking at things.
It was apropos of the supposed subject of my novel--oh, irony!--apropos of
the real subject of my interview that he began.

"I have been thinking about our conversation and about your book, and I am
afraid that I expressed myself badly yesterday. When I said that one may
love and be loved at any age I ought to have added that sometimes this
love comes too late. It comes when one no longer has the right to prove to
the loved one how much s