talking, much mortified, and observed his young brother
more attentively, who, however, did not occupy himself further with him.
How he had changed! The parents, who saw him every day, had not noticed
anything; but the penetrating and moreover jealous eyes of Philip did
not find any more the well known expression after several months of
absence. Pierre had a happy, languid, thoughtless, torpid air,
indifferent as to persons, inattentive to what is about them, floating
in an atmosphere of voluptuous dream, like a young girl. And Philip felt
that he counted for nothing in the little brother's thoughts.

Since he was no less expert in analyzing himself than in observing
others, he was quick to recover consciousness of his own vexation and
laugh at it. Vanity thrust aside, he interested himself in Pierre and
searched for the secret of his metamorphosis. He would have liked well
to have solicited his confidence, but that was a business to which he
was not habituated, and besides, little brother did not seem to have any
need of confiding; with a careless and chaffing unconstraint he looked
on while Philip attempted awkwardly to spread the net; and with his
hands in his pockets, smiling, his thoughts elsewhere, whistling a
little air, he answered vaguely, without listening carefully to what he
was being asked--then, all of a sudden, turned off to his own regions.
Good night! And he was no longer there. One caught only at his
reflection in the water, which escaped from between one's fingers.--And
Philip, like a lover disdained, felt all his value now and experienced
the attraction of the mystery in this heart which he had lost.

The key to the enigma came to him by pure chance. As he was coming home
in the evening by Boulevard Montparnasse, in the dark he passed Pierre
and Luce. He was afraid they might have noticed him. But they cared
little for what surrounded them. Closely pressed together, Pierre
supporting his arm on the arm of Luce and holding her hand with fingers
interlaced, they strolled along with short steps immersed in the hungry
and gluttonous tenderness of Eros and Psyche as they lie at length on
the nuptial couch in the Farnesina. The close embrace of their gaze
fused them into a single being like a waxen group. Philip, leaning
against a tree, looked upon them as they passed, stopped, went on and
disappeared in the dark. And his heart was full of pity for the two
children. He thought:

"My life is sacrificed. S