“Commit myself how?”

“I do not know—­”

“What else?”

“The anger that you show, or the embarrassment, when the name of Caffie is pronounced, Madame Dammauville’s, and Florentin’s—­”

“And you conclude that my anger on hearing these three names—­”

“Nothing—­I am afraid—­”

CHAPTER XLIII

THE TERRIBLE REVELATION

This confession threw him into a state of confusion and agitation, for if it did not go beyond what he feared, yet it revealed a terrible situation.

Clearly, as in an open book, he read her; if she did not know all, she was but one step from the truth, and if she had not taken this step, it was because her love restrained her.  If her love had been less strong, less powerful, she certainly would not have withstood the proofs that pressed on her from all sides.

But because she had held back so long, he must not conclude that the struggle would be continued in this way, and that a more violent blow, a stronger proof than the others, would not open her eyes in spite of herself.

It only needed an imprudence, a carelessness on his part, and unluckily he could no longer be relied on.

From what he had just learned it would be easy to watch himself closely, and to avoid dangerous subjects, those that she described to him; but if he could guard his words and looks during the day, neither saying nor letting anything appear that was an accusation, not confirming the suspicions against which she struggled, he could not do it at night.

He had not talked, and when she answered negatively to his question, she lifted a terribly heavy weight from his heart.  But he had groaned and moaned, he had pronounced broken words without sense and unintelligible, and there was the danger.

What was necessary to make these sighs, these groans, these broken and unintelligible words become distinct and take a meaning?  A nothing, an accident, since his real cerebral tendency placed him up to a certain point in a somnambulistic state.  Was this tendency congenital with him or acquired?  He did not know.  Before the agitated nights after Madame Dammauville’s death and Florentin’s condemnation, the idea had never occurred to him that he might talk in his sleep.  But now he had the proof that the vague fears which had tormented him on this subject were only too well founded; he had talked, and if the words that escaped were not now comprehensible, they might become so.

Without having made a special study of sleep, natural or induced, he knew that in the case of natural somnambulists a hypnotic sleep is easily produced, and that while holding a conversation with a subject who talks in his sleep one may readily hypnotize him.  Without doubt he need not fear this from Phillis; but it was possible that some night when incoherent words escaped him she would not be able to resist the temptation to enter into a conversation with him, and to lead him to confess what she wished to know—­what the love that she felt for her brother would drive her to wish to learn.