During the first bedridden week, Georges d’Aubrac visited Duchemin at least once each day to compare wounds and opinions concerning the inefficiency of the local gendarmerie.  For that body accomplished nothing toward laying by the heels the authors of the attacks on d’Aubrac and Duchemin, but (for all Duchemin can say to the contrary) is still following “clues” with the fruitless diligence of so many American police detectives on the trail of a bank messenger accused of stealing bonds.

A decent, likable chap, this d’Aubrac, as reticent as any Englishman concerning his part in the Great War.  Duchemin had to talk round the subject for days before d’Aubrac confessed that his record in the French air service had won him the title of Ace; and this only when Duchemin found out that d’Aubrac was at present, in his civilian capacity, managing director of an establishment manufacturing airplanes.

At the end of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin’s side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality.  Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d’Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne.

But the third week found Duchemin mending all too rapidly; the time came too soon when the word “to-morrow” held for him all the dread significance, he assured himself, that it holds for a condemned man on the eve of execution.

To-morrow the detectives commissioned by Madame de Montalais’s bankers would arrive.  To-morrow Eve would set out on her journey to Paris.  To-morrow Andre Duchemin must walk forth from the Chateau de Montalais and turn his back on all that was most dear to him in life.

On that last day he saw even less of Eve than usual.  She was naturally busy with preparations for her trip, a trifle excited, too; it would be only the third time she had left the chateau for as long as overnight since returning to it after her husband’s death.  When Duchemin did see her, she seemed at once exhilarated and subdued, and he thought to detect in her attitude toward him a trace of apprehensiveness.

She knew, of course; Duchemin at thirty-eight was too well versed in lore of women to dream he had succeeded in keeping his secret from the fine intuition of one of thirty.  But—­he told himself a bit bitterly—­she ought to know him well enough by this time to know more, that she need not fear he would ever speak his heart to her.  The social gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivete of soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass.  And even if it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could only seem silly....