fly with him. For there was no other way. Madame Walter, he well understood, would never agree to give him her daughter. She still loved him; she would always love him with unmanageable violence. He restrained her by his studied coldness; but he felt that she was eaten up by hungry and impotent passion. He could never bend her. She would never allow him to have Susan. But once he had the girl away he would deal on a level footing with her father. Thinking of all this, he replied by broken phrases to the remarks addressed to him, and which he did not hear. He only seemed to come to himself when they returned to Paris.
Susan, too, was thinking, and the bells of the four horses rang in her ears, making her see endless miles of highway under eternal moonlight, gloomy forests traversed, wayside inns, and the hurry of the hostlers to change horses, for everyone guesses that they are pursued.
When the landau entered the courtyard of the mansion, they wanted to keep George to dinner. He refused, and went home. After having eaten a little, he went through his papers as if about to start on a long journey. He burnt some compromising letters, hid others, and wrote to some friends. From time to time he looked at the clock, thinking: “Things must be getting warm there.” And a sense of uneasiness gnawed at his heart. Suppose he was going to fail? But what could he fear? He could always get out of it. Yet it was a big game he was playing that evening.
He went out towards eleven o’clock, wandered about some time, took a cab, and had it drawn up in the Place de la Concorde, by the Ministry of Marine. From time to time he struck a match to see the time by his watch. When he saw midnight approaching, his impatience became feverish. Every moment he thrust his head out of the window to look. A distant clock struck twelve, then another nearer, then two together, then a last one, very far away. When the latter had ceased to sound, he thought: “It is all over. It is a failure. She won’t come.” He had made up his mind, however, to wait till daylight. In these matters one must be patient.