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264 Constance looked up with a question in her eyes. Every kind of thought raced through her, so rapidly that she could not follow them. And yet she seemed to see one thought flash across them slantwise: had three letters from Alex been lying there, from Alex who was always so much obsessed by the vision of terror and blood that had shocked his young imagination, she would have feared the worst.

Van der Welcke handed her the letter without a word; she read it greedily. Guy wrote briefly, wrote difficult, sincere words of gratitude. Oh, it was not want of gratitude to Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance that had made him go without taking leave of all who were dear to him! He was not ungrateful to Addie! But it was just because under all his cheerfulness he had felt himself quietly growing sad under all their kindness. . . while he found it impossible to go on working. And of course he knew that, if he had said to Addie, "I can't work at books; what I want, very vaguely and I don't know how, is to make my own way," Addie would have let him go, because Addie understood everybody and everything so well. But it was just this, the conversations, the leave-takings, that he feared, because within him there was so much inert weakness, because he could never have gone, if he had had to speak, if he had had to take leave; and that was why he was going away like this, with his bicycle and his bit of pocket-money.

"But the boy's mad!" cried Van der Welcke.

"To clear out like this at his age, with no money and just his bicycle! The boy's mad! I must telegraph to Addie at once."

"He will be out . . . and on his way to us: this is his day for coming down."

"Which train does he come by?"