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143 STRAIT IS THE GATE

I agreed mechanically; so that I was unable to see Alissa alone. But the presence of this charming girl was, no doubt, a help to us; I no longer felt the intolerable embarrassment of the day before; the conversation between the three of us was soon going smoothly, and was less futile than I had at first feared. Alissa smiled strangely when I said good-bye to her; I had the impression that she had not understood till that moment that I was going away the next morning. But the prospect of my speedy return took away any touch of tragedy from my good-bye. After dinner, however, prompted by a vague uneasiness, I went down to the town, where I wandered about for nearly an hour before I made up my mind to ring at the Bucolins door. It was my uncle who received me. Alissa, who was not feeling very well, had already gone to her room and, no doubt, straight to bed. I talked to my uncle for a few moments, and then left. It would be vain for me to blame the perverseness of these incidents, unfortunate though they were. For even if everything had favoured us, we should still have invented our embarrassment ourselves. But nothing could have made me more wretched, than that Alissa, too, should feel this. This is the letter I received as soon as I got to Paris:

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