How should he employ it?

It was the first time in years that he had asked himself such a question; he, who each day always found that he needed three or four hours more to carry out his programme.

He dressed slowly, and then thought of writing to Phillis to tell her of his trip to Nice.  But suddenly he changed his mind, and decided to go to see her.

The preceding year he attended Madame Cormier, who had been stricken with paralysis, and he could occasionally present himself at her house without appearing to call upon Phillis.  It was easy to say that he was passing by, and wished to learn news of the patient whom he had cured.

At nine o’clock he knocked at her door.

“Enter,” a man’s voice said.

He was surprised, for in his visits to Madame Cormier he had never seen a man there.  He crossed the hall and knocked at the dining-room door.  This time it was Phillis who bid him come in.

He opened the door and saw Phillis, in a gray blouse, seated before a large table placed by the window.  She was painting some cards.

Hearing steps, she turned her head and instantly rose, but she restrained the cry-the name that was on her lips.

“Mamma,” she said, “here is Doctor Saniel.”

Madame Cormier entered, walking with difficulty; for, if Saniel had put her on her feet, he had not given her the suppleness or the grace of youth.

After a few words, Saniel explained that, having to pay a visit to the Batignolles, he would not come so near his former patient without calling to see her.

While Madame Cormier told at great length how she felt, and also how she did not feel, Phillis looked at Saniel, uneasy to see his face so convulsed.  Surely, something very serious had happened; his visit said this.  But what?  Her anguish was so much the greater, because he certainly avoided looking at her.  Why?  She had done nothing, and could find nothing with which to reproach herself.

At this moment the door opened, and a man still young, tall, with a curled beard, entered the room.

“My son,” Madame Cormier said.

“My brother Florentin, of whom we have spoken so often,” Phillis said.

Florentin!  Was he then becoming imbecile, that he had not thought the voice of the man who bid him enter was that of Phillis’s brother?  Was he so profoundly overwhelmed that such a simple reasoning was impossible to him?  Decidedly, it was important for him to go away as quickly as possible; the journey would calm his nerves.

“They wrote to me,” Florentin said, “and since my return they have told me how good you were to my mother.  Permit me to thank you from a touched and grateful heart.  I hope that before long this gratitude will be something more than a vain word.”

“Do not let us speak of that,” Saniel said, looking at Phillis with a frankness and an open countenance that reassured heron a certain point.  “It is I who am obliged to Madame Cormier.  If the word were not barbarous, I should say that her illness has been a good thing for me.”