love restrained her. If her love had been less strong,
less powerful, she certainly would not have withstood the proofs that
pressed on her from all sides.

But because she had held back so long, he must not conclude that the
struggle would be continued in this way, and that a more violent blow,
a stronger proof than the others, would not open her eyes in spite of
herself.

It only needed an imprudence, a carelessness on his part, and unluckily
he could no longer be relied on.

From what he had just learned it would be easy to watch himself closely,
and to avoid dangerous subjects, those that she described to him; but
if he could guard his words and looks during the day, neither saying
nor letting anything appear that was an accusation, not confirming the
suspicions against which she struggled, he could not do it at night.

He had not talked, and when she answered negatively to his question, she
lifted a terribly heavy weight from his heart. But he had groaned and
moaned, he had pronounced broken words without sense and unintelligible,
and there was the danger.

What was necessary to make these sighs, these groans, these broken and
unintelligible words become distinct and take a meaning? A nothing, an
accident, since his real cerebral tendency placed him up to a certain
point in a somnambulistic state. Was this tendency congenital with him
or acquired? He did not know. Before the agitated nights after Madame
Dammauville's death and Florentin's condemnation, the idea had never
occurred to him that he might talk in his sleep. But now he had the
proof that the vague fears which had tormented him on this subject were
only too well founded; he had talked, and if the words that escaped were
not now comprehensible, they might become so.

Without having made a special study of sleep, natural or induced, he
knew that in the case of natural somnambulists a hypnotic sleep is
easily produced, and that while holding a conversation with a subject
who talks in his sleep one may readily hypnotize him. Without doubt he
need not fear this from Phillis; but it was possible that some night
when incoherent words escaped him she would not be able to resist the
temptation to enter into a conversation with him, and to lead him to
confess what she wished to know--what the love that she felt for her
brother would drive her to wish to learn.

If this opportunity presented itself, would the love for her brother or
for her husband carry he