"Why not, Joseph?"
"Because I cannot now."
"But when will you go, for good?"
Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly’glance, and says:
"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."
I feel that he does not wish to speak. Neverthe- less I insist:
"It depends on what?"
He hesitates to answer; then, in a mysterious and, at the same time, somewhat excited tone, he says:
"On a certain matter; on a very important matter."
"But what matter?"
"Oh! on a certain matter, that’s all."
This is uttered in a brusque voice,—a voice not of anger exactly, but of impatience. He refuses to explain further.
He says nothing to me of myself. This astonishes me, and causes me a painful disappointment. Can he have changed his mind? Has my curiosity, my hesitation, wearied him? Yet it is very natural that I should be interested in an event in the success or failure of which I am to share. Can the suspicion that I have not been able to hide, my suspicion of the outrage committed by him upon
