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same as all that business about my French governess who behaved so badly with Papa, and then she was sent away. All those things are connected, I can feel that, it’s just that I don’t know how. Oh, I wish I knew the secret, I wish I understood it, I wish I had the key that opens all those doors, and I wasn’t a child any more with people hiding things from me and pretending. I wish I didn’t have to be deceived and put off with excuses. It’s now or never! I’m going to get that terrible secret out of them. A line was dug into his brow, the slight twelve-year -old looked almost old as he sat there brooding, without sparing a glance for the landscape unfolding its resonant colours all around: the mountains in the pure green of the coniferous forests, the valleys still young with the fresh bloom of spring, which was late this year. All he saw was the couple opposite him on the back seat of the carriage, as if his intense glances, like a fishing-line, could bring the secret up from the gleaming depths of their eyes. Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark. Sometimes it is only a flimsy door that cuts children off from what we call the real world, and a chance gust of wind will blow it open for them.
    Suddenly Edgar felt that the unknown, the great secret was closer than ever before, almost within reach, he felt it just before him—still locked away and unsolved, to be sure, but close, very close. That excited him and gave him a sudden, solemn gravity. For unconsciously he guessed that he was approaching the end of his childhood.
    The couple opposite felt some kind of mute resistance before them, without guessing that it came from the boy. They felt constrained and inhibited as the three of them sat in the carriage together. The two eyes opposite them, with their dark and flickering glow, were an obstacle to both adults. They hardly dared to speak, hardly dared to look. They could not find the way back to their earlier light small-talk, they were already enmeshed too far in that tone of ardent intimacy, those dangerous words in which insidious lust trembles at secret touches. Their conversation kept coming up against lacunae, hesitations. It halted, tried to go on, but still stumbled again and again over the child’s persistent silence.
    That grim silence was particularly hard for his mother to bear. She cautiously looked at him sideways, and as the child compressed his lips she was suddenly startled to see, for the first time, a similarity to her husband when he was annoyed or angry. It was uncomfortable for her to be reminded of her husband just now, when she wanted to play a game with an adventure, a game of hide and seek. The child seemed to her like a ghost, a guardian of her conscience, doubly intolerable herein the cramped carriage, sitting just opposite with his watchful eyes glowing darkly beneath his pale forehead. Then Edgar suddenly looked up, just for a second. Both of them lowered their eyes again at once; she felt, for the first time in her life, that they were keeping watch on each other. Until now they had trusted one another blindly, but today something between the two of them, mother and child, was suddenly different. For the first time they began observing each other, separating their two lives, both already feeling a secret dislike that was still too new for them to dare to acknowledge it.
    All three breathed a sigh of relief when the horses stopped outside the hotel. As an outing it had been a failure; they all felt that, but no one dared say so. Edgar jumped down first. His mother excused herself, saying that she had a headache, and quickly went upstairs. She felt tired and wanted to be alone. Edgar and the Baron were left behind. The Baron paid the driver of the carriage, looked at his watch, and walked towards the lobby, ignoring the boy. He went past Edgar, turning his