He then knew he had been thinking
of some early sign from Chad as more likely, after all, than not;
and this would be precisely the early sign. He took it so for
granted that he opened the petit bleu just where he had stopped, in
the pleasant cool draught of the porte-cochere--only curious to see
where the young man would, at such a juncture, break out. His
curiosity, however, was more than gratified; the small missive,
whose gummed edge he had detached without attention to the address,
not being from the young man at all, but from the person whom the
case gave him on the spot as still more worth while. Worth while
or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the big one
on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a fear
of the danger of delay. He might have been thinking that if he didn't
go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all. He at
any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very
deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly
than harshly. He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form
of a petit bleu--which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,
inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own communication, it consisted
of the fewest words.
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