The next day, he saw her at the Opera.

She was still wearing the plain gold ring.

She was gentle and kind to him.

She talked to him of the plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career.
He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest.
She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as a stage toward his coming fame.

And when he replied that fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows were only short-lived.
"How can you speak so lightly of such serious things ?" he asked.
"Perhaps we shall never see each other again! I may die during that expedition." "Or I," she said simply.
She no longer smiled or jested.