The Casino was shrouded in darkness and silence, and there was nothing in the streets of the little town but the salt smell of the sea, a vague aroma of fish and the distant sound of the breakers.

Little by little, Bernard lost the feeling of having been startled, and began to perceive that he could reason about his trouble.
Trouble it was, though this seems an odd name for the consciousness of a bright enchantment; and the first thing that reason, definitely consulted, told him about the matter was that he had been in love with Angela Vivian any time these three years.

This sapient faculty supplied him with further information; only two or three of the items of which, however, it is necessary to reproduce.

He had been a great fool--an incredible fool--not to have discovered before this what was the matter with him! Bernard's sense of his own shrewdness--always tolerably acute--had never received such a bruise as this present perception that a great many things had been taking place in his clever mind without his clever mind suspecting them.

But it little mattered, his reason went on to declare, what he had suspected or what he might now feel about it; his present business was to leave Blanquais-les-Galets at sunrise the next morning and never rest his eyes upon Angela Vivian again.