Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was himself without great sympathy for a certain side of that man which he could not quite make out.

He only felt it obscurely to be his real personality--the true--and, perhaps, the absurd.

As, for instance, in that case of the assistant.

Renouard had given way to the arguments of his friend and backer--the argument against the unwholesome effect of solitude, the argument for the safety of companionship even if quarrelsome.

Very well.