M. Hervart felt a pain in the back of his neck.
He began thinking of that season of Platonic love he had once passed at Versailles with a virtuous woman, and he was frightened; for that passion of light kisses and hand-pressures had undermined him as more violent excesses had never done.
"What will become of me?" he thought. "This is a case of acute Platonism, marked by the most decisive symptoms. All or nothing! Otherwise I am a dead man."
He looked at Rose, meaning to put on a chilly expression; but those eyes of her looked back at him so sweetly!
His thoughts became confused. He felt a desire to lie down in the grass and sleep, and he said so.
"All right, lie down and sleep. I'll watch over you and keep the flies away from your eyes and mouth. I'll fan you with this fern."
She spoke in a voice that was caressingly passionate. It was like music. M. Hervart woke up and uttered words of love.
"I love you, Rose. The touch of your lips has refreshed my blood and brought joy to my heart. When I first touched you, it was as though I were clasping a treasure without price. But tell me, my darling, you won't take back this treasure now you have given it?"
M. Hervart was breathing heavily. Rose shook her head and said, "No, I won't take it back;" and to prove that she meant it she leaned towards him, as though offering her bosom; M. Hervart lightly touched the stuff of her blouse with his lips.
Seeing her lover's lack of alacrity, Rose, without suspecting the mystery, at least guessed that there was a mystery.
"No doubt," she thought, "love needs a rest every now and then. We will go for a little walk and I'll talk to him of flowers and insects. We should do well, perhaps, to go back to the garden, for it would be very annoying if they took it into their heads to come and look for us." They got up and walked round the wood meaning to go straight back to the house.
M. Hervart seemed to be in an absent-minded mood. He was holding Rose's hand in his, but he forgot to squeeze it. His thoughts were, none the less, thoughts of love. He looked about him as though he were searching for something.
"What are you looking for? Tell me; I'll look too."
M. Hervart was looking for a nook. He inspected the dry leaves, peeped into every nook and bower of the wood. But he felt ashamed of his quest.
"Yet," he thought, "I must. I love her and these innocent amusements are really too pernicious. Shall I go away? That would be to condemn myself to a melancholy solitude, with, perhaps, bitter consolations. Marry her, then? Certainly, but it can't come off to-morrow, and we are too much aquiver with desire to wait patiently. And suppose, when we are engaged, we have to submit ourselves to the law of the traditional sentimentality.... No, let us be peasants, children of this kindly earth. Let us, like them, make love first, at haphazard, where the paths of the wood lead us; then, when we are certain of the consent of our flesh, we will call our fellow men to witness."
He went on looking and found what he wanted, but when he had found, he started searching again, for he was ashamed of himself.
"Perhaps," he thought, answering his own objections, "one may have to behave like a cad in order to be happy. What, shall I submit myself to the prejudices of the world at the moment when life offers to my kisses a virgin who is unaware of them? I will have the courage of my caddishness."
Time passed and his eyes examined the heaps of leaves with decreasing interest. His imagination returned pleasantly to the joys of a little before, and he longed to be able to lay his trembling hand once more on Rose's breast and to drink her breath in a kiss.
M. Hervart was recovering all his self-possession. He concluded:
"Well, it's very curious adventure and one that will increase the sum of my knowledge and of my pleasures."
Rose, feeling the pressure of his fingers, had the courage, at last, to look at him. He smiled and she was reassured.
"You won't leave me, will you?" she said. "Promise. When we are married well live wherever you like, but till then, I want you near me, in my house, in my garden, my woods, my fields. Do you understand?"
"Child, I love you and I understand that you love me too."
"Why 'too'? I loved you first; I don't like that word; it expresses a kind of imitation."
"It's true," said M. Hervart. "We fell in love simultaneously. But the convention is that the man falls in love first and the woman does no more than consent to his desires."
"What can you want that I don't want myself?"
"Delicious innocence!" thought M. Hervart.
He went on:
"But perhaps I want still more intimacy, complete surrender, Rose."
"But am I not entirely yours? I want you in exchange, though, Xavier, I want you, all of you."
M. Hervart did not know what to say. He became quite shy. This charming ingenuousness troubled his imagination more than the images of pleasure itself.
"She doesn't know," he thought. "She hasn't even dreamed of it. What chastity and grace!"
He answered:
"I belong to you, Rose, with all my heart...."
"What were you thinking of a moment ago? You seemed far away."
"I was just feeling happy."
"You must have had such a lot of happinesses since you began life, Xavier. You have given happiness, received it...."
"I have just lived," said M. Hervart.
"Yes, and I'm only a girl of twenty."
"Think of being twenty!"
"If you were twenty, I shouldn't love you."
M. Hervart answered only by a smile which he tried to make as young, as delicate as possible. He knew what he would have liked to say, but he felt that he could not say it. Besides, he wondered whether Rose and he were really speaking the same language.
"This conversation is really absurd. I tell her that I want her to surrender herself to me, and she answers—at least I suppose that's what she means—that she has given me her heart. Obviously, she has no idea of what might happen between us.... What do these little caresses mean to her? They're just marks of affection.... All the same there was surely desire in her movements, her kisses, her eyes. And her body trembled at the urgent touch of my lips. Yes, she knows what love is. How ridiculous! All the same, if we go to work cleverly...."
"You mustn't believe, Rose," he said out loud, "that I have ever yet had occasion to give my heart. That doesn't always happen in the course of a life; and when it does happen, it happens only once.... A man has plenty of adventures in which his will is not concerned.... Man is an animal as well as a man...."
"And what about women?"
"The best people agree," said M. Hervart, "that woman is an angel."
Rose burst out laughing at this remark, apparently very innocently, and said:
"I can't claim to be an angel. It wouldn't amuse me to be one, either. Angels—why, father puts them in his pictures. No, I prefer being a woman. Would you love an angel?"
M. Hervart laughed too. He explained that young girls had a right to being called angels, because of their innocence....
"When one is in love, is one still innocent?"
"If one still is, one doesn't remain so long."
They could say no more. They had come back to the stream and there they caught sight of M. Des Boys showing his domains to two gentlemen, one of whom seemed to be of his own age, while the other looked about thirty.
M. Hervart soon recognised in one of the visitors a friend of old days, Lanfranc, the architect. The young man, as he found out, was Lanfranc's nephew, pupil and probable successor. He was further informed that the two architects were installed in the old manor house of Barnavast, the restoration of which they had undertaken on behalf of Mme. Suif, widow of that famous Suif who gave such a fine impulse to the art of mortuary and religious sculpture. Lanfranc, who had patched and painted every church in Normandy, had for twenty years bought his materials at Suif's and the widow had always appreciated him. Hence this job at Barnavast which would round off his fortune, make it possible for him to return to Paris and achieve a place in the Institute.
As soon as they had settled down in the shade of the chestnut trees on the rustic seat, Lanfranc began telling the story of Mme. Suif, a story that was well known to every one. Rose listened attentively. The moment Lanfranc could collect a friendly audience he always told the story of Mme. Suif. It was in some degree his own story too. Mme. Suif had been his mistress, then he had married, then he had resumed relations with her and had, with the cooling of their passion, remained her friend.
"Ah! If I hadn't been so childish as to marry for love, I would marry Mme. Suif's millions to-day, for Mme. Suif would be grateful to any man who would relieve her of her name. Being an architect of churches and ancient monuments, I could hardly get divorced, could I? But of course she may be willing to call herself Mme. Leonor Varin. For she looks at my nephew with no unfavourable eye!"
"Thanks, I don't want her," said Leonor, blushing.
Rose had looked at him and he had suddenly felt quite ashamed of his secret cupidity.
Leonor, who was nearly thirty, looked older from a distance and younger from close at hand. He was large, rather massive and slow in his movements. But when one came near him one was surprised at the sentimental expression of his eyes, surprised at the youthful appearance of a beard that still seemed to be newly sprouting, at the awkwardness of his gestures and, when he spoke, the abrupt shyness of his speech; for he could hardly open his mouth without blushing. It is true that the moment after he would frown and contract his whole face into an expression of harshness. But the eyes remained blue and gentle in this frowning mask. Leonor was a riddle for everybody, including himself. He liked pondering, and when he thought of love it was to come to the conclusion that his ideal hovered between the daydream and the debauch, between the happiness of kissing, on bended knees, a gloved hand and the pleasure of lying languidly in the midst of a troop of odalisques of easy virtue. He had no suspicion that he was like almost all other men. He was afraid of himself and contemptuous too, when he caught himself thinking too complacently of Mme. Suif's millions, those millions that would give immediate satisfaction to his vices and, later on, to his sentimental aspirations.
He looked at Rose in his turn, but Rose did not drop her eyes. Meanwhile, M. Hervart was growing bored.
"Mme. Suif," said Lanfranc, "is still quite well preserved. For instance...."
"Rose dear," interrupted M. Des Boys, "doesn't your mother want you?"
"Oh, no, I'm sure she doesn't. Mother would only find me in the way."
"Your father is right, Rose," said M. Hervart glad to make trial of his authority.
She did not dare oppose her lover's wish, but she felt angry as she rose to go.
"Acting like my master already!" she thought. "I should so like to listen to M. Lanfranc...."
She dared not add: "... and to look at this M. Leonor and be looked at by him and still more, to hear them talk of Mme. Suif. What was he going to say? Oh, I don't want to know!"
She entered the house, came out again by another door and hid herself in a shrubbery from which she could hear their voices quite clearly.
"It's not only her shoulders," M. Lanfranc was saying, "they're not the only things about her that tempt one. She's forty-five, but her figure is still good and not too excessively run to flesh. As a whole she is certainly a bit ample, but at the Art School one could still make a very respectable Juno of her. I've seen worse on the model's throne...."
"Time," said M. Hervart, "often shows angelical clemency. He pardons women who have been good lovers."
"And still are," said Lanfranc.
"There's no better recreation than love," said Leonor. "No sport more suited to keep one fit and supple."
M. Hervart looked in surprise at this dim young man who had so unexpectedly made a joke. Anxious to shine in his turn, he replied: "No one has ever dared to put that in a manual of hygiene. What a charming chapter one could make of it, in the style of the First Empire: 'Love, the preserver of Beauty.'"
"A pretty subject too for the Prix de Rome," said Lanfranc.
"Seriously," broke in M. Des Boys, "I believe that the thing that so quickly shrivels up virtuous women in chastity."
"Virtuous women!" said Lanfranc, "they're mean to reproduce the species. When they have had their children, and that must take place between twenty and thirty, their rôle is finished."
"The only thing left for them to do," said M. Des Boys, "is to concoct philters to keep us young."
The others looked at him interrogatively; he laughed.
"You will see, or rather you'll taste, and you will understand. I wish you all as good a magician as Mme. Des Boys."
"True," said M. Hervart, understanding him at last, "she has a real genius for cookery. Dinners of her planning are regular love-potions."
"You'll realise that when you get back to Paris."
"Yes, when I get back to Paris. I am taking a holiday here," said M. Hervart, pleased at this mark of confidence. He even added, so as to guard against possible suspicions:
"A holiday from love is not without a certain melancholy."
Rose had found it all very amusing, but when her father began speaking she stopped listening. Leonor, pleased at having made a witty remark, and afraid of not being able to think of another, had got up and was walking about the garden. Rose looked at him. The sight of this young animal interested her. And what curious words about love had issued from that mouth! So love was an exercise like tennis, or bicycling, or riding! What a revelation! And the most singular fancies took shape in her mind as she followed with her eyes the now distant figure of this ingenious and decisive young man.
"How do people play the game of love," she wondered, "real love? Xavier teaches me nothing. He knows all about it though, more probably than this young Leonor, but he takes care not to tell me. He treats me like a little girl, while he makes fun of my innocence. Oh! it's gentle fun, because he loves me; but all the same he rather abuses his superior position. A sport, a sport...."
Quitting the shrubbery, she went and sat down on an old stone bench in a lonely corner, from which she could keep a watch between the trees on all that was happening in the neighbourhood. She was fond of this nook and in it, before M. Hervart's arrival, she had spent whole mornings dreaming alone. She laughed at the childishness of those dreams now.
"It always seemed to me," she thought, "that the branches were just about to open, making way for some beautiful young cavalier.... Without saying a word, he would bring his horse to stop at my side, would lean down, pick me up, lay me across the saddle and off we would go. Then there was to be a mad, furious, endless gallop, and in the end I should go to sleep. And in reality I used to wake up as though from a sleep, even though I hadn't dropped off. Nothing happened but this dumb ride in the blue air, and yet, when I came to myself, I felt tired.... How often I have dreamed this dream! How often have I seen the lilac plumes bending to make way for my lovely young knight and his black horse! The horse was always black. I remember very little of the face of the Perseus who delivered me, for a few hours at least, from the bondage of my boring existence.... A sport? That was indeed a sport! What did he do with his Andromeda, this Perseus of mine? I've never been able to find out. What do Perseuses do with their Andromedas?"
To this question Rose's tireless imagination provided, for the hundredth time, a new series of answers. The imagination of a young girl who knows and yet is ignorant of what she desires has an Aretine-like fecundity.
Into all these imaginations of hers Rose now introduced the complicity of M. Hervart. Even at the moment when she was on the lookout for Leonor's return, it was really of M. Hervart that she was thinking. Leonor was to be nothing more than a stimulant for her heart and her nerves, a musical accompaniment to something else. The stimulation which the young man's arrival had brought to her went to the profit of M. Hervart.
"Xavier," she murmured, "Xavier...."
Xavier, meanwhile, was congratulating himself that his paternal intervention had spared Rose's ears the hearing of those over-frank remarks of M. Lanfranc. The architect would of course have toned down his language; but is it good that a young girl should learn the use that wives make of marriage? He said:
"M. Lanfranc, keep an eye on your language at table. Don't forget that we have a young girl with us."
"Yes," said M. Des Boys "I sent her away from here, but that would hardly be possible during luncheon."
"Girls," said Lanfranc, "understand nothing."
"They guess," said M. Hervart.
M. Des Boys had no opinions on maiden perspicacity, but he desired to conform to custom and allow his daughter to listen only to the choicest conversation.
"Well, then," said Lanfranc, "let us profitably employ these moments while we are alone." His lively blue eyes lit up his tanned face.
The conversation had deviated once more in the direction of Mme. Des Boys' administrative merits.
"One meets so many different kinds of women," said M. Hervart. "The best of them is never equal to the dream one makes up about them."
"Silly commonplace," he thought. "What answer will he make to that?"
"I don't dream," said Lanfranc, "I search. But I scarcely ever find. Adventures have always disappointed me. That's why Paris is the only place for love affairs. One can find plenty of pleasant romances there with only one chapter—the last."
"Your opinion of women ceases to astonish me then!"
"His opinion is very reasonable," said M. Des Boys. "You talk as though you were still twenty-five, Hervart."
He reddened a little.
"Me! Oh no, thank God! I'm forty."
And seeing the appropriateness of the occasion, he added:
"You're jealous of my liberty, but I am becoming afraid that I may lose it."
"Are you thinking of marriage?" asked Lanfranc.
"Perhaps."
"Mme. Suif would suit you very well. Leonor is being coy about her...."
Irritated by so much vulgarity, M. Hervart got up and walked into the garden. Rose and Leonor were strolling there together.
Rose had laid her plans in such a fashion that the young man had found her in his path. Not to see her was too deliberately to avoid her. If he saw her, he had to take off his hat. And this was what had happened. Rose had answered his salutation by a word of welcome; conversation had then passed to the old house at Barnavast, finally to Mme. Suif. But Leonor was discreet and vague, so much so that at one of Rose's questions the conversation had switched off on to sentimental commonplaces. But, for Rose, nothing in the world was commonplace yet.
"Isn't she rather old to marry again?" she asked.
"Ah, but Mme. Suif is one of those whose hearts are always young."
"Then there are some hearts that grow old more slowly than others?"
"Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young."
"All the same, I see a great difference, when I look around me, between the feelings of young and old people."
"Do you know many people?"
"No, very few; but I have always seen a correspondence between people's hearts and faces."
"Certainly; but a general truth, although it may represent the average of particular truths, is hardly ever the same as a single particular case selected by chance...."
Rose looked at Leonor with a mixture of admiration and shame: she did not understand. Leonor perceived the fact and went on:
"I mean that there are, in all things, exceptions. I also mean that there are rules which admit of a great number of exceptions. It even happens in life, just as in grammar, that the exceptional are more numerous than the regular cases. Do you follow?"
"Oh, perfectly."
"But that," he concluded, emphasising his words, "does not prevent the rule's being the rule, even though there were only two normal cases as against ten exceptions."
Rose liked this magisterial tone. M. Hervart had, for some time, done nothing but agree with her opinions.
"But how does one recognise the rule?" she went on.
"Rules," said Leonor, "always satisfy the reason."
Rose looked at him in alarm; then, pretending she had understood, made a sign of affirmation.
"Women never understand that very well," Leonor continued. "It doesn't satisfy them. They yield only to their feelings. So do men, for that matter, but they don't admit it. So that women accused of hypocrisy and vanity have less of these vices, it may be, than men.... At any rate the rule is the rule. The rule demands that Marguerite should give up...."
"Who's Marguerite?"
"Mme. Suif."
"Do you know her well?"
Leonor smiled. "Am I not the nephew and lieutenant of her architect? The rule, then, would demand that Marguerite should give up love; and the rule further demands, Mademoiselle, that you should begin to think of it."
"The rule is the rule," said Rose sententiously, suppressing the shouts of laughter that exploded silently in her heart.
"The rule's not so stupid after all," she thought. "I don't ask anything better than to obey it...."
At this moment M. Hervart came face to face with them at the turn of a path. Rose welcomed him with a happy smile, a smile of delicious frankness.
"Good," thought M. Hervart, "he isn't my rival yet. My rôle for the moment is to act the part of the man who is sure of himself, the man who possesses, dominates, the lord who is above all changes and chances...."
And he began to talk of his stay at Robinvast and of the pleasure he found in the midst of this rich disorderly scene of nature.
"But you," he said, "have come to put it in order. You have come to whiten these walls, scrape off this moss and ivy, cut clearings through these dark masses, and you will make M. Des Boys a present of a brand-new castle with a charming and equally brand-new park."
"Who's going to touch my ivy?" exclaimed Rose, indignantly.
"Why should it be touched," said Leonor. "Isn't ivy the glory of the walls of Tourlaville? Ivy—why, it's the only architectural beauty that can't be bought. At Barnavast, which is in a state of ruin, we always respect it when the wall can be consolidated from inside. To my mind, restoration means giving back to a monument the appearance that the centuries would have given it if it had been well looked after. Restoration doesn't mean making a thing look new; it doesn't consist in giving an old man the hair, beard, complexion and teeth of a youth; it consists in bringing a dying man back to life and giving him the health and beauty of his age."
"How glad I am to hear you talk like this," said Rose. "I hope M. Lanfranc shares your ideas."
"M. Lanfranc is completely converted to my ideas."
"My father will do nothing without consulting me, but I shall feel more certain of getting my way if you are my ally."
"I will be your ally then."
"Yours is a sensible method," said M. Hervart. "You may know that I am the keeper of the Greek sculpture at the Louvre. I entered that necropolis at a time when the old system of restoration had begun to be abandoned. They were oscillating between two methods—re-making or doing nothing. The second has prevailed. You will have noticed that our marbles can be divided into two groups: those which have no antiquity but in the name, and those which have no antiquity except in the material. In old days, when they had found a bust, they manufactured a new head for it, new arms and new legs; then they wrote underneath: 'Artemis (restored), Minerva (restored), Nymph with a bow (restored),' according to the fancy of the cast-maker or as they were guided by a somnolent archæology. I think that they certainly filled some gaps in this way. If the system had gone on being followed, we should doubtless be in possession at the present time of a complete Olympus; while as it is there are plenty of empty places left in the assembly of our gods. Since we decided to do nothing, our galleries have grown rich in curious anatomical odds and ends—legs and hands that look like those ex-voto offerings that used, as a matter of fact, to hang in Greek sanctuaries; heads that look as though they had, like Orpheus's head, been rolled by storms among the pebbles of the sea; busts so full of holes that they seem to have served as targets for drunken soldiers. In short nothing comes to us now but fragments—fragments of great archæological interest, but whose value as works of art is almost nothing. Wouldn't some intermediate method be preferable? By intermediate I mean intelligent. Intelligence is the art of reconciling ideas and producing a harmony. A head of Aphrodite with a broken nose ceases to be a head of Aphrodite. I ask for beauty and they give me a museum specimen. If they want me to admire it, they must make a new nose; if they don't want to make a new nose, then they must divide up the Louvre into two museums, the æsthetic museum and the archæological museum."
Having finished speaking, he looked first of all at Rose, thus showing that he had need, before everything else, of her approbation. Rose's face lit up with happiness. Her eyes answered, "My dear, I admire you. You're a god."
These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.
"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who know something about life, whether through experience or through the confidences of some one else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. Hervart has a pair of fine blue eyes, gentle and lively, ardent. But what do I care? I don't desire the good graces of this innocent."
While reflecting thus, he had answered M. Hervart, "I quite agree with you. People tend too much to-day to confound the curious, rare or antique with the beautiful. The æsthetic sense has been replaced by a feeling of respect."
"The process was perhaps inevitable," said M. Hervart. "In any case it suits a democracy. People have no time to learn to admire, but one can very quickly learn to respect. The intelligence is docile, but taste is recalcitrant."
"But aren't there such things," Rose asked, "as spontaneous admirations?"
"Yes," said Leonor, "there's love."
"Then is admiration the same as love?"
"If they don't yet love, people come very near loving when they admire."
"And is love admiration?"
"Not always."
"Love," said M. Hervart, "is compatible with almost all other feelings, even with hatred."
"Yes," replied Leonor, "that has the appearance of being true, for there are many kinds of love. The love that struggles with hatred can only be a love inspired by interest or sensuality."
"One never knows. I hold that love, just as it is capable of taking any shape or form, can devour all other feelings and install itself in their place. It comes and it goes, without one's ever being able to understand the mechanism of its movements. It lasts two hours or a whole life....
"You are mixing up the different species," said Leonor. "You must, if we are to understand one another, allow words to keep their traditional sense with all its shades of meaning. Love is at the base of all emotions either as a negative or positive principle; one can say that, and when one has said it one is no forwarder. Do you think there's no point in the way verbal usage employs the words 'passion, caprice, inclination, taste, curiosity' and other words of the kind? It would surely be better to create new shades, rather than set one's wits to work to dissolve all the colours and shades of sensation and emotion into a single hue."
Like a village musician plunged into the midst of a discussion on counterpoint and orchestration, Rose listened, a little disquieted, a little irritated, but at the same time fascinated. They were speaking of something that filled her heart and set her nerves tingling; she did not understand, she felt. She would have liked to understand.
"Xavier will explain it all to me. How silly I look in the middle of the conversations where I can't put in a word."
She pretended to desire a rose out of reach of her hand. M. Hervart darted forward, reached the flower and set to work to strip the branch of its thorns and its superfluous wood and leaves.
"That was not the one I wanted," said Rose.
M. Hervart began again and the girl looked on, happy at having been able to interrupt a serious conversation by a mere whim.
Leonor examined them with a certain irony. Rose noticed his look, felt herself blushing and slipped away.
M. Hervart and Leonor continued their stroll and their chat; but they talked no more about love.
Luncheon passed agreeably for Rose. She was the centre of looks, desires and conversation. M. Lanfranc gallanted without bad taste. She would laugh and then, with sudden seriousness, accept the contact of some gesture of M. Hervart's, who was sitting next to her. Leonor confined himself to a few curt phrases, which were meant to sum up the more ingenuous remarks of his fellow guests. He had thought he could treat this girl with contempt, but her eyes, he found, excited him. By dint of trying to seem a superior being, he succeeded in looking like a thoroughly disagreeable one. Rose was frightened of him.
"How cold he is," she thought. "One could never talk or play with a man so sure of all his movements. He would always win."
Several times, with innocent unconsciousness, she looked at M. Hervart.
"How well I have chosen! Here is a man who is younger than he, nearer my own age, and yet each of his words and gestures brings me closer to Xavier. I feel that it will be always like that. Who can compete with him? Xavier, I love you."
She leaned forward to reach a jug and as she did so whispered full in M. Hervart's face, "Xavier, I love you."
M. Hervart pretended to choke. His redness of face was put down to a cherry stone; Lanfranc gave vent to some feeble joking on the subject.
As luncheon was nearing its end, she said with a perverse frankness:
"M. Hervart, will you come with me and see if everything's all right down in the garden?"
"I am having coffee served out of doors," Mme. Des Boys explained.
Lanfranc expatiated on the beauties of this country custom.
As soon as they were hidden from view behind the shrubbery, Rose, without a word, took M. Hervart by the shoulders and offered him her lips. It was a long kiss. Xavier clasped the girl in his arms and with a passion in which there was much amorous art, drank in her soul.
When he lifted his head, he felt confused:
"I have been giving the kiss of a happy lover, when what was asked for was a betrothal kiss. What will she think of me?"
Rose was already looking at the rustic table. When M. Hervart rejoined her, she greeted him with the sweetest of smiles.
"Was that what she wanted then?" M. Hervart wondered.
"Rose," he said aloud, "I love you, I love you."
"I hope you do," she replied.
"Oh, how I should like to be alone with you now!"
"I wouldn't. I should be afraid."
This answer set M. Hervart thinking: "Does she know as much about it as all that? Is it an invitation?"
His thought lost itself in a tangle of vain desires. But for the very reason that the moment was not propitious, he let himself go among the most audacious fancies. His eyes wandered towards the dark wood, as though in search of some favourable retreat. He made movements which he never finished. Raising himself from his chair, he let himself fall back, fidgeted with an empty cup, searched vainly for a match to light his absent cigarette. The arrival of Leonor calmed him. His fate that day was to embark on futile discussions with this young man, and he accepted his destiny.
Every one was once more assembled. The conversation was resumed on the tone it had kept up at luncheon; but Rose was dreaming, and M. Hervart had a headache. It was all so spiritless, despite the enticements of M. Lanfranc, that M. Des Boys lost no time in proposing a walk.
"If you want us," said Leonor, "to draw up a plan for the transformation of your property, you must show it to us in some detail. Is this wood to be a part of your projected park? And what's beyond it? Another estate, or meadows, or ploughed fields? What are the rights of way? Do you want a single avenue towards Couville? One could equally well have one joining the St. Martin road....
"Do you intend to lay waste this wood?" asked Rose. "It's so beautiful and wild."
"My dear young lady," said Leonor, "I intend to do nothing; that is to say, I only intend to please you...."
"Do what my daughter wants," said M. Des Boys. "You're here for her sake."
"For her sake," Mme. Des Boys repeated.
"Oh, well," said Leonor, "we shall get on very well then."
"So I hope," said Rose.
"I am at your orders," said Leonor.
"Come on then," said Rose.
With these words she got up, throwing M. Hervart a look which was understood. But as M. Hervart rose to his feet, Mme. Des Boys approached him:
"I have something very interesting to tell you."
M. Hervart had to let Rose and Leonor plunge alone into the wood in which he had, during these last few days, experienced such delightful emotions. Mme. Des Boys took him into the garden.
"I have a question to ask you," she said. "First of all, is architecture a serious profession?"
"Very," said M. Hervart.
"But do people make really a lot of money at it?"
"Lanfranc, who was a beggar when I first knew him, is probably richer than you are to-day. Leonor will go even further, I should think, for he seems an intelligent fellow and knows a lot about his business."
"You're not speaking out of mere friendship for him?"
"Not at all. Far from it; to tell you the truth I'm not very fond of either of them."
"But they're thorough gentlemen and very good company."
"Certainly, Lanfranc especially."
"Isn't he amusing? His nephew is more severe, but I prefer it."
"So do I."
"I'm glad to see that you agree with me."
She continued after a moment's reflection. "He would be an excellent husband for Rose."
Hervart did not reply. He had grown pale and his heart had begun beating violently. His thoughts were in confusion; his head whirled.
"What do you think of the idea?" Mme. Des Boys insisted.
He withheld his answer, for he knew that his voice would seem quite changed. He murmured; "Hum," or something of the sort, something that simply meant that he had heard the question.
But bit by bit he recovered. The happy idea came to him that time. Des Boys was a nullity in the family and had little influence over her daughter.
"Nothing that she says has any importance. I'll agree with her."
"I entirely agree with you," he pronounced,
"My daughter's a curious creature," went on Mme. Des Boys, "but your approbation will perhaps be enough to convince her. You have a great deal of influence over her."
"I?"
"She's very fond of you. It's obvious."
"I'm such an old friend," said M. Hervart courageously.
His cowardice made him blush.
"Why shouldn't I confess? Why not say, 'Yes, she does like me, and I like her, why not?' Isn't my desire evident? Can I go away, leave her, do without her?..." But to all these intimate questions M. Hervart did not dare to give a definite answer.
"What I should like is that the present moment should go on for ever...."
"They have hardly spoken to one another, and yet," Mme. Des Boys continued, "I seem to see between them the beginnings of ... what?... how shall I put it?..."
"The beginnings of an understanding," prompted M. Hervart with ironic charity. "Why not love? There's such a thing as love at first sight."
"Oh, Rose is much too well bred."
The silliness of this woman, so reasonable and natural, none the less, in her rôle of mother, exasperated M. Hervart even more than the insinuations to which he had been obliged to listen. Ceasing, not to hesitate, but to reflect, he said abruptly:
"I shall be very sorry to see her married."
Mme. Des Boys pressed his hand:
"Dear friend! yes, it will make a big difference in our home."
She went on, after a moment's hesitation:
"Not a word about all this, dear Hervart; you understand. And now I think that thetête-a-têtehas perhaps gone on long enough; it would be very nice of you if you'd go and join them."
M. Hervart, impatient though he was, made his way slowly through the meanders of the little copse. Like Panurge, he kept repeating to himself, "Marry her? or not marry her?"
His head was a clock in which a pendulum swung indefatigably. He sat down on the little bench where, for the first time, he had fell the girl's head coming gently to rest on his shoulder. He wanted to think.
"I must come to a decision," he said to himself.
Leonor had noticed that, from the moment their walk had begun, Rose was on the alert at the slightest noise.
"She expects him. That means he'll come. So much the better. I care very little about this schoolgirl. We're alone now; no more compliments. I'm simply a landscape gardener at the orders of Mlle. Rose Des Boys. What a name!..."
He looked at the girl.
"After all, the name isn't so ridiculous as one might think. She is so fresh, she looks so pure. How curious they are, these innocent beings who go through life with the grace of a flower blossoming by the wayside.... But let's get on with our job....
"The taste of the day, mademoiselle, inclines towards the French style of garden. Some compromise, at least, is necessary between the sham naturalness of the English park and the rigidity of geometrical designs....
"Tell me what your compromise is."
"But I don't know the ground yet."
"It isn't big, you know. In a quarter of an hour you will have an idea of the place as a whole."
Leonor continued his dissertation on the art of the garden for a little, but he was perfectly aware that he was not being listened to. Finally he said:
"Nature must obey man; but a reasonable man only asks of her that she should allow herself to be admired or to be loved. Those who wish to admire are inclined to impose certain sacrifices upon her. Those who love ask less and are content, provided they find an easy access to the sites that please them. But I should imagine that women demand more. They want nature to be tamer, they want to see her utterly conquered; they want landscapes in which you can see the mark of their power...."
"What a curious conversation," Rose said to herself. "Here's an architect who would get on my nerves if I had to pass my life in his company...."
This idea made her think more urgently of M. Hervart. She turned her head, questioning the narrow alleys where the sunlight filtered through in little drops.
"She's thinking of her dear Xavier," thought Leonor. "What subject can I think of to hold her attention? Obviously, my remarks have so far interested her very little."
A man, however cold he may voluntarily make himself, however self-controlled he may be by nature, is scarcely capable of going for a walk alone with a young woman without wishing to please. He is equally incapable of keeping his presence of mind sufficiently to be able to look at himself acting and not to make mistakes. But how can one please? Can it be done by rule, particularly with a young girl? Women are hardly capable of anything but total impressions. They do not distinguish, for instance, between cleverness and intelligence, between facility and real power, between real and apparent youthfulness. If one pleases them, one pleases in one's entirety, and as soon as one does please them, one becomes their sacred animal. Leonor had an inspiration. Instead of expounding his own ideas on gardens, he set to work to repeat, in different terms, what Rose had said that morning:
"What I have been expounding," he said, "doesn't seem to interest you much. But you see, I must do my job, which is to back up M. Lanfranc. Personally, I agree with you. If there are weak spots in your house, the nearest mason can put on the necessary plaster, stone and mortar. As for the garden and the wood, I should do nothing except make a few paths so that I might walk without fear of dew or brambles."
"Now you're being sensible. Very well then, I shall tell my father that I shall make arrangements with you alone. You will come back here and we will do nothing, almost nothing."
"I shall come back with pleasure and I shall do nothing; but if I have not made you dislike me I shall consider that I have done a great deal."
"But I don't dislike you. When people agree with me, I never dislike them."
"But how can people fail to agree with you when you say such sensible things?"
"Oh, that's very easy. M. Hervart doesn't dispose with disagreement. He contradicts me, laughs at me."
"Good," thought Leonor, "she's in love with Hervart; then she likes being contradicted and even laughed at a little. Or perhaps she's lying, so as to make me believe that Hervart is indifferent to her. Let's try and get a rise."
"At this age that sort of thing is permissible."
"That's why I don't get cross."
"And besides, he's very nice."
"Oh, so nice; I'm very fond of him."
"It doesn't take," thought Leonor. "Hervart, to her, is a god and we might go on talking till to-morrow without her understanding a single one of my insinuations or ironies."
He went on, nevertheless, picking out all the spiteful things that can be said with politeness.
"Old bachelors often have manias...."
"That's what I often tell him. For instance, his taste for insects.... But it amuses him so."
"She's invulnerable," said Leonor to himself.
"And then he knows life. He has lived so much."
"That's true. Sometimes, when he's speaking to me, I fed as though a whole world were opening before me."
"He knows all there is to be known, the arts and the sciences, friendship and love, men, women.... He's seen a lot of them and of every variety."
This time it was Rose who paused a moment to reflect, then:
"That's why I have such immense confidence in him. It's a real happiness for me that he should come and spend his holidays here. I have learnt more in these few weeks than in all the other years of my life."
Leonor looked at Rose. He felt a powerful emotion, for to be loved like this seemed to him the height of felicity. He had never believed that it was possible to inspire a young girl with such ingenuous confidence. And how frank she was! What a divine simplicity!
"How does one make oneself so much loved? What's his secret? Ah! if only I dared ask more! But now, I don't even want to try and violate an intimacy so charming to contemplate. I'm looking at happiness, and it's such a rare sight."
He glanced at Rose once more.
"And with all that she's very pretty. How graceful she is under this aspect of wildness! What suppleness of form! Everything down to her complexion, gilded and freckled like an apple by the sun, looks lovely in these country surroundings. How well a wife like this would suit me; for I belong to this country and am destined to live here. Why couldn't Hervart have stayed among his Parisian women?"
"He must be very fond of you," he went on, "and I envy his happiness in being allowed to be your friend. I shall come back, since you so desire, but I would rather not come back."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to displease you."
"But it won't displease me; far from it. Do explain."
"If I come back, perhaps, I shan't have the strength of mind not to grow fond of you, and that will make you angry."
"But why? How odd you are! Make yourself a friend of the house. I shall be very pleased."
"But then I shan't be able to like you as you like M. Hervart."
"Oh! I don't think that would be possible."
"And you won't like me as you like him."
She broke into such ingenuous laughter that Leonor assured himself that she had not understood anything of his insinuations. However, he was wrong, and her laughter proved it. She had laughed just because the idea had suddenly come to her that another man might have played Xavier's part in what had happened. The idea seemed to her comic and she had laughed. But the idea had come, and that was a great point.
It was such a great point that in her turn she looked at Leonor, and this time she did not laugh; but she had no time to make any comparison, for at the same moment she pricked up her ears and said, "There he is."
M. Hervart did not arrive till quite an appreciable time had passed, and Leonor said to himself:
"She scents her lover as a pointer scents the game. Love is extraordinary."
He abandoned himself to reflection, astonished at having learnt so many things in half an hour's walk with a young and simple-hearted girl.
Rose was staring with all her eyes in the direction from which the sound of rustling leaves had come. Leonor stooped down behind her and kissed the hem of her skirt.
While he was alone, M. Hervart had done his best to make a decision, as he had promised himself to do; but decisions had fluttered like capricious butterflies round his head and would not let themselves be caught. He was neither surprised nor vexed at the fact.
"Rose," he said to himself at last, "will do all I want."
This certitude was enough for him. The moment he had a will, Rose would acquiesce.
"Provided my will agrees with hers, that's obvious. Now Rose's wish is to become Mme. Hervart. Dear little thing, she's in love with me...."
He dwelt complacently on this idea, but a moment later it alarmed him and he felt himself a prisoner. A hundred times over he repeated:
"I must have done with it. I will speak to Des Boys this evening, to-morrow morning at latest.... He will laugh at me. But that's all. He will have to give in afterwards. My will, Rose's will.... I shall carry her off and take her to Paris. Is it my first adventure? If it's the last it will at least be a splendid one."
He pictured to himself all the details of this romantic enterprise. He would, of course, reserve a compartment in the train so as to insure a propitious solitude. It would not be at night, but in the evening. After an amusing little supper and some thrilling kisses, Rose would go to sleep on his shoulder and from time to time he would touch her breast, kiss her eyelids. She would be, at this moment, at once his wife and his mistress, the woman who has given herself, but whom one has not yet taken, a beautiful fruit to be looked at and delicately handled before it is at last relished. What an exquisite creature of love she would be. How docile her curiosity! What a pupil, like clay the hands of the sculptor. An elopement? Why not a marriage tour? No, no elopements! no romantic nonsense! Des Boys will give me his daughter when I want....
But suddenly he had a curious vision. He was standing on the platform of Caen station, amusing himself by peeping indiscreetly into the carriages, and what did he see?—Rose and Leonor huddled together, mouth against mouth. The train moved on, and he was left standing there, looking at the red light disappearing in the smoke....
He got up, full of jealousy; he ran, then slowed down, listening for possible words, questioning the silence. Without his knowing exactly why, Rose's laugh, heard through the leaves of the wood, reassured him. He saw Leonor stoop down and rise again holding a little pink flower in his hand.
"Sherardia arvensis," he said, taking the flower. "It has no business to grow here. Its place is in the field next door.Arvensis, you see,arvensis. But there are lots of plants that lose their way."
"He knows everything," said Rose. "You see, he knows everything."
Leonor, who had understood the allusion, did not answer. He walked away, under the pretense of continuing his botanical researches in the wood.
"If love were born at this moment in my heart, it would be most untimely, it would have chosen its place very unfortunately. Does he love as he is loved? That is what I should like to know. Is he capable of perseverance? Who knows? It may be, Rose, that you will one day lie weeping in my arms."
All three of them made their way back, Leonor walking a little ahead. M. Hervart kept silence, for what he had to say demanded secrecy, and commonplace words were impossible. Rose did not notice the silence; she herself did not think of talking. She was happy, walking dose to her lover. Sometimes, furtively she stretched out her hand and squeezed one of his fingers. M. Hervart allowed his left arm to hang limply on purpose. Leonor did not turn round once, and Rose was grateful to him for that. M. Hervart, who felt that his secret had been guessed, would have preferred a less deliberate, a less suspicious discretion.
"What have these architects come to do here?" he wondered. "It looks as though it had all been arranged by the Des Boys with a view to getting off their daughter. Will they come back? Leonor certainly will. And shall I be able to stay?"
His perplexities began again. When Rose's hand touched his own, he felt himself her prisoner, her happy slave. As soon as the contact was removed, he was seized by ideas of flight and liberty. He would like to have called Leonor, flung Rose into his arms and made off across country.
"I have never been so much disturbed by any amour. It's the question of marriage. What complications! I hate this fellow Leonor. But for him.... But for him? But is he the only man in the world? If I don't take her, it will be somebody else." Suddenly he drew closer to Rose and whispered frenziedly in her ear a stream of tender and violent words, "Rose, I love you, I desire you with all my being, I want you."
Rose started, but these words responded so exactly to her own thoughts that she was only surprised by their suddenness. First she blushed, then a smile of happy sweetness lit up her face and her eyes shone with life and desire.
They soon rejoined Lanfranc and M. Des Boys, who were confabulating over a glass of wine. A few minutes later the architects got into their carriage.
At the moment when the groom let go of the horse's head, Leonor turned round. Rose realised that the gesture was meant for her; she slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm going to do a little painting," said M. Des Boys.
"I caught sight of an interesting beetle at the top of the garden," said M. Hervart.
"I'm going up to my room," said Rose.
Five minutes later the two lovers had met again near the bench on which M. Hervart had meditated in vain.
Without saying a word, Rose let herself fall into her lover's arms. Her drooping head revealed her neck, and M. Hervart kissed it with more passion than usual. His mouth pushed aside the collar of her dress, seeking her shoulder.
"Let us sit down," she said at last, when she had had her fill of her lover's mild caresses. And taking his head between her hands, she in her turn covered him with kisses, but mostly on the eyes and on the forehead. Desiring a more tender contact, he took the offensive, seized the exquisite head and after a slight resistance made a conquest of her lips. There was always, when they were sitting down, a little struggle before he reached this point, although she had often, when they were walking, offered him her lips frankly. On the bench it was more serious, because it was slower and because the kiss irradiated more easily throughout her body.
"No, Xavier, no!"
But she surrendered. For the first time, M. Hervart, having loosened her bodice, touched the soft flesh of her breast, fluttering with fear and passion. He kissed her violently, and when the kiss was slow in coming she provoked it, amorously. A simultaneous start put an end to their double pleasure; and there, sitting close to one another, were a pair of lovers, at once happy and ill satisfied. One of them was wondering if love had not completer pleasures to offer; and the other was saying, what a pity that one is a decent man!
At the moment M. Hervart considered himself very reserved. Later, when he had recovered his presence of mind a little more, he felt certain scruples, for he was delicate and subject to headaches as a result of indecisive pleasures. He felt proud of the at least partial domination, which he could, at scabrous moments, exercise over his nervous centres with his well-constructed, well-conditioned brain.
"Do you love your husband, little Rose?"
"Oh, yes!"
She roused herself to utter this exclamation with energy. M. Hervart felt no further indecision. Furthermore, he began almost at once to give a new direction to his thoughts. He wanted something to eat; Rose acquiesced. As she was slow in getting up he wanted to pick her up in his arms; but his arms, grown strangely weak, were unequal to the light burden. M. Hervart felt, too, that his legs were not as solid as they might have been. He would have liked to eat and at the same time to lie down in the grass. He let himself fall back on the bench.
"You look so tired," said Rose, inventing every kind of tenderness. "Stay here, I'll bring you some cakes and wine."
But he refused and they went back together.
Cheered by a little sherry and some brioches, M. Hervart asked for music. Rose, inexpert though she was, soothed her lover with all the melodies he desired. She even sang to him. The songs were all romances.
"Joys of the young couple," he said to himself, half dozing. "A picture by Greuze. Nothing is lacking except the little spaniel dog and the paternal old man looking in at the window and shedding a few quiet tears 'inspired by memory' at the sight of this ravishing scene. There, I'm laughing at myself, so that I can't be quite so badly done for as might have been thought. Not so close a prisoner, either."
"Go and see my father," said Rose, leaving a verse half sung. "I'll come and find you there later."
And she went on with her music.
"More and more conjugal, for I shall obey her after having, of course, gone over: I kissed her in the neck. Dear child, she's waiting for the surprise, shivering at it already...."
Everything went off as M. Hervart had predicted, but there was something more. Rose turned round and said, after offering her lips:
"Go along, my darling, and mind you admire his painting a lot, more than yesterday."
"Yes, my love."
"How charming it all is!" he said to himself as he knocked at the studio door. "Delightful family conspiracies. Shall I be able to play this part for long? Suppose I announce my intentions to my venerable friend. Obviously there can be no more hesitation. Come on!"
They talked of Ste. Clotilde. M. Hervart was loud in his praise both of the historical knowledge as well as the pictorial skill of the master of Robinvast, and at every word he uttered he felt a longing to make the conversation touch on the conjugal virtues of that honourable queen. Then the desire passed.
Dinner time came. Afterwards, as usual, they played a game of whist. M. Hervart retired to bed with pleasure and, wearied by his kisses and his thoughts, went to sleep full of the contentment that comes from a pleasant fatigue.
"I shall have to warn Rose," he said to himself as soon as he woke, rather late, next morning, "of her mother's schemes. They might make her fall into some trap."
He soon found an opportunity. In the morning their kisses were more reserved, still somnolent. They frittered away the time pleasantly. M. Hervart would sometimes make a serious examination of some rare insect: Rose worked at her embroidery with conviction. They did not venture into the wood, because of the dew, but remained in the neighbourhood of the house. At this hour of the day M. Hervart was always particularly lucid. He discoursed on a hundred different topics and Rose listened, without daring to interrupt, even when she did not understand. She enjoyed the sound of his voice much more than the sense of his words.
Rose was not surprised to learn of her mothers schemes. She confessed, furthermore, that she had divined in M. Varin's attitude the existence of quite definite intentions. It was therefore decided that M. Hervart should make his request that very day in order to forestall circumstances. Rose spoke so resolutely and her words were so lyrical that M. Hervart felt all his absurd hesitations melt away within him. She knew her parents' income and gave the figure, very straightforwardly, like the practical woman she was. M. Des Boys had an income of sixty thousand francs of which, she imagined, he hardly spent half. There was no doubt that he would willingly give the greater part of the other half to his only daughter. As she had also calculated, though with less certainty, the value of M. Hervart's fortune, she included decisively:
"We shall have from thirty to forty thousand francs a year."
M. Hervart calculated the figures again with the details that were known to him personally and found the estimate correct. His admiration for Rose was increased.
"She has all the virtues: an aptitude for love and the sense of domestic economy, intelligence and very little education, health without a striking beauty. Finally, she adores me and I love her."
At the first insinuations of his friend M. Des Boys smiled and said:
"I thought as much. My daughter has received but the vaguest education. Her mother is incapable. As for me, I am interested only in art. She needs a serious husband, a husband, that is to say, who is not in his first youth. If she wants you, take her. I'll go and ask her."
M. Hervart was on the point of saying there was no need. But luckily he checked himself and M. Des Boys questioned his daughter.
"I should like to," she said.
M. Des Boys returned.
"She said, 'I should like to,' She said it without enthusiasm, but she said it. Now go and arrange things yourselves. I shall go on with my painting."
M. Hervart admired Rose still more for her astute answer.
The girl was waiting for him as he came towards her, serious, scarcely smiling, but beautified by the profound emotion that she could scarcely contain. She gave him her hand, then her forehead; and when M. Hervart drew her into his arms, she burst into tears.
Meanwhile Leonor had received a wound which he could not support with patience. A hundred times a day he thought of Rose. He was not in love with the woman, he was in love with her love. He saw her as she had appeared to him in the wood at Robinvast, with her whole desire, her whole will, her whole body, turned innocently toward M. Hervart and he felt no jealousy; on the contrary, he admired the ingenuous force of so confiding, so powerful a love. By having been able to inspire such a love M. Hervart evoked in him an almost superstitious respect; he would willingly have helped him in his amour.
"I should like to know him," he said to himself naively; "I should ask him for advice and lessons. I should beg him to reveal his secret to me."
He would spend hours dreaming on this theme: to be loved like that. In these matters the most intelligent easily become childish. The ego is a wall that limits the view, rising higher in proportion as the man is greater. There is, however, a certain degree of greatness from which, when a man reaches it, he can always look over the top of the wall of his egoism; but that is very rare. Leonor was not a rare character; he was simply a man a little above the ordinary, capable of originality and of learning from experience, clever at his profession, apt at forming general ideas, sometimes refined and sometimes gross, a peasant rather than a man of the world, a solitary, cold of aspect, full of contradictions, ironic or ingenuous by fits, tormented by sexual images and sentimental ideas.
He was not one of those in whom a budding love, even a love of the head, abolishes the senses. The more he dreamed about Rose, the more disquietingly tense grew his nerves. His desire did not turn towards her; he caught himself one evening spying on the wife of the Barnavast keeper, who was showing her legs as she bent over the well. It made him feel rather ashamed, for this big Norman peasant woman, so young and fresh, could boast, he imagined, of nothing more than a peasant's cleanliness—wholly exterior, and he would only, could only tolerate woman in the state of the nymph fresh risen from the bath, like the companions of Diana.
Besides, he noticed that Lanfranc was making up to this good creature and doing it in all seriousness. Sure of giving him satisfaction by taking himself off for a few days, he drove to Valognes and took the Paris train.
Leonor, without making pretensions to conquests, would have liked to have certain kinds of adventures. He wanted to find one of those women whom some careless husband, whether through avarice or poverty, deprives of the joy of fashionable elegance or who, adorned by a lover's prodigalities, dreams of giving for nothing the present which they none the less very gladly sell. He had experienced these equivocal good graces in the days when he lived in Paris. He had even succeeded, during the space of eighteen months, in enchanting a very agreeable little actress who fitted marvellously into the second category, and he remembered how he had taken in a very pretty and very poor young middle-class woman who had surrendered herself to him because he had given himself out to be a rich nobleman. At the moment his mistress was Mme. de la Mesangerie, a local beauty; but he had never really possessed her as he desired.
What Grand Turk ever ruled over such a harem? Paris, the cafés, the concert halls, the theatres, the stations, the big shops, the gardens, the Park! The women belong to whoever takes them; none belongs to herself. None leaves her home in freedom and is sure of not returning a slave. Leonor had no illusions with regard to the results of his sensual quest He knew very well that he would captivate none but willing slaves, slaves by profession, slaves by birth. But the hunt, if the game came and offered itself graciously to the hunter, would still have its attraction—that of choice; the fun would be to put one's hand on the fattest partridge.
"No," he said to himself, as he walked down the Avenue de l'Opera, "this child from Robinvast shall not obsess me thus hour by hour. Any woman, provided she is acceptable to my senses, will deliver me from this silly vision. Is there such a thing as love without carnal desire? It would be contrary to physiological truth. If I love Rose, it means that I desire her.... If I desire her, it means that I have physical needs. Once these needs are satisfied, I shall feel no desire for any woman and I shall stop thinking of this silly girl. Hervart can do what he likes with her; I shan't mind; and, after all, will the satisfaction which he derives from her be so different from that which some unknown woman will lavish so generously on me? A little coyness, does that add a spice? The sensation of a victory, a favour is better. Shall I obtain a favour? Alas, no. But by paying for it one can have the most perfect imitations. Ah! why am not I at Barnavast, gauging cubes of masonry, with glimpses of Placide Gerard's podgy thighs? Now I know just what will happen.... Does one ever know? It's only eleven in the morning and I've got a week before me."
Still pursuing his stroll and his reflections, he entered the Louvre stores. Here, provincials and foreigners were parading their requirements and their astonishments. One heard all the possible ways of pronouncing French badly. It was an exhibition of provincial dialects. He jumped on moving platforms and staircases, passed down long files of stoves and lamps, went down again, traversed an ocean of crockery, went upstairs, found leather goods, whips and carriage lanterns, tumbled into lifts, was caught once more in a labyrinth of endless drapery, and after having wandered for some time among white leather belts garters and umbrellas, he found himself face to face with Mme de la Mesangerie, who blushed.
"Is it a stroke of luck?" he wondered.
Perhaps it was, for she said to him very quickly:
"I'm alone. My husband has just gone back. I was going to wire to you."
Then in a lower voice:
"Well here you are! I don't ask how it happened. Shall we profit by the opportunity?"
"It seems to me that I was looking for you without knowing."
"I have two days," she said, "at least two days."
They left the shop, making their plans, which were very simple.
"Let's go," she said, "and shut ourselves up at Fontainebleau for a couple of days."
"No, at Compiègne. It's more of a desert."
She wanted to start on the spot. Her provincial prudery seemed suddenly to have flown away. She was no longer the calm mistress who had never yielded except to the most passionate entreaties. The proud-hearted woman was turning into the lover, full of tenderness, a little reckless.
As he packed his bag, Leonor felt very happy, though still very much surprised. He decided, however, that he would ask no equivocal questions. The woman he was looking for, and whom he would not have found, had just fallen into his arms. What was more, he knew this woman, he was in love with her, though without passion; he had derived from her furtive but delicious pleasures. She inspired him, in a word, with the liveliest curiosity: he trembled at the thought that he was now to see her in all her natural beauty.