It had already grown hot. They sat down in the shade, on a tree trunk.
Large harmless ants crawled hither and thither on the bark, but M.
Hervart seemed to have lost his interest in entomology. Idly, they
looked at the busy little creatures, crossing and recrossing one
another's paths.
"Do they know what they're doing? And do I know what I'm doing? Some
sensation guides them. What about me? They run here and there, because
they think they've seen or smelt some prey. And I? Oh, I should like to
run away from my prey. I reason, I deliberate.... Yes, I deliberate, or
at least I try."
He looked up at the girl.
Rose was engaged in pulling foxglove buds off their stems and making
them pop in the palm of her hand. Her face was serious. M. Hervart
could look at her without distracting her from her dreams.
She made a pretty picture, as she sat there, gentle and, at the same
time, wild. Her features, while they still preserved a trace of
childishness, were growing marked and definite. She was a woman. How
red her mouth was, how voluptuous! M. Hervart caught himself reflecting
that that mouth would give most excellent kisses. What a fruit to bite,
firm-fleshed and succulent! Rose heaved a sigh, and it was as though
a wave had lifted her white dress; all her young bosom had seemed to
expand. M. Hervart had a vision of roseate whiteness, soft and living;
he desired it as a child desires the peach he sees on the wall hidden
under its long leaves. He took the pleasure in this desire that he had
sometimes taken in standing before Titian's Portrait of a Young Lady.
The obstacle was as insurmountable: Rose, so far as he was concerned,
was an illusion.
"But that makes no difference," he said to himself, "I have desired
her, which isn't chaste of me. If I had been in love with her, I should
not have had that kind of vision. Therefore I am not in love with her.
Fortunately!"
Rose was thinking of nothing. She was just letting herself be looked
at. Having been examined, she smiled gently, a smile that was faintly
tinged with shyness. Flying suddenly to the opposite extreme, she burst
out laughing and, holding on with both hands to the knotted trunk,
leaned backwards. Her hat fell off her hair came undone. She sat up
again, looking wilder than ever. M. Hervart thought that she was going
to run away, like Galatea; but there was no willow tree.
"I don't care," she said as M. Hervart handed her the hat; "my hair
will have to stay down. It's all right like that. Pins don't hold on my
head."
"Pins," said M. Hervart, "pins rarely do hold on women's heads."
She smiled without answering and certainly without understanding. She
was smiling a great deal this morning, M. Hervart thought.
"But her smile is so sweet that I should never get tired of it. Come
now, I'll tell her that...."
"I love your smile. It's so sweet that I should never get tired of it."
"As sweet as that? That's because it's so new. I don't smile much
generally."
It was enough to move any man to the depths of his being. M. Hervart
murmured spontaneously:
"I love you, Rose."
Frankly, and without showing any surprise, she answered:
"So do I, my dear."
At the same time she shook her skirt on which a number of ants were
crawling.
"This sort doesn't bite," she said. "They're nice...."
"Like you." (What a compliment! How insipid! What a fool I'm making of
myself!)
"There's one on your sleeve," said Rose. She brushed it off.
"Now say thank you," and she presented her cheek, on which M. Hervart
printed the most fraternal of kisses.
"It's incomprehensible," he thought. "However, I don't think she's in
love. If she were, she would run away. It is only after the decisive
act that love becomes familiar...."
"If we want to go to Cherbourg," said Rose, "we must have lunch early."
They moved away; soon they were out of the wood and had entered the
hardly less unkempt garden. It was sunny there, and they crossed it
quickly. She walked ahead. M. Hervart picked a rose as he went along
and presented it to her. Rose took it and picked another, which she
gave to M. Hervart, saying:
"This one's me."
M. Hervart had to begin pondering again. He was feeling happy, but
understood less and less.
"She behaves as though she were in love with me.... She also behaves
as though she weren't. At one moment one would think that I was
everything to her. A little later she treats me like a mere friend of
the family..... And it's she who leads me on.... I have never seen
that with flirts.... Where can she have learnt it? Women are like the
noblemen in Molière's time: they know everything without having been
taught anything at all."
M. Hervart weighed down in mind, but light of heart, went up to his
room, so as to be able to meditate more at ease. First of all he
smarted himself up with some care. He plucked from his beard a hair,
which, if not quite silver, was certainly very pale gold. He scented
his waistcoat and slipped on his finger an elaborately chased ring.
"It may come in useful when conversation begins to flag."
He was about to begin his meditations, when somebody knocked at the
door. Luncheon was ready.
M. Des Boys, despite the disturbance of his plans seemed pleased. A
drive, he declared would do him good. He needed an outing; besides he
had a right to one.
"I have just finished the ninth panel of my of my life of Sainte
Clotilde. It is her entry too the convent of Saint Martin at Tours."
M. Hervart manifested an interest in this composition, which he had
admired the previous evening before it had been given the final
touches. He hoped to see it soon in its proper frame, with the other
panels in Robinvast church.
"There are going to be twelve in all," said M. Des Boys.
"People will come and see them as they do the Life of St. Bruno that
used to be at the Chartreux and is now in the Louvre."
"So I hope."
"But they won't come quite so much."
"Yes, Robinvast is rather far. But then who goes to the Louvre? A few
artists, a few aimless foreign sightseers. Nobody in France takes an
interest in art."
"Nobody in the world does," said M. Hervart, "except those who live by
it."
"What about those who die of it?" asked Rose.
Mme. Des Boys looked at her daughter with some surprise:
"I have never heard that painting was a dangerous industry."
"When one believes in it, it is," said M. Hervart.
"What, not dangerous?" said M. Des Boys "What about white lead?"
"One must believe," said Rose, looking at M. Hervart.
"This just shows," M. Des Boys went on, "what the public's point of
view in this matter is. My wife's marvellously absurd remark exactly
represents their feelings."
There followed a series of pointless anecdotes on Mme. Des Boys'
habitual absence of mind. M. Hervart very nearly forgot to laugh: he
was thinking of what Rose had just said.
"Rose," said M. Des Boys, "ask Hervart if we weren't believers when we
went around the Louvre. We were in a fever of enthusiasm. Hervart is my
pupil; I formed his taste for beauty. Unluckily I left Paris and he has
turned out badly. I remain faithful, in spite of everything."
"But" said M. Hervart, "faithfulness only begins at the moment of
discovering one's real vocation."
Rose seemed to have given these words a meaning which M. Hervart had
not consciously intended they should have. Two eyes, full of an
infinite tenderness, rested on his like a caress.
"It's as though I had made a declaration," he thought. "I must be mad.
But how can one avoid phrases which people go and take as premeditated
allusions?"
However, he found the game amusing. It was possible in this way to
speak in public and to give utterance to one's real feelings under
cover of the commonplaces of conversation. Rose had given him the
example; he had followed her without thinking, but this docility was a
serious symptom.
"I am lost. Here I am in process of falling in love."
But like those drunkards who, feeling the moment of intoxication at
hand, desire to control themselves, but must still obey their cravings
because they have been so far weakened by the very sensation that now
awakens them to a consciousness of their state, M. Hervart, while
deciding that he ought to struggle, yielded.
He drank off a whole glass of wine and said:
"It is easy to make a mistake at one's first entry into life, and to go
on making it long after. I am still very fond of art, but I was never
meant to do more than pay her visits. We are friends, not a married
couple. I have built my house on other foundations; it may be worth
much or little, but I live in it faithfully. One can only stick to what
one loves. To keep a treasure, you must have found it first."
He had spoken with passion.
"What eloquence!" said M. Des Boys.
All of a sudden, Rose began to laugh, a laugh so happy, so full of
gratitude, that M. Hervart could make no mistake about its meaning.
"You're being laughed at, my poor friend," M. Des Boys went on.
At this mistake, Rose's laughter redoubled. It became gay, childish,
uncontrollable.
"This is something," said Mme. Des Boys, "which will console you, I
hope. But what a little demon my daughter is!"
Out of pity for her mother, Rose made an effort to restrain herself.
She succeeded after two or three renewed spasms and said, addressing
herself to M. Hervart:
"What do you think of the little demon? Are you afraid?"
"More than you think."
"So am I; I'm afraid of myself."
"That's a sensible remark," said Mme. Des Boys. "Come now, behave."
The home-made cake being approved of, she began giving the recipe.
A meal rarely passed without Mme. Des Boys' revealing some culinary
mystery.
The carriage drove past the windows, and lunch ended almost without
further conversation. Rose had become dreamy. M. Hervart's conclusion
was:
"Our affair has made the most terrifying progress in these few
seconds."