"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...."
"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.