"Here's the tower," said Rose. "Let's go up. It will be cool on top."
She too was breathing heavily, but from uneasiness, not from passion. It was cool within the tower. In a few moments Rose, now freed from her sense of sense of oppression, was at the top. She had quite well realised that M. Hervart, absorbed in some dream of his own, had been far away from her all the last part of their walk. Rose was annoyed, and the appearance of M. Hervart, rather red in the face and with eyes that were still wild, was not calculated to calm her. She felt jealous and would have liked to destroy the object of his thought.
M. Hervart noticed the little movement of irritation, which Rose had been unable to repress, and he was pleased. He would have liked to be alone.
He went and and leaned on the balustrade and, without speaking, looked far out over the blue sea. Seeing him once more absorbed by something which was not herself, Rose was torn by another pang of jealousy; but this time she knew her rival. Women have no doubts about one another, which is what always ensures them the victory, but Rose now pitted herself against the charm of the infinite sea. She took up her position, very close to M. Hervart, shoulder to shoulder with him.
M. Hervart looked at Rose and stopped looking at the sea.
His eyes were melancholy at having seen the ironic flight of desire. Rose's were full of smiles.
"They are the colour of the infinite sea, Rose."
"It's quite pleasant," thought M. Hervart, "to be the first man to say that to a young girl.... In the ordinary way, women with blue eyes hear that compliment for the hundredth time, and it makes them think that all men are alike and all stupid.... It's men who have made love so insipid.... Rose's eyes are pretty, but I ought not to have said so.... Am I the first?..."
M. Hervart felt the prick, ill defined as yet, of jealousy.
"Who can have taught her these little physical complaisances? She has no girl friends; it must have been some enterprising young cousin.... What a fool I am, torturing myself! Rose has had girl friends, at Valognes at the convent. She has them still, she writes to them.... And besides, what do I care? I'm not in love; it's all nothing more than a series of light sensations, a pretext for amusing observations...."