it is, what must the catalogue of the Cherbourg museum be like?" he asked.

M. Des Boys shrugged his shoulders:

"You have lost my esteem."

And he affirmed the perfect authenticity of the Van Dycks, Van Eycks, Chardins, Poussins, Murillos, Jordaenses, Ribeiras, Fra Angelicos, Cranachs, Pourbuses and Leonardos which adorned the town hall.

"There's no Raphael," said M. Hervart, "and there ought to be a Velasquez and a Titian and a Correggio."

M. Des Boys replied sarcastically:

"There's a Natural History museum."

And with a wave of the hand, he disappeared round the corner of a street.

One would think everything in this dreary maritime city had been arranged to disguise the fact that the sea is there. The houses turn their backs on it, and a desert of stones and dust and wind lies between the shores and the town. To discover that Cherbourg is really a seaport, one must climb to the top of the Roule rock. M. Hervart had a desire to scale this pinnacle.

"It's a waste of time," said Rose; "let's go up the tower in the Liais gardens."

Side by side, they walked through the dismal streets. Rose kept on looking at M. Hervart; she was disquieted by his silence. She took his arm.

"I didn't dare offer it to you," he said.

"That's why I took it myself."

"I do enjoy walking with you like this, Rose."

But as a matter of fact he was most embarrassed. This privilege was at once too innocent and too free. He wondered what he should do to keep it within its present bounds.

"If this is going on.... And to think it only started this morning...."

He reassured himself by this most logical piece of reasoning:

"Either I do or I don't want to marry her; in either case I shall have to respect her.... That's evident. Being neither a fool nor a blackguard, I have nothing to fear from myself. The civilised instinct; I'm very civilised...."

They were lightly clad. As he held her arm, he could feel its warmth burning into his flesh.

"Distressing fact! in love you can never be sure of anything or anybody, least of all of yourself. I'm helpless in the hands of desire. And then, at the same time as my own, I must calm down this child's over-exited nerves. Nerves? No, feelings. Feelings lead anywhere.... What a fool I am, making mental sermons like this! I'm spoiling delicious moments."

A house like all the others, a carriage door, a vaulted passage—and behold, you were in a great garden, where the brilliance and scent of exotic flowers burst from among the palm-trees, more intoxicating to their senses than the familiar scents and colours of the copse at Robinvast. Within the high walls of this strange oasis, the air hung motionless, heavy and feverish. The flowers breathed forth an almost carnal odour.

"What a place to make love in," thought M. Hervart.

He forgot all about Rose; his imagination called up the thought of Gratienne and her voluptuousness. He shut out the sun, lit up the place with dim far away lamps, spread scarlet cushions on the grass where a magnolia had let fall one of its fabulous flowers, and on them fancied his mistress.... He knelt beside her, bent over her beauty, covering it with kisses and adoration.

"This garden's making me mad," said M. Hervart aloud. The dream was scattered.

"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...."

The afternoon was drawing on. They had to think of the commissions which Mme. Des Boys had given them.... It was time to go down.

"How dark the staircase is," said Rose. "Give me your hand."

At the bottom, as though to thank him for his help, she offered her cheek. His kiss settled on the corner of her mouth. Rose recoiled, warned of danger by this new sensation that was too intimate, too intense. But in the process of moving away, she came near to falling. Her hands clutched at his, and she found herself once more leaning towards M. Hervart. They looked at one another for a moment. Rose shut her eyes and waited for a renewal of the burning touch.

"I hope you haven't hurt yourself."

She burst out laughing.

"That," said M. Hervart to himself, "is what is called being self-controlled. And then she laughs at me for it. Such are the fruits of virtue."

They went into almost all the shops in the Rue Fontaine, which is the centre of this big outlandish village. M. Hervart bought some picture postcards. The castles in the Hague district are almost as fine and as picturesque as those on the banks of the Loire. He would have liked to send the picture of them to Gratienne, but he felt himself to be Rose's prisoner. For a moment, that put him in a bad temper. Then, as Rose was entering a draper's shop, he made up his mind; the post office was next door.

"I should like your advice," said Rose. "I have got to match some wools."

But he had gone. She waited patiently.

The castles were at last dropped into the box and they continued their course. The walk finished up at the confectioner's.

One of Mr. Hervart's pleasures was eating cakes at a pastry cook's, and the pleasure was complete when a woman was with him. He was a regular customer at the shop in the Rue du Louvre, at the corner of the square; he went there every day and not always alone.

Entering the shop with Rose, he imagined himself in Paris, enjoying a little flirtation, and the thought amused him. Rose was as happy as he. Smiling and serious, she looked as though she were accomplishing some familiar rite.

"She would soon make a Parisian," M. Hervart thought, as he looked at her.

And in an instant of time, he saw a whole future unfolding before him. They would live in the Quai Voltaire; she would often start out with him in the mornings on her way to the