Chapter 8

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.