Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/158

154 there was another misfortune: the toys for the children had been forgotten. Hortense felt rather ashamed when she confessed this; she also inwardly regretted such an oversight.

"I am a lover, but I am also a mother."

For the first time the possibility of a conflict between two tendencies of her heart occurred to her. A few minutes' shopping in the town repaired her omissions, and meanwhile opportunity to send a post-card to Barnavast. After that she abandoned herself, with a certain pleasure, to the re-discovery of familiar landscapes: they were not so different as she might have thought.

Leonor went back with no lyrical ideas in his head, but none the less very well satisfied.

"I have a mistress of the very kind I wanted. Libertinage and sentiment. The mixture has a very piquant savour. But I didn't believe her capable of so much boldness. She would never have dared in her own surroundings. People only become themselves out of their native surroundings: they either die or else they develop according to their own physiological logic. Breton girls, out of whom Paris sometimes makes such agreeable little