Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/176

172 "It's curious," he thought, "that they all have the same vocabulary by nature."

He was ashamed. Nothing makes a man ashamed so much as having failed in his purpose, what ever may have been the cause of his failure. He said, a little nervously:

"Let's walk a little. Let's do something."

"What an idiot I am," he thought, as they walked along the Couville road, where there are rocks and a little heather and fox-gloves among the birch-trees; "after all, she's my wife."

On the following days the same manoevre was repeated several times, and M. Hervart always hesitated at the decisive moment.

"Besides," he wondered, "would she let me? I can hardly violate my ﬁancée, can I? I have taught her nothing she doesn't know. If we came on to untried lessons, how would she take it?..."

He continued: "Dismal pleasures for me. I've had enough of them. It was amusing only the ﬁrst time."

Finally, one evening when they had gone out alone, a thing which never had happened before, he was a little more daring....