Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/27

Rh wasn't born here, but I belong to the place. I belong to it as the trees do, as the grass and all the animals. Yes, I am a peasant woman.

She raised her head proudly.

"I come from here too," said M. Hervart.

"Yes, and you don't care for it any longer."

"I do, because it produced you and because you love it."

Delighted at the discovery of this insipidity, M. Hervart darted, hat in hand, in pursuit of a butterﬂy; he missed it.

"They're not so easy to catch as kisses," said Rose with a touch of irony.

M. Hervart was startled:

"Is she merely sensual?" he wondered.

But Rose was incapable of dividing her nature into categories. She felt her character as a perfect unity. Her remark had been just a conversational remark, for she was not lacking in wit.

Meanwhile, this mystery plunged M. Hervart into a prolonged meditation. He constructed the most perverse theories about the precocity of girls.

But he was soon ashamed of these mental wanderings.