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34 mind. M. Hervart very nearly forgot to laugh: he was thinking of what Rose had just said.

"Rose," said M. Des Boys, "ask Hervart if we weren't believers when we went around the Louvre. We were in a fever of enthusiasm. Hervart is my pupil; I formed his taste for beauty. Unluckily I left Paris and he has turned out badly. I remain faithful, in spite of everything."

"But," said M. Hervart, "faithfulness only begins at the moment of discovering one's real vocation."

Rose seemed to have given these words a meaning which M. Hervart had not consciously intended they should have. Two eyes, full of an infinite tenderness, rested on his like a caress.

"It's as though I had made a declaration," he thought. "I must be mad. But how can one avoid phrases which people go and take as premeditated allusions?"

However, he found the game amusing. It was possible in this way to speak in public and to give utterance to one's real feelings under cover of the commonplaces of conversation.