Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/49

Rh M. Hervart looked at Rose and stopped looking at the sea.

His eyes were melancholy at having seen the ironic ﬂight of desire. Rose's were full of smiles.

"They are the colour of the inﬁnite sea, Rose."

"It's quite pleasant," thought M. Hervart, "to be the ﬁrst man to say that to a young girl.... In the ordinary way, women with blue eyes hear that compliment for the hundredth time, and it makes them think that all men are alike and all stupid.... It's men who have made love so insipid.... Rose's eyes are pretty, but I ought not to have said so.... Am I the ﬁrst?..."

M. Hervart felt the prick, ill deﬁned as yet, of jealousy.

"Who can have taught her these little physical complaisances? She has no girl friends; it must have been some enterprising young cousin.... What a fool I am, torturing myself! Rose has had girl friends, at Valognes at the convent. She has them still, she writes to them.... And besides, what do I care? I'm not in love; it's all nothing