Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/52

48 as he. Smiling and serious, she looked as though she were accomplishing some familiar rite.

"She would soon make a Parisian," M. Hervart thought, as he looked at her.

And in an instant of time, he saw a whole future unfolding before him. They would live in the Quai Voltaire; she would often start out with him in the mornings on her way to the Louvre stores. He would take her as far as the arcades. She would come and pick him up for luncheon. On other days, she would come into his office at four o'clock and they would go and eat cakes and drink a glass of iced water; and then they would walk slowly back by the Pont Neuf and the Quays; on the way they would buy some queer old book and look at the play of the sunlight on the water and in the trees. Sometimes they would take the steamer or the train and go to some wood, not so wild as the Robinvast wood, but pleasant enough, where Rose could breathe an air almost as pure as the air of her native place....

There was not much imagination in this dream of M. Hervart's, for he had often real-