Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/83

Rh "I was just feeling happy."

"You must have had such a lot of happinesses since you began life, Xavier. You have given happiness, received it..."

"I have just lived," said M. Hervart.

"Yes, and I'm only a girl of twenty."

"Think of being twenty!"

"If you were twenty, I shouldn't love you."

M. Hervart answered only by a smile which he tried to make as young, as delicate as possible. He knew what he would have liked to say, but he felt that he could not say it. Besides, he wondered whether Rose and he were really speaking the same language.

"This conversation is really absurd. I tell her that I want her to surrender herself to me, and she answers—at least I suppose that's what she means—that she has given me her heart. Obviously, she has no idea of what might happen between us.... What do these little caresses mean to her? They're just marks of affection.... All the same there was surely desire in her movements, her kisses, her eyes. And her body trembled at the urgent touch of my lips. Yes, she knows what