Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/84

80 love is. How ridiculous! All the same, if we go to work cleverly...."

"You mustn't believe, Rose," he said out loud, "that I have ever yet had occasion to give my heart. That doesn't always happen in the course of a life; and when it does happen, it happens only once.... A man has plenty of adventures in which his will is not concerned .... Man is an animal as well as a man...." because of their innocence....

"And what about women?"

"The best people agree," said M. Hervart, "that woman is an angel."

Rose burst out laughing at this remark, apparently very innocently, and said:

"I can't claim to be an angel. It wouldn't amuse me to be one, either. Angels—why, father puts them in his pictures. No, I prefer being a woman. Would you love an angel?"

M. Hervart laughed too. He explained that young girls had a right to being called angels, because of their innocence....

"When one is in love, is one still innocent?"

"If one still is, one doesn't remain so long."

They could say no more. They had come back to the stream and here they caught sight