"Whether it's women or beetles, love is their whole life. Bugs die as soon as their work is done, and women begin dying from the moment of their first kiss.... They also begin living. It's pretty, the spectacle of these girls who want to live, want to fulfil their destiny, and don't know how, and go sobbing through the darkness, looking for their way. I expect I shall find her crying." Rose, indeed, had just finished wiping her eyes. They were blue when she was sad and greenish when she laughed. "You've been crying. Did you prick yourself coming through this holly? I did too." "I shouldn't cry for a thing like that. But who told you I'd been crying? I got a fly in my eye. Look, only one of them's red." But, instead of lifting her head, she bent down and began to pick the flowers at her feet. "May I sit down beside you?" "What a question!" "You see, your skirt takes up all the room." "Well then, push it away." M. Hervart turned back the outspread skirt and sat down on the old bench--cautiously, for he knew that it was rather rickety. Now that he had money and an aristocratic name, M. Des Boys had become romantic. His whole domain, except for the kitchen garden and the rooms that were actually inhabited, was kept in a perennially wild, decrepit state. In the house and its surroundings you could see nothing but mouldering walls and rotten planks moss-grown benches, impenetrable bramble bushes. Near the stream stood an old tower from which the ivy fell in a cataract whose waves of greenery splashed up again to the summit of an old oak with dead forked branches--a pretty sight. The Des Boys never went out except to show their virgin forest to a visitor. M. Des Boys dabbled in painting. It was morning, and the wood was cool, still damp with dew. Through the thickly woven beech branches the sunlight fell on the stiff holly leaves and lit them up like flowers. A little chestnut tree, that had sprouted all awry raised its twisted head towards the light! Near-by stood a wild cherry, into which the sparrows darted, twittering and alarmed. A jay passed like a flash of blue lightning. The wind crept in beneath the trees, stirring the bracken that darkened and lightened at its passage. A wounded bee fell on Rose's skirt. "Poor bee! One of his wings is unhooked. I'll try and put it right." "Take care," said Mr. Hervart. "It will sting. Animals never believe that you mean well by them. To them every one's an enemy." "True," said Rose, shaking off the bee. "Your bugs will eat him and that will be a happy ending. Every one's an enemy." Rose had spoken so bitterly that M. Hervart was quite distressed. He brought his face close to hers as her big straw hat would permit, and whispered: "Are you unhappy?" How beautifully women manage these things! In a flash the hat had disappeared, tossed almost angrily aside, and at the same moment an exquisitely pale and fluffy head dropped on to M. Hervart's shoulder.