M. Hervart was flattered. It occurred to him also that this sentimental child might make a very good practical little wife. His rather curious life passed rapidly before him and he called to mind some of the mistresses of his fugitive amours. He saw Gratienne; it was six months since they had met; she would have left him, very likely, by the time he returned. At this thought M. Hervart frowned. At the same time the pressure of his fingers relaxed. Rose looked at him: "What are you thinking about?" "Again!" said M. Hervart to himself. "Oh, that eternal feminine question! As if any one ever answered it! Here's my answer...." Looking at the clouds, he pronounced: "I think it's going to rain." "Oh, no!" said Rose, "I don't think so. The wind is 'suet'...." Conscious of having uttered a provincialism, she made haste to add: "As the country people say." "What does it mean?" "South-east." M. Hervart was little interested in dialectal forms; rather spitefully and with the true Parisian's fatuous vanity, he replied: "What an ugly word! You ought to say South-east. You're a regular peasant woman." "Laugh away," said Rose. "I don't mind, now. We're all country-people; my father comes from these parts, so does my mother. I wasn't born here, but I belong to the place. I belong to it as the trees do, as the grass and all the animals. Yes, I _am_ a peasant woman." She raised her head proudly. "I come from here too," said M. Hervart. "Yes, and you don't care for it any longer." "I do, because it produced you and because you love it." Delighted at the discovery of this insipidity, M. Hervart darted, hat in hand, in pursuit of a butterfly; he missed it. "They're not so easy to catch as kisses," said Rose with a touch of irony. M. Hervart was startled. "Is she merely sensual?" he wondered. But Rose was incapable of dividing her nature into categories. She felt her character as a perfect unity. Her remark had been just a conversational remark, for she was not lacking in wit. Meanwhile, this mystery plunged M. Hervart into a prolonged meditation. He constructed the most perverse theories about the precocity of girls. But he was soon ashamed of these mental wanderings. "Women are complex; not more so, of course, than men, but in a different way which men can't understand. They don't understand themselves, and what's more, they don't care about understanding. They feel, and that suffices to steer them very satisfactorily through life, as well as to solve problems which leave men utterly helpless. One must act towards them as they do themselves. It's only through the feelings that one can get into contact with them. There is but one way of understanding women, and that is to love them.... Why shouldn't I say that aloud? It would amuse her, and perhaps she might find something pretty to say in reply."