But, without being exactly shy, M. Hervart was nervous about hearing the sound of his own voice. That was why he generally gave vent only to the curtest phrases. Rose had taken his hand once more. This mute language seemed to appeal to her, and M. Hervart was content to put up with it, though he found this exchange of manual confidences a little childish. "But nothing," he went on to himself, "nothing is childish in love...." This word, which he did not pronounce, even to himself, but which he seemed to see, as though his own hand had written it on a sheet of paper this word filled him with terror. He burst out into secret protestations: "But there's no question of love. She doesn't love me. I don't love her. It's a mere game. This child has made me a child like herself...." He wanted to stop thinking, but the process went on of its own accord. "A dangerous game.... I oughtn't to have kissed her eyes. Her forehead, that's a different matter; it's fatherly.... And then letting her lean on my shoulder, like that! What's to be done?" He had to admit that he had been the guilty party. Almost unconsciously, prompted by his mere male instinct, he had, since his arrival a fortnight before, and while still to all appearance, he continued to treat her as a child, been silently courting her. He was always looking at her, smiling to her, even though his words might be serious. Feeling herself the object of an unceasing attention, Rose had concluded that he wanted to capture her, and she had allowed herself to be caught. M. Hervart considered himself too expert in feminine psychology to admit the possibility of a young girl's having deliberately taken the first step. He felt like an absent-minded sportsman who, forgetting that he has fired, wakes up to find a partridge in his game-bag. "An agreeable surprise," he reflected. "Almost too agreeable." CHAPTER II It had already grown hot. They sat down in the shade, on a tree trunk. Large harmless ants crawled hither and thither on the bark, but M. Hervart seemed to have lost his interest in entomology. Idly, they looked at the busy little creatures, crossing and recrossing one another's paths. "Do they know what they're doing? And do I know what I'm doing? Some sensation guides them. What about me? They run here and there, because they think they've seen or smelt some prey. And I? Oh, I should like to run away from my prey. I reason, I deliberate.... Yes, I deliberate, or at least I try." He looked up at the girl. Rose was engaged in pulling foxglove buds off their stems and making them pop in the palm of her hand. Her face was serious. M. Hervart could look at her without distracting her from her dreams.