But Anne realized that her life would be very different. It would probably mean facing the world once more in some sort of struggle for existence, without the companionship, which quiet unemotional as it was, meant all she had ever known of a friendly home, and human affection. Often as these reflections assailed her, she put them from her. This was her summer. She would not spoil it by thinking of cold rain and wintry days. It was while she was sitting to François that they talked most; and always sooner or later, the conversation centred upon René Dampierre. “He has genius,” François assured her with the generous enthusiasm of an artist for work that is beyond his own powers. “We are all desperately excited about René’s career. He will be great, as Corot, as Daubigny are great. He is the coming man. You will see. In ten years time, he will be a leader, the founder of a new school of painting; a great power in France. Oh! we’re going to be proud of René! Unless, of course,” he added with a change of tone, “he plays the fool. There’s always that to fear with him. He must let women alone. They’re the very devil for smashing up a man’s work; and that’s René’s weak side. He’s a fool about women. Just the sort of sentimental fool who’s capable of marrying one of them. And if he does----” Fontenelle’s shrug of the shoulders and the gesture of his disengaged hand, completed the sentence. “Why?” Anne was accustomed to frank conversation from François Fontenelle. He discussed his own love affairs with perfect freedom. He told her of the adventures of his acquaintances in Paris, and with a Frenchman’s love of analysis, entered into long discussions on the psychology of love and passion. Anne listened calmly. Ignorant as she was, except through her reading, of the phase of existence he described, she had by this time grown to form a very fair idea of the emotional life of the men in her friend’s set in Paris. Much of what François said, she heard with incomprehension, not of the facts, but of the feelings to which they corresponded. She was neither shocked nor surprised. François’ conversation never offended her. He talked to her frankly as to a grown woman of intelligence, and she accepted his confidences as simply as they were offered. As yet, Anne knew little about herself. It had never occurred to her to analyze her own temperament. Throughout her life it never occurred to her, and in this circumstance lay the secret of a certain simplicity which to her dying day she preserved.