His shrewdness of judgment was only to be matched by the lightness of his heart. For a month many of his most salient gifts had been lying idle. Rose had not asked for management, and there had been in their easy-going lovemaking no very great place for tact. Léon was on the look-out for difficulty, for gulfs of temperament and training, efforts and sacrifices and gently taught lessons, but after a time his look-out ceased. Rose looked out. She made the efforts, she learned his lessons, before the need arose to teach her. In fact, she saved him trouble, and there had been moments when Léon found this a trifle dull. It was different now; his skill was called upon at every turn. Madame Gérard was a very unhappy woman. She had had a spoilt childhood and a sentimental and enthusiastic youth guarded at every point from experience. All her adventures had been in her unfettered dreams. She had dreamed that she should marry Raoul, and then she had married him. Life had brought her up very short. She had believed in an exquisite and ideal relationship and she had been given with terrible promptitude Monsieur Gérard’s impression of what constituted the marriage tie. He had spoilt her dreams, he had shaken about her ears the fullness of her life; but he was still the man she loved. All other men were but as trees walking, even Léon was only a tree that walked. It was true that he walked more and more frequently in her direction. She took a certain notice of him, her heart lay in the dust but it began to mean something to her that Léon resented this. She felt through the bitterness of her shame a tiny spark of returning pride. It was a very tiny spark, it hardly amounted to self-respect--but Léon guarded it and kept it alight, as a man shields a flickering match from the rough air. He flattered her grossly at first because she was too sad to understand subtlety. Afterwards, as her mind turned towards him, he refined his flatteries. He kept her a little hungry so that she should more and more look to him for this nourishment of the spirit. But Madame Gérard, in spite of her grief, was a kind-hearted little woman. She remembered Rose. “We must not neglect her,” she would say gently, “the little English wife. One does not cure one unhappiness by making another.” And Léon would explain that the English were a strange race. They loved solitude, speechlessness and wonderful long newspaper articles about politics. Also Rose was learning French from a nun and she didn’t care to make a third in their little amusements until she could talk more freely with them. “She has a pride about it,” Léon explained. “These cold, silent women are very proud.” “I should not have thought her cold,” said Madame Gérard, thoughtfully. “She has kind eyes. When one is very unhappy one notices kind eyes.”