Léon led the conversation back to Madame’s unhappiness and away from Rose’s eyes. He had not meant to be disloyal to Rose, he rather liked to think of her as cold and proud. After a time Madame no longer tried to send him back to Rose; she was a Frenchwoman, even if she was broken-hearted, and she was not slow to understand Léon. “This type,” she said to herself, “will always be with some woman or other--with me he is safe! I shall send him back to her as he came even perhaps a little wiser, a little more appreciative of her. I will do her no bad turn, the little English wife.” Madame Gérard had the best intentions, too. She had even better ones than Léon, but neither of them perceived that they had them in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, for a time all went well. Monsieur Gérard studied for the coming opera season with a freer mind and in a better temper. Rose took long lessons from the nun, and as she slowly and painstakingly began to master the intricate and exquisite language of her husband she felt as if she were approaching his spirit, and preparing for herself and for him a fresh world of understanding and companionship. Day by day Léon brought her, with fresh enthusiasm, endless stories of his progress with the affair Gérard. Some instinct in Rose told her that by the length of these stories, and by Léon’s absorbed, invigorated returns to her, their love was still safe. She needed all the assurances that she could get, for she was very much alone. She was always just the same to Léon; she spread about him the warm, wide sea of her magnanimity; he was never to know she felt sad or strange, or that she had a silly habit of almost crying when she walked alone on the cliffs above the bright, transparent sea. He wasn’t to dream that she minded his boating and driving and walking with Madame Gérard, or that she kept explaining to herself how natural it was for him to talk more and with more gaiety in French, and not to care so much as he used to for moonlight in the garden. She succeeded so entirely in the effect of appearing not to mind that she thoroughly annoyed Léon. He had been looking forward to a fresh drama with Rose, a little visible but not fettering jealousy, a scene or two, even a few tears, wise and tender explanation on his part, and passionate pleading upon her own. But Rose’s passion was very quiet and it never occurred to it to plead. She had no such intention, but she made Léon’s vanity smart, under her daily serenity. “Is she made of wood--or of iron,” he asked himself bitterly, “that she lets me live in the pocket of another woman even during the honeymoon? What have I to look forward to--centuries of ice?” He knew very well that there was no ice in Rose, but his bad conscience enjoyed resentment very much. It was not only his vanity that was injured, he began to be conscious of a secret fear. Rose was to be his guardian angel in this affair--he mustn’t, whatever happened, be allowed to lose his head.