"So she knew what she was saying," I said to myself. "Her words were not casual," but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me her happiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like the landscape? Because it carries me back into past times when men believed in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be a wonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that men wandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breast between the leaves, and henceforth they could love no mortal woman? The beautiful name of their malady was nympholepsy. A disease that every one would like to catch." "But if you were to catch it you wouldn't be able to love me, so I'll not bring you to the mountains. Some peasant girl----" "Fie! Doris, I have never liked peasant girls." "Your antiquity is eighteenth-century antiquity. There are many alcoves in it." "I don't know that the alcove was an invention of the eighteenth century. There were alcoves at all times. But, Doris, good heavens! what are those trees? Never did I see anything so ghastly; they are like ghosts. Not only have they no leaves, but they have no bark nor any twigs; nothing but great white trunks and branches." "I think they are called plantains." "That won't do, you are only guessing; I must ask the coachman." "I think, sir, they are called plantains." "You only think. Stop and I'll ask those people." "Sont des plantains, Monsieur." "Well, I told you so," Doris said, laughing. Beyond this spectral avenue, on either side of us there were fields, and Doris murmured: "See how flat the country is, to the very feet of the hills, and the folk working in the fields are pleasant to watch." I declared that I could not watch them, nor could you, reader, if you had been sitting by Doris. I had risen and come away from long months of toil; and I remember how I told Doris as we drove across those fields towards the hills, that it was not her beauty alone that interested me; her beauty would not be itself were it not illumed by her wit and her love of art. What would she be, for instance, if she were not a musician? Or would her face be the same face if it were robbed of its mirth? But mirth is enchanting only when the source of it is the intelligence. Vacuous laughter is the most tiresome of things; a face of stone is more inveigling. But Doris prided herself on her beauty more than on her wit, and she was disinclined to admit the contention that beauty is dependent upon the intelligence. Our talk rambled on, now in one direction, now in another. Lovers are divided into two kinds, the babbling and the silent.