M. Simare walked up to her, bowed to her gallantly, like a bull-fighter dedicating his next feat of prowess to the most prominent person present and sat down four feet in front of her. And he began: “The setting first, madame. Picture the skirt of a wood: _dramatis personæ_, Fanchon and her friend Colin, who is whispering sweet nothings in her ear, very much in her ear, and ... but wait! At no great distance, in the middle of the wood, his reverence the rector is strolling, reading his breviary; and his walk takes him in the direction of our young rustics.... He comes.... He comes nearer and nearer.... Do you see the picture, madame?” “Yes, yes,” said Gilberte, earnestly, like a child who is interested in a fairy-tale. “What next?” “The sun darts his rays through the branches, from the patches of blue sky....” He continued his description at length, talked of the rector and the birds and the flowers and the cool shade of the trees; and, strange to say, there was not another word about Fanchon and Colin. “M. Simare is a little discursive this evening,” whispered somebody. “He is not coming to the point as quickly as usual.” In fact, he was veering away from it, with his eyes fixed on Gilberte, who listened eagerly and who repeated, at intervals: “And then? What next?” Thereupon, he got more and more entangled in the poetic stroll of the rector, who kept on walking and never seemed to come as far as Fanchon and Colin. And it was Gilberte who, at last, exclaimed: “But what became of Colin and Fanchon?” Then the old boy made a decisive gesture: “I can’t, I can’t tell you.... No, I won’t tell you....” Everybody rose. Everybody protested. M. Simare took refuge in laughter: “Well, no, I won’t tell you.” “But why not?” “Why not? I don’t know! It’s her eyes.... There are words one can’t utter when one looks at her, there are things one can’t tell.” He was no longer laughing. The others were silent. And he continued: “Look at her eyes. They gaze at you so softly, so innocently.... All the time that I was talking my nonsense, I wanted to invent something for her, something about saints and angels and a good little girl who loves her mother and only thinks of pleasing her and is happy from morning till night....” V THE SUITORS Gilberte went to more of Mme. de la Vaudraye’s evenings: not that she liked them much; but she did not wish to have it thought that she disliked them.