She would have babbled on a long time, despite Monsieur's look of fretful impatience, but fortunately just then the hissing sound of an overflowing soup-pot came ominously through the open door.
"Holy Joseph, patron of good housewives, defend us!" exclaimed Mme. Blond, making a dash for the door, "the croûte-au-pot is boiling over."
Rose Marie made to follow her.
"Need you go, my snowdrop?" he asked, loth to let her go.
"Just to change my crumpled gown, and smooth my hair," she replied demurely.
"You are so beautiful like this, I would not wish to see one single curl altered upon your head, or one fold changed upon your gown."
She was standing against the table, the fingers of one hand resting lightly upon the blackened oak, her head bent slightly forward the while her blue eyes half sought, half shrank from his gaze.
He went up to her, and drew her to him. The desire was irresistible and she almost called for that first kiss by her beauty, her innocence, her perfect girlishness which was so ready to give all bliss and to taste all happiness.
He kissed her fair hair, her eyes, her delicate cheeks now suffused with blushes. Then with a look he asked for her lips and she understood and yielded them to him with a glad little sigh of infinite trust.
The hand of time marked these heavenly minutes; surely the angels looked down from their paradise in envy at this earthly heaven. Outside the wind sighed amid the branches of the acacias, wafting into the room something of the pungent odour of this spring air, of the opening buds of poplars and of beeches and the languorous odour of newly-awakened life.