He felt softened, moved, overcome, as he had been by no other woman.
"I had thought about one matter," she continued, "but it is rather difficult to explain."
"What is it?" he asked.
"Well, it is this, my dear boy, I am like all women, I have my weaknesses, my pettinesses. I love all that glitters, that catches the ear. I should have so delighted to have borne a noble name. Could you not, on the occasion of your marriage, ennoble yourself a little?"
She had blushed in her turn, as if she had proposed something indelicate.
He replied simply enough: "I have often thought about it, but it did not seem to me so easy."
"Why so?"
He began to laugh, saying: "Because I was afraid of making myself look ridiculous."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Not at all, not at all Every one does it, and nobody laughs. Separate your name in two—Du Roy. That looks very well."
He replied at once like a man who understands the matter in question: "No, that will not do at all. It is too simple, too common, too well-known. I had thought of taking the name of my native place, as a literary pseudonym at first, then of adding it to my own by degrees, and then, later on, of even cutting my name in two, as you suggest."