Going back to the drawing-room for refreshments, they managed to precede the many groups slowly making their way up the lawn and went round the villa. Thus they arrived last. As they were walking Isabelle suddenly asked her companion:
“Jean, can you understand that one might marry with love in one’s heart?”
“Love for one’s husband, do you mean?”
“You are joking.”
He was indeed joking, not wishing to understand. But, as at the very moment he was looking at an ugly slug dragging itself over a rose in the courtyard, he felt very tenderly and regretfully for Isabelle’s sacrificed beauty.
“Better to love before than after,” was all he could say in the end.
“Oh, if you love before you love after, too.”
He turned the conversation, for he was struggling against his feelings. Never had he experienced such a passion for that masterful profile, those bold eyes, those red and sensual lips, those brilliant teeth, all that abounding youthful grace.
“Am I not a wizard? I foretold your marriage that evening in the railway carriage.”
“Yes, my mother has often told me, ‘My dear, after a week all men are the same—fortune and youth are both fleeting things, but the first alone can bestow a prize upon the second.’”