"One must believe," said Rose, looking at M. Hervart.
"This just shows," M. Des Boys went on, "what the public's point of view in this matter is. My wife's marvellously absurd remark exactly represents their feelings."
There followed a series of pointless anecdotes on Mme. Des Boys' habitual absence of mind. M. Hervart very nearly forgot to laugh: he was thinking of what Rose had just said.
"Rose," said M. Des Boys, "ask Hervart if we weren't believers when we went around the Louvre. We were in a fever of enthusiasm. Hervart is my pupil; I formed his taste for beauty. Unluckily I left Paris and he has turned out badly. I remain faithful, in spite of everything."
"But" said M. Hervart, "faithfulness only begins at the moment of discovering one's real vocation."
Rose seemed to have given these words a meaning which M. Hervart had not consciously intended they should have. Two eyes, full of an infinite tenderness, rested on his like a caress.
"It's as though I had made a declaration," he thought. "I must be mad. But how can one avoid phrases which people go and take as premeditated allusions?"
However, he found the game amusing. It was possible in this way to speak in public and to give utterance to one's real feelings under cover of the commonplaces of conversation. Rose had given him the example; he had followed her without thinking, but this docility was a serious symptom.
"I am lost. Here I am in process of falling in love."
But like those drunkards who, feeling the moment of intoxication at hand, desire to control themselves, but must still obey their cravings because they have been so far weakened by the very sensation that now awakens them to a consciousness of their state, M. Hervart, while deciding that he ought to struggle, yielded.