They went into almost all the shops in the Rue Fontaine, which is the centre of this big outlandish village. M. Hervart bought some picture postcards. The castles in the Hague district are almost as fine and as picturesque as those on the banks of the Loire. He would have liked to send the picture of them to Gratienne, but he felt himself to be Rose's prisoner. For a moment, that put him in a bad temper. Then, as Rose was entering a draper's shop, he made up his mind; the post office was next door.
"I should like your advice," said Rose. "I have got to match some wools."
But he had gone. She waited patiently.
The castles were at last dropped into the box and they continued their course. The walk finished up at the confectioner's.
One of Mr. Hervart's pleasures was eating cakes at a pastry cook's, and the pleasure was complete when a woman was with him. He was a regular customer at the shop in the Rue du Louvre, at the corner of the square; he went there every day and not always alone.
Entering the shop with Rose, he imagined himself in Paris, enjoying a little flirtation, and the thought amused him. Rose was as happy as he. Smiling and serious, she looked as though she were accomplishing some familiar rite.
"She would soon make a Parisian," M. Hervart thought, as he looked at her.
And in an instant of time, he saw a whole future unfolding before him. They would live in the Quai Voltaire; she would often start out with him in the mornings on her way to the Louvre stores. He would take her as far as the arcades. She would come and pick him up for luncheon. On other days, she would come into his office at four o'clock and they would go and eat cakes and drink a glass of iced water; and then they would walk slowly back by the Pont Neuf and the Quays; on the way they would buy some queer old book and look at the play of the sunlight on the water and in the trees. Sometimes they would take the steamer or the train and go to some wood, not so wild as the Robinvast wood, but pleasant enough, where Rose could breathe an air almost as pure as the air of her native place....
There was not much imagination in this dream of M. Hervart's, for he had often realised it in the past. But the introduction of Rose made of it something quite new, a pleasure hitherto unfelt.
"By the end of my stay I shall be madly in love with her and very unhappy," he said to himself at last.