On his return he found Rose in the garden. Since their engagement she had been living in a perpetual smile. She entered naïvely into her destiny, suspecting no further possible obstacle to her happiness. At the same time, by what must have been instinctive coquetry, she had become, not more reserved, but less prompt at their habitual sports. She spoke a great deal of her future house, picturing to herself their drawing-room furniture, which she pictured from the illustrated catalogues, and the colour of their carpets and curtains. The idea of this furniture horrified M. Hervart, who had a taste for antiques and happy discoveries, which he mixed, without shame, with practical constructions made under his own directions. To-day he found it more difficult than usual to tolerate this housewifely chatter. He was bored.
"Can it be," he wondered, "that I feel nothing but a wholly carnal love for her? What's the use of marrying, if I can't see in her the wife, the mother, the lady of the house as well as the mistress? In that case Gratienne is quite enough for me. Marriage is delightful when one is fresh from school. One finds the happiest establishments among students. They live on one another, in one another. Promiscuity seems an enchantment. One makes one's first acquaintance with the opposite sex; one completes oneself. Later on, all this intimacy is no longer possible; and later still, one is very well content with mere amorous visitations while one awaits the moment when solitude brings the only instants of appreciable happiness."
M. Hervart brought his meditations to no conclusions, and so the morning passed—Rose choosing imaginary wallpapers and Xavier philosophising in secret on the unpleasantnesses of marriage.
After luncheon, a diabolic idea occurred to him: Why shouldn't he take a definite advance on his conjugal rights? The blood went to his head. He began to breathe a little heavily as he pressed Rose against him. When they were seated, the usual ceremony took place after the usual rebuffs. She allowed her lover's hand to wander. Their mouths, meanwhile, were kissing, drinking one another. After a moment of calm, M. Hervart, on his knees now, took one of Rose's feet in his hand. He caressed the ankle and she made no resistance, when he became more daring, though much moved, still she did not protest, and did no more than whisper, "Xavier! No! No!" Nothing more happened. M. Hervart did not dare. While, feeling very uncomfortable, he was deploring his virtue, Rose fondled him and called him naughty.
"It's curious," he thought, "that they all have the same vocabulary by nature."
He was ashamed. Nothing makes a man ashamed so much as having failed in his purpose, what ever may have been the cause of his failure. He said, a little nervously:
"Let's walk a little. Let's do something."
"What an idiot I am," he thought, as they walked along the Couville road, where there are rocks and a little heather and foxgloves among the birch-trees; "after all, she's my wife."
On the following days the same manoeuvre was repeated several times, and M. Hervart always hesitated at the decisive moment.
"Besides," he wondered, "would she let me? I can hardly violate my fiancée, can I? I have taught her nothing she doesn't know. If we came on to untried lessons, how would she take it?..."