“The next day we met Monsieur Beaurain at the railway station, and in those days he was good-looking, but I had made up my mind not to encourage him, and I did not.  Well, we arrived at Bezons.  It was a lovely day, the sort of day that touches your heart.  When it is fine even now, just as it used to be formerly, I grow quite foolish, and when I am in the country I utterly lose my head.  The green grass, the swallows flying so swiftly, the smell of the grass, the scarlet poppies, the daisies, all that makes me crazy.  It is like champagne when one is not accustomed to it!

“Well, it was lovely weather, warm and bright, and it seemed to penetrate your body through your eyes when you looked and through your mouth when you breathed.  Rose and Simon hugged and kissed each other every minute, and that gave me a queer feeling!  Monsieur Beaurain and I walked behind them, without speaking much, for when people do not know each other, they do not find anything to talk about.  He looked timid, and I liked to see his embarrassment.  At last we got to the little wood; it was as cool as in a bath there, and we four sat down.  Rose and her lover teased me because I looked rather stern, but you will understand that I could not be otherwise.  And then they began to kiss and hug again, without putting any more restraint upon themselves than if we had not been there; and then they whispered together, and got up and went off among the trees, without saying a word.  You may fancy what I looked like, alone with this young fellow whom I saw for the first time.  I felt so confused at seeing them go that it gave me courage, and I began to talk.  I asked him what his business was, and he said he was a linen draper’s assistant, as I told you just now.  We talked for a few minutes, and that made him bold, and he wanted to take liberties with me, but I told him sharply to keep his place.  Is not that true, Monsieur Beaurain?”

Monsieur Beaurain, who was looking at his feet in confusion, did not reply, and she continued:  “Then he saw that I was virtuous, and he began to make love to me nicely, like an honorable man, and from that time he came every Sunday, for he was very much in love with me.  I was very fond of him also, very fond of him!  He was a good-looking fellow, formerly, and in short he married me the next September, and we started in business in the Rue des Martyrs.

“It was a hard struggle for some years, monsieur.  Business did not prosper, and we could not afford many country excursions, and, besides, we had got out of the way of them.  One has other things in one’s head, and thinks more of the cash box than of pretty speeches, when one is in business.  We were growing old by degrees without perceiving it, like quiet people who do not think much about love.  One does not regret anything as long as one does not notice what one has lost.