erstood. But when it
comes to a young virgin, on the contrary, no one can guess anything
about her. At heart I begin to think that she is making sport of
me."

Saval tilted his chair. He said, very slowly: "Take care, my dear
fellow, she will lead you to marriage. Remember those other
illustrious examples. It was just by this same process that
Mademoiselle de Montijo, who was at least of good family, became
empress. Don't play Napoleon."

Servigny murmured: "As for that, fear nothing. I am neither a
simpleton nor an emperor. A man must be either one or the other to
make such a move as that. But tell me, are you sleepy?"

"Not a bit."

"Will you take a walk along the river?"

"Gladly."

They opened the iron gate and began to walk along the river bank
toward Marly. It was the quiet hour which precedes dawn, the hour of
deep sleep, of complete rest, of profound peacefulness. Even the
gentle sounds of the night were hushed. The nightingales sang no
longer; the frogs had finished their hubbub; some kind of an animal
only, probably a bird, was making somewhere a kind of sawing sound,
feeble, monotonous, and regular as a machine. Servigny, who had
moments of poetry, and of philosophy too, suddenly remarked: "Now
this girl completely puzzles me. In arithmetic, one and one make
two. In love one and one ought to make one but they make two just
the same. Have you ever felt that? That need of absorbing a woman in
yourself or disappearing in her? I am not speaking of the animal
embrace, but of that moral and mental eagerness to be but one with a
being, to open to her all one's heart and soul, and to fathom her
thoughts to the depths."

"And yet you can never lay bare all the fluctuations of her wishes,
desires, and opinions. You can never guess, even slightly, all the
unknown currents, all the mystery of a soul that seems so near, a
soul hidden behind two eyes that look at you, clear as water,
transparent as if there were nothing beneath a soul which talks to
you by a beloved mouth, which seems your very own, so greatly do you
desire it; a soul which throws you by words its thoughts, one by
one, and which, nevertheless, remains further away from you than
those stars are from each other, and more impenetrable. Isn't it
queer, all that?"

"I don't, ask so much," Saval rejoined. "I don't look behind the
eyes. I care little for the contents, but much for the vessel." And
Servigny replied: "What a singular person Yvette is!