ther's acquaintance. When
they left the train they did not notice each other; if he took the left
side of the street, she took the other, and vice versa. This state
of things lasted several months without a word having been exchanged
between them; in due time they learned each other's names and
professions. She was a professor of drawing, as he supposed, the
daughter of an artist who had been dead several years, and was called
Mademoiselle Phillis Cormier. He was a physician for whom a brilliant
future was prophesied, a man of power, who would some day be famous;
and, very naturally, their attitude remained the same. There was no
particular reason why it should change. But accident made a reason.
One summer day, at the hour when they ordinarily took the train back
to Paris, the sky suddenly became overcast, and it was evident that
a violent storm was approaching. Saniel saw Phillis hurrying to the
station without an umbrella, and, as some friend had lent him one, he
decided to speak to her for the first time.

"It seems as if the storm would overtake us before we reach the station.
As you have no umbrella, will you permit me to walk beside you, and to
shelter you with mine?"

She replied with a smile, and they walked side by side until the rain
began to fall, when she drew nearer to him, and they entered the station
talking gayly.

"Your umbrella is better than Virginia's skirt," she said.

"And what is Virginia's skirt?"

"Have you not read Paul and Virginia?"

"No."

She looked at him with a mocking smile, wondering what superior men
read.

Not only had he not read Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's romance, nor any
others, but he had never been in love. He knew nothing of the affairs of
the heart nor of the imagination. Leisure must be had for light reading,
and even more for love, for they require a liberty of mind and an
independence of life that he had not. Where could he find time to read
novels? When and how could he pay attention to a woman? Those that he
had known since his arrival in Paris had not had the slightest influence
over him, and he retained only faint memories of them. On the contrary,
thinking of this walk in the rain, he remembered this young girl with a
vividness entirely new to him. She made a strong impression on him, and
it remained. He saw her again, with her smile that showed her brilliant
teeth, he heard the music of her voice, and the bare plain that he had
walked so many times now see