te near Rouen ... but all this doesn't interest you."

"It does, profoundly," I said.

She looked at me with a spice of mischief in her eyes. "Why?" she asked.

It was a tempting opening for a flirtation, but I could not flirt with
her. When I had first heard the clear, soft tones of her voice at the
window, I must have known that my meeting with her was a new and decisive
experience. I had always idealised a certain type of woman, and perhaps
for that reason I had always held back from the possible disillusions of
an exploring intimacy. But my recognition of Anne had nothing in common
with all my old deliberately romantic searchings for a theoretical
affinity. If I had been asked at any time before two o'clock that morning
to define my ideal, the definition would not have described Anne. Indeed,
I could never have imagined her. She was altogether too individual, too
positive, too independently real, to fit the mawkish vapourings of a man's
imaginary woman. There was something about her that conquered me. Already
I was blushingly ashamed of my jealous suspicion that she could sell
herself by a marriage with Jervaise. In all her moods, she appeared to me
with an effect that I can only describe as "convincing."

She was a perpetual revelation, and each new phase of her thrilled me with
admiration, and a sense of long-sought satisfaction. I could be content to
watch and to listen to her. The revelations of her personality were to me
as a continual and glorious adventure. To flirt with her would be a
confession on my part of a kind of superiority that I could never feel; a
suggestion of the ridiculous assumption that I could afford to dally with
and in certain circumstances flout her. I could sooner have dallied with
and flouted a supreme work of art. Wherefore when she challenged me with
her daring "Why?" I met her eyes with a look that if it in any way
represented what I was feeling, must have expressed a grave and sincere
humility.

"I can hardly tell you why," I said. "I can only assure you that I am
profoundly interested."

She accepted that statement with a readiness that gave me another thrill
of satisfaction. She understood my desire and gave way to it, instantly
fulfilling my present need of her.

"My great-grandfather went back to Paris after things had settled down,"
she went on, as if there had been no break in her narrative; "just as a
common workman. He was about thirty-five, then, I believe; his first w