He looked at Rose in his turn, but Rose did not drop her eyes. Meanwhile, M. Hervart was growing bored.
"Mme. Suif," said Lanfranc, "is still quite well preserved. For instance...."
"Rose dear," interrupted M. Des Boys, "doesn't your mother want you?"
"Oh, no, I'm sure she doesn't. Mother would only find me in the way."
"Your father is right, Rose," said M. Hervart glad to make trial of his authority.
She did not dare oppose her lover's wish, but she felt angry as she rose to go.
"Acting like my master already!" she thought. "I should so like to listen to M. Lanfranc...."
She dared not add: "... and to look at this M. Leonor and be looked at by him and still more, to hear them talk of Mme. Suif. What was he going to say? Oh, I don't want to know!"
She entered the house, came out again by another door and hid herself in a shrubbery from which she could hear their voices quite clearly.
"It's not only her shoulders," M. Lanfranc was saying, "they're not the only things about her that tempt one. She's forty-five, but her figure is still good and not too excessively run to flesh. As a whole she is certainly a bit ample, but at the Art School one could still make a very respectable Juno of her. I've seen worse on the model's throne...."
"Time," said M. Hervart, "often shows angelical clemency. He pardons women who have been good lovers."
"There's no better recreation than love," said Leonor. "No sport more suited to keep one fit and supple."
M. Hervart looked in surprise at this dim young man who had so unexpectedly made a joke. Anxious to shine in his turn, he replied: "No one has ever dared to put that in a manual of hygiene. What a charming chapter one could make of it, in the style of the First Empire: 'Love, the preserver of Beauty.'"
"A pretty subject too for the Prix de Rome," said Lanfranc.
"Seriously," broke in M. Des Boys, "I believe that the thing that so quickly shrivels up virtuous women in chastity."
"Virtuous women!" said Lanfranc, "they're mean to reproduce the species. When they have had their children, and that must take place between twenty and thirty, their rôle is finished."
"The only thing left for them to do," said M. Des Boys, "is to concoct philters to keep us young."