He had approached her with the idea of a brief and easy intrigue, such as he had so often heard described, but had never yet experienced, at least hardly in such a form as to be worthy of the name. She had dropped her sunshade just in time to provide him with an excuse for accosting her. and now that he was thus cunningly entangled in the pretty web of the young girl's life he felt no desire to free himself from it until he should have advanced much further into her intimacy.

But the amazing purity of her profile and her incomparable good health --- are not good health and corruption always assumed by the rhetorician to be incompatible? --- had subdued the ardor of his first onset and, overcome with a sudden reluctance to go further, he now found all his delight in marvelling at the mystery of her face, with its clear and delicate chiselling and infinite sweetness of expression. His happiness was complete, he was at rest.