warrant his thinking her anything but utterly indifferent to him; and
yet....

No; he wasn't ass enough to dream that he was in love with the woman;
to the contrary, he was wise enough, knew himself well enough, to know
that he could be, easily, and would be, given half a chance to lose his
head.

His warning had been clear beyond mistake, in that hour in the motor
car on the road from La Roque to Nant, when Nature, as she sometimes
will, incautiously had shown her hand to one whom she herself had
schooled to read shrewdly, letting him discern what was her will with
him, the snare that was laid for his feet and in which he must soon
find himself trapped beyond extrication ... always providing he lacked
the wit and resolution to fly his peril, who knew through bitterest of
learning that love was never for him.

Now he had seen Madame de Montalais another time, and had found that
she fitted to the sweetest detail of perfection his ideal of Woman.

On the previous afternoon, meeting the ladies of the château by
arrangement in the bureau of the maire, Duchemin had sat opposite and
watched and listened to Eve de Montalais for upwards of two hours--as
completely devoted to covert study of her as if she had been the one
woman in the room, as if the girl Louise, Madame de Sévénié, and the
officials and functionaries of Nant had not existed in the same world
with her. And in that tedious and constrained time of formalities he
had learned much about her, but first of all, thanks to the
uncompromising light of day that filled the cheerless room, that
moonlight had not enhanced but rather tempered the charms of person