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.