I can't say that my experience tallied with theirs, in this respect.

I went to church and I took walks, and am very well convinced that nobody minded me.

There was not a girl or woman in the Rue Fossette who could not, and did not testify to having received an admiring beam from our young doctor's blue eyes at one time or other.

I am obliged, however humbling it may sound, to except myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin.
So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of treading.

This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it.