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100 answered, "My dear, I admire you. You're a god."

These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.

"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who know something about life, whether through experience or through the conﬁdences of someone else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. Hervart has a pair of ﬁne blue eyes, gentle and lively, ardent. But what do I care? I don't desire the good graces of this innocent."

While reﬂecting thus, he had answered M. Hervart, "I quite agree with you. People tend too much to-day to confound the curious, rare or antique with the beautiful. The æsthetic sense has been replaced by a feeling of respect."

"The process was perhaps inevitable," said M. Hervart. "In any case it suits a democracy.