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Rh an idea ﬂashed through her mind, the smile broke into a laugh, which, for all its violence, seemed somehow tinged with shyness. Grown calmer, she asked.

"I'd like to know... to know... I'd like to know your name."

M. Hervart was nonplussed.

"My name? But... Ah, I see... the other one."

He hesitated. This name, the sound of which he had hardly heard since his mother's death, was so unfamiliar to him that he felt a certain embarrassment at uttering it. He signed himself simply "Hervart." All his friends called him by this name, for none had known him in the intimacy of the family; even his mistresses had never murmured any other. Besides, women prefer to make use of appellations suitable to everyone in general, such as "wolf," or "pussy-cat," or "white rabbit."—M. Hervart, who was thin, had been generally called "wolf."

"Xavier," he said at last. Rose seemed satisﬁed.

She began eating blackberries as she had done the day before. And M. Hervart, just as