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88 when her father began speaking she stopped listening. Leonor, pleased at having made a witty remark and afraid of not being able to think of another, had got up and was walking about the garden. Rose looked at him. The sight of this young animal interested her. And what curious words about love had issued from that mouth! So love was an exercise like tennis, or bicycling, or riding! What a revelation! And the most singular fancies took shape in her mind as she followed with her eyes the now distant ﬁgure of this ingenious and decisive young man.

"How do people play the game of love," she wondered, "real love? Xavier teaches me nothing. He knows all about it though, more probably than this young Leonor, but he takes care not to tell me. He treats me like a little girl, while he makes fun of my innocence. Oh! it's gentle fun, because he loves me; but all the same he rather abuses his superior position. A sport, a sport..."

Quitting the shrubbery, she went and sat down on an old stone bench in a lonely corner, from which she could keep a watch between the trees on all that was happening in the