Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/98

94 "Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young."

"All the same, I see a great difference, when I look around me, between the feelings of young and old people."

"Do you know many people?"

"No, very few; but I have always seen a certain correspondence between people's hearts and faces."

"Certainly; but a general truth, although it may represent the average of particular truths, is hardly ever the same as a single particular case selected by chance...."

Rose looked at Leonor with a mixture of admiration and shame: she did not understand. Leonor perceived the fact and went on:

"I mean that there are, in all things, exceptions. I also mean that there are rules which admit of a great number of exceptions. It even happens in life, just as in grammar, that the exceptional are more numerous than the regular cases. Do you follow?"

"Oh, perfectly."

"But that," he concluded, emphasizing his words, "does not prevent the rule's being the