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A VIRGIN HEART
149

glass, and at the same time, at the risk of offending her lover, who shouldn't have doubted the fact, she said, "You're the only person who has seen me like this, you and I ...."

When Leonor went to sleep she knelt beside his adored body and pious words came to her lips: she had found the living god at last.

They had two days. They decided to finish the last hours at Paris and they returned to shut themselves up in a hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. Hortense was indefatigable.

"What shall we do to recapture this?" she asked.

The idea of taking a little house at Carentan seemed to them a good one. Mme de la Mesangerie would always have the pretext of going to see her mother at Carquebut; her husband accompanied her there only once a year.

"Yes," said Leonor; "there's the time between two trains, one hour; then one misses one train. That makes two hours. Plenty of things can be done in two hours."

"Lovers learn the art of using every moment."

To Hortense it seemed as though she had be-