Léon made no attempt to talk to Rose. He hardly looked at her, but he persistently observed her. He saw that she had in some sense which had been denied her family, imagination and warmth. He surprised in her a sympathy of attention different from the playful kindness of her sisters. Agatha and Edith were from the first jolly with Léon. They cultivated, with masculine acquaintances, a slightly jocular tone, and the humor of this was deepened, of course, by Léon’s being a Frenchman. They gambolled cheerfully about him, much like heavy sheep dogs good-humoredly greeting a greyhound. Léon accommodated his pace to theirs, he met them half-way, but he privately thought they weren’t like women at all. He took Agatha round the little temple and Edith to the foot of the highest waterfall. He let their niceness (for he recognized with a rare leap of the imagination that they were being nice to him) expand into unconscious revelations. He allowed their frank communications to slip over the polished surface of his manner like leaves borne on the waters that dashed past them. Once or twice he arrested the floating leaves with the point of his stick, and once or twice in the flood of Edith’s careless chatter he held, very slightly, the point of his mind against a special revelation. He gathered that the Pinsents were very well off. It wasn’t that they ever spoke of money, but the tremendous amount of things you had to have, the bother of _salonslits_ and the burden of expensive hotels filtered through their wider statements of having to think twice as to whether they’d go on to Sicily or not. They deplored prices, but they invariably chose the best of what there was. Léon listened carefully, but he hadn’t at first any real intentions. Rose pleased him. She was an unknown English type. A strange creature, as independent as if she were married, and as innocent as if she had never seen a man. He decided to devote himself a little to studying her, and in order to do this he had, of course, to accept the Pinsent family. To Mr. Pinsent he could only be attentive. He found him an English club and was delighted to observe the increasing use which Mr. Pinsent made of it. Mrs. Pinsent, however, was comparatively easy to handle. She was a woman with the maternal instinct, and with her Léon found it easy to be candid. He told her that he had just finished his military service and was now taking a little “voyage” before settling down. He talked a good deal about his mother, who occupied herself with good works in Paris; his father he mentioned less, and the works that occupied him not at all. Nevertheless, it could be seen that he had a great affection for both his parents and no brothers and sisters. “I expect that’s why he likes,” Mrs. Pinsent explained to her husband, “to be so much with the girls.” It was three days before Léon found himself alone with Rose.