The economy of Christine Lagarde Lagarde, herself, is a bit of a puzzle. She's Chanel suits and weekend denim, a French woman who has called the United States home during pivotal stretches of her life, a lawyer by training who's in charge of a financial institution crucial to the globe's economic pulse. Though connected to every possible political leader, and all manner of business stakeholders, Lagarde is, essentially, on her own. A graceful and sociable loner. At 56, she denies herself the usual Parisian vices like alcohol or tobacco or even red meat. Her loved ones - a dashing Corsican companion as well as two grown sons from previous marriages - live far from her Washington residence. It has been years since she's had time to tend her rose garden in a Normandy country house. But she does have her routines. Wherever she travels - Riga one day, Tokyo a few weeks later, or back at her West End condo - she swims her laps to shake off the tensions of her grueling portfolio. But even this disciplined exercise routine has not shielded Lagarde entirely. In April, Lagarde began her morning in New Delhi, pushing herself. She swam, extra hard, in a hotel pool. Next, she boarded a series of flights back to Washington. During a plane change in Paris, she felt the twinge in her knee, and it gave way to a snap, and then frightening, destabilizing pain. After landing in D.C., her travelling staff shuttled her to George Washington University Hospital. The emergency room flew into action. "It was quite dramatic," Lagarde said in her office, a few weeks later. She pointed to a tanned leg under a pink skirt. She showed the exact place where surgeons entered. After weeks of physical therapy, her knee bent easily as she stood. There was no visible scar. "I'm quite proud of it," she said. Holton Arms Christine Lallouette first arrived in the Washington area in 1973. She won a year-long scholarship to attend Holton Arms, the all-girls prep school in Bethesda. She was shaky on the language and not privy to senior-year inside jokes. She was taller than many. She smoked. She was used to having boys around, as the older sister to two brothers. And her father, a professor of English literature, had died only months before she left. The 17-year-old girl stared down anything that was difficult, recalled Bob Tupper, her government teacher and a mentor to many over three-plus decades at Holton Arms. He recalled that she struggled with writing essays in English, that he pushed her, that she kept at it.