第104章

In God's name what IS it she does to you?""Nothing.Nothing that you can understand.And now that I have given you up, I must not complain of her to you.""That's no reasoning!" cried Newman."Complain of her, on the contrary.

Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will talk it over so satisfactorily that you won't give me up."Madame de Cintre looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising her eyes, she said, "One good at least has come of this:

I have made you judge me more fairly.You thought of me in a way that did me great honor; I don't know why you had taken it into your head.

But it left me no loophole for escape--no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.It was not my fault; I warned you from the first.

But I ought to have warned you more.I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed to disappoint you.But I WAS, in a way, too proud.

You see what my superiority amounts to, I hope!" she went on, raising her voice with a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful.

"I am too proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless.

I am timid and cold and selfish.I am afraid of being uncomfortable.""And you call marrying me uncomfortable!" said Newman staring.

Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious.

"It is not marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it.

It's the rupture, the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way.

What right have I to be happy when--when"--And she paused.

"When what?" said Newman.

"When others have been most unhappy!"

"What others?" Newman asked."What have you to do with any others but me?

Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you should find it by obeying your mother.You contradict yourself.""Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even intelligent.""You are laughing at me!" cried Newman."You are mocking me!"She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she was asking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common pain by confessing that she was mocking him.

"No; I am not," she presently said.

"Granting that you are not intelligent," he went on, "that you are weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed you were--what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common effort.

There is a great deal on my side to make it easy.The simple truth is that you don't care enough about me to make it.""I am cold," said Madame de Cintre, "I am as cold as that flowing river."Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim laugh."Good, good!" he cried."You go altogether too far--you overshoot the mark.There isn't a woman in the world as bad as you would make yourself out.I see your game;it's what I said.You are blackening yourself to whiten others.

You don't want to give me up, at all; you like me--you like me.

I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt it.

After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you, I say; they have tortured you.It's an outrage, and I insist upon saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity.

Would you chop off your hand if your mother requested it?"Madame de Cintre looked a little frightened."I spoke of my mother too blindly, the other day.I am my own mistress, by law and by her approval.She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing.

She has never alluded to those hard words I used about her.""She has made you feel them, I'll promise you!" said Newman.

"It's my conscience that makes me feel them.""Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!"exclaimed Newman, passionately.

"It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,"said Madame de Cintre."I don't give you up for any worldly advantage or for any worldly happiness.""Oh, you don't give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know," said Newman.

"I won't pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that.

But that's what your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that villainous ball of hers--I liked it at the time, but the very thought of it now makes me rabid--tried to push him on to make up to you."

"Who told you this?" said Madame de Cintre softly.

"Not Valentin.I observed it.I guessed it.I didn't know at the time that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory.And afterwards, you recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory.

You said then that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.""That was before--before THIS," said Madame de Cintre.

"It doesn't matter," said Newman; "and, besides, I think I know.

He's an honest little Englishman.He came and told you what your mother was up to--that she wanted him to supplant me;not being a commercial person.If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you over and give me the slip.

Lord Deepmere isn't very intellectual, so she had to spell it out to him.

He said he admired you 'no end,' and that he wanted you to know it;but he didn't like being mixed up with that sort of underhand work, and he came to you and told tales.That was about the amount of it, wasn't it? And then you said you were perfectly happy.""I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere," said Madame de Cintre.

"It was not for that you came here.And about my mother, it doesn't matter what you suspect and what you know.When once my mind has been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.

Discussing anything, now, is very idle.We must try and live each as we can.

I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think of me.

When you do so, think this--that it was not easy, and that I did the best I could.I have things to reckon with that you don't know.

I mean I have feelings.I must do as they force me--I must, I must.

They would haunt me otherwise," she cried, with vehemence;"they would kill me!"

"I know what your feelings are: they are superstitions!