Madame de Mauves

morrow for Brussels; but when the morrow came it occurred to him that he ought by way of preparation to acquaint himself mo

h, nevertheless, and wandered about nervously, promising himself to take the next train. A dozen trains started, however, and he was still in Paris. This inward ache was more than he had bargained for, and as he looked at the shop-windows he wondered if it represented a "passion." He had never been fond of the word and had grown up with much mistrust of what it stood for. He had hoped that when he should fall "really" in love he should do it with an excellent conscience, with plenty of co

of June roses was trained over the wall of the house, placed himself at a table near by, where the best of dinners was served him on the whitest of linen and in the most shining of porcelain. It so happened that his table was near a window and that as he sat he could look into a corner of the salon. So it was that his attention rested on a lady seated just within the window, which was open, face to face apparently with a companion who was concealed by the curtain. She was a very pretty woman, and Longmore looked at her as often as was consistent with good manners. After a

smile and interrupting him fitfully, while she crunched her bonbons, with a murmured response, presumably as broad, which appeared to have the effect of launching him again. She drank a great dea

bserved it, and observed also, apparently, that the room beyond them was empty; that he stood within eyeshot of Longmore he failed to observe. He stooped suddenly and imprinted a gallant kiss on the fair expanse. In the author of this tribute Longmore then recognised Richard de Mauves. The lady to whom it had been rendered put on her bonnet, using his flushed smile as a mirror, an

rifice of everything that bound him to the tranquil past, he could offer her with a rapture which at last made stiff resistance a terribly inferior substitute for faith. Nothing in his tranquil past had given such a zest to consciousness as this happy sense of choosing to go straight back to Saint-Germain. How to justify his return, how to explain his ardour, troubled him little. He wasn't even sure he wished to be understood; he wished only to show how little by any fault of his Madame de Mauves wa

that she was walking a little way in the forest. Longmore went through the garden and out of the small door into the lane, and, after half an hour's vain exploration, saw her coming t

said with her beautiful ey

ot to Paris I found how fond

nded her with complications too great to be disguised by a colourless welcome. For some moments, as he turned and walked beside her, neither spoke; then abruptly, "Tell me truly, Mr. Longmore," she said, "why you've come back." He inclined himself to her, almost pulling up again, with an air that startled her into a certainty of what she had feared. "Because I've learned the real answer to the question I asked you the other day. You're not happy-you're too good to be happy on the terms offered you. Madame de Mauves," he went on with a gesture which protested against a gesture of her own, "I can't be happy, you know, when you're as little so as I make you out. I don't care for anything so long as I only feel helple

the appearance by the time he had stopped speaking of a flush in her guarded clearness. Such as it was it told Longmore she was moved, and his first p

t they did Longmore a world of good. He had always felt indefinably afraid of her; her being had somehow seemed fed by a deeper faith and a stronger will than his own; but her half-dozen smothered sobs showed him the

d. "Listen to a friend for his own sake if not for yours. I've never presumed to of

de the fallen log on which they had rested a few evenings before, she went and sat down on it with a resigned grace while the young m

u're truth itself, and there's no truth about you. You believe in purity and duty and dignity, and you live in a world in which they're da

can begin to tell you now. Sometimes when I remember certain impulses, certain illusions of those days they take away my breath, and I wonder that my false point of view hasn't led me into troubles greater than any I've now to lament. I had a conviction which you'd probably smile at if I were to attempt to express it to you. It was a singular form for passionate faith to take, but it had all of the sweetness and the ardour of passionate faith. It led me to take a great step, and it lies behind me now, far off, a vague deceptive form melting in the light of experience. It has faded, but it hasn't vanished. Some feelings, I'm sure, die only with ourselves; some illusions a

understand neither such troubles nor such compensations. A year ago, while I was in the country, a friend of mine was in despair at the infidelity of her husband; she wrote me a most dolorous letter, and on my return to Paris I went immediately to see her. A week had elapsed, and as I had seen stranger things I thought she might have recovered her spirits. Not at all; she was still in despair-but at what? At the conduct, the abandoned, shameless conduct of-well of a lady I'll call Madame de T. You'll imagine of course that Madame de T. was the lady whom my friend's husband preferred to his wife. Far from it; he had never seen her. Who then was

ongmore expressively repeat

oss theoretically to defend compromises; but if I found a poor creature who had managed to arrive at one I should think myself not urgently called

ess and rectitude. As I see it you should have found happiness serene, profound, complete; a femme de chambre not a jewel perhaps, but warranted to tell but one fib a day; a society possibly rather provincial, but-in spite of your poor opinion of

the expense of such dazzling visions for me. Visions are vain thi

f her patience, "the reality YOU 'happen to be in for' has, if I'm not

d with vehemence, "I have none! I believe, Mr. Longmore," she added in a moment, "that I've nothing on earth but a conscience-it's a good time to tell you so-nothing but a dogged obstinate clinging conscience. Does that prove me to be indeed of yo

cut a great romantic figure. And yet I've fancied that in my case the unaccommodating organ we speak of might be blinded and gagged a while, in

n't laugh at your conscience," she answered

nd, and at the same moment he heard a footstep in an adjacent by-pa

not addicted, but he seemed on this occasion to have resorted to it with some equanimity. He was smoking a fragrant cigar and had thrust his thumb into the armhole of his waistcoat with the air of a man thinking at his ease. He stopped short with surp

Madame de Mauves, "that I might congr

t," she immediately answered, "i

st meeting after some commotion. "My return was unexpected t

ited interest. "It's needless for me to make you welcome. Madame de Mauves k

at her expense. Yet if matters were none the less plainly at a crisis between them he could but wonder vainly what it was on her part that prevented some practical protest or some rupture. What did she suspect?-how much did she know? To what was she resigned?-how much had she forgiven? How, above all, did she reconcile with knowledge, or with suspicion, that intense consideration she had just now all but assured him she entertained? "She has loved him once," Longmore said with a sinking of the heart, "and

she surrendered her post and addressed herself to our hero. Longmore, at thirty, was still an ingenuous youth, and there was something in this lady's large assured attack that fairly intimidated him. He was doubtless not as reass

Brussels by way of the

returned yesterday from Paris

known a person at all to be so fond of Saint-Ger

Longmore, vexed at his lack of superio

y wailed. "I'm the dullest thing here. They've not had

asy to have it. Madame de

great fan. "To he

ent; he hated the ton

r epigram, which the charming creature received with a droop of the head and eyes that strayed through the windo

nspired French he had ever uttered. He rose