Madame de Mauves

great arrangement was needed to make it seem a striking allegory, and it haunted and oppressed him for the rest of the day. He took refuge, however, in his quickened conviction that the o

him. His presence now might be simply a gratuitous annoyance, and yet his absence might seem to imply that it was in the power of circumstances to make them ashamed to meet each other's eyes. He sat a long time with his head in his hands, lost in a painful confusion of hopes and ambiguities.

ngle loose coil and as if she were unprepared for company. She stopped when she saw her friend, showed some surprise, uttered an exclamation and stood waiting for him to speak. He tried, with his eyes on her, to say something, but found no words. He knew it was awkward, it was offensive, to stand gazing at her; but he couldn't say what was suitable and mightn't say what he wished. Her face was indistinct

, the meaning of her words came to him. "I had a bad headach

d answered her without betraying h

ou, I'm bette

leaned closer to her, against the balustrade of the terrace. "I hoped you might have been able to

him was changed. It was this same something that hampered the desire with which he had come, or at least converted all his imagined freedom of speech about it to a final hush of wonder. No, certainly, he couldn't clasp her to his arms now, any more

rticular reason for being glad. I half-expected yo

swered, "it was impossible I shouldn't come. I've

ou." Longmore gave an uneasy shift to his position. To what was she coming? But he said nothing, and she went on: "I take a great interest in you. There's no reason why I shouldn't say it. I feel a great friendship for you." He be

ngly; but doubtless never rationally enough

clearer. "You do yourself injustice. I've such confidence in your fairness

man cried. "My fairness of mind? Of all the question-begging terms!" he lau

kind. She shook her head impatiently and came near enough to lay her fan on his arm with a strong pressure. "If that were so it would be a weary world. I know enough, howev

it; I

ong unanswered. If this were to happen-if I were to find you selfish where I thought you generous, narrow where I thought you large"-and she spoke slowly, her voice lingering with all emphasis on each of these words-"vulgar where I thought you rare, I should think worse of human nature. I should ta

ords was all remonstrance, refusal, dismissal, but her presence and effect there, so close, so urgent, so personal, a distracting contradiction of it. She had never been so lovely. In her white dress, with her pale face and deeply-lighted brow, she seemed the very spirit of the summer night. When she had ceased speaking she drew a long breath

last sophistry of his great desire for her knew itself touched as a bubble is pricked; it died away with a stifled murmur, and her beauty, more and more radiant in the da

I might see you, I thought, and simply say to you that there were excellent reasons why we should part, and that I begged this visit should be your last. This I inclined to do; what made me decide otherwise was-well, simply that I like

aste!" the poor

a pause, "to fall back on my strict right. But, as I said bef

Longmore answered, "I feel so angry, so merely sore and s

," she returned with no drop in her ardour. "No, I don't want to think of you as feeling a gre

st!" he broke in. "A creature who could know you without lo

her end of the terrace and stood there with her face to the garden. She assumed that he understood her, and slowly, slowly, half as the fruit of this mute pressure, he let everything go but the rage of a purpose somehow still to please her. She was giving him a chance to do gallantly what it seemed unworthy of both of them he should do meanly. She must have "liked" him indeed, as she said, to wish so to spare him, to go to the trouble

amed in the opening as if, though just arriving on the scene, she too were already aware of its interest. Conscious, apparently, that she might be suspected of having watched t

n me is the thing this woman can best conceive. What I ask of you is something she can't begin to!" They seemed somehow to beg him to suffer her to be triumphantly herself, and to intimate-yet this too all decently-how little that self was of Madame Clairin's particular swelling measure. He felt an immense answe