pretty woman, sitting in fire-side talk with her brother, in the gray
depths of her inhospitable-looking house--what had he to say to her? She
seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what grounds had he
pulled away the curtain? For a moment he felt as if he had plunged into
some medium as deep as the ocean, and as if he must exert himself to
keep from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame de Cintre, and
she was settling herself in her chair and drawing in her long dress and
turning her face towards him. Their eyes met; a moment afterwards she
looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on the fire. But
the moment, and the glance which traversed it, had been sufficient to
relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of personal embarrassment
he was ever to know. He performed the movement which was so frequent
with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his taking mental
possession of a scene--he extended his legs. The impression Madame de
Cintre had made upon him on their first meeting came back in an instant;
it had been deeper than he knew. She was pleasing, she was interesting;
he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention.

She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there, how
he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with that
distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had struck
Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women, he had come
to like extremely. Here and there Madame de Cintre's utterance had a
faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten minutes Newman found
himself waiting for these soft roughnesses. He enjoyed them, and he
marveled to see that gross thing, error, brought down to so fine a
point.

"You have a beautiful country," said Madame de Cintre, presently.

"Oh, magnificent!" said Newman. "You ought to see it."

"I shall never see it," said Madame de Cintre with a smile.

"Why not?" asked Newman.

"I don't travel; especially so far."

"But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?"

"I go away in summer, a little way, to the country."

Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
knew what. "Don't you find it rather--rather quiet here?" he said;
"so far from the street?" Rather "gloomy," he was going to say, but he
reflected that that would be impolite.

"Yes, it is