ne absolutely naif from its
pleading and caressing cadence. She had turned away, and it made her
stop a moment with her back to him. "Think better of that. You are
too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others
happy. If you are afraid of losing your freedom, I can assure you that
this freedom here, this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what
I will offer you. You shall do things that I don't think you have ever
thought of. I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you propose.
Are you unhappy? You give me a feeling that you are unhappy. You have no
right to be, or to be made so. Let me come in and put an end to it."

Madame de Cintre stood there a moment longer, looking away from him.
If she was touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable. His
voice, always very mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft
and as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved
child. He stood watching her, and she presently turned round again, but
this time she did not look at him, and she spoke in a quietness in which
there was a visible trace of effort.

"There are a great many reasons why I should not marry," she said, "more
than I can explain to you. As for my happiness, I am very happy. Your
offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say. Of
course you have a perfect right to make it. But I cannot accept it--it
is impossible. Please never speak of this matter again. If you cannot
promise me this, I must ask you not to come back."

"Why is it impossible?" Newman demanded. "You may think it is, at first,
without its really being so. I didn't expect you to be pleased at first,
but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while, you may be
satisfied."

"I don't know you," said Madame de Cintre. "Think how little I know
you."

"Very little, of course, and therefore I don't ask for your ultimatum on
the spot. I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope. I will wait
as long as you desire. Meanwhile you can see more of me and know me
better, look at me as a possible husband--as a candidate--and make up
your mind."

Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintre's thoughts; she
was weighing a question there, beneath Newman's eyes, weighing it and
deciding it. "From the moment I don't very respectfully beg you to leave
the house and never return," she said, "I listen to you, I seem to give
you hope. I HAVE listened to you--agains