ast I shall have." And she paused, with
her great misty eyes fixed upon him. "I know how I have deceived and
injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I see it
as vividly as you do--I feel it to the ends of my fingers." And she
unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted them,
and dropped them at her side. "Anything that you may have said of me in
your angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself."

"In my angriest passion," said Newman, "I have said nothing hard of
you. The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the
loveliest of women." And he seated himself before her again, abruptly.

She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale. "That is because you
think I will come back. But I will not come back. It is in that hope
you have come here, I know; I am very sorry for you. I would do almost
anything for you. To say that, after what I have done, seems simply
impudent; but what can I say that will not seem impudent? To wrong you
and apologize--that is easy enough. I should not have wronged you." She
stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him to let her go on.
"I ought never to have listened to you at first; that was the wrong.
No good could come of it. I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your
fault. I liked you too much; I believed in you."

"And don't you believe in me now?"

"More than ever. But now it doesn't matter. I have given you up."

Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee. "Why,
why, why?" he cried. "Give me a reason--a decent reason. You are not a
child--you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to drop me
because your mother told you to. Such a reason isn't worthy of you."

"I know that; it's not worthy of me. But it's the only one I have to
give. After all," said Madame de Cintre, throwing out her hands, "think
me an idiot and forget me! That will be the simplest way."

Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause was
lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting. He went to
one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river
and the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round, Madame
de Cintre had risen; she stood there silent and passive. "You are not
frank," said Newman; "you are not honest. Instead of saying that you are
imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked. Your mother and
your brother have been