false and cruel; they have been so to me, and I
am sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to shield them? Why do
you sacrifice me to them? I'm not false; I'm not cruel. You don't know
what you give up; I can tell you that--you don't. They bully you and
plot about you; and I--I"--And he paused, holding out his hands. She
turned away and began to leave him. "You told me the other day that
you were afraid of your mother," he said, following her. "What did you
mean?"

Madame de Cintre shook her head. "I remember; I was sorry afterwards."

"You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumb-screws. In God's
name what IS it she does to you?"

"Nothing. Nothing that you can understand. And now that I have given you
up, I must not complain of her to you."

"That's no reasoning!" cried Newman. "Complain of her, on the contrary.
Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will
talk it over so satisfactorily that you won't give me up."

Madame de Cintre looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising
her eyes, she said, "One good at least has come of this: I have made
you judge me more fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me great
honor; I don't know why you had taken it into your head. But it left me
no loophole for escape--no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.
It was not my fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to have
warned you more. I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed
to disappoint you. But I WAS, in a way, too proud. You see what my
superiority amounts to, I hope!" she went on, raising her voice with
a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful. "I am too
proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless. I am timid and
cold and selfish. I am afraid of being uncomfortable."

"And you call marrying me uncomfortable!" said Newman staring.

Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his
pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express
her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. "It is not
marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it. It's the rupture,
the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right
have I to be happy when--when"--And she paused.

"When what?" said Newman.

"When others have been most unhappy!"

"What others?" Newman asked. "What have you to do with any others but
me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happi