ness, and that you
should find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself."

"Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even
intelligent."

"You are laughing at me!" cried Newman. "You are mocking me!"

She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she was
asking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common pain
by confessing that she was mocking him. "No; I am not," she presently
said.

"Granting that you are not intelligent," he went on, "that you are
weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed
you were--what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common
effort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simple
truth is that you don't care enough about me to make it."

"I am cold," said Madame de Cintre, "I am as cold as that flowing
river."

Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim
laugh. "Good, good!" he cried. "You go altogether too far--you overshoot
the mark. There isn't a woman in the world as bad as you would make
yourself out. I see your game; it's what I said. You are blackening
yourself to whiten others. You don't want to give me up, at all; you
like me--you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt
it. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you,
I say; they have tortured you. It's an outrage, and I insist upon saving
you from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop off
your hand if your mother requested it?"

Madame de Cintre looked a little frightened. "I spoke of my mother
too blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by her
approval. She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has never
alluded to those hard words I used about her."

"She has made you feel them, I'll promise you!" said Newman.

"It's my conscience that makes me feel them."

"Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!" exclaimed Newman,
passionately.

"It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear," said Madame
de Cintre. "I don't give you up for any worldly advantage or for any
worldly happiness."

"Oh, you don't give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know," said Newman. "I
won't pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that. But that's what
your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that villainous
ball of hers--I liked it at the time, but the very thought of it now
makes me rabid--tried to p