"Well," said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, "I don't
believe you would have been happy."

Newman gave a little laugh. "Say I should have been miserable, then;
it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."

Mrs. Tristram began to muse. "I should have been curious to see; it
would have been very strange."

"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?"

"A little," said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious. Newman
gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment, and then
she said, "That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much to
see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place; second,
what would happen if it should take place."

"So you didn't believe," said Newman, resentfully.

"Yes, I believed--I believed that it would take place, and that you
would be happy. Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations,
a very heartless creature. BUT," she continued, laying her hand upon
Newman's arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest flight
ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!"

Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for
three months. Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget his
misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed it. "I
really feel," Newman rejoined, "as if to leave YOU, at least, would do
me good--and cost me very little effort. You are growing cynical, you
shock me and pain me."

"Very good," said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as may be
thought most probable. "I shall certainly see you again."

Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets he
had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear
a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in
the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery. He
would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his preparations.
Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train that would
transport him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of
Britain. As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had
become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally
pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.

He arrived