what does it prove?"

"I can't say it proves anything; but it suggests a great many things."

"Be so good as to mention a few," he said, as we walked on.

"You are not sure of her yourself," I began.

"Never mind that--go on with your analogy."

"That's a part of it. You _are_ very much in love with her."

"That's a part of it too, I suppose?"

"Yes, as I have told you before. You are in love with her, and yet you
can't make her out; that's just where I was with regard to Madame de
Salvi."

"And she too was an enchantress, an actress, an artist, and all the rest
of it?"

"She was the most perfect coquette I ever knew, and the most dangerous,
because the most finished."

"What you mean, then, is that her daughter is a finished coquette?"

"I rather think so."

Stanmer walked along for some moments in silence.

"Seeing that you suppose me to be a--a great admirer of the Countess," he
said at last, "I am rather surprised at the freedom with which you speak
of her."

I confessed that I was surprised at it myself. "But it's on account of
the interest I take in you."

"I am immensely obliged to you!" said the poor boy.

"Ah, of course you don't like it. That is, you like my interest--I don't
see how you can help liking that; but you don't like my freedom. That's
natural enough; but, my dear young friend, I want only to help you. If a
man had said to me--so many years ago--what I am saying to you, I should
certainly also, at first, have thought him a great brute. But after a
little, I should have been grateful--I should have felt that he was
helping me."

"You seem to have been very well able to help yourself," said Stanmer.
"You tell me you made your escape."

"Yes, but it was at the cost of infinite perplexity--of what I may call
keen suffering. I should like to save you all that."

"I can only repeat--it is really very kind of you."

"Don't repeat it too often, or I shall begin to think you don't mean it."

"Well," said Stanmer, "I think this, at any rate--that you take an
extraordinary responsibility in trying to put a man out of conceit of a
woman who, as he believes, may make him very happy."

I grasped his arm, and we stopped, going on with our talk like a couple
of Florentines.

"Do you wish to marry her?"

He looked away, without meeting my eyes. "It's a great responsibility,"
he repeated.

"Before Heaven," I said, "I would have married the mother! You are
exactly in my situa