ing enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and
of seeing her lovely eyes shining through it opposite to me, like fog-
lamps at sea." And here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke off into
an ardent parenthesis, and declared that Madame Blumenthal's eyes had
something in them that he had never seen in any others. "It was a jumble
of crudities and inanities," he went on; "they must have seemed to her
great rubbish; but I felt the wiser and the stronger, somehow, for having
fired off all my guns--they could hurt nobody now if they hit--and I
imagine I might have gone far without finding another woman in whom such
an exhibition would have provoked so little of mere cold amusement."

"Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary," I surmised, "entered into your
situation with warmth."

"Exactly so--the greatest! She has felt and suffered, and now she
understands!"

"She told you, I imagine, that she understood you as if she had made you,
and she offered to be your guide, philosopher, and friend."

"She spoke to me," Pickering answered, after a pause, "as I had never
been spoken to before, and she offered me, formally, all the offices of a
woman's friendship."

"Which you as formally accepted?"

"To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but allow me to say I don't
care!" Pickering spoke with an air of genial defiance which was the most
inoffensive thing in the world. "I was very much moved; I was, in fact,
very much excited. I tried to say something, but I couldn't; I had had
plenty to say before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last I
bolted out of the room."

"Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your pocket!"

"Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she came in. Afterwards
she kindly offered to read German aloud with me, for the accent, two or
three times a week. 'What shall we begin with?' she asked. 'With this!'
I said, and held up the book. And she let me take it to look it over."

I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I had been, I might
have been disarmed by Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that
Madame Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to introduce me.
Among the foolish things which, according to his own account, he had
uttered, were some generous words in my praise, to which she had civilly
replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I begged that the
introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to let Pickering work
out his destin