up, but he decided to stay. "I wonder
if you'd understand me," he said at last, "if I were to tell you that
I have for Madame de Mauves the most devoted and most respectful
friendship?"

"You underrate my intelligence. But in that case you ought to exert your
influence to put an end to these painful domestic scenes."

"Do you imagine she talks to me about her domestic scenes?" Longmore
cried.

His companion stared. "Then your friendship isn't returned?" And as he
but ambiguously threw up his hands, "Now, at least," she added, "she'll
have something to tell you. I happen to know the upshot of my brother's
last interview with his wife." Longmore rose to his feet as a protest
against the indelicacy of the position into which he had been drawn; but
all that made him tender made him curious, and she caught in his averted
eyes an expression that prompted her to strike her blow. "My brother's
absurdly entangled with a certain person in Paris; of course he ought
not to be, but he wouldn't be my brother if he weren't. It was this
irregular passion that dictated his words. 'Listen to me, madam,'
he cried at last; 'let us live like people who understand life! It's
unpleasant to be forced to say such things outright, but you've a way
of bringing one down to the rudiments. I'm faithless, I'm heartless,
I'm brutal, I'm everything horrible--it's understood. Take your revenge,
console yourself: you're too charming a woman to have anything to
complain of. Here's a handsome young man sighing himself into a
consumption for you. Listen to your poor compatriot and you'll find that
virtue's none the less becoming for being good-natured. You'll see
that it's not after all such a doleful world and that there's even an
advantage in having the most impudent of husbands."' Madame Clairin
paused; Longmore had turned very pale. "You may believe it," she
amazingly pursued; "the speech took place in my presence; things were
done in order. And now, monsieur"--this with a wondrous strained grimace
which he was too troubled at the moment to appreciate, but which he
remembered later with a kind of awe--"we count on you!"

"Her husband said this to her face to face, as you say it to me now?" he
asked after a silence.

"Word for word and with the most perfect politeness."

"And Madame de Mauves--what did she say?"

Madame Clairin smiled again. "To such a speech as that a woman
says--nothing. She had been sitting with a piece of needlework, and I