sake--she feared nothing, she needed nothing--but for that
of his own happiness and his own character. He must assent to destiny.
Why else was he young and strong, intelligent and resolute? He mustn't
give it to her to reproach him with thinking she had had a moment's
attention for his love, give it to her to plead, to argue, to break off
in bitterness. He must see everything from above, her indifference and
his own ardour; he must prove his strength, must do the handsome thing,
must decide that the handsome thing was to submit to the inevitable, to
be supremely delicate, to spare her all pain, to stifle his passion,
to ask no compensation, to depart without waiting and to try to believe
that wisdom is its own reward. All this, neither more nor less, it was
a matter of beautiful friendship with him for her to expect of him. And
what should he himself gain by it? He should have pleased her! Well,
he flung himself on his bed again, fell asleep at last and slept till
morning.

Before noon next day he had made up his mind to leave Saint-Germain at
once. It seemed easiest to go without seeing her, and yet if he might
ask for a grain of "compensation" this would be five minutes face to
face with her. He passed a restless day. Wherever he went he saw her
stand before him in the dusky halo of evening, saw her look at him with
an air of still negation more intoxicating than the most passionate
self-surrender. He must certainly go, and yet it was hideously hard. He
compromised and went to Paris to spend the rest of the day. He strolled
along the boulevard and paused sightlessly before the shops, sat a while
in the Tuileries gardens and looked at the shabby unfortunates for whom
this only was nature and summer; but simply felt afresh, as a result
of it all, the dusty dreary lonely world to which Madame de Mauves had
consigned him.

In a sombre mood he made his way back to the centre of motion and sat
down at a table before a cafe door, on the great plain of hot asphalt.
Night arrived, the lamps were lighted, the tables near him found
occupants, and Paris began to wear that evening grimace of hers that
seems to tell, in the flare of plate glass and of theatre-doors, the
muffled rumble of swift-rolling carriages, how this is no world for
you unless you have your pockets lined and your delicacies perverted.
Longmore, however, had neither scruples nor desires; he looked at
the great preoccupied place for the first time with an easy