r was posted that he fully measured the zeal with which he had
declared that the journey must either be deferred or abandoned--since he
couldn't possibly leave Saint-Germain. He took a walk in the forest
and asked himself if this were indeed portentously true. Such a truth
somehow made it surely his duty to march straight home and put together
his effects. Poor Webster, who, he knew, had counted ardently on this
excursion, was the best of men; six weeks ago he would have gone through
anything to join poor Webster. It had never been in his books to throw
overboard a friend whom he had loved ten years for a married woman whom
he had six weeks--well, admired. It was certainly beyond question that
he hung on at Saint-Germain because this admirable married woman was
there; but in the midst of so much admiration what had become of his
fine old power to conclude? This was the conduct of a man not judging
but drifting, and he had pretended never to drift. If she were as
unhappy as he believed the active sympathy of such a man would help her
very little more than his indifference; if she were less so she needed
no help and could dispense with his professions. He was sure moreover
that if she knew he was staying on her account she would be extremely
annoyed. This very feeling indeed had much to do with making it hard
to go; her displeasure would be the flush on the snow of the high cold
stoicism that touched him to the heart. At moments withal he assured
himself that staying to watch her--and what else did it come to?--was
simply impertinent; it was gross to keep tugging at the cover of a book
so intentionally closed. Then inclination answered that some day her
self-support would fail, and he had a vision of this exquisite creature
calling vainly for help. He would just be her friend to any length, and
it was unworthy of either to think about consequences. He was a friend,
however, who nursed a brooding regret for his not having known her
five years earlier, as well as a particular objection to those who had
smartly anticipated him. It seemed one of fortune's most mocking strokes
that she should be surrounded by persons whose only merit was that they
threw every side of her, as she turned in her pain, into radiant relief.

Our young man's growing irritation made it more and more difficult for
him to see any other merit than this in Richard de Mauves. And yet,
disinterestedly, it would have been hard to give a name to the pitiless