settee,
and Paul was encouraged to bring a chair into her neighbourhood, and
was there held in discourse. And though he might in the review of later
experiences have arrived at the conclusion that Madame la Baronne was
a somewhat heartless and not particularly brainy little fribble, he was
never able to forget or deny a certain charm of manner which he had
not elsewhere encountered, and which had in it a seductive warmth and
gentleness. Before he fairly knew it, he was talking with something of
the ease and intimacy of an old friend. He had been so sore-hearted
of late and so removed from all feminine companionship, that this
unexpected, unlooked-for intercourse with a woman of culture and of such
undoubted airs of refinement soothed like a poultice. It was water to
the thirsty, bread to the hungry heart; it was fire and shelter to
the houseless wanderer. Madame drew him into little confidences, all
sufficiently simple, harmless, and discreet They related mainly to his
methods of work, to his acquaintance with brother men of letters, to
incidents of youthful life, to the early hopes and failures of his
career.

'How profoundly interesting!' Madame purred from time to time. 'Oh,
you men of the people, Mr. Armstrong, you men of the people, how you do
surpass and captivate us all when you just happen to have brains!'

The 'man of the people 'was certainly making no concealment of his
origin, as he certainly never made any parade of it; but he did not
quite like this, and perhaps his face revealed as much, for the Baroness
hastened with great agility to quit the theme. She began to offer to
Paul some little insight into her own history. It would be a prudery,
she said, to pretend to be sensitive about it any longer--the whole
world knew the sordid and melancholy truth; and this sounded like
a prelude to a much fuller explanation than she was for the moment
disposed to make, and it helped Paul to understand the hints in which
she chose to set forward the fact that she was a person of a lonely
heart, that her husband pursued his affairs in Wall Street and elsewhere
without her greatly concerning herself as to what those affairs might
be, and apparently leaving her much to her own devices. He learned to
think afterwards that these confidences, coming upon so very brief an
acquaintance, were barely indicative of that exquisite delicacy of soul
for which the lady gave herself credit, but it did not occur to him
to think so fo