Part 22 (1/2)

”Very well, I promise.”

”Good-by, then,” she said, and extended her hand.

He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more. But he only looked at her; then he took his departure.

That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde. After they had exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen Madame de Cintre a few hours before.

”I know it,” said Bellegarde. ”I dined in the Rue de l'Universite.”

And then, for some moments, both men were silent. Newman wished to ask Bellegarde what visible impression his visit had made and the Count Valentin had a question of his own. Bellegarde spoke first.

”It's none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my sister?”

”I am willing to tell you,” said Newman, ”that I made her an offer of marriage.”

”Already!” And the young man gave a whistle. ”'Time is money!' Is that what you say in America? And Madame de Cintre?” he added, with an interrogative inflection.

”She did not accept my offer.”

”She couldn't, you know, in that way.”

”But I'm to see her again,” said Newman.

”Oh, the strangeness of woman!” exclaimed Bellegarde. Then he stopped, and held Newman off at arms'-length. ”I look at you with respect!”

he exclaimed. ”You have achieved what we call a personal success!

Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother.”

”Whenever you please!” said Newman.

CHAPTER X

Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance. ”We were all very well so long as we had no rivals--we were better than nothing. But now that you have become the fas.h.i.+on, and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into the corner. I am sure it is very good of you to come and see us once a month; I wonder you don't send us your cards in an envelope. When you do, pray have them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last illusion.” It was in this incisive strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman's so-called neglect, which was in reality a most exemplary constancy. Of course she was joking, but there was always something ironical in her jokes, as there was always something jocular in her gravity.

”I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,” Newman had said, ”than the fact that you make so free with my character.

Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a little proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to dinner say I was going to the Princess Borealska's. But I have not any pride where my pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to see me--if you must see me only to call me bad names--I will agree to anything you choose; I will admit that I am the biggest sn.o.b in Paris.”

Newman, in fact, had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska, an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram's; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of the Avenue d'Iena that he was faithless to his early friends.h.i.+ps. She needed the theory to explain a certain moral irritation by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation was unsound, a deeper a.n.a.lyst than I must give the right one. Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards.

Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was ”satisfactory.”

The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that, in essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was.

Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from Newman's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. Newman was, according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that she did not in the least answer for her being a compendium of all the virtues. ”No woman was ever so good as that woman seems,” she said.

”Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona; 'a supersubtle Venetian.'

Madame de Cintre is a supersubtle Parisian. She is a charming woman, and she has five hundred merits; but you had better keep that in mind.” Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out that she was jealous of her dear friend on the other side of the Seine, and that in undertaking to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much on her own disinterestedness? We may be permitted to doubt it. The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d'Iena had an insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually. She had a lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times, of imagining the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs, with a vividness more intense than that of conviction. She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman related to her that he had made a formal proposal to Madame de Cintre. He repeated in a few words what he had said, and in a great many what she had answered. Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.

”But after all,” said Newman, ”there is nothing to congratulate me upon.

It is not a triumph.”

”I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Tristram; ”it is a great triumph. It is a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word, and request you never to speak to her again.”