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
perversity lighted by such a conclusion, and there were times when
Longmore was almost persuaded against his finer judgement that he was
really the most considerate of husbands and that it was not a man's
fault if his wife's love of life had pitched itself once for all in the
minor key. The Count's manners were perfect, his discretion
irreproachable, and he seemed never to address his companion but,
sentimentally speaking, hat in hand. His tone to Longmore--as the latter
was perfectly aware--was that of a man of the world to a man not quite
of the world; but what it lacked in true frankness it made up in easy