persuade herself out of her bitterness by saying that her hopes had been
vanities and follies and that what was before her was simply Life. "I
hate tragedy," she once said to him; "I'm a dreadful coward about having
to suffer or to bleed. I've always tried to believe that--without base
concessions--such extremities may always somehow be dodged or
indefinitely postponed. I should be willing to buy myself off, from
having ever to be OVERWHELMED, by giving up--well, any amusement you
like." She lived evidently in nervous apprehension of being fatally
convinced--of seeing to the end of her deception. Longmore, when he
thought of this, felt the force of his desire to offer her something of
which she could be as sure as of the sun in heaven.



IV

His friend Webster meanwhile lost no time in accusing him of the basest
infidelity and in asking him what he found at suburban Saint-Germain to
prefer to Van Eyck and Memling, Rubens and Rembrandt. A day or two after
the receipt of this friend's letter he took a walk with Madame de Mauves
in the forest. They sat down on a fallen log and she began to arrange
into a bouquet the anemones and violets she had gathered. "I've a word
here," he said at last, "from a friend whom I some time ago promised to
join in Brussels. The time has come--it has passed. It finds me terribly
unwilling to leave Saint-Germain."

She looked up with the immediate interest she always showed in his
affairs, but with no hint of a disposition to make a personal
application of his words. "Saint-Germain is pleasant enough, but are you
doing yourself justice? Shan't you regret in future days that instead of