you would certainly have arrived at guesses of your own, and, besides,
she has never told me her secrets. The only one she ever pretended to
was that she's the happiest creature in the world, after assuring me of
which, poor thing, she went off into tears; so that I prayed to be
delivered from such happiness. It's the miserable story of an American
girl born neither to submit basely nor to rebel crookedly marrying a
shining sinful Frenchman who believes a woman must do one or the other
of those things. The lightest of US have a ballast that they can't
imagine, and the poorest a moral imagination that they don't require.
She was romantic and perverse--she thought the world she had been
brought up in too vulgar or at least too prosaic. To have a decent home-
life isn't perhaps the greatest of adventures; but I think she wishes
nowadays she hadn't gone in quite so desperately for thrills. M. de
Mauves cared of course for nothing but her money, which he's spending
royally on his menus plaisirs. I hope you appreciate the compliment I
pay you when I recommend you to go and cheer up a lady domestically
dejected. Believe me, I've given no other man a proof of this esteem; so
if you were to take me in an inferior sense I would never speak to you
again. Prove to this fine sore creature that our manners may have all
the grace without wanting to make such selfish terms for it. She avoids
society and lives quite alone, seeing no one but a horrible French
sister-in-law. Do let me hear that you've made her patience a little
less absent-minded. Make her WANT to forget; make her like you."

This ingenious appeal left the young man uneasy. He found himself in
presence of more complications than had been in his reckoning. To call
on Madame de Mauves with his present knowledge struck him as akin to
fishing in troubled waters. He was of modest composition, and yet he
asked himself whether an appearance of attentions from any gallant
gentleman mightn't give another twist to her tangle. A flattering sense