had to pass the drawing-room window. As he did so he started with an
exclamation. Madame Clairin stood framed in the opening as if, though
just arriving on the scene, she too were already aware of its interest.
Conscious, apparently, that she might be suspected of having watched
them she stepped forward with a smile and looked from one to the other.
"Such a tete-a-tete as that one owes no apology for interrupting. One
ought to come in for good manners."

Madame de Mauves turned to her, but answered nothing. She looked
straight at Longmore, and her eyes shone with a lustre that struck him
as divine. He was not exactly sure indeed what she meant them to say,
but it translated itself to something that would do. "Call it what you
will, what you've wanted to urge upon me is the thing this woman can
best conceive. What I ask of you is something she can't begin to!" They
seemed somehow to beg him to suffer her to be triumphantly herself, and
to intimate--yet this too all decently--how little that self was of
Madame Clairin's particular swelling measure. He felt an immense
answering desire not to do anything then that might seem probable or
prevu to this lady. He had laid his hat and stick on the parapet of the
terrace. He took them up, offered his hand to Madame de Mauves with a
simple good-night, bowed silently to Madame Clairin and found his way,
with tingling ears, out of the place.



IX

He went home and, without lighting his candle, flung himself on his bed.
But he got no sleep till morning; he lay hour after hour tossing,
thinking, wondering; his mind had never been so active. It seemed to him