Madame De Mauves eBook

his wife for having married him too extravagantly and loved him too well; since he feels, I suppose, in some uncorrupted corner of his being that as she originally saw him so he ought to have been.  It disagrees with him somewhere that a little American bourgeoise should have fancied him a finer fellow than he is or than he at all wants to be.  He hasn’t a glimmering of real acquaintance with his wife; he can’t understand the stream of passion flowing so clear and still.  To tell the truth I hardly understand it myself, but when I see the sight I find I greatly admire it.  The Count at any rate would have enjoyed the comfort of believing his wife as bad a case as himself, and you’ll hardly believe me when I assure you he goes about intimating to gentlemen whom he thinks it may concern that it would be a convenience to him they should make love to Madame de Mauves.”

V

On reaching Paris Longmore straightaway purchased a Murray’s “Belgium” to help himself to believe that he would start on the morrow for Brussels; but when the morrow came it occurred to him that he ought by way of preparation to acquaint himself more intimately with the Flemish painters in the Louvre.  This took a whole morning, but it did little to hasten his departure.  He had abruptly left Saint-Germain because it seemed to him that respect for Madame de Mauves required he should bequeath her husband no reason to suppose he had, as it were, taken a low hint; but now that he had deferred to that scruple he found himself thinking more and more ardently of his friend.  It was a poor expression of ardour to be lingering irresolutely on the forsaken boulevard, but he detested the idea of leaving Saint-Germain five hundred miles behind him.  He felt very foolish, nevertheless, and wandered about nervously, promising himself to take the next train.  A dozen trains started, however, and he was still in Paris.  This inward ache was more than he had bargained for, and as he looked at the shop-windows he wondered if it represented a “passion.”  He had never been fond of the word and had grown up with much mistrust of what it stood for.  He had hoped that when he should fall “really” in love he should do it with an excellent conscience, with plenty of confidence and joy, doubtless, but no strange soreness, no pangs nor regrets.  Here was a sentiment concocted of pity and anger as well as of admiration, and bristling with scruples and doubts and fears.  He had come abroad to enjoy the Flemish painters and all others, but what fair-tressed saint of Van Eyck or Memling was so interesting a figure as the lonely lady of Saint-Germain?  His restless steps carried him at last out of the long villa-bordered avenue which leads to the Bois de Boulogne.