“Well, I’m going to change, now,” said Newman.  “I don’t mean that I am going to be indelicate; but I’m going to go back to where I began.  I am back there.  I have been all round the circle.  Or rather, I have never been away from here.  I have never ceased to want what I wanted then.  Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more sure of myself, and more sure of you.  I know you better, though I don’t know anything I didn’t believe three months ago.  You are everything—­you are beyond everything—­I can imagine or desire.  You know me now; you must know me.  I won’t say that you have seen the best—­but you have seen the worst.  I hope you have been thinking all this while.  You must have seen that I was only waiting; you can’t suppose that I was changing.  What will you say to me, now?  Say that everything is clear and reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my reward.  And then give me your hand.  Madame de Cintre do that.  Do it.”

“I knew you were only waiting,” she said; “and I was very sure this day would come.  I have thought about it a great deal.  At first I was half afraid of it.  But I am not afraid of it now.”  She paused a moment, and then she added, “It’s a relief.”

She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her.  He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him keep.  “That means that I have not waited for nothing,” he said.  She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears.  “With me,” he went on, “you will be as safe—­as safe”—­and even in his ardor he hesitated a moment for a comparison—­“as safe,” he said, with a kind of simple solemnity, “as in your father’s arms.”

Still she looked at him and her tears increased.  Then, abruptly, she buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into noiseless sobs.  “I am weak—­I am weak,” he heard her say.

“All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,” he answered.  “Why are you troubled?  There is nothing but happiness.  Is that so hard to believe?”

“To you everything seems so simple,” she said, raising her head.  “But things are not so.  I like you extremely.  I liked you six months ago, and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure.  But it is not easy, simply for that, to decide to marry you.  There are a great many things to think about.”

“There ought to be only one thing to think about—­that we love each other,” said Newman.  And as she remained silent he quickly added, “Very good, if you can’t accept that, don’t tell me so.”

“I should be very glad to think of nothing,” she said at last; “not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up.  But I can’t.  I’m cold, I’m old, I’m a coward; I never supposed I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to you.  When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to marry freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from you.”