This emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high degree sentimental; he had thought very little about the “position” of women, and he was not familiar either sympathetically or otherwise, with the image of a President in petticoats.  His attitude was simply the flower of his general good-nature, and a part of his instinctive and genuinely democratic assumption of every one’s right to lead an easy life.  If a shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and a vote, women, of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose physical tissue was in itself an appeal, should be maintained, sentimentally, at the public expense.  Newman was willing to be taxed for this purpose, largely, in proportion to his means.  Moreover, many of the common traditions with regard to women were with him fresh personal impressions; he had never read a novel!  He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety, their tact, their felicity of judgment.  They seemed to him exquisitely organized.  If it is true that one must always have in one’s work here below a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found his metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final responsibility to some illumined feminine brow.

He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs. Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked.  He would have been incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies.  The complex Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor irritated his curiosity.  He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself.  Mrs. Tristram’s “advice” was a part of the show, and a more entertaining element, in her abundant gossip, than the others.  He enjoyed her talking about himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away from her.  For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting thing she had had to think about in many a month.  She wished to do something with him—­she hardly knew what.  There was so much of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy constantly on the alert.  For the present, the only thing she could do was to like him.  She told him that he was “horribly Western,” but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with insincerity.  She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest.  Newman accepted every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation.  Tom Tristram complained of his wife’s avidity, and declared that he could never have a clear five minutes with his friend.