“I was at your brother’s funeral,” Newman said.  “Then I waited three days.  But I could wait no longer.”

“Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,” said Madame de Cintre.  “But it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been.”

“I’m glad you think I have been wronged,” said Newman, with that oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest meaning.

“Do I need to say so?” she asked.  “I don’t think I have wronged, seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously.  To you, to whom I have done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is to say, ‘I know it, I feel it!’ The reparation is pitifully small!”

“Oh, it’s a great step forward!” said Newman, with a gracious smile of encouragement.  He pushed a chair towards her and held it, looking at her urgently.  She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near her; but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her.  She remained seated, like a troubled creature who had passed through the stage of restlessness.

“I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you,” she went on, “and yet I am very glad you came.  Now I can tell you what I feel.  It is a selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have.”  And she paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him.  “I know how I have deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been.  I see it as vividly as you do—­I feel it to the ends of my fingers.”  And she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted them, and dropped them at her side.  “Anything that you may have said of me in your angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself.”

“In my angriest passion,” said Newman, “I have said nothing hard of you.  The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the loveliest of women.”  And he seated himself before her again, abruptly.

She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale.  “That is because you think I will come back.  But I will not come back.  It is in that hope you have come here, I know; I am very sorry for you.  I would do almost anything for you.  To say that, after what I have done, seems simply impudent; but what can I say that will not seem impudent?  To wrong you and apologize—­that is easy enough.  I should not have wronged you.”  She stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him to let her go on.  “I ought never to have listened to you at first; that was the wrong.  No good could come of it.  I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your fault.  I liked you too much; I believed in you.”

“And don’t you believe in me now?”

“More than ever.  But now it doesn’t matter.  I have given you up.”

Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee.  “Why, why, why?” he cried.  “Give me a reason—­a decent reason.  You are not a child—­you are not a minor, nor an idiot.  You are not obliged to drop me because your mother told you to.  Such a reason isn’t worthy of you.”