“I know that; it’s not worthy of me.  But it’s the only one I have to give.  After all,” said Madame de Cintre, throwing out her hands, “think me an idiot and forget me!  That will be the simplest way.”

Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause was lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting.  He went to one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river and the formal gardens which lay beyond it.  When he turned round, Madame de Cintre had risen; she stood there silent and passive.  “You are not frank,” said Newman; “you are not honest.  Instead of saying that you are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked.  Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel; they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you.  Why do you try to shield them?  Why do you sacrifice me to them?  I’m not false; I’m not cruel.  You don’t know what you give up; I can tell you that—­you don’t.  They bully you and plot about you; and I—­I”—­And he paused, holding out his hands.  She turned away and began to leave him.  “You told me the other day that you were afraid of your mother,” he said, following her.  “What did you mean?”

Madame de Cintre shook her head.  “I remember; I was sorry afterwards.”

“You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumb-screws.  In God’s name what is it she does to you?”

“Nothing.  Nothing that you can understand.  And now that I have given you up, I must not complain of her to you.”

“That’s no reasoning!” cried Newman.  “Complain of her, on the contrary.  Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will talk it over so satisfactorily that you won’t give me up.”

Madame de Cintre looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising her eyes, she said, “One good at least has come of this:  I have made you judge me more fairly.  You thought of me in a way that did me great honor; I don’t know why you had taken it into your head.  But it left me no loophole for escape—­no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.  It was not my fault; I warned you from the first.  But I ought to have warned you more.  I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed to disappoint you.  But I was, in a way, too proud.  You see what my superiority amounts to, I hope!” she went on, raising her voice with a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful.  “I am too proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless.  I am timid and cold and selfish.  I am afraid of being uncomfortable.”

“And you call marrying me uncomfortable!” said Newman staring.

Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious.  “It is not marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it.  It’s the rupture, the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way.  What right have I to be happy when—­when”—­And she paused.