She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether she had been hesitating.  She smiled with her usual frankness, and held out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous eyes, and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see him and that she hoped he was well.  He found in her what he had found before—­that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact with the world, but the more perceptible the more closely you approached her.  This lingering diffidence seemed to give a peculiar value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist.  It was, in fact, Madame de Cintre’s “authority,” as they say of artists, that especially impressed and fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he should complete himself by taking a wife, that was the way he should like his wife to interpret him to the world.  The only trouble, indeed, was that when the instrument was so perfect it seemed to interpose too much between you and the genius that used it.  Madame de Cintre gave Newman the sense of an elaborate education, of her having passed through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture in her youth, of her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain exalted social needs.  All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem rare and precious—­a very expensive article, as he would have said, and one which a man with an ambition to have everything about him of the best would find it highly agreeable to possess.  But looking at the matter with an eye to private felicity, Newman wondered where, in so exquisite a compound, nature and art showed their dividing line.  Where did the special intention separate from the habit of good manners?  Where did urbanity end and sincerity begin?  Newman asked himself these questions even while he stood ready to accept the admired object in all its complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security, and examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.

“I am very glad to find you alone,” he said.  “You know I have never had such good luck before.”

“But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,” said Madame de Cintre.  “You have sat and watched my visitors with an air of quiet amusement.  What have you thought of them?”

“Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful, and wonderfully quick at repartee.  But what I have chiefly thought has been that they only helped me to admire you.”  This was not gallantry on Newman’s part—­an art in which he was quite unversed.  It was simply the instinct of the practical man, who had made up his mind what he wanted, and was now beginning to take active steps to obtain it.

Madame de Cintre started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had evidently not expected so fervid a compliment.  “Oh, in that case,” she said with a laugh, “your finding me alone is not good luck for me.  I hope some one will come in quickly.”