Madame de Cintré shook her head. “I remember; I was sorry afterwards.”
“You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumbscrews. 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 Cintré 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 Cintré 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.
“When what?” said Newman.
“When others have been most unhappy!”
“What others?” Newman asked. “What have you to do with any others but me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you should find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself.”