'Pardon me, but it is not the Duc de Béthune or any other man who has any concern with the position which you have created for yourself and for my pupil; the only person for whom it can have any vital interest, or who can exercise any influence over it, is the Countess Othmar, to whom you will not speak of it.'
Othmar coloured; he was greatly annoyed. He was conscious also that Rosselin was right in what he said.
'If my wife heard of her from others, I would tell her how she came there,' he said, with some embarrassment. 'But I can assure you that though M. de Béthune might believe in the facts as you know them, she would not do so. She never believes in any single motives. She would suppose that I tried to gloss over with sentiment a mere vulgar amour.'
'Men's natures,' he added, bitterly, 'are often as simple, and straight, and frank as a dog's, because, like dogs, we are stupid and trustful; but the mind of a woman of culture is far too critical in its survey and too intricate in its own motives ever to accredit us with the intellectual honesty we possess. It is a quality so stupid that it seems to women as incredible as it is uninteresting.'
Rosselin grew in his turn impatient.
'You, too, appear to me,' he said bluntly, 'to be too fond of Pascal's esprit de finesse, jugement de sentiment. Intellectual analysis is very interesting no doubt, but I never knew it serve in the least to solve the prosaic difficulties of active life. You cannot govern circumstances with theories.'
In himself he thought:
'You create a position in the frankness of your generosity which you perceive becomes equivocal in its aspect to others; you earnestly desire to prevent its appearing so; yet you do not take the one measure which would secure to it immunity from suspicion.'
'I have an idea,' he continued aloud, 'that the best way to test her talents and prepare the world for the appreciation of them, would be for her to recite at some great house, to be seen and heard by some choice audience. Why not in yours? Why not to your friends?'
'In mine? To my acquaintances?'