to believe?"

"To you everything seems so simple," she said, raising her head. "But
things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago, and
now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy, simply
for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things to think
about."

"There ought to be only one thing to think about--that we love each
other," said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added, "Very
good, if you can't accept that, don't tell me so."

"I should be very glad to think of nothing," she said at last; "not to
think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I can't.
I'm cold, I'm old, I'm a coward; I never supposed I should marry again,
and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to you.
When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to marry
freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from you."

"That's nothing against me," said Newman with an immense smile; "your
taste was not formed."

His smile made Madame de Cintre smile. "Have you formed it?" she asked.
And then she said, in a different tone, "Where do you wish to live?"

"Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that."

"I don't know why I ask you," she presently continued. "I care very
little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost anywhere.
You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great many
things--that I must have a brilliant, worldly life. I am sure you are
prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But
that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that." She paused
again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet
to him that he had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have
had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise. "Your being so different, which
at first seemed a difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a
pleasure, a great pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet if I
had said so, no one would have understood me; I don't mean simply to my
family."

"They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?" said Newman.

"They would have said I could never be happy with you--you were too
different; and I would have said it was just BECAUSE you were so
different that I might be happy. But they would have given better
reasons than I. My only reason"--and she paused again.

But this time, in the midst of his golden su