riosity as to what was coming
of this respectful demeanour. 'Indeed!' she said.

He then informed her that he had been overhauling himself since they
last talked, and had some reason to blame himself for bluntness and
general want of euphemism; which, although he had meant nothing by it,
must have been very disagreeable to her. But he had always aimed at
sincerity, particularly as he had to deal with a lady who despised
hypocrisy and was above flattery. However, he feared he might have
carried his disregard for conventionality too far. But from that time
he would promise that she should find an alteration by which he hoped
he might return the friendship at least of a young lady he honoured more
than any other in the world.

This retrograde movement was evidently unexpected by the honoured young
lady herself. After being so long accustomed to rebuke him for his
persistence there was novelty in finding him do the work for her. The
guess might even have been hazarded that there was also disappointment.

Still looking across the river at the bridge of boats which stretched to
the opposite suburb of Deutz: 'You need not blame yourself,' she said,
with the mildest conceivable manner, 'I can make allowances. All I wish
is that you should remain under no misapprehension.'

'I comprehend,' he said thoughtfully. 'But since, by a perverse fate, I
have been thrown into your company, you could hardly expect me to feel
and act otherwise.'

'Perhaps not.'

'Since I have so much reason to be dissatisfied with myself,' he added,
'I cannot refrain from criticizing elsewhere to a slight extent, and
thinking I have to do with an ungenerous person.'

'Why ungenerous?'

'In this way; that since you cannot love me, you see no reason at all
for trying to do so in the fact that I so deeply love you; hence I say
that you are rather to be distinguished by your wisdom than by your
humanity.'

'It comes to this, that if your words are all seriously meant it is much
to be regretted we ever met,' she murmured. 'Now will you go on to where
you were going, and leave me here?'

Without a remonstrance he went on, saying with dejected whimsicality as
he smiled back upon her, 'You show a wisdom which for so young a lady is
perfectly surprising.'

It was resolved to prolong the journey by a circuit through Holland and
Belgium; but nothing changed in the attitudes of Paula and Captain De
Stancy till one afternoon during their stay at the Hague,