er her something of
which she could be as sure as of the sun in heaven.

IV

His friend Webster meanwhile lost no time in accusing him of the basest
infidelity and in asking him what he found at suburban Saint-Germain to
prefer to Van Eyck and Memling, Rubens and Rembrandt. A day or two after
the receipt of this friend's letter he took a walk with Madame de Mauves
in the forest. They sat down on a fallen log and she began to arrange
into a bouquet the anemones and violets she had gathered. "I've a word
here," he said at last, "from a friend whom I some time ago promised to
join in Brussels. The time has come--it has passed. It finds me terribly
unwilling to leave Saint-Germain."

She looked up with the immediate interest she always showed in
his affairs, but with no hint of a disposition to make a personal
application of his words. "Saint-Germain is pleasant enough, but are you
doing yourself justice? Shan't you regret in future days that instead
of travelling and seeing cities and monuments and museums and improving
your mind you simply sat here--for instance--on a log and pulled my
flowers to pieces?"

"What I shall regret in future days," he answered after some hesitation,
"is that I should have sat here--sat here so much--and never have shown
what's the matter with me. I'm fond of museums and monuments and of
improving my mind, and I'm particularly fond of my friend Webster. But I
can't bring myself to leave Saint-Germain without asking you a question.
You must forgive me if it's indiscreet and be assured that curiosity
was never more respectful. Are you really as unhappy as I imagine you to
be?"

She had evidently not expected his appeal, and, making her change
colour, it took her unprepared. "If I strike you as unhappy," she none
the less simply said, "I've been a poorer friend to you than I wished to
be."

"I, perhaps, have been a better friend of yours than you've supposed,"
he returned. "I've admired your reserve, your courage, your studied
gaiety. But I've felt the existence of something beneath them that was
more YOU--more you as I wished to know you--than they were; some trouble
in you that I've permitted myself to hate and resent."

She listened all gravely, but without an air of offence, and he felt
that while he had been timorously calculating the last consequences of
friendship she had quietly enough accepted them. "You surprise me," she
said slowly, and her flush still lingered. "But to r