efuse to answer
you would confirm some impression in you even now much too strong. Any
'trouble'--if you mean any unhappiness--that one can sit comfortably
talking about is an unhappiness with distinct limitations. If I were
examined before a board of commissioners for testing the felicity of
mankind I'm sure I should be pronounced a very fortunate woman." There
was something that deeply touched him in her tone, and this quality
pierced further as she continued. "But let me add, with all gratitude
for your sympathy, that it's my own affair altogether. It needn't
disturb you, my dear sir," she wound up with a certain quaintness of
gaiety, "for I've often found myself in your company contented enough
and diverted enough."

"Well, you're a wonderful woman," the young man declared, "and I admire
you as I've never admired any one. You're wiser than anything I, for
one, can say to you; and what I ask of you is not to let me advise
or console you, but simply thank you for letting me know you." He had
intended no such outburst as this, but his voice rang loud and he felt
an unfamiliar joy as he uttered it.

She shook her head with some impatience. "Let us be friends--as I
supposed we were going to be--without protestations and fine words.
To have you paying compliments to my wisdom--that would be real
wretchedness. I can dispense with your admiration better than the
Flemish painters can--better than Van Eyck and Rubens, in spite of
all their worshippers. Go join your friend--see everything, enjoy
everything, learn everything, and write me an excellent letter, brimming
over with your impressions. I'm extremely fond of the Dutch painters,"
she added with the faintest quaver in the world, an impressible break of
voice that Longmore had noticed once or twice before and had interpreted
as the sudden weariness, the controlled convulsion, of a spirit
self-condemned to play a part.

"I don't believe you care a button for the Dutch painters," he said with
a laugh. "But I shall certainly write you a letter."

She rose and turned homeward, thoughtfully rearranging her flowers
as she walked. Little was said; Longmore was asking himself with an
agitation of his own in the unspoken words whether all this meant
simply that he was in love. He looked at the rooks wheeling against the
golden-hued sky, between the tree-tops, but not at his companion, whose
personal presence seemed lost in the felicity she had created. Madame de
Mauves was si