Mamma thinks it a very strange sort of thing for me to be doing, and though she delights, of all things, in a good cause, she is not sure that this cause is good enough to justify the means.
I admit that the means are very singular, and, as far as the Louvre is concerned, they were not successful.
We sat and looked for a quarter of an hour at the great Venus who has lost her arms, and he said never a word.
I think he does n't know what to say. Before we separated he asked me if I heard from you. 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'every day.' 'And does he speak of me?' 'Never!' I answered; and I think he looked disappointed." Bernard had, in fact, in writing to Angela, scarcely mentioned his name. "He had not been here for two days," she continued, at the end of a week;
"but last evening, very late--too late for a visitor--he came in.
Mamma had left the drawing-room, and I was sitting alone;
I immediately saw that we had reached a crisis. I thought at first he was going to tell me that Blanche had carried out his prediction; but I presently saw that this was not where the shoe pinched; and, besides, I knew that mamma was watching her too closely.
'How can I have ever been such a dull-souled idiot?' he broke out, as soon as he had got into the room.
'I like to hear you say that,' I said, 'because it does n't seem to me that you have been at all wise.' 'You are cleverness, kindness, tact, in the most perfect form!' he went on.
As a veracious historian I am bound to tell you that he paid me a bushel of compliments, and thanked me in the most flattering terms for my having let him bore me so for a week.
'You have not bored me,' I said; 'you have interested me.'
'Yes,' he cried, 'as a curious case of monomania. It 's a part of your kindness to say that; but I know I have bored you to death; and the end of it all is that you despise me.
You can't help despising me; I despise myself. I used to think that I was a man, but I have given that up; I am a poor creature!
I used to think I could take things quietly and bear them bravely.
But I can't! If it were not for very shame I could sit here and cry to you.' 'Don't mind me,' I said; 'you know it is a part of our agreement that I was not to be critical.'
'Our agreement?' he repeated, vaguely. 'I see you have forgotten it,' I answered; 'but it does n't in the least matter; it is not of that I wish to talk to you. All the more that it has n't done you a particle of good. I have been extremely nice with you for a week; but you are just as unhappy now as you were at the beginning. Indeed, I think you are rather worse.'
'Heaven forgive me, Miss Vivian, I believe I am!' he cried.
'Heaven will easily forgive you; you are on the wrong road.
To catch up with your happiness, which has been running away from you, you must take another; you must travel in the same direction as Blanche; you must not separate yourself from your wife.'
At the sound of Blanche's name he jumped up and took his usual tone; he knew all about his wife, and needed no information.
But I made him sit down again, and I made him listen to me.
I made him listen for half an hour, and at the end of the time he was interested. He had all the appearance of it; he sat gazing at me, and at last the tears came into his eyes.
