"Oh no, I never try, my love," he answered. "I know you loathe me quite
enough when I take my chance."
Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure
one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram.
Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the
June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say
that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed
plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see
the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer
starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His
hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this
subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called
subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made
an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he
had done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from
Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a
languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the tale,
by no means always to his advantage; and Newman's own emotions were but
scantily chronicled.
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