He waited some minutes, walking up and down; but
at length, as he turned at the end of the room, he saw that Madame de
Cintre had come in by a distant door. She wore a black dress, and she
stood looking at him. As the length of the immense room lay between them
he had time to look at her before they met in the middle of it.
He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed,
almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had
little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant good
grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own, and she
let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons,
and her touch was portentously lifeless.
"I was at your brother's funeral," Newman said. "Then I waited three
days. But I could wait no longer."
"Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting," said Madame de Cintre. "But
it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been."
"I'm glad you think I have been wronged," said Newman, with that
oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest
meaning.
"Do I need to say so?" she asked. "I don't think I have wronged,
seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously. To you, to whom I
have done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is
to say, 'I know it, I feel it!' The reparation is pitifully small!"
"Oh, it's a great step forward!" said Newman, with a gracious smile of
encouragement.
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