You thought of me in a way that did me great
honor; I don't know why you had taken it into your head. But it left me
no loophole for escape--no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.
It was not my fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to have
warned you more. I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed
to disappoint you. But I WAS, in a way, too proud. You see what my
superiority amounts to, I hope!" she went on, raising her voice with
a tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful. "I am too
proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless. I am timid and
cold and selfish. I am afraid of being uncomfortable."
"And you call marrying me uncomfortable!" said Newman staring.
Madame de Cintre blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his
pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express
her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. "It is not
marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it. It's the rupture,
the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right
have I to be happy when--when"--And she paused.
"When what?" said Newman.
"When others have been most unhappy!"
"What others?" Newman asked. "What have you to do with any others but
me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you
should find it by obeying your mother.
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