month, the month which had elapsed since the evening of the de Saulnes' dinner party. They were not at all startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night upon the day – the day upon the night again. In a word this girl, who had considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who had almost none of the qualities she chiefly admired in men. During the month's time she had passed from a phase of angry self-scorn through a period of bewilderment not unmixed with fear, and from that she had come into an unknown world, a land very strange to her, where old standards and judgments seemed to be valueless – a place seemingly ruled altogether by new emotions, sweet and thrilling or full of vague terrors as her mood veered here or there.
That sublimated form of guesswork which is called "woman's intuition" told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other gambling ventures, is bound to succeed about half the time, and it succeeded on this occasion. Even as Miss Benham stood at the window looking out through the curtains Monsieur Ste. Marie was announced from the doorway.
She turned to meet him with a little frown of determination, for in his absence she was often very strong indeed, and sometimes she made up and rehearsed little speeches of great dignity and decision, in which she told him that he was attempting a quite hopeless thing, and, as a well-wishing friend, advised him to go away and attempt it no longer. But as Ste. Marie came quickly across the room towards her the little frown wavered and at last fled from her face, and another look came there. It was always so. The man's bodily presence exerted an absolute spell over her.
"I have been sitting with your grandfather for half an hour," Ste. Marie said, and she said —
"Oh, I'm glad! I'm very glad. You always cheer him up. He hasn't been too cheerful, or too well of late." She unnecessarily twisted a chair about and after a moment sat down in it. And she gave a little laugh.
"This friendship which has grown up between my grandfather and you," said she, "I don't understand it at all. Of course, he knew your father and all that, but you two seem such very different types, I shouldn't think you would amuse each other at all. There's Mr. Hartley, for example, I should expect my grandfather to like him very much better than you, but he doesn't – though I fancy he approves of him much more."
She laughed again, but a different laugh, and when he heard it Ste. Marie's eyes gleamed a little and his hands moved beside him.
"I expect," said she, "I expect, you know, that he just likes you, without stopping to think why – as everybody else does. I fancy it's just that. What do you think?"
"Oh, I?" said the man. "I – how should I know? I know it's a great privilege to be allowed to see him – such a man as that. And I know we get on wonderfully well. He doesn't condescend as most old men do who have led important lives. We just talk as two men in a club might talk. And I tell him stories and make him laugh. Oh yes, we get on wonderfully well."
"Oh!" said she. "I've often wondered what you talk about. What did you talk about to-day?"
Ste. Marie turned abruptly away from her and went across to one of the windows – the window where she had stood earlier looking out upon the dingy garden. She saw him stand there, with his back turned, the head a little bent, the hands twisting together behind him, and a sudden fit of nervous shivering wrung her. Every woman knows when a certain thing is going to be said to her, and usually she is prepared for it, though usually also she says she is not. Miss Benham knew what was coming now, and she was frightened – not of Ste. Marie, but of herself. It meant so very much to her, more than to most women at such a time. It meant, if she said yes to him, the surrender of almost all the things she had cared for and hoped for. It meant the giving up of that career which old David Stewart had dwelt upon a month ago.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room. He came a little way towards where the girl sat and halted, and she could see that he was very pale. A sort of critical second self noticed that he was pale, and was surprised, because, although men's faces often turn red, they seldom turn noticeably pale except in very great nervous crises – or in works of fiction; while women on the contrary may turn red and white twenty times a day, and no harm done. He raised his hands a little way from his sides in the beginning of a gesture, but they dropped again as if there were no strength in them.
"I – told him," said Ste. Marie in a flat voice, "I told your grandfather that I – loved you more than anything in this world or in the next. I told him that my love for you had made another being of me – a new being. I told him that I wanted to come to you and to kneel at your feet and to ask you if you could give me just a little, little hope – something to live for – a light to climb towards. That is what we talked about, your grandfather and I."
"Ste. Marie! Ste. Marie!" said the girl in a half whisper.
"What did my grandfather say to you?" she asked after a silence.
Ste. Marie looked away.
"I cannot tell you," he said. "He – was not quite sympathetic."
The girl gave a little cry.
"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said." The man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze and in the end he gave in.
"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie. And the girl, after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous overwrought laughter, and covered her face with her hands.
He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away. An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees and he would have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It became him.
"Listen! listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he could go on. She dropped her hands from her face and she bent a little forward over the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took his head for a swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes. At the touch a sudden wave of tenderness swept her – almost an engulfing wave – almost it overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew. And so when she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said —
"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold towards you. You have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all somehow, don't you? I suppose I'm not as different from the others as I thought I was.
"And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right. No, let me talk, now! I must talk for a little. I must try to tell you how it is with me – try somehow to find a way. He was right. He meant that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm moments, I know we are. I know that well enough. When you're not with me I feel very sure about it. I think of a thousand excellent reasons why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny. I think he has prophetic powers. They say very old people often have. He and I talked about you when I came home from that dinner party at the de Saulnes' a month ago – the dinner party where you and I first met. I told him that I had met a man whom I liked very much – a man with great charm – and, though I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other men, he was quite oddly disturbed, and talked for a long time about it, about the sort of man I ought to marry and the sort I ought not to marry. It was unusual for him. He seldom says anything of that kind. Yes, he is right. You see, I'm ambitious in a particular way. If I marry at all I ought to marry a man who is working hard in politics or in something of that kind. I could help him. We could do a great deal together."
"I
