Page:A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales (1875).djvu/224

218 but I feel the wiser and the stronger, somehow, for having poured them out before her; and I imagine I might have gone far without finding another woman in whom such an exhibition would have provoked so little of mere cold amusement."

"Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary," I surmised, "entered into your situation with warmth."

"Exactly so,—the greatest! She's wise, she knows, she has felt, she has suffered, and now she understands!"

"She told you, I imagine, that she understood you to a t, and she offered to be your guide, philosopher, and friend."

"She spoke to me," Pickering answered, after a pause, "as I had never been spoken to before, and she offered me, in effect, formally, all the offices of a woman's friendship."

"Which you as formally accepted?"

"To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but allow ne to say I don't care!" Pickering cried, with an air of genial aggression which was the most inoffensive thing in the world. "I was very much moved; I was, in fact, very much excited. I tried to say something, but I could n't; I had had plenty to say before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last I took refuge in an abrupt retreat."

"Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your pocket!"