I confess I was curious to see her, but I begged that the
introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to let Pickering work
out his destiny alone. For some days I saw little of him, though we met
at the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the park. I watched, in
spite of my desire to let him alone, for the signs and portents of the
world's action upon him--of that portion of the world, in especial, of
which Madame Blumenthal had constituted herself the agent. He seemed
very happy, and gave me in a dozen ways an impression of increased self-
confidence and maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always,
after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I asked myself what
experience could really do, that innocence had not done, to make it
bright and fine. I was struck with his deep enjoyment of the whole
spectacle of foreign life--its novelty, its picturesqueness, its light
and shade--and with the infinite freedom with which he felt he could go
and come and rove and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an
awakening, a coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a
little less of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he
saw her often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit to
myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she were really the ruling
star of this happy season, she must be a very superior woman.
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