but he had begged her on his knees to be readmitted to favor. All in vain! She was stone, she was ice, she was outraged virtue. People noticed a great change in him: he gave up society, ceased to care for anything, looked shockingly. One fine day they learned that he had blown out his brains." Euphemia is now free, and Longmore's first instinct is to go to her. However he puts off leaving for Europe from day to day for several years, because "The truth is, that in the midst of all the ardent tenderness of his memory of Madame de Mauves, he has become conscious of a singular feeling,—a feeling for which awe would be hardly too strong a name." Themes In this story James' international theme takes a tragic and even perverse turn, as the marriage of a somewhat puritanical American woman and an easy-living, pagan Frenchman leads to despair and suicide. Whether an affair between Longmore and Euphemia (suggested by the amoral Richard and his equally cynical sister Madame de Clairin) would have made any difference is doubtful, but things couldn't have turned out much worse under any circumstances. Longmore is somewhat typical of James' male protagonists, hesitant about taking action and entering fully into life. Even at the end of the story he can't decide whether to return to Euphemia. This paralysis of the will affects many of James' central characters, but Longmore is extreme even by Jamesian standards in his uncertainty and indecision. The final lesson seems to be that American idealism and European sophistication can make for a dangerous, even lethal mixture. James would write many more fictions about the clash of America and Europe, leading to the ultimate synthesis in The Golden Bowl. In that much later novel, a marriage similar to the one in Madame de Mauves is saved by the kind of careful diplomacy that neither spouse in the earlier story is capable of. Critical evaluation Much critical dispute has arisen over Richard's suicide after Euphemia's refusal to reconcile with him. Some commentators find it frankly incredible that his wife's rebuff would drive Richard to self-destruction. Others maintain that such a man could easily sicken of life and decide to end it all, but have doubted that he could ever have repented and asked Euphemia's forgiveness in the first place. Although the believability of the story's conclusion is somewhat in