Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/110

 ," he continued, "that I often remember there are things to be seen here to which I probably have not done justice. I should like for instance to see West Nazareth."

She looked round at him, open-eyed; not apparently that she exactly supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior motive. He had spoken in fact from the simplest of motives. The girl beside him appealed, strangely, to his sense of character, and even, in her way, to his sense of beauty, and, satisfied that her quality would be very much her own, and neither borrowed nor reflected nor imposed, he wished, positively as a help for liking her better, to make her show him how little her situation had had to give her. Her second movement now was to take him at his word. "Since you're free to do as you please, why don't you go there?"

"I 'm not free to do as I please now. I 've offered your cousin to bear him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm, and I can't back out."

"Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?"

Rowland hesitated. "I think I may almost say so."

Mary Garland walked along in silence. "Do you mean to do a great deal for him?" she asked at last.

"What I can. But my power of helping him is very small beside his power of helping himself."

For a moment she was silent again. "You 're very generous," she then simply said. 76