Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/220

 phrase, sympathetic; but the idea of pleasing this extremely reduced gentleman was not disagreeable to him.

Miss Light's bust stood for a while on exhibition in Roderick's studio, and half the foreign colony came to see it. With the completion of his work, however, Roderick's visits at the Palazzo Falconieri by no means came to an end. He spent half his time in Mrs. Light's drawing-room and began to be talked about as "attentive" to Christina. The success of the bust restored his equanimity, and in the garrulity of his good-humour he suffered Rowland to see that she was just now the object uppermost in his thoughts. Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener than speaker; partly because Roderick's tone admitted of few openings, and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for having called her unsafe, he for some reason lacked presence of mind to defend himself. The impression remained with our friend that she was unsafe; that she was a complex, wilful, passionate creature who might easily draw down a too confiding spirit into some strange underworld of unworthy sacrifice, not unfurnished with traces of others of the lost. And yet these elements in her were in themselves an appeal to curiosity, and she struck him not only as preying possibly thus on the faith of victims, but as ready to take on occasion her own life in her hand. Roderick, in the glow of that renewed admiration provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal, was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her beauty.

"I had no idea of it," he said, "till I began to look 186