Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/296

 ," said Roderick; "though you have such a genius for knowing what will be most odious to me."

"It's greater happiness than you deserve then! You 've never chosen, I say; you 've been afraid to choose. You 've never really looked in the face the fact that you 're false, that you 've broken your faith. You 've never looked at it and seen that it was hideous and yet said 'No matter, I 'll brave the penalty, I 'll bear the shame.' You 've closed your eyes; you 've tried to stifle remembrance, to persuade yourself that you were not behaving so badly as you seemed to be, that there would be some way, after all, of doing what you liked and yet escaping trouble. You 've faltered and dodged and drifted, you 've gone on from accident to accident, and I 'm sure that at this present moment you can't tell what it is you really wish."

Roderick was sitting with his knees drawn up and bent and his hands clasped round his legs. He dropped his head, resting his forehead on his knees. Christina went on with a sort of infernal pitiless calm. "I believe that really you don't greatly care for your friend in America any more than you do for me. You 're one of the men who care only for themselves and for what they can make of themselves. That 's very well when they can make some thing great, and I could interest myself in a man of extraordinary power who should wish to turn all his passions to account. But if the power should turn out to be, after all, rather ordinary? Fancy feeling one's self ground in the mill of a third-rate talent! If you 've doubts about yourself I can't 262