Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/327

 I 'm incapable of giving it up. I sit holding my head by the hour, racking my brain, wondering what to invent. You told me at Northampton that I took the thing too lightly; you 'd tell me now perhaps that I take it too hard. I do, altogether; but it can't be helped. Without flattering myself I may say that I 'm cursed with sympathy—I mean as an active faculty, the last of fond follies, the last of my own. Wiser men, before this, would have cast their worries to the winds and settled that the bel enfant of my adoption must lie on his bed as he has made it. Some people perhaps would even say I 'm making my ado about nothing, that I 'm crying out before I 'm hurt, or at least before he is; and that in short I 've only to give him rope and he 'll tire himself out. He tugs at his rope, however, much too hard for me to hold it comfortably. I certainly never pretended the thing was anything but an experiment; I promised nothing, I answered for nothing; I only said that the case was hopeful and it would be a shame not to give him a chance. I 've done my best, and if the machine 's running down I 've a right to stand aside and let it rattle. Amen, amen! No, I can write that, but I can't feel it. I can't be just; I can only be insanely romantic. I 'm too abjectly fond of the hapless youth; I can never give him up. As for understanding him, that 's another matter; nowadays I don't believe even you would. One's intelligence sometimes really ceases to serve one over here, and I 'm in the way of seeing more than one quaint specimen of human nature. Roderick and Miss Light, between them! 293