Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/378

 ingeniously of the need of man's spirit to refine upon them, her fresh imagination had responded, and she was following this mystic clue into retreats where the intellectual effort gave her a well-nigh tragic tension. She wished to be very sure, to take only the best, knowing it to be the best. Her desire to improve herself struck him at moments as almost grim, and not the less so that the fruits of the process for which his aid was indispensable were so little to be served at any table of his. She might have been originally as angular as he had, on the other scene, positively liked her for being; but who was to say now what might n't result for her from the cultivation of a motive for curves? "Oh, exquisite virtue of circumstance," her companion admiringly mused, "that takes us by the hand and leads us forth out of corners where perforce our attitudes are a trifle contracted, and beguiles us into testing unsuspected faculties!" She would develop, evidently, right and left, and to the top of her capacity; and he would have been at the bottom of it all. But that was where he would remain, essentially and obscurely; all taken for granted, merely for granted, as a good cellar, with its dusky supporting vaults, is taken for granted in a sound house.

They went a great deal to Saint Peter's, and Mary easily recognised that to climb the long low yellow steps, beneath the huge florid facade, and then, pushing the ponderous leathern apron of the door, find one's self a mere sentient point in that brilliant immensity, was an act that had its way of remaining a thrill. In those days the hospitality of the 344