Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/418

 "What do you think of her?"

"I think she 's false." It quite rang out.

"But she wished to please you; she tried," Rowland rejoined in a moment.

"She wished above all to please herself!"

He was silent again, held a moment by a strange intensity of thought. Yes, this young woman would never be anything but unjust to the other one, and that though neither had a vulgar soul. And he saw the attitude in Mary as immutable for ever, and Christina was interesting, and Mary would be wrong. He himself could take it thus and yet not "mind." How little with her there, verily, he minded! This came and went in fifty seconds—leaving all the rest, however, not less distinct. He knew that his companion knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who loves, how the beautiful strange girl she had seen for the first time at Saint Peter's (since when she had asked no question about her) had possibly the power to do her a definite wrong. To what extent she had the will remained of course ambiguous, and last night's interview had somehow, by a perverse process, only proved an omen of ill. It was in these conditions equally unbecoming for Rowland to depreciate or to defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having verified the latter's own assurance that she had made a bad impression. He tried to talk of indifferent matters—about the statues and the frescoes; but to-day plainly the quest of elegant knowledge on Mary's part had folded its wings. Curiosity of another sort had taken its place. She was longing, he was sure, to break ground again 384