Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/442

 "This 's a point I can't discuss with you minutely. I like him very much."

"Would you marry him if he were to ask you?"

"He has asked me."

"And if he should ask again?"

"I shall marry no one just now."

"Roderick," said Rowland, "has been wonderfully affected. He appears much exalted."

"He knows then of my rupture?"

"He 's making a great holiday of it."

Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to retouch his beauty. "I like him very much," she repeated; "much more than I used to. Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia's I 've felt a great friendship for him. Il n'est ni banal ni bête; and then there 's nothing in life he 's afraid of. He 's not afraid of failure; he 's not afraid of ruin or death."

Rowland had a stare—he indeed had a chill—for this singular description. "Oh, he 's a romantic figure!"

"A romantic figure, yes; the most romantic I 've ever met, I think—and with the charm of coming, so oddly, from your awful country. There are things in one to which it makes him quite sharply appeal."

"Yet your mother," Rowland objected, "told me just now that you say you don't care a button for him."

"Very likely! I meant as an amoureux. One does n't want a lover one pities, and one does n't want—of all things in the world—a husband who 's a 408