Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/459

 time. Don't you see how you 're making your mother suffer?"

"Do I enjoy it myself?" cried Roderick. "Is the suffering all on your side and theirs? Do I look as if I were happy and were stirring you up with a stick for my amusement? Here we all are in the same boat; we might as well understand each other. These women must know that I 'm not to be counted on. That has a sound of the last impudence, no doubt, and I certainly don't deny your right to be disgusted with me."

"Will you keep what you 've got to say till another time," said Mary, "and let me hear it alone?"

"Oh, I 'll let you hear it as often as you please; but what 's the use of keeping it? I 'm in the humour now; it won't keep! It 's a very simple matter—it is n't worth keeping. I 'm a dead failure, that 's all; I 'm not a first-rate man. I 'm second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please. After that it 's all one!"

Mary turned away and buried her face in her hands; but Roderick, affected apparently now in some unwonted fashion by her gesture, drew her toward him again and went on a little differently. "It 's hardly worth while we should have any private talk about this, Mary"—and he had one of his strange, straight drops (stranger than any flare of passion or of irony) into simple kindness. "The thing would be comfortable for neither of us. It 's better, after all, that it be said once for all and dismissed. There are things I can't talk to you about. Can I, at least? You strike me sometimes as deep, you know—one never can tell." 425