Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/503

 approach it she called to him eagerly to stop and yield to the impossibility. Poor Rowland, whose interest in her had so much more nourished itself on plain fare than snatched at any golden apple of reward, enjoyed immensely the sense of her caring for three minutes what should become of him. He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he was perfectly indifferent to her nerves.

"I can get the flower," he called to her. "Will you trust me?"

"I don't want it; I'd rather not have it!" she cried.

"Will you trust me?" he repeated, looking at her hard.

She looked at him in return and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would shriek and swoon as Christina had done. "I wish it were something better!" she said simply; and she stood watching him while he began to clamber. Rowland was not a trained acrobat, and his enterprise was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow footholds and coigns of vantage and at last secured his prize. He managed to stick it into his button-hole, after which he worked his way down again. There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he had not lost his head or his hold. It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and that was all he had proposed to himself. He was red in the face when he offered Mary the flower, and she was visibly pale. She had kept her eyes on him without moving. All this had passed without the knowledge of Mrs. Hudson, who was dozing beneath the hood of the 469