Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/504

 carriage. Mary's eyes did not perhaps quite display the ardent admiration anciently offered to the victor by the queen of beauty at a tournament; but they told him that his existence had for the time mattered to her. He liked having proof of this to put in his pocket, very much as a "handsome" subscriber to an important cause likes an acknowledgement of his cheque.

"Why did you do that?" she asked gravely. He hesitated, conscious of the deep desire to answer "Because I love you!" But he had not kept his head before to lose it now. He lowered his pitch and replied simply: "Because I wanted to do something for you."

"Suppose you had broken your neck."

"I believed I should n't. And you believed it, I think."

"I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me."

"Quod erat demonstrandum!" cried Rowland. "I think you know Latin."

When our four friends were established in what I have called their hollow in the hills there was much scrambling over slopes both grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a great many long walks and, thanks to the tonic mountain air, not a little relief and oblivion. Mrs. Hudson was reduced to forgetting, above all, that the poison of Europe — as she knew Europe — might lurk in the breeze, and even to admitting that the eggs of Engelthal were almost as fresh and the cream almost as thick as those of the Connecticut Valley. She was certainly more in her element than she had 470