Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/512

 Roderick might say what he would, he did n't hate it. So it came round to her having, behind everything, an insidious art. Rowland liked, for his part, to think of her insidious art. Since she had asked him as a favour to herself, at any rate, to come with them to Switzerland, he thought she might by this time have let him know if he seemed to have done her a service. The days passed without her doing so, and at last he walked away to an isolated eminence some five miles from the inn and murmured to the silent rocks that she was ungrateful. Listening nature appeared not to contradict him, so that on the morrow he asked the girl with a touch of melancholy malice whether it struck her that his deflexion from his other plan had been attended with brilliant results.

"Why, we're delighted you're with us!" she simply answered.

He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply that she had forgotten how she had put it to him that he would particularly oblige her. He reminded her of her request and recalled the place and time. "That evening on the terrace, late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed, and Roderick being absent."

She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her. "I 'm afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you then. You wanted very much to do something else."

"I wanted above all things to do what you would like, and I made no sacrifice. But if I had made an immense one it would be more than made up to me 478