Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/515

 years." His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his own accord. "I believed there was a future in it all! She gave me pleasure—extraordinary pleasure; and when an artist, such a one as I was, receives extraordinary pleasure, you know—!" And he paused again. "You never saw her as I did, you never heard her in her great moments. But there 's no help in talking about that! At first she would n't regard me seriously; she only chaffed me and made light of me and kept me off. Then at last I forced her to admit I was a great man. She told me she believed that, and it gave me more extraordinary pleasure than anything else. A great man was what she was looking for, and we agreed to find our happiness for life in each other. To please me she promised not to marry till I should say I was prepared—so far as I could be prepared—to see her. I was of course not in a marrying way myself, but it was a stiff dose—which I kept begging off from—to have to think of another man's possessing her. To spare my sensibilities she promised to turn off her Prince, and the idea of her doing so made me as happy as to see some blest idea shaping itself in the block. You 've seen how she kept her promise. When I learned it, it was as if my block had suddenly split and turned rotten. She died for me, like that!" And he snapped his fingers. "Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire, betrayed confidence? I 'm sure I don't know. I make the beastly mistakes, and you find the proper names for them."

Rowland, after an instant, could but temporise. "The poor girl did the best she could." 481