Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/516

 "That that was her best then was exactly the grand sell! I 've hardly thought of her these two months, but you see, and I 'm in fact myself surprised to find, how little I 've forgiven her."

"Well, you may probably take it that you 're avenged. I can't think of her as very happy."

"Ah, I can't pity her!" said Roderick. After which he relapsed into silence, and the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. "Who 's this mighty man," he finally demanded, "and what 's he coming down on us for? We 're small people here, and we can't keep company with giants."

"Wait till we meet him on our own level," said Rowland, "and perhaps he 'll not overtop us."

"He's like me," Roderick rejoined; "he'll have passed for ten minutes for bigger than he is." At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon and became invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly he went on: "I should like to see her once more — simply to look at her."

"I wouldn't advise it," his companion observed.

"It was the wonderful nature of her beauty that did it!" Roderick kept on. "It was all her beauty — so fitful, so alive, so subject to life, yet so always there and so interesting and so splendid. In comparison the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to think of it as my own property and possession — somehow bought and paid for. I had mastered it and made it mine; no one else had studied it as I had, no one else so understood it. What does that stick of a Casamassima know about it at this hour? There were things I 482