Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/542

 items. "Come, be more definite," he said. "Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched."

Rowland frowned; if he would n't take generosity he should have full justice. "It 's a perpetual sacrifice then to live with a remorseless egotist!"

"I 'm a remorseless egotist?" Roderick returned.

"Did it never occur to you?"

"An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?" He repeated the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it might seem) a sudden violent curiosity for news about himself.

"You 're selfish," said Rowland; "you think only of yourself and believe only in your own history. You regard other people only as they play into your own hands. You 've always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed up with the nature of your genius and the very breath of your life that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse. But if one was to believe in you as I 've done one was to pay a tax on one's faith!"

Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together and crossed them shadewise over his eyes. In this attitude for a moment he sat looking coldly at his friend. "So I 've made you very uncomfortable?" he went on.

"Extremely so."

"I 've been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent, cruel?"

"I 've accused you mentally of all these things—with the particular exception of vanity." 508