Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/121

 together, on a strange soil, in spite of themselves; but it was probable that at home these unnatural intimates must have met only to part. They had indeed by habit and form as little in common as possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters, accepted the situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over it privately; used often indeed to retire to his room early in the evening for the express purpose of considering it conscientiously and, as he would have said, with detachment. He was not sure it was a good thing for him to have given himself up so unreservedly to our hero, whose way of taking life was so little his own.

Newman was a spirit of easy power; Mr. Babcock even at times saw it clear that he was one of nature's noblemen, and certainly it was impossible not to feel strongly drawn to him. But would it not be desirable to try to produce an effect on him, to try to quicken his moral life and raise his sense of responsibility to a higher plane? He liked everything, he accepted everything, he found amusement in everything; he was not discriminating, his values were as vague and loose as if he had carried them in his trousers pocket. The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault that he considered very grave and did his best himself to avoid—of what he would have called a want of moral reaction. Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and churches, and kept Mrs. Jameson's volumes in his trunk; he regarded works of art as questions and his relations with them as experiences, and received peculiar impressions from everything he saw. But 91