Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/132

 the courage, the celerity, the clear eye and the firm hand. Of certain other performances it would be going too far to say he was ashamed of them, for he had doubtless never had a stomach for dirty work. He had been blessed from the first with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct unreasoning blow the painted face of temptation. In no man, verily, could a want of the stricter scruple have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former had received at his hands, early and late, much putting in its place. None the less, however, some of his memories wore at present a graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him that if he had never incurred any quite ineffaceable stain he had never on the other hand followed the line of beauty, as a sought direction, for a single mile of its course. He had spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and now that he stood so well outside of it the business of mere money-getting showed only, in its ugliness, as vast and vague and dark, a pirate-ship with lights turned inward. It is very well, of a truth, to think meanly of money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and our friend, it may be said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralise with this superiority. To that it may be answered that he might have made another fortune if he chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralising. It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very brave and bristling world, and that it had not all been made by men "live" in his old mean sense. 102