Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/134

 sweet things I taste the more greedily I look over the table. Now that I'm in the shafts why should n't I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the far East and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue; Damascus and Bagdad, Trebizond, Samarcand, Bokhara. I spent a week last month in the company of a returned missionary who told me I ought to be ashamed to be loafing about Europe when there is such a treat to be had out there. I do want more treats, but I think frankly I should like best to look for them in the Rue de l'Université. Do you ever hear from that handsome tall lady? If you can get her to promise she'll be at home the next time I call I'll go back to Paris straight. So there you have a bargain. I'm more than ever in the state of mind I told you about that evening; I want a companion for life and still want her to be a star of the first magnitude. I've kept an eye on all the possible candidates for the position who have come up this summer, but none of them has filled the bill or anything like it. I should have enjoyed the whole thing a thousand times more if I had had the lady just mentioned under my arm. The nearest approach to her was a cultivated young man from Dorchester Mass., who, however, very soon demanded of me a separation for incompatibility of temper. He told me I had n't it in me ever to raise a "tone," and he really made me half-believe him. But shortly afterwards I met an Englishman with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed to promise well—a very bright man who writes in the London papers and knows Paris nearly 104