Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/145

THE AMERICAN and drawing in her long dress and vaguely, rather indirectly, turning her face to him. Their eyes met; a moment later she looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on the fire. But the moment, and the glance that lived in it, had been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of sharp personal embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement frequent with him and which was always a symbol of his taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his long legs. The impression his hostess had made on him at their first meeting came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She took on a light and a grace, or, more definitely, an interest; he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention.

She asked him questions as if unable to do less: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram, how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there, how he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with that absence of any one of those long familiar to him which on his arrival in Europe had struck him as constituting by itself a complete foreignness—a foreignness that in women he had come to like extremely. Here and there her utterance slightly exceeded this measure, but at the end of ten minutes he found himself waiting for these delicate discords. He enjoyed them, marvelling to hear the possible slip become the charming glide. "You have a beautiful country of your own," she safely enough risked.

"Oh, very fine, very fine. You ought to come over and see it." 115