Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/162

THE AMERICAN mean a dead failure—and it's a turning of the tables to talk as if I could lend you a hand."

"How does it come that you have n't succeeded?" Newman ingenuously asked.

"Oh, I'm not a failure to wring your heart," the young man returned. "I've not fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise and luckily no scandal. But you stand up, so very straight, for accomplished facts. You've made a fortune, you've raised an edifice, you're a financial, practical power, you can travel about the world till you've found a soft spot and lie down on it with the consciousness of having earned your rest. And all—so fabulously!—in the flower of your magnificent manhood. Is not that true? Well, imagine the exact reverse of all that and you have votre serviteur. I've done nothing, and there's not a poor pitiful thing for me to do."

"Why what's the matter with all the things?"

"It would take me time to say. Some day I 'll tell you. Meanwhile I'm right, eh? You're a horrid success? You've made more money than was ever made before by one so young and so candid? It's none of my business, but in short you're beastly rich?"

"That's another thing it sounds foolish to say," said Newman. "Do you think that's all I am?"

"No, I think you're original—that's why I'm here. We're very different, you and I, as products, I'm sure; I don't believe there's a subject on which we judge or feel alike. But I rather guess we shall get on, for there's such a thing, you know, 132