Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/173

THE AMERICAN boiled cat in a gold-digger's camp. You've stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time and you 've sat through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in another pew. It can't all have been very folichon. But at any rate you've done something and you are something; you've used your faculties and you've developed your character. You've not abruti yourself with debauchery, and you've not mortgaged your fortune to social conveniencies. You take things as it suits you, and you've fewer prejudices even than I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or four that stand in my way. Happy man, you're strong and you're free—nothing stands in yours. But what the deuce," he wound up, "do you propose to do with such advantages? Really to use them you need a better world than this. There's nothing worth your while here."

"Oh, I guess there's something," Newman said.

"What is it?"

"Well," he sighed, "I'll tell you some other time!"

In this way he delayed from day to day broaching a subject he had greatly at heart. Meanwhile, however, he was growing practically familiar with it; in other words he had called again, three times, on Madame de Cintré. On but two of these occasions had he found her at home and on each of them she had other visitors. Her visitors were numerous and, to our hero's sense, vociferous, and they exacted much of their hostess's attention. She found time none the less to bestow a little of it on the stranger, a quantity 143