Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/198

THE AMERICAN "Don't make too much of that," said Madame de Cintré. "He can help you very little."

"Of course I must work my way myself. I know that very well; I only want a chance to. In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you almost seem to be giving me a chance."

"I 'm seeing you," she slowly and gravely pronounced, "because I promised my brother I would."

"Blessings on your brother's head then!" Newman cried. "What I told him last evening was this: that I admired you more than any woman I had ever seen and that I should like extraordinarily to make you my wife." He spoke these words with great directness and firmness and without any sense of confusion. He was full of his idea, he had completely mastered it, and he seemed to look down on the woman he addressed, and on all her gathered graces, from the height of his bracing good conscience. It is probable that this particular tone and manner were the very best he could have adopted; yet the light, just visibly forced smile with which she had listened to him died away and she sat looking at him with her lips parted and her face almost as portentous as a tragic mask. There was evidently an inconvenience amounting to pain for her in this extravagant issue; her impatience of it, however, found no angry voice. Newman wondered if he were hurting her; he could n't imagine why the liberal devotion he meant to express should be offensive. He got up and stood before her, leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. "I know I've seen you very little to say this, so little that it may make what I say seem 168