Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/201

THE AMERICAN down and straight before her. Then she slowly rose to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally keen eyes would have made out in her an extraordinarily fine tremor. She still looked extremely serious. "I'm very much obliged to you for your offer. It seems to me very strange, but I'm glad you spoke without waiting any longer. It's better the subject should be dismissed between us. I appreciate immensely all you say; you do me great honour. But I've decided not to marry."

"Oh, don't say that!" cried Newman with the very innocence of pleading desire. She had turned away, and it made her stop a moment with her back to him. "Think better of that. You're too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others happy. If you're afraid of losing your freedom I can assure you that this freedom here, the life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what I 'll offer you. You shall do things that I don't think you've ever thought of. I 'll take you to live anywhere in the wide world you may want. Are you unhappy? You give me a feeling that you are unhappy. You 've no right to be, or to be made so. Let me come in and put an end to it."

The young woman waited, but looking again all away from him. If she was touched by the way he spoke the thing was conceivable. His voice, always very mild, almost flatly soft and candidly interrogative for so full an organ, had become as edgeless and as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved child. He stood watching her, and she presently turned again, but with her face 171