Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/202

THE AMERICAN not really meeting his own; and she spoke with a quietness in which there was a visible trace of effort. "There are a great many reasons why I should n't marry—more, I beg you to believe, than I can explain to you. As for my happiness, I'm perfectly content. If I call your proposal 'strange' it 's also for more reasons than I can say. Of course you've a perfect right to make it. But I can't accept it—that's impossible. Please never speak of the matter again. If you can't promise me this I must ask you not to come back."

"Why is it impossible?" he demanded with an insistence that came easily to him now. "You may think it is at first without its really being so. I did n't expect you to be pleased at first, but I do believe that if you 'll think of it a good while you may finally be satisfied."

"I don't know you," she returned after a moment. "Think how little I know you!"

"Very little of course, and therefore I don't ask for your ultimatum on the spot. I only ask you not simply to put me off. I only ask you to let me 'stay round,' and by so doing to let me hope. I 'll wait as long as ever you want. Meanwhile you can see more of me and know me better, look at me in the light—well, of my presumption, yes, but of other things too. You can make up your mind."

Something was going on, rapidly, in her spirit; she was weighing a question there beneath his eyes, weighing it and deciding it. "From the moment I don't very respectfully beg you to leave the house and never return I listen to you—I seem to give 172