Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/207

THE AMERICAN you choose; I 'll admit I 'm the biggest kind of a sneak." Newman in fact had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska, an enquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram's; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of the Avenue d'Iéna that he was faithless to his early friendships. She needed the theory to explain one of her fine exasperations. Having launched our hero on the current that was bearing him so rapidly along she felt but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was "quite satisfactory." The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that in essentials the feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed the mild expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from her guest's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. He was only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect on that enthusiasm with which she had overflowed a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintré, and wished to have it understood that she did n't in the least pretend to have gone into a final analysis of her life, or in other words of her honesty. "No woman"—she played with this idea—"can 177