Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/233

THE AMERICAN having scanned for a moment its brilliant vista, turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the same school on the left. It contained very few persons, but at the further end of it Mademoiselle Nioche sat before her easel. She was not at work; her palette and brushes had been laid down beside her, her hands were folded in her lap and she had relapsed into her seat to look intently at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with their backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures. These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion, they were dressed with great splendour and their long silken trains and furbelows were spread over the polished floor. It was on their dresses the young woman had fixed her eyes, though what she was thinking of I am unable to say. I hazard the hypothesis of her mutely remarking that to carry about such a mass of ponderable pleasure would surely be one of the highest uses of freedom. Her reflections, at any rate, were disturbed by the advent of her unannounced visitors, whom, as she rose and stood before her easel, she greeted with a precipitation of eye and lip that was like the glad clap of a pair of hands.

"I came here on purpose to see you—seulement vous, expray, expray," Newman said in his fairest, squarest, distinctest French. And then, like a good American, he introduced Valentin formally: "Allow me to make you acquainted with Comte Valentin de Bellegarde."

Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to her quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful brevity of her response was 203