Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/239

THE AMERICAN "Well, of soaring, of almost sublime ambition! She's a very bad little copyist, but, endowed with the artistic sense in another line, I suspect her none the less of a strong feeling for her great originals."

Newman wondered, but presently followed. "Surely her great originals will have had more beauty."

"Not always. She has enough to look as if she had more, and that's always plenty. It's a face and figure in which everything tells. If she were prettier she would be less intelligent, and her intelligence is half her charm."

"In what way does her intelligence strike you as so remarkable?" asked Newman, at once puzzled, impressed and vaguely scandalised by his friend's investment of such a subject with so much of the dignity of demonstration.

She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined to be something—to succeed at any cost. Her smearing of colours is of course a mere trick to gain time. She's waiting for her chance; she wishes to launch herself, and to do it right. Nobody, my dear man, can ever have had such a love of the right. She knows her Paris. She 's one of fifty thousand, so far as her impatiences and appetites go, but I'm sure she has an exceptional number of ideas."

Newman raised his strong eyebrows. "Are you also sure they're really good ones?"

"Ah, 'good, good'!" cried Valentin: "you people are too wonderful with your goodness. Good for what, please—? They 'll be excellent, I warrant, for some things! They'll be much better than the hopeless game she has just given up. They'll be good 209