Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/243

THE AMERICAN luxury, and to think of him as perverse was somehow to miss an occasion. No one had ever given him that impression, which he might have compared to the absolute pleasure, for the palate, of wine of the highest savour. One didn't put anything "into" such a vintage and there was a way of handling the very bottle. The grace of him, of Valentin, was all precious, the growth of him all fortunate, the quantity of him elsewhere all doubtless limited. "I might perhaps have been a factor in that young lady's moral future," Newman presently said—but I don't come in now. And evidently," he added "you've no room for me in yours."

The young man gave a laugh, and the next moment, arm in arm, they had resumed their walk. "Oh, on the contrary," Valentin then replied; "since what I want, precisely, is to keep it spacious and capacious—at least on the scale, if you please, of my moral past; which indeed seems to me, when I look back on it, as boundless as the desert. It's a prospect that, at all events, such figures as you and your wonderful friends help to people. And I may say about them," he went on, "that I should like really—in the interest of the impression that I confess the young lady makes on me—to propose to you a fair agreement."

On which, amusedly enough, Newman debated as they went. "That I shall shut my eyes to what you want to do?"

"Well, yes—say I may expect you'll shut them to me as soon as I shall find you've opened them to the grand manner in which your old gentleman is a man of the world. You 'll be obliged, I'm convinced, 213