Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/278

THE AMERICAN seemed. Newman's assumptions, none the less, were never importunate; his habit of sinking differences and supposing equalities was not an aggressive taste nor an æsthetic theory, but something as natural and organic as a physical appetite which had never been put on a scant allowance and had consequently never turned rabid. His air as of not having to account for his own place in the social scale was probably irritating to Urbain, for whom it could but represent a failure to conceive of other places either, and who thus saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law in a crude and colourless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the impressive image thrown upon his own intellectual mirror. He never forgot himself an instant, and replied with mechanical politeness to the large bright vaguenesses that he was apparently justified in regarding as this visitor's wanton advances. Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself and indulging in an unlimited amount of irresponsible enquiry and conjecture, now and then found himself confronted by these obscure abysses of criticism. What in the world M. de Bellegarde was falling back either from or on he was at a loss to divine. M. de Bellegarde's general orderly retreat may meanwhile be supposed to have been, for himself, a compromise between a great many emotions. So long as he ambiguously smiled—and what could make more for order?—he was polite, and it was proper he should be polite. A smile moreover committed him to nothing more than politeness; it left the degree of politeness agreeably vague. Civil ambiguity too—and it was perfectly civil— 248