Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/294

THE AMERICAN She gave, still with her charming eyes on him, the slowest, gentlest headshake. "That's a poor reason."

"No, it's a very good one. I believe everything you say, and I know why—if you'll let me tell you. You've a high spirit, a high standard; but with you it's all natural and unaffected: you don't seem to have stuck your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for the photograph of propriety. Yet you do also think of me, I guess, as a sort of animal that has had no idea in life but to make money and drive sharp bargains. Well, that's a fair description," he pursued, "but it's not the whole. A man ought to care for something else—I'm alive to that and always was, even if I don't know exactly for what. I cared for money-making, but I never cared so very terribly for the money. There was nothing else to do, and I take it you don't see me always on the loaf. I've been very easy to others, and I've tried always to know where I was myself. I've done most of the things that people have asked me—I don't mean scoundrels. I guess no one has suffered by me very badly. As regards your mother and your brother," he added, "there's only one point on which I feel that I might quarrel with them. I don't ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let you alone. If I thought they talked against me to you at all badly"—and he just paused—"why I 'd have to come in somewhere on that."

She reassured him. "They've let me alone, as you say. They have n't talked against you to me at all badly." 264