Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/324

THE AMERICAN pressed over his ears. In this position he stared fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing. Noémie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman.

"You had better have remained an honest girl," his obstinate sense of his old friend's painful situation prompted him at last to remark.

M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling. "You mean that I look so much like one? That's more than most women do nowadays. Don't judge me yet a while," she added. "I mean to succeed; that's what I mean to do. I leave you; I don't mean to be seen in such places as this, for one thing. I can't think what you want of my poor father; he's very comfortable now. It is n't his fault either. Au revoir, little father." And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute, looking again at their visitor. "Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to come and get it from me!" And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.

M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. "So you determined not to shoot her, after all," Newman said presently.

M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and let all their confession quite dismally and abjectly 294