Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/329

THE AMERICAN what I suppose you 'd call the fair thing by you. Miss Noémie desired me to tell you—but hanged if I know what!"

"Bless your quiet imagination," said Valentin, "do you suppose I've been waiting for you? I've been to see her for myself—no less than three times these five days. She's a charming hostess; we attack the noblest subjects of discussion. She's really very clever and a rare and remarkable type; not at all low nor wanting to be low—determined not to be. She means to take very good care of herself. She's as perfect as you please, and as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a sea-nymph on an antique intaglio; and I warrant she has n't a grain more true sensibility than if she were scooped out of a big amethyst. You can't scratch her even with a diamond. Extremely pretty—really, when you know her, she's wonderfully pretty—intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of seeing a man strangled without changing colour, she's, upon my honour, remarkably agreeable."

"Well," said Newman after reflexion, I once saw in a needle-factory a gentleman from the city, who had stopped too near a machine that struck him as curious, picked up as clean as if he had been removed by a silver fork from a china plate, and swallowed down and ground to small pieces!"

Re-entering his rooms late in the evening, three days after Madame de Bellegarde had struck her bargain with him, as he might feel, over the entertainment at which she was to present him to the world, he found on his table a goodly card of 299