Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/344

THE AMERICAN accompanied in each case by a "Very happy to meet you, sir." He looked at Madame de Cintré, but her attention was absent. If his personal self-consciousness had been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her as to the critic before whom in company he played his part, he might have found it a flattering proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting on him. It is a reflexion he did n't make, but we may nevertheless risk it, that in spite of this circumstance she probably saw every movement of his little finger. The Marquise Urbain was wondrously dressed in crimson crape bestrewn with huge silver moons—full discs and fine crescents, half the features of the firmament.

"You don't say anything about my toilette," she impatiently observed to him.

"Well, I feel as if I were looking at you through a telescope. You put me in mind of some lurid comet, something grand and wild."

"Ah, if I'm grand and wild I match the occasion! But I'm not a heavenly body."

"I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade of crimson," Newman said.

"That's just my originality: any fool could have chosen blue. My sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of that colour, with a dozen little delicate moons. But I think crimson much more amusing. And I give my idea, which is moonshine."

"Moonshine and bloodshed," said Newman.

"A murder by moonlight," the young woman laughed. "What a delicious idea for a toilet! To make it complete there's a dagger of diamonds, you 314