Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/367

THE AMERICAN "The matter now is that, as I'm a madman with lucid intervals, I 'm having one of them now. But I came within an ace of entertaining a sentiment—!"

"For the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire, in a pink dress?"

"Did you notice what a rare kind of pink it was?" Valentin enquired by way of answer. "It makes her look as white as new milk."

Newman had a stare of some wonderment, and then: "Is she what you call crême de la crême?" But as Valentin's face pronounced this a witticism below the Parisian standard he went on: "You've stopped then, at any rate, going to see her?"

"Oh bless you, no. Why should I stop? I've changed, but she has n't," said Valentin. "The more I see her the more sure I am—well, that I see her right. She has awfully pretty arms, and several other things, but she's not really a bit gentille. The other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father, to his face, in my presence. I should n't have expected it of her; it was a disappointment. Heigho!"

"Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat," Newman declared. "I discovered that the first time I saw her."

"Oh, that's another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar what she pleases. But it was base in her to call him bad names; it spoiled my reckoning and quite threw me off. It was about a frilled petticoat that he was to have fetched from the washerwoman's; he appeared to have forgotten the frilled petticoat. She almost boxed his ears. He stood there staring at her with his little blank eyes and 337