Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/383

THE AMERICAN that excuses be made, the most proper excuses. But you 'd be much too coulant. You won't do."

Newman was silent a moment. He was in presence, it seemed to him, of a vain and grotesque parade, poor, restricted, indirect as a salve to an insult or a righting of a wrong, and yet pretentious and pompous as an accommodation. But he saw it useless to attempt interference. "When is this precious performance to come off?" he could only ask.

"The sooner the better. The day after to-morrow I hope."

"Well," Newman went on, "I 've certainly a claim to know the facts. I can't consent to shut my eyes to a single one of them."

"I shall be most happy to tell you them all then. They're very simple and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I 'll jump into a cab; you had better drive to my rooms and wait for me there. I 'll turn up at the end of an hour."

Newman assented protestingly, let him go, and then betook himself to the encumbered little apartment in the Rue d'Anjou. It was more than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able to announce that he had found one of his accessories and that this gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing the other. Newman had been sitting without lights by the faded fire, on which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the rich multifarious properties of the place and produced fantastic gleams and shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin's account of what had passed between him 353