Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/387

THE AMERICAN one to conceal. She shone upon him, as always, with that light of her gentleness which might have been figured, in the heat-thickened air, by a sultry harvest moon; but she was visibly bedimmed, and she confessed, on his charging her with her red eyes, that she had been, for a vague vain reason, crying them half out. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours before and had somehow troubled her without in the least intending it. He had laughed and gossiped, had brought her no bad news, had only been, in taking leave of her, rather "dearer," poor boy, than usual. A certain extravagance of tenderness in him had in fact touched her to positive pain, so that on his departure she had burst into miserable tears. She had felt as if something strange and wrong were hanging about them—ah, she had had that feeling in other connexions too; nervous, always nervous, she had tried to reason away the fear, but the effort had only given her a headache. Newman was of course tongue-tied on what he himself knew, and, his power of simulation and his general art of optimism breaking down on this occasion as if some long needle point had suddenly passed, to make him wince, through the sole crevice of his armour, he could, to his high chagrin, but cut his call short. Before he retreated, however, he asked if Valentin had seen his mother.

"Yes; but he did n't make her cry!"

It was in Newman's own apartments that the young man dined, having sent his servant and his effects to await him at the railway. M. Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and 357