Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/395

THE AMERICAN "It would be only more painful. I hoped I should n't see you—that I should escape. I wrote to you, but only three words. Good-bye." And she put out her hand again.

Newman put both his own into his pockets. "I 'll simply go with you."

She laid her two hands on his arm. "Will you grant me a last request?"—and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears. "Let me go alone—let me go in peace. Peace I say—though it's really death. But let me bury myself. So—good-bye."

Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly rubbing his head and looking through his keenly-narrowed eyes from one to the other of the three persons before him. His lips were compressed, and the two strong lines formed beside his mouth and riding hard, as it were, his restive moustache, might have at first suggested a wide grimace. I have said that his excitement was an intenser deliberateness, and now his deliberation was grim. "It seems very much as if you had interfered, Marquis," he said slowly. "I thought you said you would n't interfere. I know you did n't like me; but that does n't make any difference. I thought you promised me you would n't interfere. I thought you swore on your honour that you would n't interfere. Don't you're member, Marquis?"

The Marquis lifted his eyebrows, but he was apparently determined to be even more urbane than usual. He rested his two hands upon the back of his mother's chair and bent forward as if he were 365