Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/437

THE AMERICAN by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de l'Université. The man's dull face brightened as he perceived our hero, the case always being that Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the liveried gentry. The footman led the way across a great main vestibule, with a pyramid of plants at its centre and glass doors all around, to what appeared to be the principal saloon. The visitor crossed the threshold of a room of superb proportions, which made him feel at first like a tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee. But when his guide had left him alone after observing that he would call Madame la Comtesse, he saw the place contained little that was remarkable beyond a dusky ceiling with curiously carved beams, a set of curtains of elaborate antiquated tapestry and a dark oaken floor polished like a mirror. He waited some minutes, walking up and down; then at last, as he turned at the end of the room, saw Madame de Cintré had come in by a distant door. She wore a black dress—she stood looking at him. As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time to take her well in before they met in the middle of it.

He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard, with a monastic rigidity in her dress, she had little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own and surrendered to him her hand; but the eyes were like two rainy autumn moons and the touch portentously lifeless. "I was at your brother's 407