Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/442

THE AMERICAN comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. "It's not marrying you; it's doing all that would go with it. It's the rupture, the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right have I to be happy when—when—?" Again she broke down.

"When what?" he pressed.

"When others have so suffered."

"What others?" he demanded. "What have you to do with any others but me? Besides, you said just now that you wanted happiness and that you should find it by obeying your mother. You strangely contradict yourself."

"Yes, I strangely contradict myself; that shows you—strangely enough too—that I'm not even intelligent."

"You 're laughing at me!" he cried. "It 's as if you were horribly mocking!"

She looked at him intently, and an observer might have believed her to be asking herself if she should n't most quickly end their common pain by confessing to some such monstrosity. Yet "No; I'm not," was what she presently said.

"Granting that you 're not intelligent," he went on, "that you 're weak, that you 're common, that you 're nothing I've believed you to be—what I ask of you is not an heroic effort, it's a very easy and possible effort. There's a great deal on my side to make it so. The simple truth is that you don't care enough for me to make it."

"I'm cold," said Madame de Cintré. "I'm as cold as that flowing river." 412