Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/449

THE AMERICAN He dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long inarticulate wail. That this superb woman, in whom he had seen all human grace, the rarest personal resource, should turn from him and all the brightness he offered her—him and his future and his fortune and his fidelity—to muffle herself in ascetic rags and entomb herself in a cell, was a confounding combination of the merciless and the impossible. As the vision spread before him the impossibility turned to the monstrous; it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to which he was subjected. "You—you a nun; you with your beauty defaced and your nature wasted—you behind locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!" And he sprang to his feet in loud derision.

"You can't prevent it," she returned, "and it ought a little to satisfy you. Do you suppose I 'll go on living in the world, still beside you, and yet not with you? It 's all arranged. Good-bye, good-bye."

This time he took her hand, took it in both his own. "For ever?" he said. Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own sounded a deep imprecation. She closed her eyes as if with the pain of hearing it; then he drew her toward him and clasped her to his breast. He kissed her white face again and again, as to leave less of it for his loss; for an instant she resisted and for a minute she submitted; then, with a force that threw him back panting, she disengaged herself and hurried away over the long shining floor. The next moment the door closed behind her, and after another he had made his way out as he could.