Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/451

THE AMERICAN fingers. His satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive, for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of accommodation of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him intently and continually, and what he saw there did n't assuage his resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy, pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronised and satirised, and have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain—to have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to protest.

And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connexion with the Bellegardes began—as if he had made the least circumstance of the commercial—as if he would n't have consented to confound the commercial fifty times a day if it might have increased by a hair's breadth the chance of his not suffering this so much more than commercial treachery! Granted one's being commercial was fair ground for one's being cleverly "sold," how little they knew about the class so designated and its enter rising way of not standing on trifles! It was in the 421