Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/460

THE AMERICAN that there are certain weaknesses people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once."

"You may be weak but once, but you 'll be audacious many times, madam," Newman rang out. "I did n't come, however, for conversational purposes. I came to say this simply: that if you 'll write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to our marriage I 'll take care of the rest. You don't want to make of her a cloistered nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a commercial person is better than being buried alive. Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you give way and that she may take me with your blessing, and I'll take it to her at her place of retreat and bring that retreat to an instant end. There's your chance—and I call them easy terms."

"We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call any terms that you can propose impossible," Urbain declared. They had all remained standing stiffly in the middle of the room. "I think my mother will tell you that she 'd rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than Mrs. Christopher Newman."

But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating: "But once, Mr. Newman; but once!"

Nothing he had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of polished marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it. "Is there anything that would weigh with you?" he asked. 430