Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/492

THE AMERICAN to himself to be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way. "So you're serious about that?" she sighed.

"About your living with me? Why, you don't suppose I've turned you inside out this way not to want to get you into shape again. You're in no kind of shape for these people now—even if they were in any for you; after your seeing what they've done to me—and to her. You just give me the thing I'm after and then you move out."

"I never thought I should have lived to take a new place—unless," Mrs. Bread made moan, "I should have gone some day to Mr. Valentin or, in her own establishment, to my young lady."

"Come to me and you 'll come to her establishment yet, I guess—you 'll come at least to where both those names will be cherished and sacred."

She considered a little and then replied: "Oh, I shall like to pronounce them to you, sir! And if you're going to pull the house down," she added, "I had surely better be clear of it."

"Ah," said Newman almost with the gaiety of a dazzle of alternatives, "it won't be quite my idea to appeal—if that's what you mean—to the police. The meanest and the damnedest things are always beyond their ken and out of their hands. Which has the merit in this case, however, that it leaves the whole story in mine. And to mine," he declared, "you've given power!"

"Ah, you're bolder than I ever was!" she resignedly sighed; and he felt himself now, to whatever end, possessed of her. He walked back with her to the château; the curfew—it could n't have been 462