Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/517

THE AMERICAN while we're in mourning. But I have n't given it up for that. The partie is arranged; I have my cavalier—Lord Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin; but a few months hence I'm to name any evening, and he'll come over from Ireland on purpose. That's what I call really feeling for a woman."

Shortly after this Madame Urbain walked away with her little girl. Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the chapel had raked over the glowing coals of his resentment. His accessory kept him waiting, but she proved as good as her word. Finally she reappeared at the end of the path with her little girl and her footman; beside her slowly walked her husband with his mother on his arm. They were a long time advancing, during which Newman sat unmoved. Aching as he fairly did now with his passion—the passion of his wrath at the impudence, on the part of such a pair, of an objection to him in the name of clean hands—it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able to moderate his expression of it very much as he would have turned down a flaring gas-jet. His native shrewdness, coolness, clearness, his lifelong submission to the sense that words were acts and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of taking steps curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for quadrupeds and foreigners—all this admonished him that rightful wrath had no connexion with being a fool and indulging in spectacular violence. So as he rose, when the elder lady and her son were close 487