Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/529

THE AMERICAN. That's just what's the matter with me. I regularly want to shock people."

M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the fine white stitching on one of his black gloves. Then without looking up, "We don't offer you money," he said. "That we suppose to be useless."

Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came back. "What do you offer me? By what I can make out the generosity is all to be on my side."

The Marquis dropped his arms at his flanks and held his head a little higher. "What we offer you is a chance—a chance a gentleman should appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done you no wrong."

"There are two things to say to that," Newman returned. "The first is, as regards appreciating your 'chance', that you don't consider me a gentleman. That's your great point, you know. It's a poor rule that won't work both ways. The second is that—well, in a word, you're talking sad nonsense."

In the midst of his bitterness he had kept well before his eyes, as I have noted, a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, and he felt a quick scruple for the too easy impatience of these words. But the Marquis took them more quietly than might have been expected. Sublime ambassador that he was, he continued the policy of ignoring what was disagreeable in his adversary's replies. He gazed at the gilded arabesques on the opposite wall and then transferred his glance to his host as if he too had been 499