Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/541

THE AMERICAN they could get some one else's without working so hard for it. It is n't worth finding out. It may be it was not with your Countess, Lizzie's and yours, that the idea of chucking you originated; very likely the old woman put her up to it. I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh? You're well out of it, at any rate, old man; make up your mind to that. If I express myself strongly it's all because I love you so much; and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought of making up to that piece of pale peculiarity as I should have thought of wooing the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde."

Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye; never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile. "You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which he repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."

But even without the lash of his friend's loud tongue Newman would have waked again into his bitterest consciousness. He could keep it at bay only when he could cease to miss what he had lost, and each day, for the present, but added a ton of weight to that quantity. In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to se faire, as she put it, une raison; she assured him the sight of his countenance made her wretched.

"How can I help it?" he demanded with a trembling voice—"how can I help it when the sight of 511