Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/542

THE AMERICAN everything makes me so? I feel exactly like a stunned widower—and a widower who has not even the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife, one who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat. I feel," he added in a moment, "as if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at large."

Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were: "Are you very sure that you 'd have been happy?"

He stared, then shook his head. "That's weak; that won't do."

"Well," she persisted as with an idea, "I don't believe it would have really done."

He gave a sound of irritation. "Say then it would have damnably failed. Failure for failure I should have preferred that one to this."

She took it in her musing way. "I should have been curious to see; it would have been very strange."

"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to put myself forward?"

"A little," she still more boldly answered. New man gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her, turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment and then said: "That sounds very cruel, but it's less so than it sounds. Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much to see, first, if such a union could actually come through; second, what would happen to it afterwards." 512