Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/555

THE AMERICAN with a shock somewhat muffled; he had begun to know the need of accepting the absolute. At other times, however, the truth was again an infamy and the actual a lie, and he could only pace and rage and remember till he was weary. Passion, in him, by habit, nevertheless, burned clear rather than thick, and in the clearness he saw things, even things not gross and close—having never the excuse that anything could make him blind. Without quite knowing it at first, he began to read a moral into his strange adventure. He asked himself in his quieter hours whether he perhaps had been more commercial than was decent. We know that it was in reaction against questions of the cruder avidity that he had come out to pick up for a while an intellectual, or otherwise a critical, living in Europe; it may therefore be understood that he was able to conceive of a votary of the mere greasy market smelling too strong for true good company. He was willing to grant in a given case that unpleasant effect, but he could n't bring it home to himself that he had reeked. He believed there had been as few reflexions of his smugness caught during all those weeks in the high polish of surrounding surfaces as there were monuments of his meanness scattered about the world. No one had ever unprovokedly suffered by him—ah, provokedly was another matter: he liked to remember that, and to repeat it, and to defy himself to bring up a case.

If moreover there was any reason in the nature of things why his connexion with business should have cast a shadow on a connexion—even a connexion broken—with a woman justly proud, he was willing 525