Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/558

THE AMERICAN a leaf of smaller size than those he had dismissed. He did n't unfold it; he simply sat looking at the back of it. If he had momentarily entertained the idea of destroying it this possibility at least quickly dropped. What the thing suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost heart and that no reviving cheerfulness could long quench—the feeling that, after all and above all, he was a good fellow wronged. With it came a hope, as intense as a pang, that the Bellegardes were enjoying their suspense as to what he would do yet. The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it. He had hung fire once, yes; perhaps in his present queer state of mind he might hang fire again. But he restored the safe scrap to his pocket-book very tenderly and felt better for thinking of the suspense of the Bellegardes. He felt better every time he thought of it while he sailed the summer seas. He landed in New York and journeyed across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing he observed by the way contributed to mitigate his sense of being a good fellow wronged.

He saw a great many other good fellows—his old friends—but he told none of them of the trick that had been played him. He said simply that the lady he was to have married had changed her mind, and when asked if he had changed his own inscrutably answered, "Suppose we change the subject." He told his friends he had brought home no "new ideas" from Europe, and his conduct probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing invention. He took no interest in discussing business and showed no desire to go into anything whatever. He asked half a dozen 528