Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/65

 III

performed that ceremony the following day, when, by appointment, Christopher Newman went to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived behind one of those chalk-coloured façades which decorate with their pompous sameness the broad avenues distributed by Baron Haussmann over the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. Their apartment was rich in the modern conveniences, and Tristram lost no time in calling his visitor's attention to their principal household treasures, the thick-scattered gas-lamps and the frequent furnace-holes. Whenever you feel homesick," he said, "you must come right up here. We 'll stick you down before a register, under a good big burner, and—"

"And you'll soon get over your homesickness," said Mrs. Tristram.

Her husband stared; this lady often had a tone that defied any convenient test; he could n't tell for his life to whom her irony might be directed. The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram the need for any little intellectual luxury she could pick up by the way. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband; and though she made frequent concessions to the dull small fact that he had married her it must be confessed that her reserves were not always muffled in pink gauze. They were founded upon the 35