Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/72

 d'Iéna, and his host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs. Tristram protested, declaring as promptly that her husband exhausted a low cunning in trying to displease her.

"Oh no, I never try, my love," he answered; "I know you loathe me quite enough when I take my chance." But their visitor hated to see a married couple on these terms, and he was sure one or other of them must be very unhappy. Yet he knew it was not Tristram. The lady had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer starlight. Sometimes he kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram in half an hour to the Occidental and sometimes forgot it. His companion asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not "subjective," though when he felt her interest sincere he made a real effort to meet it. He told her many things he had done, and regaled her with pictures of that "nature" as the child of which he figured for her; she herself was from Philadelphia and, with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the tale, though by no means always to his advantage; and the states of Newman's own spirit were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been 42