Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/89

 "It was you who triumphed," said Newman. "You must n't see too much in her."

Mrs. Tristram stared. "What do you mean?"

"She did n't strike me as so very proud. I should call her quite timid."

"I should call you quite deep! And what do you think of her face?"

"Well, I guess I like her face," said Newman.

"I should think you might! May I guess, on my side, that you'll go and see her?"

"To-morrow!" cried Newman.

"No, not to-morrow; next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris on Monday. If you don't see her it will at least be a beginning." And she gave him Madame de Cintré's address.

He walked across the Seine late in the summer afternoon and made his way through those grey and silent streets of the Faubourg Saint Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a perverse, verily a "mean" way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid façade, diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, gravelled court, surrounded on three sides with closed windows; here was a doorway facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tent-like canopy. The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman's conception 59