75Henry Jamesments of presumptuous

75
Henry James
ments of presumptuous youth, by big cold public men,
but never, so far as he could recall, by any private lady.
More than anything yet it gave him the measure of his
companion’s subtlety, and thereby of Kate’s possible career.
“Don’t be too impossible!”—he feared from his friend,
for a moment, some such answer as that; and then felt, as
she spoke otherwise, as if she were letting him off easily.
“I want her to marry a great man.” That was all; but,
more and more, it was enough; and if it hadn’t been her
next words would have made it so. “And I think of her
what I think. There you are.”
They sat for a little face to face upon it, and he was
conscious of something deeper still, of something she
wished him to understand if he only would. To that extent
she did appeal—appealed to the intelligence she desired
to show she believed him to possess. He was meanwhile,
at all events, not the man wholly to fail of comprehension.
“Of course I’m aware how little I can answer to any
fond proud dream. You’ve a view—a grand one; into which
I perfectly enter. I thoroughly understand what I’m not,
and I’m much obliged to you for not reminding me of it in
any rougher way.” She said nothing—she kept that up; it
might even have been to let him go further, if he was
capable of it, in the way of poorness of spirit. It was one
of those cases in which a man couldn’t show, if he showed
at all, save for poor; unless indeed he preferred to show
for asinine. It was the plain truth: he was—on Mrs.
Lowder’s basis, the only one in question—a very small
quantity, and he did know, damnably, what made quantities
large. He desired to be perfectly simple, yet in the
midst of that effort a deeper apprehension throbbed. Aunt
Maud clearly conveyed it, though he couldn’t later on
have said how. “You don’t really matter, I believe, so much
as you think, and I’m not going to make you a martyr by
banishing you. Your performances with Kate in the Park
are ridiculous so far as they’re meant as consideration for
me; and I had much rather see you myself—since you’re,
in your way, my dear young man, delightful—and arrange
with you, count with you, as I easily, as I perfectly
should. Do you suppose me so stupid as to quarrel with
you if it’s not really necessary? It won’t—it would be too
absurd!—BE necessary. I can bite your head off any day,