Vanitas

pression and irritation got hold of him. Before breakfast, while ruminating over a list of books fo

" He had read it, of course, and dived into it-the last volume it was-at random. Do authors ever reflect how much influence they must occasionally have, coming by accident, to arouse some latent feeling, or to reinforce some dominant habit of mind? Certainly Henry James had been possessed of no ill-will towards Miss Val Flodden, whom indeed he might have made the heroine of some amiable story. Yet Henry James, at that moment, did Val Flodden a very bad turn. Greenleaf got up from the book, after twenty minutes' random reading, in a curiously suspicious and aggressive mood. Of course he never dreamed that he

'Princess Casamassima'-Miss F

"isn't it good? and so n

incess natural-you don't think there

quite overpowered him at this very moment; and he asked in hope

him pharisaical, as she sometimes did, and considered it her duty to

natural; only she might

icked?" asked Gr

bored, but it's not always about nice things and nice people, as in the case of the Princess. She may have done mischief-she shouldn't have played with that wretched little morbid bookbinding boy; women oughtn't to play with men even when they're fools, indeed especially not then. But that wasn't in

rtant things is a great delight, Miss Flodden?" asked Gr

rs among people who talked nothing but gossip and

. Miss Flodden was rather silent during their cataloguing wo

things-for-granted tone in which they had been said. Women of her lot, Miss Flodden had once informed him, would go great lengths for the sake of a new frock or a pair of stepping horse

t variety of things, which the blustering wind had seemed to sweep away like the brown beech leaves in the hollows. The fact was that Greenleaf was not attending. He kept revolving in his mind the same idea, with the impossibility of solving it. He was rather like a man in love, who cannot decide whether or not he is sufficiently so to make a declaration and feels the propitious moment escaping. Greenleaf was not in love; had he been, had there been any chance of his being so, Val Flodden would not have been there in

f something he wanted. Deprive him if his suspicions should be true. For if his suspicions were true, there was no alternative to giving up all relations with her. He was not a selfish man, trying to save himself heartburns and disenchantments. He was thinking of his opinions, solely.

samassima, her denial would be worth nothing; but when we cannot endure a suspicion against someone, we do not, in our wild desire to have it denied at any price, stop short to reflect that the denial will be worthless. A denial; he wanted a denial, not f

s of most people's lives. Greenleaf could not remember. It was all muddled in his memory,

ldish voice; "but I've always found that the people wh

and a square tower, with a red tile extinguisher, and a veering weather-cock, closing

bered for a long time that street and that tower. He did

his belief become the plaything of a capricious ch

s brief, and it contained no allusion to any future meeting, and no promised introduction to the Miss Carpenters. Only at the end was this sentenc