THE AMERICAN
"It's too large. It's like smoking in a ball-room or a church."
"That's what you were laughing at just now?" Newman asked; "the size of my room?"
"It's not size only, but splendour and harmony, beauty of detail. It was the smile of sympathy and of admiration."
Newman looked at him harder and then, "So it is very ridiculous?" he enquired.
"Ridiculous, my dear sir? It's sublime."
"That of course is the same thing," said Newman. "Make yourself comfortable. Your coming to see me, I take it, is an act of sympathy and a sign of confidence. You were not obliged to. Therefore if anything round here amuses you it will be all in a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like to have my little entertainment a success. Only I must make this request: that you explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak. I don't want to lose anything myself."
His friend gave him a long look of unresentful perplexity. He laid his hand on his sleeve and seemed on the point of saying something, but suddenly checked himself, leaned back in his chair and puffed at his cigar. At last, however, breaking silence, "Certainly," he began, "my coming to see you is the frank demonstration you recognise. I have been, nevertheless, in a measure encouraged—or urged—to the step. My sister, in a word, has asked it of me, and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was near you just now and I observed lights in what I supposed to be your rooms. It was not a ceremonious
127
