The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sacred Fount, by Henry James

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Title: The Sacred Fount

Author: Henry James

Release Date: June 21, 2010 [EBook #32939]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE SACRED FOUNT

BY

HENRY JAMES

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1901

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

THE SACRED FOUNT

I

It was an occasion, I felt--the prospect of a large party--to look out
at the station for others, possible friends and even possible enemies,
who might be going. Such premonitions, it was true, bred fears when they
failed to breed hopes, though it was to be added that there were
sometimes, in the case, rather happy ambiguities. One was glowered at,
in the compartment, by people who on the morrow, after breakfast, were
to prove charming; one was spoken to first by people whose sociability
was subsequently to show as bleak; and one built with confidence on
others who were never to reappear at all--who were only going to
Birmingham. As soon as I saw Gilbert Long, some way up the platform,
however, I knew him as an element. It was not so much that the wish was
father to the thought as that I remembered having already more than once
met him at Newmarch. He was a friend of the house--he wouldn't be going
to Birmingham. I so little expected him, at the same time, to recognise
me that I stopped short of the carriage near which he stood--I looked
for a seat that wouldn't make us neighbours.

I had met him at Newmarch only--a place of a charm so special as to
create rather a bond among its guests; but he had always, in the
interval, so failed to know me that I could only hold him as stupid
unless I held him as impertinent. He was stupid in fact, and in that
character had no business at Newmarch; but he had also, no doubt, his
system, which he applied without discernment. I wondered, while I saw my
things put into my corner, what Newmarch could see in him--for it a