Project Gutenberg's The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2, by Henry James

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2

Author: Henry James

Release Date: July 19, 2009 [EBook #29452]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINGS OF THE DOVE, VOL 1 OF 2 ***

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

BY HENRY JAMES

VOLUME I

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1902

Copyright, 1902, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

----

Published, August, 1902

TROW DIRECTORY

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

NEW YORK

BOOK FIRST

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

I

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her
unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in
the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation
that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.
It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place,
moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed
cloth that gave at once--she had tried it--the sense of the slippery
and of the sticky. She had looked at the sallow prints on the walls and
at the lonely magazine, a year old, that combined, with a small lamp in
coloured glass and a knitted white centre-piece wanting in freshness,
to enhance the effect of the purplish cloth on the principal table; she
had above all, from time to time, taken a brief stand on the small
balcony to which the pair of long windows gave access. The vulgar
little street, in this view, offered scant relief from the vulgar
little room; its main office was to suggest to her that the narrow
black house-fronts, adjusted to a standard that would have been low
even for backs, constituted quite the publicity implied by such
privacies. One felt them in the room exactly as one felt the room--the
hundred like it or worse--in the street. Each time she turned in again,
each time, in her impatience, she gave him up, it was to sound to a
deeper depth, while she tasted the faint, flat emanation of things, the
failure of fortune and of honour. If she continued to wait it was
really, in a manner, that she might not