‘Do you mean my disposition? It won’t get spoiled,’ Isabel answered, smiling. ‘I’m taking very good care of it. I’m extremely struck,’ she added, turning away, ‘with the off-hand way in which you speak of a woman’s leaving her husband. It’s easy to see you’ve never had one!’

‘Well,’ said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, ‘nothing is more common in our Western cities, and it’s to them, after all, that we must look in the future.’ Her argument, however, does not concern this history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure. Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get rid of them all.

For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low tone, with a quick smile: ‘My dear Ralph—!’

It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously: ‘I’ve seen less of you than I might, but it’s better than nothing. And then I’ve heard a great deal about you.’

‘I don’t know from whom, leading the life you’ve done.’

‘From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other people speak of you. They always say you’re “charming”, and that’s so flat.’

‘I might have seen more of you certainly,’ Isabel said. ‘But when one’s married one has so much occupation.’

‘Fortunately I’m not married. When you come to see me in England I shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.’ He continued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded in making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to his term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though about this, as about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic. Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should divide it, of the precautions he should take. ‘Henrietta’s my greatest precaution,’ he went on. ‘The conscience of that woman’s sublime.’

‘Certainly she’ll be very conscientious.’

‘Will be? She has been! It’s only because she thinks it’s her duty that she goes with me. There’s a conception of duty for you.’

‘Yes, it’s a generous one,’ said Isabel, ‘and it makes me deeply ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know.’

‘Your husband wouldn’t like that.’

‘No, he wouldn’t like it. But I might go, all the same.’

‘I’m startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!’

‘That’s why I don’t go,’ said Isabel simply—yet not very lucidly.

Ralph understood well enough, however. ‘I should think so, with all those occupations you speak of.’

‘It isn’t that. I’m afraid,’ said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: ‘I’m afraid.’