willing, because—because—’ And he paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say which would be very much to the point. ‘Because I think we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!’

He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife’s quick emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command, they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one’s country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious—the observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her husband’s blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action—a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond’s touch. If she must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather than a dupe. ‘I know you’re a master of the art of mockery,’ she said. ‘How can you speak of an indissoluble union—how can you speak of your being contented? Where’s our union when you accuse me of falsity? Where’s your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in your heart?’

‘It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.’

‘We don’t live decently together!’ cried Isabel.

‘Indeed we don’t if you go to England.’

‘That’s very little; that’s nothing. I might do much more.’

He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long enough in Italy to catch this trick. ‘Ah, if you’ve come to threaten me I prefer my drawing.’ And he walked back to his table, where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it.

‘I suppose that if I go you’ll not expect me to come back,’ said Isabel.

He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ he enquired.

‘How can it be anything but a rupture?’ she went on; ‘especially if all you say is true?’ She was unable to see how it could be anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.

He sat down before his table. ‘I really can’t argue with you on the hypothesis of your defying me,’ he said. And he took up one of his little brushes again.

She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion, were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of Isabel’s step she raised her head.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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