Bab Bab 15 · Chapter XV

It had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London

under Ralph’s escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour on

the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Stackpole

would be sure to suggest, and she enquired if the correspondent of

the _Interviewer_ was to take the party to stay at her favourite

boarding-house.

“I don’t care where she takes us to stay, so long as there’s local

colour,” said Isabel. “That’s what we’re going to London for.”

“I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do

anything,” her aunt rejoined. “After that one needn’t stand on trifles.”

“Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?” Isabel enquired.

“Of course I should.”

“I thought you disliked the English so much.”

“So I do; but it’s all the greater reason for making use of them.”

“Is that your idea of marriage?” And Isabel ventured to add that her

aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Touchett.

“Your uncle’s not an English nobleman,” said Mrs. Touchett, “though even

if he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in

Florence.”

“Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?” the

girl asked with some animation. “I don’t mean I’m too good to improve. I

mean that I don’t love Lord Warburton enough to marry him.”

“You did right to refuse him then,” said Mrs. Touchett in her smallest,

sparest voice. “Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you’ll manage

to come up to your standard.”

“We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I

hope very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me

completely.”

“You probably won’t be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the

Bohemian manner of life. However, I’ve promised Ralph not to criticise.”

“I’ll do whatever Ralph says is right,” Isabel returned. “I’ve unbounded

confidence in Ralph.”

“His mother’s much obliged to you!” this lady dryly laughed.

“It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!” Isabel irrepressibly

answered.

Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in

their paying a visit--the little party of three--to the sights of the

metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of

her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely

lost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself

deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the

seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph

accompanied their visitors to town and established them at a quiet inn

in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had

been to take them to his father’s house in Winchester Square, a large,

dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in silence

and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at

Gardencourt, there was no one in the house to get them their meals,

and Pratt’s Hotel accordingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his

side, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a “den” there of which

he was very fond and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a

cold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of

Pratt’s Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow

travellers, who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white

waistcoat, to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said,

after breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertainment

for the day. As London wears in the month of September a face blank but

for its smears of prior service, the young man, who occasionally took

an apologetic tone, was obliged to remind his companion, to Miss

Stackpole’s high derision, that there wasn’t a creature in town.

“I suppose you mean the aristocracy are absent,” Henrietta answered;

“but I don’t think you could have a better proof that if they were

absent altogether they wouldn’t be missed. It seems to me the place is

about as full as it can be. There’s no one here, of course, but three

or four millions of people. What is it you call them--the lower-middle

class? They’re only the population of London, and that’s of no

consequence.”

Ralph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that Miss

Stackpole herself didn’t fill, and that a more contented man was nowhere

at that moment to be found. In this he spoke the truth, for the stale

September days, in the huge half-empty town, had a charm wrapped in them

as a coloured gem might be wrapped in a dusty cloth. When he went home

at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, after a chain of hours

with his comparatively ardent friends, he wandered into the big dusky

dining-room, where the candle he took from the hall-table, after letting

himself in, constituted the only illumination. The square was still, the

house was still; when he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to

let in the air he heard the slow creak of the boots of a lone constable.

His own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous; some of the

carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy

echo. He sat down in one of the armchairs; the big dark dining table

twinkled here and there in the small candle-light; the pictures on the

wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a

ghostly presence as of dinners long since digested, of table-talk

that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural perhaps had

something to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and

that he remained in his chair a long time beyond the hour at which he

should have been in bed; doing nothing, not even reading the evening

paper. I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of

the fact that he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel

could only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting

little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming

as during these days spent in sounding, tourist-fashion, the deeps

and shallows of the metropolitan element. Isabel was full of premises,

conclusions, emotions; if she had come in search of local colour she

found it everywhere. She asked more questions than he could answer, and

launched brave theories, as to historic cause and social effect, that he

was equally unable to accept or to refute. The party went more than once

to the British Museum and to that brighter palace of art which reclaims

for antique variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent

a morning in the Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower; they

looked at pictures both in public and private collections and sat

on various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens.

Henrietta proved an indestructible sight-seer and a more lenient judge

than Ralph had ventured to hope. She had indeed many disappointments,

and London at large suffered from her vivid remembrance of the strong

points of the American civic idea; but she made the best of its dingy

dignities and only heaved an occasional sigh and uttered a desultory

“Well!” which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. The truth

was that, as she said herself, she was not in her element. “I’ve not a

sympathy with inanimate objects,” she remarked to Isabel at the National

Gallery; and she continued to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse

that had as yet been vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes

by Turner and Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the literary

dinner-parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of

Great Britain.

“Where are your public men, where are your men and women of intellect?”

she enquired of Ralph, standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square as

if she had supposed this to be a place where she would naturally meet a

few. “That’s one of them on the top of the column, you say--Lord Nelson.

Was he a lord too? Wasn’t he high enough, that they had to stick him a

hundred feet in the air? That’s the past--I don’t care about the past; I

want to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won’t say of the

future, because I don’t believe much in your future.” Poor Ralph had few

leading minds among his acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the pleasure

of buttonholing a celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss

Stackpole to indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. “If I were on the

other side I should call,” she said, “and tell the gentleman, whoever

he might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see

for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom

here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of those

that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall

have to give up the social side altogether;” and Henrietta, though

she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the

_Interviewer_ about the Tower (in which she described the execution of

Lady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of falling below her mission.

The incident that had preceded Isabel’s departure from Gardencourt left

a painful trace in our young woman’s mind: when she felt again in her

face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor’s

surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could

not have done less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her

necessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in

a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her

conduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of

freedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the

great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into

odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped

the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the

grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when

they were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticed these quaint charities;

he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might

pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had

the house set in order as much as possible for their visit. There

was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of

Ralph’s who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with

Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr.

Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed,

universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at

everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her

society the _bric-à-brac_, of which Ralph had a considerable collection,

and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the

square and pretend it was a _fête-champetre_, walked round the limited

enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk,

bounded responsive--as with a positive passion for argument--to her

remarks upon the inner life.

“Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally

there’s not much going on there when there’s such a lot of illness

about. Touchett’s very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his

being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his

father. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter

with him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic

disease so developed that you may depend upon it he’ll go, some day

soon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully

dull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for

them. Then I believe Mr. Touchett’s always squabbling with his wife; she

lives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American

way of yours. If you want a house where there’s always something going

on, I recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil,

in Bedfordshire. I’ll write to her to-morrow and I’m sure she’ll be

delighted to ask you. I know just what you want--you want a house

where they go in for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My

sister’s just that sort of woman; she’s always getting up something or

other and she’s always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I’m

sure she’ll ask you down by return of post: she’s tremendously fond of

distinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you know; but

I haven’t read everything she has written. It’s usually poetry, and I

don’t go in much for poetry--unless it’s Byron. I suppose you think a

great deal of Byron in America,” Mr. Bantling continued, expanding

in the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole’s attention, bringing up his

sequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand.

Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to

Henrietta, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. “I

understand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport.

The Touchetts aren’t English at all, you know; they have their own

habits, their own language, their own food--some odd religion even, I

believe, of their own. The old man thinks it’s wicked to hunt, I’m told.

You must get down to my sister’s in time for the theatricals, and I’m

sure she’ll be glad to give you a part. I’m sure you act well; I know

you’re very clever. My sister’s forty years old and has seven children,

but she’s going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up

awfully well--I will say for her. Of course you needn’t act if you don’t

want to.”

In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over

the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered

by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her

blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine

merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and

she valued the opportunity he offered her. “I don’t know but I would go,

if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you

call her name?”

“Pensil. It’s an odd name, but it isn’t a bad one.”

“I think one name’s as good as another. But what’s her rank?”.

“Oh, she’s a baron’s wife; a convenient sort of rank. You’re fine enough

and you’re not too fine.”

“I don’t know but what she’d be too fine for me. What do you call the

place she lives in--Bedfordshire?”

“She lives away in the northern corner of it. It’s a tiresome country,

but I dare say you won’t mind it. I’ll try and run down while you’re

there.”

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be

obliged to separate from Lady Pensil’s obliging brother. But it happened

that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she

had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington,

Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now

preparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on

the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once

they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that

Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn

Street at six o’clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of

this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave

first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs

in another part of the enclosure, were occupied--if the term may be

used--with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical

colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled

between Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some

reputable hour at Pratt’s Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter must

have a cab. She couldn’t walk all the way to Jermyn Street.

“I suppose you mean it’s improper for me to walk alone!” Henrietta

exclaimed. “Merciful powers, have I come to this?”

“There’s not the slightest need of your walking alone,” Mr. Bantling

gaily interposed. “I should be greatly pleased to go with you.”

“I simply meant that you’d be late for dinner,” Ralph returned. “Those

poor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare

you.”

“You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,” said Isabel.

“I’ll get you a hansom if you’ll trust me,” Mr. Bantling went on.

“We might walk a little till we meet one.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust him, do you?” Henrietta enquired of

Isabel.

“I don’t see what Mr. Bantling could do to you,” Isabel obligingly

answered; “but, if you like, we’ll walk with you till you find your

cab.”

“Never mind; we’ll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care you

get me a good one.”

Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure,

leaving the girl and her cousin together in the square, over which

a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was perfectly

still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the

windows, where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were

a vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a

neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation

in the interior, poked their faces between the rusty rails of

the enclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red

pillar-post on the southeast corner.

“Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn

Street,” Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss Stackpole as Henrietta.

“Very possibly,” said his companion.

“Or rather, no, she won’t,” he went on. “But Bantling will ask leave to

get in.”

“Very likely again. I am very glad they are such good friends.”

“She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go

far,” said Ralph.

Isabel was briefly silent. “I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman, but

I don’t think it will go far. They would never really know each other.

He has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just

comprehension of Mr. Bantling.”

“There’s no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.

But it ought not to be so difficult to understand Bob Bantling,” Ralph

added. “He is a very simple organism.”

“Yes, but Henrietta’s a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?”

Isabel asked, looking about her through the fading light, in which the

limited landscape-gardening of the square took on a large and effective

appearance. “I don’t imagine that you’ll propose that you and I, for our

amusement, shall drive about London in a hansom.”

“There’s no reason we shouldn’t stay here--if you don’t dislike it. It’s

very warm; there will be half an hour yet before dark; and if you permit

it I’ll light a cigarette.”

“You may do what you please,” said Isabel, “if you’ll amuse me till

seven o’clock. I propose at that hour to go back and partake of a simple

and solitary repast--two poached eggs and a muffin--at Pratt’s Hotel.”

“Mayn’t I dine with you?” Ralph asked.

“No, you’ll dine at your club.”

They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square

again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would have given him

extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest little feast she

had sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For

the moment, however, he liked immensely being alone with her, in the

thickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her

seem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could

exert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions

submissively which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. “Why

won’t you let me dine with you?” he demanded after a pause.

“Because I don’t care for it.”

“I suppose you’re tired of me.”

“I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.”

“Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile,” said Ralph.

But he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat

some time in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise of

entertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and he wondered

what she was thinking about; there were two or three very possible

subjects. At last he spoke again. “Is your objection to my society this

evening caused by your expectation of another visitor?”

She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. “Another

visitor? What visitor should I have?”

He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as

well as brutal. “You’ve a great many friends that I don’t know. You’ve a

whole past from which I was perversely excluded.”

“You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over

there across the water. There’s none of it here in London.”

“Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing

to have your future so handy.” And Ralph lighted another cigarette and

reflected that Isabel probably meant she had received news that Mr.

Caspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette

he puffed it a while, and then he resumed. “I promised just now to be

very amusing; but you see I don’t come up to the mark, and the fact is

there’s a good deal of temerity in one’s undertaking to amuse a

person like you. What do you care for my feeble attempts? You’ve grand

ideas--you’ve a high standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring

in a band of music or a company of mountebanks.”

“One mountebank’s enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in

another ten minutes I shall begin to laugh.”

“I assure you I’m very serious,” said Ralph. “You do really ask a great

deal.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I ask nothing.”

“You accept nothing,” said Ralph. She coloured, and now suddenly it

seemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But why should he speak

to her of such things? He hesitated a little and then he continued:

“There’s something I should like very much to say to you. It’s a

question I wish to ask. It seems to me I’ve a right to ask it, because

I’ve a kind of interest in the answer.”

“Ask what you will,” Isabel replied gently, “and I’ll try to satisfy

you.”

“Well then, I hope you won’t mind my saying that Warburton has told me

of something that has passed between you.”

Isabel suppressed a start; she sat looking at her open fan. “Very good;

I suppose it was natural he should tell you.”

“I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope

still,” said Ralph.

“Still?”

“He had it a few days ago.”

“I don’t believe he has any now,” said the girl.

“I’m very sorry for him then; he’s such an honest man.”

“Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?”

“No, not that. But he told me because he couldn’t help it. We’re old

friends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent me a line asking me

to come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh the day before he and

his sister lunched with us. He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a

letter from you.”

“Did he show you the letter?” asked Isabel with momentary loftiness.

“By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very sorry for

him,” Ralph repeated.

For some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, “Do you know how

often he had seen me?” she enquired. “Five or six times.”

“That’s to your glory.”

“It’s not for that I say it.”

“What then do you say it for. Not to prove that poor Warburton’s state

of mind’s superficial, because I’m pretty sure you don’t think that.”

Isabel certainly was unable to say she thought it; but presently she

said something else. “If you’ve not been requested by Lord Warburton to

argue with me, then you’re doing it disinterestedly--or for the love of

argument.”

“I’ve no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone.

I’m simply greatly interested in your own sentiments.”

“I’m greatly obliged to you!” cried Isabel with a slightly nervous

laugh.

“Of course you mean that I’m meddling in what doesn’t concern me. But

why shouldn’t I speak to you of this matter without annoying you or

embarrassing myself? What’s the use of being your cousin if I can’t have

a few privileges? What’s the use of adoring you without hope of a reward

if I can’t have a few compensations? What’s the use of being ill and

disabled and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game of life if I

really can’t see the show when I’ve paid so much for my ticket? Tell me

this,” Ralph went on while she listened to him with quickened attention.

“What had you in mind when you refused Lord Warburton?”

“What had I in mind?”

“What was the logic--the view of your situation--that dictated so

remarkable an act?”

“I didn’t wish to marry him--if that’s logic.”

“No, that’s not logic--and I knew that before. It’s really nothing, you

know. What was it you said to yourself? You certainly said more than

that.”

Isabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own.

“Why do you call it a remarkable act? That’s what your mother thinks

too.”

“Warburton’s such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he has

hardly a fault. And then he’s what they call here no end of a swell. He

has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought a superior being.

He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages.”

Isabel watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. “I refused him

because he was too perfect then. I’m not perfect myself, and he’s too

good for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me.”

“That’s ingenious rather than candid,” said Ralph. “As a fact you think

nothing in the world too perfect for you.”

“Do you think I’m so good?”

“No, but you’re exacting, all the same, without the excuse of thinking

yourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty, however, even of the most

exacting sort, would have managed to do with Warburton. Perhaps you

don’t know how he has been stalked.”

“I don’t wish to know. But it seems to me,” said Isabel, “that one day

when we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him.” Ralph smokingly

considered. “I hope that what I said then had no weight with you;

for they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply

peculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to marry you I’d

never have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position

he was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make him a

believer.”

“I think not. I don’t understand the matter, and I’m not conscious of

any mission of that sort. You’re evidently disappointed,” Isabel added,

looking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. “You’d have liked me to

make such a marriage.”

“Not in the least. I’m absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don’t

pretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching you--with the

deepest interest.”

She gave rather a conscious sigh. “I wish I could be as interesting to

myself as I am to you!”

“There you’re not candid again; you’re extremely interesting to

yourself. Do you know, however,” said Ralph, “that if you’ve really

given Warburton his final answer I’m rather glad it has been what it

was. I don’t mean I’m glad for you, and still less of course for him.

I’m glad for myself.”

“Are you thinking of proposing to me?”

“By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal;

I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my

inimitable _omelettes_. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane

illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a

young lady does who won’t marry Lord Warburton.”

“That’s what your mother counts upon too,” said Isabel.

“Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of

your career. I shall not see all of it, but I shall probably see the

most interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend you’d

still have a career--a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But

relatively speaking it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely

marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know

I’m extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you’ve kept the game

in your hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it.”

“I don’t understand you very well,” said Isabel, “but I do so well

enough to be able to say that if you look for grand examples of anything

from me I shall disappoint you.”

“You’ll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go hard with

you!”

To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it

that would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: “I don’t see

what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don’t want to

begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.”

“There’s nothing she can do so well. But you’re of course so

many-sided.”

“If one’s two-sided it’s enough,” said Isabel.

“You’re the most charming of polygons!” her companion broke out. At a

glance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it

went on: “You want to see life--you’ll be hanged if you don’t, as the

young men say.”

“I don’t think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I

do want to look about me.”

“You want to drain the cup of experience.”

“No, I don’t wish to touch the cup of experience. It’s a poisoned drink!

I only want to see for myself.”

“You want to see, but not to feel,” Ralph remarked.

“I don’t think that if one’s a sentient being one can make the

distinction. I’m a good deal like Henrietta. The other day when I asked

her if she wished to marry she said: ‘Not till I’ve seen Europe!’ I too

don’t wish to marry till I’ve seen Europe.”

“You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you.”

“No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it’s getting

very dark,” Isabel continued, “and I must go home.” She rose from her

place, but Ralph only sat still and looked at her. As he remained there

she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but

especially on Ralph’s, of utterances too vague for words.

“You’ve answered my question,” he said at last. “You’ve told me what I

wanted. I’m greatly obliged to you.”

“It seems to me I’ve told you very little.”

“You’ve told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that

you want to throw yourself into it.”

Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. “I never said that.”

“I think you meant it. Don’t repudiate it. It’s so fine!”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to fasten upon me, for I’m not in the

least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men.”

Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of

the square. “No,” he said; “women rarely boast of their courage. Men do

so with a certain frequency.”

“Men have it to boast of!”

“Women have it too. You’ve a great deal.”

“Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt’s Hotel, but not more.”

Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it.

“We’ll find your cab,” he said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring

street in which this quest might avail he asked her again if he mightn’t

see her safely to the inn.

“By no means,” she answered; “you’re very tired; you must go home and go

to bed.”

The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the

door. “When people forget I’m a poor creature I’m often incommoded,” he

said. “But it’s worse when they remember it!”