Page 603 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

striking of figures. That he was poor and lonely and yet that
somehow he was noble-that was what had interested her
and seemed to give her opportunity. There had been an in-
definable beauty about him-in his situation, in his mind, in
his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless
and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a ten-
derness which was the very flower of respect. He was like a
sceptical voyager strolling on the beach while he waited for
the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all
this she had found her occasion. She would launch his boat
for him; she would be his providence; it would be a good
thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anx-
iously and yet so ardently given herself-a good deal for what
she found in him, but a good deal also for what she brought
him and what might enrich the gift. As she looked back at
the passion of those full weeks she perceived in it a kind of
maternal strain-the happiness of a woman who felt that she
was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But
for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done
it. And then her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett,
sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author of in-
finite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At bottom her
money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which
was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some
other conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What
would lighten her own conscience more effectually than to
make it over to the man with the best taste in the world?
Unless she should have given it to a hospital there would
have been nothing better she could do with it; and there

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