Page 686 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to
relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to
doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted
of Lord Warburton’s; unfortunately it was beyond question,
and this aggressive, uncompromising look of it was just
what made it unattractive. She could never say to herself
that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was
able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith
in Mr. Goodwood’s compensations and no esteem for them.
A cotton-factory was not a compensation for anything-least
of all for having failed to marry Isabel Archer. And yet, be-
yond that, she hardly knew what he had-save of course his
intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never
thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended
his business-that, to the best of her belief, was the only form
exertion could take with him-it would be because it was an
enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least
because he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave
his figure a kind of bareness and bleakness which made
the accident of meeting it in memory or in apprehension
a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social drapery
commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness
of human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact
that she never heard from him and very seldom heard any
mention of him, deepened this impression of his loneliness.
She asked Lily for news of him, from time to time; but Lily
knew nothing of Boston-her imagination was all bounded
on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had
thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had

686 The Portrait of a Lady