Page 737 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

less!’
‘You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I’ve
never been a chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four
things I should like to say to you first. Your wife doesn’t
know what to do with herself,’ she went on with a change
of tone.
‘Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply
drawn. She means to carry out her ideas.’
‘Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.’
‘Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.’
‘She was unable to show me any this morning,’ said
Madame Merle. ‘She seemed in a very simple, almost in a
stupid, state of mind. She was completely bewildered.’
‘You had better say at once that she was pathetic.’
‘Ah no, I don’t want to encourage you too much.’
He still had his head against the cushion behind him;
the ankle of one foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for
a while. ‘I should like to know what’s the matter with you,’
he said at last.
‘The matter-the matter-!’ And here Madame Merle
stopped. Then she went on with a sudden outbreak of pas-
sion, a burst of summer thunder in a clear sky: ‘The matter
is that I would give my right hand to be able to weep, and
that I can’t!’
‘What good would it do you to weep?’
‘It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.’
‘If I’ve dried your tears, that’s something. But I’ve seen
you shed them.’
‘Oh, I believe you’ll make me cry still. I mean make me

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