Page 759 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

perfectly willing, because-because-’ And he paused a mo-
ment, 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 sar-
casm 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 command, they constitut-
ed 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 obser-
vance 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

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