Page 794 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a
long future. She should never escape; she should last to the
end. Then the middle years wrapped her about again and
the grey curtain of her indifference closed her in.
Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if
she were afraid she should be caught doing it; and then Is-
abel stood there in the crowd, looking about her, looking
for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished to wait. She
had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She re-
joiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in
an arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault
of the station, the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, push-
ing crowd, filled her with a nervous fear and made her put
her arm into her friend’s. She remembered she had once
liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle
in which there was something that touched her. She re-
membered how she walked away from Euston, in the winter
dusk, in the crowded streets, five years before. She could not
have done that to-day, and the incident came before her as
the deed of another person.
‘It’s too beautiful that you should have come,’ said Hen-
rietta, looking at her as if she thought Isabel might be
prepared to challenge the proposition. ‘If you hadn’t-if you
hadn’t; well, I don’t know,’ remarked Miss Stackpole, hint-
ing ominously at her powers of disapproval.
Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes
rested on another figure, however, which she felt she had
seen before; and in a moment she recognized the genial
countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little apart, and

794 The Portrait of a Lady