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it all up, that would be too much to ask of her. But she sug-
gests it; she vividly figures it.’
‘You like her then for patriotic reasons. I’m afraid it is on
those very grounds I object to her.’
‘Ah,’ said Isabel with a kind of joyous sigh, ‘I like so many
things! If a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept
it. I don’t want to swagger, but I suppose I’m rather versa-
tile. I like people to be totally different from Henrietta—in
the style of Lord Warburton’s sisters for instance. So long
as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me to an-
swer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I’m
straightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to her-
self as in respect to what masses behind her.’
‘Ah, you mean the back view of her,’ Ralph suggested.
‘What she says is true,’ his cousin answered; ‘you’ll never
be serious. I like the great country stretching away beyond
the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling, and
spreading till it stops at the green Pacific! A strong, sweet,
fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta—pardon
my simile—has something of that odour in her garments.’
Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the
blush, together with the momentary ardour she had thrown
into it, was so becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at
her for a moment after she had ceased speaking. ‘I’m not sure
the Pacific’s so green as that,’ he said; ‘but you’re a young
woman of imagination. Henrietta, however, does smell of
the Future—it almost knocks one down!’

130 The Portrait of a Lady