Page 183 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly,
like a man in trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and
staring at the floor. ‘I can’t even be glad of that,’ he said at
last, throwing himself back against the wall; ‘for that would
be an excuse.’
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘An excuse? Must I
excuse myself?’
He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another
idea had come into his head. ‘Is it my political opinions? Do
you think I go too far?’
‘I can’t object to your political opinions, because I don’t
understand them.’
‘You don’t care what I think!’ he cried, getting up. ‘It’s all
the same to you.
Isabel walked to the other side of the gallery and stood
there showing him her charming back, her light slim figure,
the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and the
density of her dark braids. She stopped in front of a small
picture as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was
something so young and free in her movement that her very
pliancy seemed to mock at him. Her eyes, however, saw
nothing; they had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a
moment he followed her, and by this time she had brushed
her tears away; but when she turned round her face was pale
and the expression of her eyes strange. ‘That reason that I
wouldn’t tell you—I’ll tell it you after all. It’s that I can’t es-
cape my fate.’
‘Your fate?’
‘I should try to escape it if I were to marry you.’

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