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were to marry our friend you’d still have a career—a very
decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking
it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked
out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You
know I’m extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that
you’ve kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving
us some grand example of it.’
‘I don’t understand you very well,’ said Isabel, ‘but I do so
well enough to be able to say that if you look for grand ex-
amples of anything from me I shall disappoint you.’
‘You’ll do so only by disappointing yourself—and that
will go hard with you!’
To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount
of truth in it that would bear consideration. At last she said
abruptly: ‘I don’t see what harm there is in my wishing not
to tie myself. I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There
are other things a woman can do.’
‘There’s nothing she can do so well. But you’re of course
so many-sided.’
‘If one’s two-sided it’s enough,’ said Isabel.
‘You’re the most charming of polygons!’ her compan-
ion broke out. At a glance from his companion, however,
he became grave, and to prove it went on: ‘You want to see
life—you’ll be hanged if you don’t, as the young men say.
‘I don’t think I want to see it as the young men want to
see it. But I do want to look about me.’
‘You want to drain the cup of experience.’
‘No, I don’t wish to touch the cup of experience. It’s a
poisoned drink! I only want to see for myself.’

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