Page 224 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Lord
Warburton.
‘When you leave your uncle where do you go?’ her com-
panion asked.
‘I go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other plac-
es.’
The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the
young man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into
circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Neverthe-
less he went on quickly with his questions. ‘And when shall
you come back to America?’
‘Perhaps not for a long time. I’m very happy here.’
‘Do you mean to give up your country?’
‘Don’t be an infant!’
‘Well, you’ll be out of my sight indeed!’ said Caspar
Goodwood.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered rather grandly. ‘The world—
with all these places so arranged and so touching each
other—comes to strike one as rather small.’
‘It’s a sight too big for me!’ Caspar exclaimed with a sim-
plicity our young lady might have found touching if her face
had not been set against concessions.
This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had
lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a mo-
ment: ‘Don’t think me unkind if I say it’s just that—being
out of your sight—that I like. If you were in the same place
I should feel you were watching me, and I don’t like that—I
like my liberty too much. If there’s a thing in the world I’m
fond of,’ she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur,

224 The Portrait of a Lady