Page 264 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks
to having been rather violently tapped at one period, didn’t
flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed moreover, as
well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that
of old she had been a little mad, and now she pretended to
be perfectly sane.
‘I judge more than I used to,’ she said to Isabel, ‘but it
seems to me one has earned the right. One can’t judge till
one’s forty; before that we’re too eager, too hard, too cru-
el, and in addition much too ignorant. I’m sorry for you;
it will be a long time before you’re forty. But every gain’s a
loss of some kind; I often think that after forty one can’t re-
ally feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone.
You’ll keep them longer than most people; it will be a great
satisfaction to me to see you some years hence. I want to see
what life makes of you. One thing’s certain—it can’t spoil
you. It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break
you up.’
Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still
panting from a slight skirmish in which he has come off
with honour, might receive a pat on the shoulder from his
colonel. Like such a recognition of merit it seemed to come
with authority. How could the lightest word do less on the
part of a person who was prepared to say, of almost ev-
erything Isabel told her, ‘Oh, I’ve been in that, my dear; it
passes, like everything else.’ On many of her interlocutors
Madame Merle might have produced an irritating effect;
it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise her. But Isabel,
though by no means incapable of desiring to be effective,

264 The Portrait of a Lady