Page 270 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

in the ages before country-house life was the fashion. Isabel
found it difficult to think of her in any detachment or priva-
cy, she existed only in her relations, direct or indirect, with
her fellow mortals. One might wonder what commerce she
could possibly hold with her own spirit. One always ended,
however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn’t neces-
sarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which,
in one’s youth, one had but just escaped being nourished.
Madame Merle was not superficialnot she. She was deep,
and her nature spoke none the less in her behaviour be-
cause it spoke a conventional tongue. ‘What’s language at
all but a convention?’ said Isabel. ‘She has the good taste not
to pretend, like some people I’ve met, to express herself by
original signs.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve suffered much,’ she once found occa-
sion to say to her friend in response to some allusion that
had appeared to reach far.
‘What makes you think that?’ Madame Merle asked with
the amused smile of a person seated at a game of guesses. ‘I
hope I haven’t too much the droop of the misunderstood.’
‘No; but you sometimes say things that I think people
who have always been happy wouldn’t have found out.’
‘I haven’t always been happy,’ said Madame Merle, smil-
ing still, but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a
child a secret. ‘Such a wonderful thing!’
But Isabel rose to the irony. ‘A great many people give
me the impression of never having for a moment felt any-
thing.’
‘It’s very true; there are many more iron pots certainly

270 The Portrait of a Lady