Page 339 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

‘I’m sorry for Miss Archer!’ Osmond declared.
Madame Merle got up. ‘If that’s a beginning of interest in
her I take note of it.’
The two stood there face to face; she settled her mantilla,
looking down at it as she did so. ‘You’re looking very well,’
Osmond repeated still less relevantly than before. ‘You have
some idea. You’re never so well as when you’ve got an idea;
they’re always becoming to you.’
In the manner and tone of these two persons, on first
meeting at any juncture, and especially when they met in
the presence of others, was something indirect and cir-
cumspect, as if they had approached each other obliquely
and addressed each other by implication. The effect of each
appeared to be to intensify to an appreciable degree the self-
consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried
off any embarrassment better than her friend; but even Ma-
dame Merle had not on this occasion the form she would
have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she would
have wished to wear for her host. The point to be made is,
however, that at a certain moment the element between
them, whatever it was, always levelled itself and left them
more closely face to face than either ever was with any one
else. This was what had happened now. They stood there
knowing each other well and each on the whole willing to
accept the satisfaction of knowing as a compensation for the
inconvenience—whatever it might be—of being known. ‘I
wish very much you were not so heartless,’ Madame Merle
quietly said. ‘It has always been against you, and it will be
against you now.’

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