Page 434 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

over the scene.
‘You say you’ll come back; but who knows?’ Gilbert Os-
mond said. ‘I think you’re much more likely to start on your
voyage round the world. You’re under no obligation to come
back; you can do exactly what you choose; you can roam
through space.’
‘Well, Italy’s a part of space,’ Isabel answered. ‘I can take
it on the way.
‘On the way round the world? No, don’t do that. Don’t
put us in a parenthesis—give us a chapter to ourselves.
I don’t want to see you on your travels. I’d rather see you
when they’re over. I should like to see you when you’re tired
and satiated,’ Osmond added in a moment. ‘I shall prefer
you in that state.’
Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Am-
pere. ‘You turn things into ridicule without seeming to do
it, though not, I think, without intending it. You’ve no re-
spect for my travels—you think them ridiculous.’
‘Where do you find that?’
She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her
book with the paper-knife. ‘You see my ignorance, my blun-
ders, the way I wander about as if the world belonged to me,
simply because—because it has been put into my power to
do so. You don’t think a woman ought to do that. You think
it bold and ungraceful.’
‘I think it beautiful,’ said Osmond. ‘You know my
opinions—I’ve treated you to enough of them. Don’t you re-
member my telling you that one ought to make one’s life a
work of art? You looked rather shocked at first; but then I

434 The Portrait of a Lady