Page 498 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her
a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful.
The desire for unlimited expansion had been succeeded in
her soul by the sense that life was vacant without some pri-
vate duty that might gather one’s energies to a point. She
had told Ralph she had ‘seen life’ in a year or two and that
she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of that of
observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspira-
tions, her theories, her high estimate of her independence
and her incipient conviction that she should never marry?
These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need-a
need the answer to which brushed away numberless ques-
tions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the situation
at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the
stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation
enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own, and that
she should be able to be of use to him. She could surrender
to him with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a
kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was giving.
He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the
Cascine-Pansy who was very little taller than a year before,
and not much older. That she would always be a child was
the conviction expressed by her father, who held her by the
hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to
go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady.
Pansy wore a short dress and a long coat; her hat always
seemed too big for her. She found pleasure in walking off,
with quick, short steps, to the end of the alley, and then in
walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for appro-

498 The Portrait of a Lady