Page 54 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

linguist. He had good winters and poor winters, and while
the former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of
virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled some three
years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this
history opens: he had on that occasion remained later than
usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather
before reaching Algiers. He arrived more dead than alive
and lay there for several weeks between life and death. His
convalescence was a miracle, but the first use he made of it
was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once.
He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it be-
hoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open
to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consis-
tent with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of losing
them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite
pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had
never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had
found it hard that he should be obliged to give up the idea of
distinguishing himself; an idea none the less importunate
for being vague and none the less delightful for having had
to struggle in the same breast with bursts of inspiring self-
criticism. His friends at present judged him more cheerful,
and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their
heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His se-
renity was but the array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.
It was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the ob-
served thing in itself that was mainly concerned in Ralph’s
quickly-stirred interest in the advent of a young lady who
was evidently not insipid. If he was consideringly disposed,

54 The Portrait of a Lady