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in taking her precautions.
One day about a month after Ralph Touchett’s arrival in
Rome Isabel came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not
only a part of her general determination to be just that she
was at present very thankful for Pansy-it was also a part of
her tenderness for things that were pure and weak. Pansy
was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that
had the rightness of the young creature’s attachment or the
sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft
presence-like a small hand in her own; on Pansy’s part it
was more than an affection-it was a kind of ardent coercive
faith. On her own side her sense of the girl’s dependence
was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason
when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself
that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
must look for it as much as possible. Pansy’s sympathy was
a direct admonition; it seemed to say that here was an op-
portunity, not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an
opportunity for what Isabel could hardly have said; in gen-
eral, to be more for the child than the child was able to be for
herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to remem-
ber that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for
she now perceived that Pansy’s ambiguities were simply her
own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any
one could care so much-so extraordinarily much-to please.
But since then she had seen this delicate faculty in opera-
tion, and now she knew what to think of it. It was the whole
creature-it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to inter-
fere with it, and though she was constantly extending her

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