is what I most see in him,” the girl declared. “What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.”
“Yes,” Ralph said, “I know him very little, and I confess I haven’t facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can’t help feeling that you’re running a grave risk.”
“Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk’s as grave as mine.”
“That’s his affair! If he’s afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he would.”
Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her cousin. “I don’t think I understand you,” she said at last coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I believed you’d marry a man of more importance.”
Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped into her face. “Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that one’s husband should be of importance to one’s self!”
Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an air of the most respectful deliberation.
“I’ll tell you in a moment what I mean,” he presently said. He felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle.
Isabel waited a little — then she went on with majesty. “In everything that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond’s is the finest I know; he’s good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever enough. I’m far more struck with what he has and what he represents than with what he may lack.”
“I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,” Ralph observed without answering this; “I had amused myself with planning out a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not to come down so easily or so soon.”
“Come down, you say?”
“Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue — to be, sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud — a missile that should never have reached you — and straight you drop to the ground. It hurts me,” said Ralph audaciously, “hurts me as if I had fallen myself!”
The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion’s face. “I don’t understand you in the least,” she repeated. “You say you amused yourself with a project for my career — I don’t understand that. Don’t amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you’re doing it at my expense.”
Ralph shook his head. “I’m not afraid of your not believing that I’ve had great ideas for you.”
“What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?” she pursued.
“I’ve never moved on a higher plane than I’m moving on now. There’s nothing higher for a girl than to marry a — a person she likes,” said poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
“It’s your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature.” Ralph hesitated, then added: “I can’t get over the sense that Osmond is somehow — well, small.” He had uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of considering.
“Small?” She made it sound immense.
“I think he’s narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!”
“He has a great respect for himself; I don’t blame him for that,” said Isabel. “It makes one more sure to respect others.”
Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
“Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one’s relation to things — to others. I don’t think Mr. Osmond does that.”
“I’ve chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he’s excellent.”
“He’s the incarnation of taste,” Ralph went on, thinking hard how he could best express Gilbert Osmond’s sinister attributes without putting himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe him impersonally, scientifically. “He judges and measures, approves and condemns, altogether by that.”
“It’s a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.”
“It’s exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride. But have you ever seen such a taste — a really exquisite one — ruffled?”
“I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband’s.”
At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph’s lips. “Ah, that’s wilful, that’s unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that way — you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!”
Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult. But “You go too far,” she simply breathed.
“I’ve said what I had on my mind — and I’ve said it because I love you!”
Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden wish to strike him off. “Ah then, you’re not disinterested!”
“I love you, but I love without hope,” said Ralph quickly, forcing a smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he intended.
Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the garden; but after a little she turned back to him. “I’m afraid your talk then is the wildness of despair! I don’t understand it — but it doesn’t matter. I’m not arguing with you; it’s impossible I should; I’ve only tried to listen to you. I’m much obliged to you for attempting to explain,” she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung up had already subsided. “It’s very good of you to try to warn me, if you’re really alarmed; but I won’t promise to think of what you’ve said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you’ve done your duty, and no man can do more. I can’t explain to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn’t if I could.” She paused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession. “I can’t enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can’t do it justice, because I see him in quite another way. He’s not important — no, he’s not important; he’s a man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that’s what you mean when you call him ‘small,’ then he’s as small as you please. I call that large — it’s the largest thing I know. I won’t pretend to argue with you about a person I’m going to marry,” Isabel repeated. “I’m not in the least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he’s not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn’t
