"Are you thinking of proposing to me?"
"By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that
supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my
insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who
won't marry Lord Warburton."
"That's what your mother counts upon too," said Isabel.
"Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of your career. I shall not see all
of it, but I shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend
you'd still have a career--a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking it would
be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the
unexpected. You know I'm extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you've kept the game
in your hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it."
"I don't understand you very well," said Isabel, "but I do so well enough to be able to say that if
you look for grand examples of anything from me I shall disappoint you."
"You'll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go hard with you!"
To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it that would bear consideration.
At last she said abruptly: "I don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don't
want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do."
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"There's nothing she can do so well. But you're of course so many-sided."
"If one's two-sided it's enough," said Isabel.
"You're the most charming of polygons!" her companion broke out. At a glance from his
companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it went on: "You want to see life--you'll be
hanged if you don't, as the young men say."
"I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I do want to look about me."
"You want to drain the cup of experience."
"No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink! I only want to see for
myself."
"You want to see, but not to feel," Ralph remarked.
"I don't think that if one's a sentient being one can make the distinction. I'm a good deal like
Henrietta. The other day when I asked her if she wished to marry she said: 'Not till I've seen
Europe!' I too don't wish to marry till I've seen Europe."
"You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you."
"No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it's getting very dark," Isabel
continued, "and I must go home." She rose from her place, but Ralph only sat still and looked at
her. As he remained there she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but
especially on Ralph's, of utterances too vague for words.
"You've answered my question," he said at last. "You've told me what I wanted. I'm greatly
obliged to you."
"It seems to me I've told you very little."
"You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that you want to throw yourself
into it."
Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. "I never said that." "I think you meant it. Don't
repudiate it. It's so fine!"
"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the least an adventurous spirit.
Women are not like men."
Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the square. "No," he said;
"women rarely boast of their courage. Men do so with a certain frequency."
"Men have it to boast of!"
"Women have it too. You've a great deal."
"Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel, but not more."
Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it. "We'll find your cab," he
said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring street in which this quest might avail he asked her
again if he mightn't see her safely to the inn.
"By no means," she answered; "you're very tired; you must go home and go to bed."
The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the door. "When people forget
I'm a poor creature I'm often incommoded," he said. "But it's worse when they remember it!"
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CHAPTER XVI
She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it simply struck her that for
some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of
the American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding
"affected" had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had
moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude, which since her arrival in England had been
but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could always command at home and she had wittingly
missed it. That evening, however, an incident occurred which--had there been a critic to note it-would
have taken all colour from the theory that the wish to be quite by herself had caused her to
dispense with her cousin's attendance. Seated toward nine o'clock in the dim illumination of Pratt's
Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from
Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the
page--words that Ralph had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly the well-muffed knuckle of the
waiter was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious
trophy, of the card of a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr.
Caspar Goodwood she let the man stand before her without signifying her wishes.
"Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am?" he asked with a slightly encouraging inflexion.
Isabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror. "He may come in," she said at
last; and waited for him not so much smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.
Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her, but saying nothing
till the servant had left the room. "Why didn't you answer my letter?" he then asked in a quick, full,
slightly peremptory tone--the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who was
capable of much insistence.
She answered by a ready question, "How did you know I was here?"
"Miss Stackpole let me know," said Caspar Goodwood. "She told me you would probably be at
home alone this evening and would be willing to see me."
"Where did she see you--to tell you that?"
"She didn't see me; she wrote to me."
Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air of defiance, or at least of
contention. "Henrietta never told me she was writing to you," she said at last. "This is not kind of
her."
"Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?" asked the young man.
"I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises."
"But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet."
"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a place as London it seemed very
possible."
"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me," her visitor went on.
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Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's treachery, as she momentarily qualified it,
was strong within her. "Henrietta's certainly not a model of all the delicacies!" she exclaimed with
bitterness. "It was a great liberty to take."
"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any others. The fault's mine as much as
hers."
As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been more square. This might have
displeased her, but she took a different turn. "No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What you've
done was inevitable, I suppose, for you."
"It was indeed!" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.
"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?"
"You may sit down, certainly."
She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place that offered, in the manner
of a man accustomed to pay little thought to that sort of furtherance. "I've been hoping every day
for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a few lines."
"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily have written you four pages as
one. But my silence was an intention," Isabel said. "I thought it the best thing."
He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them and attached them to a
spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a
strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his
strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting
any advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his
face she could enjoy being able to say "You know you oughtn't to have written to me yourself!"
and to say it with an air of triumph.
Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine through the vizard of a
helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was ready any day in the year--over and above this-to
argue the question of his rights. "You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know that.
But I never accepted any such rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon."
"I didn't say I hoped NEVER to hear from you," said Isabel.
"Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the same thing."
"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I can imagine that at the end of ten
years we might have a very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epistolary style."
She looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so much less earnest a cast than
the countenance of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, just as he said very
irrelevantly; "Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?"
"Very much indeed." She dropped, but then she broke out. "What good do you expect to get by
insisting?"
"The good of not losing you."
"You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even from your own point of view," Isabel
added, "you ought to know when to let one alone."
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"I disgust you very much," said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as if to provoke her to
compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that
he might endeavour to act with his eyes on it.
"Yes, you don't at all delight me, you don't fit in, not in any way, just now, and the worst is that
your putting it to the proof in this manner is quite unnecessary." It wasn't certainly as if his nature
had been soft, so that pin-pricks would draw blood from it; and from the first of her acquaintance
with him, and of her having to defend herself against a certain air that he had of knowing better
what was good for her than she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect frankness
was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility or to escape from him edgewise, as one
might do from a man who had barred the way less sturdily--this, in dealing with Caspar
Goodwood, who would grasp at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted
agility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as well as his active, was
large and hard, and he might always be trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they required it,
himself. She came back, even for her measure of possible pangs and aches in him, to her old sense
that he was naturally plated and steeled, armed essentially for aggression.
"I can't reconcile myself to that," he simply said. There was a dangerous liberality about it; for she
felt how open it was to him to make the point that he had not always disgusted her.
"I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it's not the state of things that ought to exist between us. If
you'd only try to banish me from your mind for a few months we should be on good terms again."
"I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up
indefinitely."
"Indefinitely is more than I ask. It's more even than I should like."
"You know that what you ask is impossible," said the young man, taking his adjective for granted
in a manner she found irritating.
"Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?" she demanded. "You're strong for everything
else; why shouldn't you be strong for that?"
"An effort calculated for what?" And then as she hung fire, "I'm capable of nothing with regard to
you," he went on, "but just of being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the
more strongly."
"There's a good deal in that;" and indeed our young lady felt the force of it--felt it thrown off, into
the vast of truth and poetry, as practically a bait to her imagination. But she promptly came round.
"Think of me or not, as you find most possible; only leave me alone."
"Until when?"
"Well, for a year or two."
"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference in the world."
"Call it two then," said Isabel with a studied effect of eagerness.
"And what shall I gain by that?" her friend asked with no sign of wincing.
"You'll have obliged me greatly."
"And what will be my reward?"
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"Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?"
"Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice."
"There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't understand such things. If you make the
sacrifice you'll have all my admiration."
"I don't care a cent for your admiration--not one straw, with nothing to show for it. When will you
marry me? That's the only question."
"Never--if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present."
"What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?"
"You'll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!" Caspar Goodwood bent his eyes again
and gazed a while into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face; she could see her
sharpness had at last penetrated. This immediately had a value --classic, romantic, redeeming, what
did she know? for her; "the strong man in pain" was one of the categories of the human appeal,
little charm as he might exert in the given case. "Why do you make me say such things to you?"
she cried in a trembling voice. "I only want to be gentle--to be thoroughly kind. It's not delightful
to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to try and reason them out of it. I think others also
ought to be considerate; we have each to judge for ourselves. I know you're considerate, as much
as you can be; you've good reasons for what you do. But I really don't want to marry, or to talk
about it at all now. I shall probably never do it--no, never. I've a perfect right to feel that way, and
it's no kindness to a woman to press her so hard, to urge her against her will. If I give you pain I
can only say I'm very sorry. It's not my fault; I can't marry you simply to please you. I won't say
that I shall always remain your friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it passes,
I believe, for a sort of mockery. But try me some day."
Caspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed upon the name of his hatter, and it
was not until some time after she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he did so the
sight of a rosy, lovely eagerness in Isabel's face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyse
her words. "I'll go home--I'll go to-morrow--I'll leave you alone," he brought out at last. "Only," he
heavily said, "I hate to lose sight of you!"
"Never fear. I shall do no harm."
"You'll marry some one else, as sure as I sit here," Caspar Goodwood declared.
"Do you think that a generous charge?"
"Why not? Plenty of men will try to make you."
"I told you just now that I don't wish to marry and that I almost certainly never shall."
"I know you did, and I like your 'almost certainly'! I put no faith in what you say."
"Thank you very much. Do you accuse me of lying to shake you off? You say very delicate
things."
"Why should I not say that? You've given me no pledge of anything at all."
"No, that's all that would be wanting!"
"You may perhaps even believe you're safe--from wishing to be. But you're not," the young man
went on as if preparing himself for the worst.
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"Very well then. We'll put it that I'm not safe. Have it as you please."
"I don't know, however," said Caspar Goodwood, "that my keeping you in sight would prevent it."
"Don't you indeed? I'm after all very much afraid of you. Do you think I'm so very easily pleased?"
she asked suddenly, changing her tone.
"No--I don't; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very dazzling
men in the world, no doubt; and if there were only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of
all will make straight for you. You'll be sure to take no one who isn't dazzling."
"If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever," Isabel said--"and I can't imagine what else you mean-
I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself."
"Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you'd teach me!"
She looked at him a moment; then with a quick smile, "Oh, you ought to marry!" she said.
He might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him to sound the infernal note,
and it is not on record that her motive for discharging such a shaft had been of the clearest. He
oughtn't to stride about lean and hungry, however--she certainly felt THAT for him. "God forgive
you!" he murmured between his teeth as he turned away.
Her accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she felt the need to right herself.
The easiest way to do it was to place him where she had been. "You do me great injustice--you say
what you don't know!" she broke out. "I shouldn't be an easy victim--I've proved it."
"Oh, to me, perfectly."
"I've proved it to others as well." And she paused a moment. "I refused a proposal of marriage last
week; what they call--no doubt--a dazzling one."
"I'm very glad to hear it," said the young man gravely.
"It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to recommend it." Isabel had
not proposed to herself to tell this story, but, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out
and doing herself justice took possession of her. "I was offered a great position and a great
fortune--by a person whom I like extremely."
