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XVI THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 131 " I think you meant it. Don't repudiate it ; it's so fine ! " "I don't know what you are trying to fasten upon me, for I am 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 have a great deal." " Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel ; but not more." Ealph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it. " We will find your cab," he said; and as they turned towards a neighbouring street in which it seemed that this quest would be fruitful, he asked her again if he might not see her safely to the inn. "By no means," she answered; "you are 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 am a sick man I am often annoyed," he said. " But it's worse when they remember it ! " XVI. ISABEL had had no hidden motive in wishing her cousin not to take her home ; it simply seemed to her that for some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the American girl who ends by regarding perpetual assistance as a sort of derogation to her sanity, had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude, and since her arrival in England it had been but scantily gratified. It was a luxury she could always command at home, and she had 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 love of solitude had caused her to dispense with Ralph's attendance. She was sitting, towards nine o'clock, in the dim illumination of Pratt's Hotel, trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, but succeeding only to the extent of reading other words on the page K 2