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210 210 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. " What you see. Put her in your way." " Isn't she meant for something better than that 1 " {t I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. " I only know what I can do with them." " I am sorry for Miss Archer ! " Osmond declared. Madame Merle got up. " If that is a beginning of interest in her, I take note of it." The two stood there, face to face ; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so. " You are looking very well," Osmond repeated, still more irrelevantly than before. " You have got some idea. You are never as well as when you have got an idea ; they are always becoming to you." In the manner of these two persons, on first meeting on any occasion, and especially when they met in the presence of others, there was something indirect and circumspect, which showed itself in glance and tone. They approached each other obliquely, as it were, and they addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an embarrassing degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off such embarrassments better than her friend ; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the manner she would have liked to have the perfect self-possession she would have wished to exhibit to her host. The point I wish to make is, however, that at a certain moment the obstruction, whatever it was, always levelled itself, and left them more closely face to face than either of them ever was with any one else. This was what had happened now. They stood there, knowing each other well, and each of them on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing, as a compensation for the inconveni- ence whatever it might be of being known. " I wish very much you were not so heartless," said Madame Merle, quietly. " It has always been against you, and it will be against you now." " I am not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don't understand it ; I don't see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the same." " You will probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you will never understand. There is no particular need that you should." "You, after all, are the most remarkable woman," said Osmond. " You have more in you than almost any one. I