Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/381

373 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 373 her ; she had made herself small, pretending there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had heen under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now she saw the whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole. Ah, she had him immensely under the charm ! It had not passed away ; it was there still ; she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful that he succeeded. He succeeded because he was sincere ; it never occurred to her to deny him that. He admired her he had told her why; because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might very well have been true ; for during those months she had imagined a world of things that had no substance. She had a vision of him she had not read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of portraits. That he was poor and lonely, and yet that somehow he was noble that was what interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There was an indefinable beauty about him in his situation, in his mind, in his face. She had felt at the same time tha^ he was helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager, strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all this that she found her occasion. She would launch his boat for him ; she would be his providence ; it would be a good thing to love him. And she loved him a good deal for what she found in him, but a good deal also for what she brought him. As she looked back at the passion of those weeks she perceived in it a kind of maternal strain the happiness of a woman who felt that she was a contributor, that she came with full hands. But for her money, as she saw to-day, she wouldn't have done it. And then her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author of infinite woe ! For this was a fact. At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other conscience. What