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460 460 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. overdo it ; you lose sight of the real. I am much simpler than you think." " I think you are very simple." And Madame Merle kept her eye upon her cup. " I have come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old ; but it is only since your marriage that I have understood you. I have seen better what you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be very careful of that precious object." "It already has a small crack," said Osmond, dryly, as he put it down. "If you didn't understand me before I married, it was cruelly rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself ; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little ; I only asked that she should like me." " That she should like you so much ! " " So much, of course ; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that." " I never adored you," said Madame Merle. " Ah, but you pretended to ! " " It is true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit," Madame Merle went on. " My wife has declined declined to do anything of the sort," said Osmond. " If you are determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy is hardly for her." " The tragedy is for me ! " Madame Merle exclaimed, rising, with a long low sigh, but giving a glance at the same time at the contents of her mantel-shelf. "It appears that I am to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false position." " You express yourself like a sentence in a copy-book. We must look for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least my child does. I shall look for com- pensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven't a fault to find with her." " Ah," said Madame Merle, softly, " if I had a child- Osmond hesitated a moment and then, with a little formal air " The children of others may be a great interest ! " he announced. " You are more like a copy-book than I. There is something, after all, that holds us together.' " Is it the idea of the harm I may do you ? " Osmond asked. " No ; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It is that," said Madame Merle, " that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be my work," she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing into its usual social expression.