Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/50

42 42 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. of his heroine must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines, which had never been cor- rected by the judgment of people who seemed to her to speak with authority. Jn matters of opinion she had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again ; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living ; that one should be one of the best, should be con- scious of a tine organization (she could not help knowing her organization was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of oneself as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend; one should try to be one's own best friend, and to give oneself, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, and bravery, and magnanimity ; "she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action; she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble, as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered her), that the chance of inflict- ing a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That always seemed to her the worst thing that could happen to one. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the things that were wrong. She had no taste for thinking of them, but~Vhenever she looked at them fixedly she recognized them. It was wrong to be mean, to^be jealous, to be fal>e, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed right to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit is the danger of inconsistency the danger of keeping up the flag after the place has surrendered ; a sort of behaviour so anomalous as to be almost a dishonour to the -flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of artillery to which young ladies are exposed, flattered herself that such contradictions would never be observed in her