Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/145

 work of art? You looked rather shocked at first; but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do with your own life."

Isabel looked up from her book.

"What you despise most in the world is bad art."

"Possibly. But yours seem to me very good."

"If I were to go to Japan next winter, you would laugh at me," Isabel continued.

Osmond gave a smile—a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their conversation was not jocular. Isabel was almost tremulously serious; he had seen her so before.

"You have an imagination that startles one!"

"That is exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."

"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it is one of the countries I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?"

"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.

"You have a better excuse—the means of going. You are quite wrong in your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what put it into your head."

"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should have the means to travel, when you have not; for you know everything, and I know nothing."

"The more reason why you should travel and learn," said Osmond, smiling. "Besides," he added, more gravely, "I don't know everything."

Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life—so it pleased her to qualify her little visit to Rome—was coming to an end. That most of the interest of this episode