Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/170

 "Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral."

"That is in keeping—you must have felt as if you were coming to a funeral," Isabel said, forcing a smile, in order to offer such encouragement as she might to an easy treatment of their situation. She had reasoned out the matter elaborately; she had made it perfectly clear that she broke no faith, that she falsified no contract; but for all this she was afraid of him. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff persistency—a persistency in which there was almost a want of tact; especially as there was a dull dark beam in his eye which rested on her almost like a physical weight.

"No, I didn't feel that; because I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I could!" said Caspar Goodwood, plainly.

"I thank you immensely."

"I would rather think of you as dead than as married to another man."

"That is very selfish of you!" Isabel cried, with the ardour of a real conviction. "If you are not happy yourself, others have a right to be."

"Very likely it is selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so. I don't mind anything you can say now—I don't feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pinpricks. After what you have done I shall never feel anything. I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life."

Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with a sort of dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than touched her; but her