Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 3.djvu/173

 her ripe freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture that she had provoked on Isabel's part in the morning; she bent her face and covered it with her hands.

"Are you going to weep, after all?" Osmond asked; and on her remaining motionless he went on—"Have I ever complained to you?"

She dropped her hands quickly. "No, you have taken your revenge otherwise—you have taken it on her."

Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling, and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the heavenly powers. "Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist."

"Of course you haven't complained. You have enjoyed your triumph too much."

"I am rather curious to know what you call my triumph."

"You have made your wife afraid of you."

Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse with. "Isabel is not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish," he said at last. "To what do you wish to provoke me when you say such things as that?"

"I have thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle answered. "Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she feared."

"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I am not responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at all; you are capable of acting without her. I have