It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton's departure.This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of mg I some importance to Isabel-the temporary absence, once again, of Madame Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a villa at Posilippo.Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of women might not also by chance be the most dangerous.Sometimes, at night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her friend-his friend-in dim, indistinguishable combination.It seemed to her that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.Isabel's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite.She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to her immediately after meeting him in Paris.He himself never wrote to Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he might not desire to see her.Their last interview, before her marriage, had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her.
Since then he had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time-the only one in fact with which a permanent pain was associated.He had left her that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels in broad daylight.There had been no mist, no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer wide.He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the tiller, and-to complete the metaphor-had given the lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking.It had been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only person with an unsatisfied claim on her.She had made him unhappy, she couldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality.She had cried with rage, after he had left her, at-she hardly knew what: she tried to think it had been at his want of consideration.He had come to her with his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of those pure rays.He had not been violent, and yet there had been a violence in the impression.There had been a violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted three or four days.
The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books.He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve.It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive.She could never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to say in the case of her English suitor.She had no faith in Mr.Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them.A cotton-factory was not a compensation for anything-least of all for having failed to marry Isabel Archer.And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had-save of course his intrinsic qualities.Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids.
If he extended his business-that, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion could take with him-it would be because it was an enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because he might hope it would overlay the past.This gave his figure a kind of bareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of human contacts.His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this impression of his loneliness.She asked Lily for news of him, from time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston-her imagination was all bounded on the east by Madison Avenue.As time went on Isabel had thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more than once the idea of writing to him.
