But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem;she still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary degree, of making her feel this need.There was something in her imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement."You've no reason for such a wish," said Isabel, "and I've every reason for going.I can't tell you how unjust you seem to me.But I think you know.It's your own opposition that's calculated.It's malignant."She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond.But he showed no surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to draw her out."It's all the more intense then,"he answered.And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel: "This is a very important matter." She recognized that; she was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a crisis.Its gravity made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on."You say I've no reason?
I have the very best.I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do.It's dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent.Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions to him.I've already made the very handsomest.Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week Iexpected him to go.I've never liked him and he has never liked me.
That's why you like him-because he hates me," said Osmond with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice."I've an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do.She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men.Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us.You smile most expressively when I talk about us, but I assure you that we, Mrs.Osmond, is all I know.I take our marriage seriously;you appear to have found a way of not doing so.I'm not aware that we're divorced or separated; for me we're indissolubly united.You are nearer to me than any human creature, and I'm nearer to you.It may be a disagreeable proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making.You don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing, because-because-" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say which would be very much to the point.
"Because I think we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!"He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm haddropped out of his tone.It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads.His last words were not command, they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one's country.
He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious-the observance of a magnificent form.They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act.Isabel had not changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory.It came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit.Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action-a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch.If she must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather than a dupe."I know you're a master of the art of mockery," she said.
"How can you speak of an indissoluble union-how can you speak of your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?
Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in your heart?""It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.""We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
"That's very little; that's nothing.I might do much more."He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long enough in Italy to catch this trick."Ah, if you've come to threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table, where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it."I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said Isabel.
He turned quickly around, and she could see this movement at least was not designed.He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of your mind?" he enquired.
"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially if all you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
He sat down before his table."I really can't argue with you on the hypothesis of your defying me," he said.And he took up one of his little brushes again.
