He was a member of your family and he left you-so long as you should be in England-to my care," said Goodwood as if he were making a great point."Do you know what he said to me the last time I saw him-as he lay there where he died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let you.'"Isabel suddenly got up."You had no business to talk about me!""Why not-why not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded, following her fast."And he was dying-when a man's dying it's different." She checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time.That had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea, which she scented in all her being."But it doesn't matter!" he exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem of her garment."If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have known all the same.I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral to see what's the matter with you.You can't deceive me any more; for God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you.You're the most unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of fiends."She turned on him as if he had struck her."Are you mad?" she cried.
"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing.Don't think it's necessary to defend him.But I won't say another word against him;I'll speak only of you," Goodwood added quickly."How can you pretend you're not heartbroken? You don't know what to do-you don't know where to turn.It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too-what it would cost you to come here.It will have cost you your life? Say it will"-and he flared almost into anger: "give me one word of truth! When I know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you? What would you think of me if Ishould stand still and see you go back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for it!'-that's what Touchett said to me.Imay tell you that, mayn't I? He was such a near relation!" cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point again."I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right.It was after he got home-when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too.I understand all about it: you're afraid to go back.You're perfectly alone; you don't know where to turn.You can't turn anywhere; you know that perfectly.Now it is therefore that I want you to think of me.""To think of 'you'?" Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk.
The idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed large.She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had been a comet in the sky.
"You don't know where to turn.Turn straight to me.I want to persuade you to trust me," Goodwood repeated.And then he paused with his shining eyes."Why should you go back-why should you go through that ghastly form?""To get away from you!" she answered.But this expressed only a little of what she felt.The rest was that she had never been loved before.She had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden.It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced open her set teeth.
At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that he would break out into greater violence.But after an instant he was perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it all out."I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you'll only for once listen to me.It's too monstrous of you to think of sinking back into that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air.It's you that are out of your mind.Trust me as if I had the care of you.Why shouldn't we be happy-when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I'm yours for ever-for ever and ever.
Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock.What have you to care about?
You've no children; that perhaps would be an obstacle.As it is you've nothing to consider.You must save what you can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the world.
