Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband’s study. Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of watercolours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.
“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said.
“When I come to your room I always knock,” he answered, going on with his work.
“I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin’s dying.”
“Ah, I don’t believe that,” said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. “He was dying when we married; he’ll outlive us all.”
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention “My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.”
“Why must you go to Gardencourt?” Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.
“To see Ralph before he dies.”
To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no negligence. “I don’t see the need of it,” he said at last. “He came to see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it’s not to have been the last. Ah, you’re not grateful!”
“What am I to be grateful for?”
Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife. “For my not having interfered while he was here.”
“Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you didn’t like it. I was very glad when he went away.”
“Leave him alone then. Don’t run after him.”
Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing. “I must go to England,” she said, with a full consciousness that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly obstinate.
“I shall not like it if you do,” Osmond remarked.
“Why should I mind that? You won’t like it if I don’t. You like nothing I do or don’t do. You pretend to think I lie.”
Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. “That’s why you must go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.”
“I know nothing about revenge.”
“I do,” said Osmond. “Don’t give me an occasion.”
“You’re only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit some folly.”
“I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.”
“If I disobeyed you?” said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of mildness.
“Let it be clear. If you leave Rome today it will be a piece of the most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.”
“How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt’s telegram but three minutes ago.”
“You calculate rapidly; it’s a great accomplishment. I don’t see why we should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.” And he stood there as if he expected to see her withdraw.
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 forever 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 recognised 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 I
