The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
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She was out of it at present, for some reason, as she hadnât been for weeks; she was always out of it, that is, when alone, and her companions had never yet so much as just now affected her as dispersed and suppressed. It was as if still again, still more tacitly and wonderfully, Eugenio had understood her, taking it from her without a word and just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, of the beautiful day: âYes, get me an hour alone; take them offâ âI donât care where; absorb, amuse, detain them; drown them, kill them if you will: so that I may just a little, all by myself, see where I am.â She was conscious of the dire impatience of it, for she gave up Susie as well as the others to himâ âSusie who would have drowned her very self for her; gave her up to a mercenary monster through whom she thus purchased respites. Strange were the turns of life and the moods of weakness; strange the flickers of fancy and the cheats of hope; yet lawful, all the sameâ âwerenât they?â âthose experiments tried with the truth that consisted, at the worst, but in practising on oneâs self. She was now playing with the thought that Eugenio might inclusively assist her: he had brought home to her, and always by remarks that were really quite soundless, the conception, hitherto ungrasped, of some complete use of her wealth itself, some use of it as a countermove to fate. It had passed between them as preposterous that with so much money she should just stupidly and awkwardly wantâ âany more want a life, a career, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage or a cook. It was as if she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure of what he was in a position, at a stretch, to undertake for her; the thoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare with a looseness on Sir Luke Strettâs part thatâ âat least in Palazzo Leporelli when mornings were fineâ âshowed as almost amateurish. Sir Luke hadnât said to her âPay enough money and leave the rest to meââ âwhich was distinctly what Eugenio did say. Sir Luke had appeared indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a different sort of cash. Those were amounts not to be named nor reckoned, and such moreover as she wasnât sure of having at her command. Eugenioâ âthis was the differenceâ âcould name, could reckon, and prices of his kind were things she had never suffered to scare her. She had been willing, goodness knew, to pay enough for anything, for everything, and here was simply a new view of the sufficient quantity. She amused herselfâ âfor it came to that, since Eugenio was there to sign the receiptâ âwith possibilities of meeting the bill. She was more prepared than ever to pay enough, and quite as much as ever to pay too much. What elseâ âif such were points at which your most trusted servant failedâ âwas the use of being, as the dear Susies of earth called you, a princess in a palace?
She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, noble and peaceful while the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain or an outer blind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging to it; that perhaps Eugenio could manage. She was in it, as in the ark of her deluge, and filled with such a tenderness for it that why shouldnât this, in common mercy, be warrant enough? She would never, never leave itâ âshe would engage to that; would ask nothing more than to sit tight in it and float on and on. The beauty and intensity, the real momentary relief of this conceit, reached their climax in the positive purpose to put the question to Eugenio on his return as she had not yet put it; though the design, it must be added, dropped a little when, coming back to the great saloon from which she had started on her pensive progress, she found Lord Mark, of whose arrival in Venice she had been unaware, and who had nowâ âwhile a servant was following her through empty roomsâ âbeen asked, in her absence, to wait. He had waited then, Lord Mark, he was waitingâ âoh unmistakeably; never before had he so much struck her as the man to do that on occasion with patience, to do it indeed almost as with gratitude for the chance, though at the same time with a sort of notifying firmness. The odd thing, as she was afterwards to recall, was that her wonder for what had brought him was not immediate, but had come at the end of five minutes; and also, quite incoherently, that she felt almost as glad to see him, and almost as forgiving of his interruption of her solitude, as if he had already been in her thought or acting at her suggestion. He was somehow, at the best, the end of a respite; one might like him very much and yet feel that his presence tempered precious solitude more
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