The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
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Lord Mark wonderedâ âhe was, oh yes, adequately human. âYou donât go about?â
She looked over the place, the storey above the apartments in which she had received him, the sala corresponding to the sala below and fronting the great canal with its gothic arches. The casements between the arches were open, the ledge of the balcony broad, the sweep of the canal, so overhung, admirable, and the flutter toward them of the loose white curtain an invitation to she scarce could have said what. But there was no mystery after a moment; she had never felt so invited to anything as to make that, and that only, just where she was, her adventure. It would beâ âto this it kept coming backâ âthe adventure of not stirring. âI go about just here.â
âDo you mean,â Lord Mark presently asked, âthat youâre really not well?â
They were at the window, pausing, lingering, with the fine old faded palaces opposite and the slow Adriatic tide beneath; but after a minute, and before she answered, she had closed her eyes to what she saw and unresistingly dropped her face into her arms, which rested on the coping. She had fallen to her knees on the cushion of the window-place, and she leaned there, in a long silence, with her forehead down. She knew that her silence was itself too straight an answer, but it was beyond her now to say that she saw her way. She would have made the question itself impossible to othersâ âimpossible for example to such a man as Merton Densher; and she could wonder even on the spot what it was a sign of in her feeling for Lord Mark that from his lips it almost tempted her to break down. This was doubtless really because she cared for him so little; to let herself go with him thus, suffer his touch to make her cup overflow, would be the reliefâ âsince it was actually, for her nerves, a question of reliefâ âthat would cost her least. If he had come to her moreover with the intention she believed, or even if this intention had but been determined in him by the spell of their situation, he mustnât be mistaken about her valueâ âfor what value did she now have? It throbbed within her as she knelt there that she had none at all; though, holding herself, not yet speaking, she tried, even in the act, to recover what might be possible of it. With that there came to her a light: wouldnât her value, for the man who should marry her, be precisely in the ravage of her disease? She mightnât last, but her money would. For a man in whom the vision of her money should be intense, in whom it should be most of the ground for âmaking upâ to her, any prospective failure on her part to be long for this world might easily count as a positive attraction. Such a man, proposing to please, persuade, secure her, appropriate her for such a time, shorter or longer, as nature and the doctors should allow, would make the best of her, ill, damaged, disagreeable though she might be, for the sake of eventual benefits: she being clearly a person of the sort esteemed likely to do the handsome thing by a stricken and sorrowing husband.
She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habits her youth might form, that of seeing an interested suitor in every bush should certainly never grow to be one of themâ âan attitude she had early judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in fact as little to do with it as possible and she scarce knew why at the present moment she should have had to catch herself in the act of imputing an ugly motive. It didnât sit, the ugly motive, in Lord Markâs cool English eyes; the darker side of it at any rate showed, to her imagination, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, simplified itself: there was a beautiful reasonâ âindeed there were twoâ âwhy her companionâs motive shouldnât matter. One was that even should he desire her without a penny she wouldnât marry him for the world; the other was that she felt him, after all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and humanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing to be well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her as threatened, haunted, blighted; but they were melting together for him, making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, as he probably called it to himself, he liked her. That was presently what remained with herâ âhis really doing it; and with the natural and proper incident of being conciliated by her weakness. Would she really have had himâ âshe could ask herself thatâ âdisconcerted or disgusted by it? If he could only be touched enough to do what she preferred, not to raise, not to press any question, he might render her a much better service than by merely enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it was strange, but he figured to her for the moment as the one safe sympathiser. It would have made her worse to talk to others, but she wasnât afraid with him of how he might wince and look pale. She would keep him, that is, her one easy relationâ âin the sense of easy for himself. Their actual outlook had meanwhile such charm, what surrounded them within and without did so much toward making appreciative stillness as natural as at the opera, that she could consider she hadnât made him hang on her lips when at last, instead of saying if she were well or ill, she repeated: âI go about here. I donât get tired of it. I never shouldâ âit suits me so. I adore the place,â she went on, âand I donât want in the least to give
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