The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
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He had looked about at the rococo elegance as if there were fifty things it didnât give her, so that he suggested with urgency the most absent. But she met his remedy with a smile. âIâve the best advice in the world. Iâm acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, in talking with you thus. One canât, as I tell you, do more than live.â
âOh live!â Lord Mark ejaculated.
âWell, itâs immense for me.â She finally spoke as if for amusement; now that she had uttered her truth, that he had learnt it from herself as no one had yet done, her emotion had, by the fact, dried up. There she was; but it was as if she would never speak again. âI shanât,â she added, âhave missed everything.â
âWhy should you have missed anything?â She felt, as he sounded this, to what, within the minute, he had made up his mind. âYouâre the person in the world for whom thatâs least necessary; for whom one would call it in fact most impossible; for whom âmissingâ at all will surely require an extraordinary amount of misplaced good will. Since you believe in advice, for Godâs sake take mine. I know what you want.â
Oh she knew he would know it. But she had brought it on herselfâ âor almost. Yet she spoke with kindness. âI think I want not to be too much worried.â
âYou want to be adored.â It came at last straight. âNothing would worry you less. I mean as I shall do it. It is soââ âhe firmly kept it up. âYouâre not loved enough.â
âEnough for what, Lord Mark?â
âWhy to get the full good of it.â
Well, she didnât after all mock at him. âI see what you mean. That full good of it which consists in finding oneâs self forced to love in return.â She had grasped it, but she hesitated. âYour idea is that I might find myself forced to love you?â
âOh âforcedââ â!â He was so fine and so expert, so awake to anything the least ridiculous, and of a type with which the preaching of passion somehow so ill consortedâ âhe was so much all these things that he had absolutely to take account of them himself. And he did so, in a single intonation, beautifully. Milly liked him again, liked him for such shades as that, liked him so that it was woeful to see him spoiling it, and still more woeful to have to rank him among those minor charms of existence that she gasped at moments to remember she must give up. âIs it inconceivable to you that you might try?â
âTo be so favourably affected by youâ â?â
âTo believe in me. To believe in me,â Lord Mark repeated.
Again she hesitated. âTo âtryâ in return for your trying?â
âOh I shouldnât have to!â he quickly declared. The prompt neat accent, however, his manner of disposing of her question, failed of real expression, as he himself the next moment intelligently, helplessly, almost comically sawâ âa failure pointed moreover by the laugh into which Milly was immediately startled. As a suggestion to her of a healing and uplifting passion it was in truth deficient; it wouldnât do as the communication of a force that should sweep them both away. And the beauty of him was that he too, even in the act of persuasion, of self-persuasion, could understand that, and could thereby show but the better as fitting into the pleasant commerce of prosperity. The way she let him see that she looked at him was a thing to shut him out, of itself, from services of danger, a thing that made a discrimination against him never yet madeâ âmade at least to any consciousness of his own. Born to float in a sustaining air, this would be his first encounter with a judgement formed in the sinister light of tragedy. The gathering dusk of her personal world presented itself to him, in her eyes, as an element in which it was vain for him to pretend he could find himself at home, since it was charged with depressions and with dooms, with the chill of the losing game. Almost without her needing to speak, and simply by the fact that there could be, in such a case, no decent substitute for a felt intensity, he had to take it from her that practically he was afraidâ âwhether afraid to protest falsely enough, or only afraid of what might be eventually disagreeable in a compromised alliance, being a minor question. She believed she made out besides, wonderful girl, that he had never quite expected to have to protest about anything beyond his natural convenienceâ âmore, in fine, than his disposition and habits, his education as well, his personal moyens, in short, permitted. His predicament was therefore one he couldnât like, and also one she willingly would have spared him hadnât he brought it on himself. No man, she was quite aware, could enjoy thus having it from her that he wasnât good for what she would have called her reality. It wouldnât have taken much more to enable her positively to make out in him that he was virtually capable of hintingâ âhad his innermost feeling spokenâ âat the propriety rather, in his interest, of some cutting down, some dressing up, of the offensive real. He would meet that halfway, but the real must also meet him. Millyâs sense of it for herself, which was so conspicuously, so financially supported, couldnât, or wouldnât, so accommodate him, and the perception of that fairly showed in his face after a moment like the smart of a blow. It had marked the one minute during which he could again be touching to her. By the time he had tried once more, after all, to insist, he had quite ceased to be so.
By this time she had turned from their window to make a diversion, had walked him through other rooms, appealing again to the inner charm of the place, going even so
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