s own character.
The gates of the girl's confidence were opened wider than they had ever
been; she said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet
said to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as
if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of
jewels. These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that
Isabel possessed, but there was all the greater reason for their being
carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one
should never regret a generous error and that if Madame Merle had not
the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse for Madame Merle.
There was no doubt she had great merits--she was charming, sympathetic,
intelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's
ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her own sex several
persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior
and preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame
Merle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She
knew how to think--an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought
to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel
couldn't have spent a week with her without being sure of that. This was
indeed Madame Merle's great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told
upon her; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction
to be taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was
pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so easily and
quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic; she
made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to having
been rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so
freely as of yore. She proposed moreover, as well as expected, to cease
feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and
now she pretended to be perfectly sane.

"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems to me
one has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty; before that
we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.
I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every
gain's a loss of some kind; I often think that after forty one can't
really feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll
keep them longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me