wish
very much you were not so heartless," Madame Merle quietly said. "It has
always been against you, and it will be against you now."

"I'm not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches
me--as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for
me. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be. But it
touches me, all the same."

"You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some
things you'll never understand. There's no particular need you should."

"You, after all, are the most remarkable of women," said Osmond. "You
have more in you than almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs.
Touchett's niece should matter very much to me, when--when--" But he
paused a moment.

"When I myself have mattered so little?"

"That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and
appreciated such a woman as you."

"Isabel Archer's better than I," said Madame Merle.

Her companion gave a laugh. "How little you must think of her to say
that!"

"Do you suppose I'm capable of jealousy? Please answer me that."

"With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't."

"Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs.
Touchett's--Palazzo Crescentini--and the girl will be there."

"Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the
girl?" said Osmond. "You could have had her there at any rate."

Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question he
could ever put would find unprepared. "Do you wish to know why? Because
I've spoken of you to her."

Osmond frowned and turned away. "I'd rather not know that." Then in
a moment he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour
drawing. "Have you seen what's there--my last?"

Madame Merle drew near and considered. "Is it the Venetian Alps--one of
your last year's sketches?"

"Yes--but how you guess everything!"

She looked a moment longer, then turned away. "You know I don't care for
your drawings."

"I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much
better than most people's."

"That may very well be. But as the only thing you do--well, it's so
little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were
my ambitions."

"Yes; you've told me many times--things that were impossible."

"Things that were impossible," said Madame Merle. And then in quite a
different tone: "In itself your little picture's very good." She looked