whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service."

"No, no; by herself."

"Ah, I protest!" Isabel earnestly cried. "If ever there was a woman who
made small claims--!"

"You put your finger on it," Ralph interrupted. "Her modesty's
exaggerated. She has no business with small claims--she has a perfect
right to make large ones."

"Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself."

"Her merits are immense," said Ralph. "She's indescribably blameless; a
pathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a
chance."

"A chance for what?"

"Well, say to call her a fool! She's the only woman I know who has but
that one little fault."

Isabel turned away with impatience. "I don't understand you; you're too
paradoxical for my plain mind."

"Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in the
vulgar sense--that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of
herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too
far--that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She's too good, too
kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She's
too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and
that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt
about Aristides the Just."

Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked
in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. "Do you
wish Madame Merle to be banished?"

"By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,"
said Ralph Touchett simply.

"You're very odious, sir!" Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if
he knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.

"Nothing whatever. Don't you see that's just what I mean? On the
character of every one else you may find some little black speck; if
I were to take half an hour to it, some day, I've no doubt I should be
able to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I'm spotted like a
leopard. But on Madame Merle's nothing, nothing, nothing!"

"That's just what I think!" said Isabel with a toss of her head. "That
is why I like her so much."

"She's a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world
you couldn't have a better guide."

"I suppose you mean by that that she's worldly?"

"Worldly? No," said Ralph, "she's the great round world itself!"

It had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into her head to
b