valuation
of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a
peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse
with. "Isabel's not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish," he said
at last. "To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as
that?"

"I've thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle answered.
"Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you
she feared."

"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not
responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at
all: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of
me that I can see," he went on; "how then should I have made her? You're
at least as brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish;
one might suppose you knew me by this time." He got up as he spoke and
walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if
he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare
porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it
in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,
he pursued: "You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you
lose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you think."

"I think you're very simple." And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
"I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's
only since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what
you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please
be very careful of that precious object."

"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack," said Osmond dryly as he put
it down. "If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly
rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box
myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I
only asked that she should like me."

"That she should like you so much!"

"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she
should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that."

"I never adored you," said Madame Merle.

"Ah, but you pretended to!"

"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit," Madame
Merle went on.

"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort," said
Osmond. "If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's
hardly for her."

"The tragedy's for me!" Madame