He spoke in the name of
something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.
They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers
had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not
changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in
the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it
began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It
came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after
all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes
before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which
she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she
must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather
than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of mockery," she said.
"How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of
your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?
Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in
your heart?"

"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks."

"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.

"Indeed we don't if you go to England."

"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."

He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived
long enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've come to
threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table, where
he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood
studying it.

"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said Isabel.

He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was
not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of your
mind?" he enquired.

"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially if all
you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.

He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on the
hypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one of his
little brushes again.

She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye
his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after
which she quickly left the room