no point of
equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection,
in other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other.
However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for
her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been.
I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids
in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the
broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point
designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these
emotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt
and Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival
Gilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during
which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose
house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he
should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.
Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long
before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on
this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin
was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day
to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was
prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.

CHAPTER XXXII

It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood
at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any
of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,
but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,
and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she
should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What
he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing
in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction
doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked
in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,
and as if she were "worth more" for it, like some curious piece in an
antiquary's collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
tray. "Let the gentleman come in," she said, and