Chapter 19 - Page 2

couldn't have spent a week with
her without being sure of that. This was indeed Madame Merle's
great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she
had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction to be
taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was
pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so
seasily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her
rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of
passion, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at one
period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed
moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely
admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she
pretended to be perfectly sane.

"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems
to me one has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty;
before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition
much too ignorant. I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time
before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of some kind; I
often think that after forty one can't really feel. The
freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll keep them
longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me to
see you some years hence. I want to see what life makes of you.
One thing's certain--it can't spoil you. It may pull you about
horribly, but I defy it to break you up."

Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting
from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour,
might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a
recognition of merit it seemed to come with authority. How could
the lightest word do less on the part of a person who was
prepared to say, of almost everything Isabel told her, "Oh, I've
been in that, my dear; it passes, like everything else." On many
of her interlocutors Madame Merle might have produced an
irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise
her. But Isabel, though by no means incapable of desiring to be
effective, had not at present this impulse. She was too sincere,
too interested in her judicious companion. And then moreover
Madame Merle never said such things in the tone of triumph or of
boastfulness; they dropped from her like cold confessions.

A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days
grew shorter and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties on
the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with
her fellow visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often
sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive apparatus
which the English climate and the English genius have between
them brought to such perfection. Madame