She had become too
flexible, too useful, was too ripe and too final. She was in a word
too perfectly the social animal that man and woman are supposed to
have been intended to be; and she had rid herself of every remnant
of that tonic wildness which we may assume to have belonged even to
the most amiable persons in the ages before country-house life was the
fashion. Isabel found it difficult to think of her in any detachment
or privacy, she existed only in her relations, direct or indirect,
with her fellow mortals. One might wonder what commerce she could
possibly hold with her own spirit. One always ended, however, by
feeling that a charming surface doesn't necessarily prove one
superficial; this was an illusion in which, in one's youth, one had
but just escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was not superficial-
not she. She was deep, and her nature spoke none the less in her
behaviour because it spoke a conventional tongue. "What's language
at all but a convention?" said Isabel. "She has the good taste not
to pretend, like some people I've met, to express herself by
original signs."
"I'm afraid you've suffered much," she once found occasion to say to
her friend in response to some allusion that had appeared to reach
far.
Pages:
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335