What had happened was something
that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet;
but here, when it came, she stopped- that sublime principle somehow
broke down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I
can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem
altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there
was a last vague space it couldn't cross- a dusky, uncertain tract
which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a
moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
CHAPTER 30
She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort,
and Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline,
thought very well of the successive hours passed in the train that
hurried his companion away from the city now distinguished by
Gilbert Osmond's preference- hours that were to form the first stage
in a larger scheme of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind;
she was planning a little trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr.
Bantling's aid. Isabel was to have three days in Florence before the
4th of June, the date of Mrs.
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