It wished, therefore, to hold fast to
justice-not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle
with its disappointment would be a petty revenge-especially as the
pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It
might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds.
It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes
open; if ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was
doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had
been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had
looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a
mistake, there was only one way to repair it-just immensely (oh,
with the highest grandeur! to accept it. One folly was enough,
especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much
set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness
which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all
that, in taking her precautions.
One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome
Isabel came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her
general determination to be just that she was at present very thankful
for Pansy-it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were
pure and weak.
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