They were as perfectly apart in feeling as
two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet
separated in act. Isabel had not changed; her old passion for
justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her
sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a
tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It came over her
that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and
that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she
had felt all the joy of irreflective action-a joy to which she had
so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she
must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather
than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of mockery," she said.
"How can you speak of an indissoluble union-how can you speak of
your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?
Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion
in your heart?"
"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks."
"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
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