"My wife has declined—declined to do anything of the sort," said Osmond. "If you are determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy is hardly for her."
"The tragedy is for me!" Madame Merle exclaimed, rising, with a long low sigh, but giving a glance at the same time at the contents of her mantel-shelf. "It appears that I am to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false position."
"You express yourself like a sentence in a copy-book. We must look for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven't a fault to find with her."
"Ah," said Madame Merle, softly, "if I had a child—"
Osmond hesitated a moment; and then, with a little formal air—"The children of others may be a great interest!" he announced.
"You are more like a copy-book than I. There is something, after all, that holds us together."
"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?" Osmond asked.
"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It is that," said Madame Merle, "that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be my work," she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing into its usual social expression. Osmond took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff—"On the whole, I think," he said, "you had better leave it to me."
After he had left her, Madame Merle went and lifted from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. "Have I been so vile all for nothing?" she murmured to herself.
