25
" She might fairly, as she watched them, have missed it as a lost thing; have yearned for it, for the straight vindictive view, the rights of resentment, the rages of jealousy, the protests of passion, as for something she had been cheated of not least: a range of feelings which for many women would have meant so much, but which for her husband’s wife, for her father’s daughter, figured nothing nearer to experience than a wild eastern caravan, looming into view with crude colours in the sun, fierce pipes in the air, high spears against the sky, all a thrill, a natural joy to mingle with, but turning off short before it reached her and plunging into other defiles. She "
― Henry James , The Golden Bowl
32
" His love of music, unlike his other loves, owned to vaguenesses, but while, on his comparatively shaded sofa, and smoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great Fawns drawing-room as everywhere, the cigars of his youth, rank with associations – while, I say, he so listened to Charlotte’s piano, where the score was ever absent but, between the lighted candles, the picture distinct, the vagueness spread itself about him like some boundless carpet, a surface delightfully soft to the pressure of his interest. "
― Henry James , The Golden Bowl
36
" Through her sublimity?" "Through her noble, lonely life. Only--that's essential--it mustn't be lonely. It will be all right if she marries." "So we're to marry her?" "We're to marry her. It will be," Mrs. Assingham continued, "the great thing I can do." She made it out more and more. "It will make up." "Make up for what?" As she said nothing, however, his desire for lucidity renewed itself. "If everything's so all right what is there to make up for?" "Why, if I did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. If I made a mistake." "You'll make up for it by making another?" And then as she again took her time: "I thought your whole point is just that you're sure." "One can never be ideally sure of anything. There are always possibilities." "Then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?" It made her again look at him. "Where would you have been, my dear, if I hadn't meddled with YOU?" "Ah, that wasn't meddling--I was your own. I was your own," said the Colonel, "from the moment I didn't object. "
― Henry James , The Golden Bowl