Quotation from: The Bostonians (Volume II of II)

Written by: Henry James


It is to be feared, indeed, that Verena was easily satisfied (convinced,
I mean, not that she ought to succumb to him, but that there were
lovely, neglected, almost unsuspected truths on his side); and there is
further evidence on the same head in the fact that after the first once
or twice she found nothing to say to him (much as she was always saying
to herself) about the cruel effect her apostasy would have upon Olive.
She forbore to plead that reason after she had seen how angry it made
him, and with how almost savage a contempt he denounced so flimsy a
pretext. He wanted to know since when it was more becoming to take up
with a morbid old maid than with an honourable young man; and when
Verena pronounced the sacred name of friendship he inquired what
fanatical sophistry excluded him from a similar privilege. She had told
him, in a moment of expansion (Verena believed she was immensely on her
guard, but her guard was very apt to be lowered), that his visits to
Marmion cast in Olive's view a remarkable light upon his chivalry; she
chose to regard his resolute pursuit of Verena as a covert persecution
of herself. Verena repented, as soon as she had spoken, of having given
further currency to this taunt; but she perceived the next moment no
harm was done, Basil Ransom taking in perfectly good part Miss
Chancellor's reflexions on his delicacy, and making them the subject of
much free laughter. She could not know, for in the midst of his hilarity
the young man did not compose himself to tell her, that he had made up
his mind on this question before he left New York--as long ago as when
he wrote her the note (subsequent to her departure from that city) to
which allusion has already been made, and which was simply the fellow of
the letter addressed to her after his visit to Cambridge: a friendly,
respectful, yet rather pregnant sign that, decidedly, on second
thoughts, separation didn't imply for him the intention of silence. We
know a little about his second thoughts, as much as is essential, and
especially how the occasion of their springing up had been the windfall
of an editor's encouragement. The importance of that encouragement, to
Basil's imagination, was doubtless much augmented by his desire for an
excuse to take up again a line of behaviour which he had forsworn (small
as had, as yet, been his opportunity to indulge in it) very much less
than he supposed; still, it worked an appreciable revolution in his view
of his case, and made him ask himself what amount of consideration he
should (from the most refined Southern point of view) owe Miss
Chancellor in the event of his deciding to go after Verena Tarrant in
earnest. He was not slow to decide that he owed her none. Chivalry had
to do with one's relations with people one hated, not with those one
loved. He didn't hate poor Miss Olive, though she might make him yet;
and even if he did, any chivalry was all moonshine which should require
him to give up the girl he adored in order that his third cousin should
see he could be gallant. Chivalry was forbearance and generosity with
regard to the weak; and there was nothing weak about Miss Olive, she was
a fighting woman, and she would fight him to the death, giving him not
an inch of odds. He felt that she was fighting there all day long, in
her cottage fortress; her resistance was in the air he breathed, and
Verena came out to him sometimes quite limp and pale from the tussle.

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