Henry James, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

"He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility had governed him -- possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted, arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had consulted his taste in everything -- his taste alone perhaps, as a sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer; that was what made him so different from every one else." (Vol. I, XXIV) This was how Isabel fell into the labyrinth of beauty and love cautiously schemed by Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. Reading James is like following the entangled web of densely layered languages. The text is so finely woven.