“Then Carlsbad, the supreme type of a German health resort; then Nuremberg, the mediaeval; then Anspach, the extinct princely capital; then Wurzburg, the ecclesiastical rococo; then Weimar, for the literature of a great epoch; then imperial Berlin; then Frankfort, the memory of the old free city; then Dusseldorf, the centre of the most poignant personal interest in the world—I don't see how we could have done better, if we'd planned it all, and not acted from successive impulses.”
“It's been grand; it's been perfect! As German-Silver Wedding Journey it's perfect—it seems as if it had been ordered! But I will never let you give up Holland! No, we will go this afternoon, and when I get to Schevleningen, I'll go to bed, and stay there, till you've completed your after-cure.”
“Do you think that will be wildly gay for the convalescent?”
She suddenly began to cry. “Oh, dearest, what shall we do? I feel perfectly broken down. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick—and away from home! How could you ever let me overdo, so?” She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and turned her face into the sofa pillow.
This was rather hard upon him, whom her vivid energy and inextinguishable interest had not permitted a moment's respite from pleasure since they left Carlsbad. But he had been married, too long not to understand that her blame of him was only a form of self-reproach for her own self-forgetfulness. She had not remembered that she was no longer young till she had come to what he saw was a nervous collapse. The fact had its pathos and its poetry which no one could have felt more keenly than he. If it also had its inconvenience and its danger he realized these too.
“Isabel,” he said, “we are going home.”
“Very well, then it will be your doing.”
“Quite. Do you think you could stand it as far as Cologne? We get the sleeping-car there, and you can lie down the rest of the way to Ostend.”
“This afternoon? Why I'm perfectly strong; it's merely my nerves that are gone.” She sat up, and wiped her eyes. “But Basil! If you're doing this for me—”
“I'm doing it for myself,” said March, as he went out of the room.