"'THE GOLDEN BOWL\n\nVolumes I and II, Complete\n\nBy Henry James\n\n\n1904\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK FIRST: THE PRINCE\n\n\n\n\nPART FIRST\n\n I\n\nThe Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was\none of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image\nof the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber.\nBrought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he\nrecognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the\nreal dimensions of such a case. If it was a question of an Imperium, he\nsaid to himself, and if one wished, as a Roman, to recover a little the\nsense of that, the place to do so was on London Bridge, or even, on a\nfine afternoon in May, at Hyde Park Corner. It was not indeed to either\nof those places that these grounds of his predilection, after all\nsufficiently vague, had, at the moment we are concerned with him, guided\nhis steps; he had strayed, simply enough, into Bond Street, where his\nimagination, working at comparatively short range, caused him now and\nthen to stop before a window in which objects massive and lumpish, in\nsilver and gold, in the forms to which precious stones contribute, or\nin leather, steel, brass, applied to a hundred uses and abuses, were as\ntumbled together as if, in the insolence of the Empire, they had been\nthe loot of far-off victories. The young man\'s movements, however,\nbetrayed no consistency of attention--not even, for that matter, when\none of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces shaded,\nas they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribboned hats, or more\ndelicately tinted still under the tense silk of parasols held at\nperverse angles in waiting victorias. And the Prince\'s undirected\nthought was not a little symptomatic, since, though the turn of\nthe season had come and the flush of the streets begun to fade, the\npossibilities of faces, on the August afternoon, were still one of the\nnotes of the scene. He was too restless--that was the fact--for any\nconcentration, and the last idea that would just now have occurred to\nhim in any connection was the idea of pursuit.\n\nHe had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before, and\nwhat had actually unsteadied him, as we join him, was the sense of how\nhe had been justified. Capture had crowned the pursuit--or success,\nas he would otherwise have put it, had rewarded virtue; whereby the\nconsciousness of these things made him, for the hour, rather serious\nthan gay. A sobriety that might have consorted with failure sat in his\nhandsome face, constructively regular and grave, yet at the same time\noddly and, as might be, functionally almost radiant, with its dark\nblue eyes, its dark brown moustache and its expression no more sharply\n\"foreign\" to an English view than to have caused it sometimes to be\nobserved of him with a shallow felicity that he looked like a \"refined\"\nIrishman. What had happened was that shortly before, at three o\'clock,\nhis fate had practically been sealed, and that even when one pretended\nto no quarrel with it the moment had something of the grimness of a\ncrunched key in the strongest lock that could be made. There was nothing\nto do as yet, further, but feel what one had done, and our personage\nfelt it while he aimlessly wandered. It was already as if he were\nmarried, so definitely had the solicitors, at three o\'clock, enabled the\ndate to be fixed, and by so few days was that date now distant. He was\nto dine at half-past eight o\'clock with the young lady on whose behalf,\nand on whose father\'s, the London lawyers had reached an inspired\nharmony with his own man of business, poor Calderoni, fresh from Rome\nand now apparently in the wondrous situation of being \"shown London,\"\nbefore promptly leaving it again, by Mr. Verver himself, Mr. Verver\nwhose easy way with his millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the\narrangements, the principle of reciprocity. The reciprocity with which\nthe Prince was during these minutes most struck was that of Calderoni\'s\nbestowal of his company for a view of the lions. If there was one thing\nin the world the young man, at this juncture, clearly intended, it was\nto be much more decent as a son-in-law than lots of fellows he could\nthink of had shown themselves in that character. He thought of these\nfellows, from whom he was so to differ, in English; he used, mentally,\nthe English term to describe his difference, for, familiar with the\ntongue from his earliest years, so that no note of strangeness remained\nwith him either for lip or for ear, he found it convenient, in life, for\nthe greatest number of relations. He found it convenient, oddly, even\nfor his relation with himself--though not unmindful that there might\nstill, as time went on, be others, including a more intimate degree of\nthat one, that would seek, possibly with violence, the larger or the\nfiner issue--which was it?--of the vernacular. Miss Verver had told him\nhe spoke English too well--it was his only fault, and he had not been\nable to speak worse even to oblige her. \"When I speak worse, you see,\nI speak French,\" he had said; intimating thus that there were\ndiscriminations, doubtless of the invidious kind, for which that\nlanguage was the most apt. The girl had taken this, she let him know,\nas a reflection on her own French, which she had always so dreamed of\nmaking good, of making better; to say nothing of his evident feeling\nthat the idiom supposed a cleverness she was not a person to rise to.\nThe Prince\'s answer to such remarks--genial, charming, like every answer\nthe parties to his new arrangement had yet had from him--was that he was\npractising his American in order to converse properly, on equal terms as\nit were, with Mr. Verver. His prospective father-in-law had a command of\nit, he said, that put him at a disadvantage in any discussion; besides\nwhich--well, besides which he had made to the girl the observation that\npositively, of all his observations yet, had most finely touched her.\n\n\"You know I think he\'s a REAL galantuomo--\'and no mistake.\' There are\nplenty of sham ones about. He seems to me simply the best man I\'ve ever\nseen in my life.\"\n\n\"Well, my dear, why shouldn\'t he be?\" the girl had gaily inquired.\n\nIt was this, precisely, that had set the Prince to think. The things, or\nmany of them, that had made Mr. Verver what he was seemed practically\nto bring a charge of waste against the other things that, with the other\npeople known to the young man, had failed of such a result. \"Why, his\n\'form,\'\" he had returned, \"might have made one doubt.\"\n\n\"Father\'s form?\" She hadn\'t seen it. \"It strikes me he hasn\'t got any.\"\n\n\"He hasn\'t got mine--he hasn\'t even got yours.\"\n\n\"Thank you for \'even\'!\" the girl had laughed at him. \"Oh, yours, my\ndear, is tremendous. But your father has his own. I\'ve made that out. So\ndon\'t doubt it. It\'s where it has brought him out--that\'s the point.\"\n\n\"It\'s his goodness that has brought him out,\" our young woman had, at\nthis, objected.\n\n\"Ah, darling, goodness, I think, never brought anyone out. Goodness,\nwhen it\'s real, precisely, rather keeps people in.\" He had been\ninterested in his discrimination, which amused him. \"No, it\'s his WAY.\nIt belongs to him.\"\n\nBut she had wondered still. \"It\'s the American way. That\'s all.\"\n\n\"Exactly--it\'s all. It\'s all, I say! It fits him--so it must be good for\nsomething.\"\n\n\"Do you think it would be good for you?\" Maggie Verver had smilingly\nasked.\n\nTo which his reply had been just of the happiest. \"I don\'t feel, my\ndear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt\nme or help me. Such as I am--but you\'ll see for yourself. Say, however,\nI am a galantuomo--which I devoutly hope: I\'m like a chicken, at best,\nchopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille,\nwith half the parts left out. Your father\'s the natural fowl running\nabout the bassecour. His feathers, movements, his sounds--those are the\nparts that, with me, are left out.\"\n\n\"All, as a matter of course--since you can\'t eat a chicken alive!\"\n\nThe Prince had not been annoyed at this, but he had been positive.\n\"Well, I\'m eating your father alive--which is the only way to taste him.\nI want to continue, and as it\'s when he talks American that he is most\nalive, so I must also cultivate it, to get my pleasure. He couldn\'t make\none like him so much in any other language.\"\n\nIt mattered little that the girl had continued to demur--it was the mere\nplay of her joy. \"I think he could make you like him in Chinese.\"\n\n\"It would be an unnecessary trouble. What I mean is that he\'s a kind\nof result of his inevitable tone. My liking is accordingly FOR the\ntone--which has made him possible.\"\n\n\"Oh, you\'ll hear enough of it,\" she laughed, \"before you\'ve done with\nus.\"\n\nOnly this, in truth, had made him frown a little.\n\n\"What do you mean, please, by my having \'done\' with you?\"\n\n\"Why, found out about us all there is to find.\"\n\nHe had been able to take it indeed easily as a joke. \"Ah, love, I\nbegan with that. I know enough, I feel, never to be surprised. It\'s you\nyourselves meanwhile,\" he continued, \"who really know nothing. There are\ntwo parts of me\"--yes, he had been moved to go on. \"One is made up of\nthe history, the doings, the marriages, the crimes, the follies, the\nboundless betises of other people--especially of their infamous waste\nof money that might have come to me. Those things are written--literally\nin rows of volumes, in libraries; are as public as they\'re abominable.\nEverybody can get at them, and you\'ve, both of you, wonderfully, looked\nthem in the face. But there\'s another part, very much smaller\ndoubtless, which, such as it is, represents my single self, the unknown,\nunimportant, unimportant--unimportant save to YOU--personal quantity.\nAbout this you\'ve found out nothing.\"\n\n\"Luckily, my dear,\" the girl had bravely said; \"for what then would\nbecome, please, of the promised occupation of my future?\"\n\nThe young man remembered even now how extraordinarily CLEAR--he couldn\'t\ncall it anything else--she had looked, in her prettiness, as she had\nsaid it. He also remembered what he had been moved to reply. \"The\nhappiest reigns, we are taught, you know, are the reigns without any\nhistory.\"\n\n\"Oh, I\'m not afraid of history!\" She had been sure of that. \"Call it the\nbad part, if you like--yours certainly sticks out of you. What was it\nelse,\" Maggie Verver had also said, \"that made me originally think of\nyou? It wasn\'t--as I should suppose you must have seen--what you call\nyour unknown quantity, your particular self. It was the generations\nbehind you, the follies and the crimes, the plunder and the waste--the\nwicked Pope, the monster most of all, whom so many of the volumes in\nyour family library are all about. If I\'ve read but two or three yet, I\nshall give myself up but the more--as soon as I have time--to the rest.\nWhere, therefore\"--she had put it to him again--\"without your archives,\nannals, infamies, would you have been?\"\n\nHe recalled what, to this, he had gravely returned. \"I might have been\nin a somewhat better pecuniary situation.\" But his actual situation\nunder the head in question positively so little mattered to them that,\nhaving by that time lived deep into the sense of his advantage, he had\nkept no impression of the girl\'s rejoinder. It had but sweetened the\nwaters in which he now floated, tinted them as by the action of\nsome essence, poured from a gold-topped phial, for making one\'s bath\naromatic. No one before him, never--not even the infamous Pope--had\nso sat up to his neck in such a bath. It showed, for that matter, how\nlittle one of his race could escape, after all, from history. What was\nit but history, and of THEIR kind very much, to have the assurance of\nthe enjoyment of more money than the palace-builder himself could have\ndreamed of? This was the element that bore him up and into which Maggie\nscattered, on occasion, her exquisite colouring drops. They were of the\ncolour--of what on earth? of what but the extraordinary American good\nfaith? They were of the colour of her innocence, and yet at the same\ntime of her imagination, with which their relation, his and these\npeople\'s, was all suffused. What he had further said on the occasion of\nwhich we thus represent him as catching the echoes from his own thoughts\nwhile he loitered--what he had further said came back to him, for it had\nbeen the voice itself of his luck, the soothing sound that was always\nwith him. \"You Americans are almost incredibly romantic.\"\n\n\"Of course we are. That\'s just what makes everything so nice for us.\"\n\n\"Everything?\" He had wondered.\n\n\"Well, everything that\'s nice at all. The world, the beautiful,\nworld--or everything in it that is beautiful. I mean we see so much.\"\n\nHe had looked at her a moment--and he well knew how she had struck him,\nin respect to the beautiful world, as one of the beautiful, the\nmost beautiful things. But what he had answered was: \"You see too\nmuch--that\'s what may sometimes make you difficulties. When you don\'t,\nat least,\" he had amended with a further thought, \"see too little.\"\nBut he had quite granted that he knew what she meant, and his warning\nperhaps was needless.\n\nHe had seen the follies of the romantic disposition, but there seemed\nsomehow no follies in theirs--nothing, one was obliged to recognise, but\ninnocent pleasures, pleasures without penalties. Their enjoyment was\na tribute to others without being a loss to themselves. Only the funny\nthing, he had respectfully submitted, was that her father, though older\nand wiser, and a man into the bargain, was as bad--that is as good--as\nherself.\n\n\"Oh, he\'s better,\" the girl had freely declared \"that is he\'s worse.\nHis relation to the things he cares for--and I think it beautiful--is\nabsolutely romantic. So is his whole life over here--it\'s the most\nromantic thing I know.\"\n\n\"You mean his idea for his native place?\"\n\n\"Yes--the collection, the Museum with which he wishes to endow it, and\nof which he thinks more, as you know, than of anything in the world.\nIt\'s the work of his life and the motive of everything he does.\"\n\nThe young man, in his actual mood, could have smiled again--smiled\ndelicately, as he had then smiled at her. \"Has it been his motive in\nletting me have you?\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear, positively--or in a manner,\" she had said.\n\n\"American City isn\'t, by the way, his native town, for, though he\'s not\nold, it\'s a young thing compared with him--a younger one. He started\nthere, he has a feeling about it, and the place has grown, as he says,\nlike the programme of a charity performance. You\'re at any rate a part\nof his collection,\" she had explained--\"one of the things that can only\nbe got over here. You\'re a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of\nprice. You\'re not perhaps absolutely unique, but you\'re so curious and\neminent that there are very few others like you--you belong to a class\nabout which everything is known. You\'re what they call a morceau de\nmusee.\"\n\n\"I see. I have the great sign of it,\" he had risked--\"that I cost a lot\nof money.\"\n\n\"I haven\'t the least idea,\" she had gravely answered, \"what you\ncost\"--and he had quite adored, for the moment, her way of saying it. He\nhad felt even, for the moment, vulgar. But he had made the best of that.\n\"Wouldn\'t you find out if it were a question of parting with me? My\nvalue would in that case be estimated.\"\n\nShe had looked at him with her charming eyes, as if his value were well\nbefore her. \"Yes, if you mean that I\'d pay rather than lose you.\"\n\nAnd then there came again what this had made him say. \"Don\'t talk about\nME--it\'s you who are not of this age. You\'re a creature of a braver and\nfiner one, and the cinquecento, at its most golden hour, wouldn\'t have\nbeen ashamed of you. It would of me, and if I didn\'t know some of the\npieces your father has acquired, I should rather fear, for American\nCity, the criticism of experts. Would it at all events be your idea,\" he\nhad then just ruefully asked, \"to send me there for safety?\"\n\n\"Well, we may have to come to it.\"\n\n\"I\'ll go anywhere you want.\"\n\n\"We must see first--it will be only if we have to come to it. There are\nthings,\" she had gone on, \"that father puts away--the bigger and more\ncumbrous of course, which he stores, has already stored in masses, here\nand in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in warehouses, vaults, banks, safes,\nwonderful secret places. We\'ve been like a pair of pirates--positively\nstage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say \'Ha-ha!\' when\nthey come to where their treasure is buried. Ours is buried pretty well\neverywhere--except what we like to see, what we travel with and have\nabout us. These, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and\narrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses we hire\na little less ugly. Of course it\'s a danger, and we have to keep watch.\nBut father loves a fine piece, loves, as he says, the good of it, and\nit\'s for the company of some of his things that he\'s willing to run his\nrisks. And we\'ve had extraordinary luck\"--Maggie had made that point;\n\"we\'ve never lost anything yet. And the finest objects are often the\nsmallest. Values, in lots of cases, you must know, have nothing to do\nwith size. But there\'s nothing, however tiny,\" she had wound up, \"that\nwe\'ve missed.\"\n\n\"I like the class,\" he had laughed for this, \"in which you place me! I\nshall be one of the little pieces that you unpack at the hotels, or at\nthe worst in the hired houses, like this wonderful one, and put out with\nthe family photographs and the new magazines. But it\'s something not to\nbe so big that I have to be buried.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she had returned, \"you shall not be buried, my dear, till you\'re\ndead. Unless indeed you call it burial to go to American City.\"\n\n\"Before I pronounce I should like to see my tomb.\" So he had had, after\nhis fashion, the last word in their interchange, save for the result of\nan observation that had risen to his lips at the beginning, which he had\nthen checked, and which now came back to him. \"Good, bad or indifferent,\nI hope there\'s one thing you believe about me.\"\n\nHe had sounded solemn, even to himself, but she had taken it gaily. \"Ah,\ndon\'t fix me down to \'one\'! I believe things enough about you, my dear,\nto have a few left if most of them, even, go to smash. I\'ve taken care\nof THAT. I\'ve divided my faith into water-tight compartments. We must\nmanage not to sink.\"\n\n\"You do believe I\'m not a hypocrite? You recognise that I don\'t lie or\ndissemble or deceive? Is THAT water-tight?\"\n\nThe question, to which he had given a certain intensity, had made her,\nhe remembered, stare an instant, her colour rising as if it had sounded\nto her still stranger than he had intended. He had perceived on the spot\nthat any SERIOUS discussion of veracity, of loyalty, or rather of the\nwant of them, practically took her unprepared, as if it were quite new\nto her. He had noticed it before: it was the English, the American sign\nthat duplicity, like \"love,\" had to be joked about. It couldn\'t be \"gone\ninto.\" So the note of his inquiry was--well, to call it nothing else--\npremature; a mistake worth making, however, for the almost overdone\ndrollery in which her answer instinctively sought refuge.\n\n\"Water-tight--the biggest compartment of all? Why, it\'s the best cabin\nand the main deck and the engine-room and the steward\'s pantry! It\'s the\nship itself--it\'s the whole line. It\'s the captain\'s table and all one\'s\nluggage--one\'s reading for the trip.\" She had images, like that, that\nwere drawn from steamers and trains, from a familiarity with \"lines,\" a\ncommand of \"own\" cars, from an experience of continents and seas,\nthat he was unable as yet to emulate; from vast modern machineries and\nfacilities whose acquaintance he had still to make, but as to which it\nwas part of the interest of his situation as it stood that he could,\nquite without wincing, feel his future likely to bristle with them.\n\nIt was in fact, content as he was with his engagement and charming as\nhe thought his affianced bride, his view of THAT furniture that mainly\nconstituted our young man\'s \"romance\"--and to an extent that made of his\ninward state a contrast that he was intelligent enough to feel. He was\nintelligent enough to feel quite humble, to wish not to be in the least\nhard or voracious, not to insist on his own side of the bargain, to warn\nhimself in short against arrogance and greed. Odd enough, of a truth,\nwas his sense of this last danger--which may illustrate moreover his\ngeneral attitude toward dangers from within. Personally, he considered,\nhe hadn\'t the vices in question--and that was so much to the good. His\nrace, on the other hand, had had them handsomely enough, and he was\nsomehow full of his race. Its presence in him was like the consciousness\nof some inexpugnable scent in which his clothes, his whole person,\nhis hands and the hair of his head, might have been steeped as in some\nchemical bath: the effect was nowhere in particular, yet he constantly\nfelt himself at the mercy of the cause. He knew his antenatal history,\nknew it in every detail, and it was a thing to keep causes well before\nhim. What was his frank judgment of so much of its ugliness, he asked\nhimself, but a part of the cultivation of humility? What was this so\nimportant step he had just taken but the desire for some new history\nthat should, so far as possible, contradict, and even if need be flatly\ndishonour, the old? If what had come to him wouldn\'t do he must\nMAKE something different. He perfectly recognised--always in his\nhumility--that the material for the making had to be Mr. Verver\'s\nmillions. There was nothing else for him on earth to make it with; he\nhad tried before--had had to look about and see the truth. Humble as he\nwas, at the same time, he was not so humble as if he had known himself\nfrivolous or stupid. He had an idea--which may amuse his historian--that\nwhen you were stupid enough to be mistaken about such a matter you did\nknow it. Therefore he wasn\'t mistaken--his future might be MIGHT be\nscientific. There was nothing in himself, at all events, to prevent it.\nHe was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence\nof prejudice backed by the presence of money? His life would be full\nof machinery, which was the antidote to superstition, which was in\nits turn, too much, the consequence, or at least the exhalation, of\narchives. He thought of these--of his not being at all events futile,\nand of his absolute acceptance of the developments of the coming age to\nredress the balance of his being so differently considered. The moments\nwhen he most winced were those at which he found himself believing that,\nreally, futility would have been forgiven him. Even WITH it, in that\nabsurd view, he would have been good enough. Such was the laxity, in the\nVervers, of the romantic spirit. They didn\'t, indeed, poor dears, know\nwhat, in that line--the line of futility--the real thing meant. HE did--\nhaving seen it, having tried it, having taken its measure. This was a\nmemory in fact simply to screen out--much as, just in front of him while\nhe walked, the iron shutter of a shop, closing early to the stale summer\nday, rattled down at the turn of some crank. There was machinery again,\njust as the plate glass, all about him, was money, was power, the power\nof the rich peoples. Well, he was OF them now, of the rich peoples; he\nwas on their side--if it wasn\'t rather the pleasanter way of putting it\nthat they were on his.\n\nSomething of this sort was in any case the moral and the murmur of his\nwalk. It would have been ridiculous--such a moral from such a source--if\nit hadn\'t all somehow fitted to the gravity of the hour, that gravity\nthe oppression of which I began by recording. Another feature was the\nimmediate nearness of the arrival of the contingent from home. He was to\nmeet them at Charing Cross on the morrow: his younger brother, who had\nmarried before him, but whose wife, of Hebrew race, with a portion that\nhad gilded the pill, was not in a condition to travel; his sister and\nher husband, the most anglicised of Milanesi, his maternal uncle, the\nmost shelved of diplomatists, and his Roman cousin, Don Ottavio, the\nmost disponible of ex-deputies and of relatives--a scant handful of the\nconsanguineous who, in spite of Maggie\'s plea for hymeneal reserve,\nwere to accompany him to the altar. It was no great array, yet it was\napparently to be a more numerous muster than any possible to the bride\nherself, having no wealth of kinship to choose from and making it up,\non the other hand, by loose invitations. He had been interested in the\ngirl\'s attitude on the matter and had wholly deferred to it, giving him,\nas it did, a glimpse, distinctly pleasing, of the kind of ruminations\nshe would in general be governed by--which were quite such as fell in\nwith his own taste. They hadn\'t natural relations, she and her\nfather, she had explained; so they wouldn\'t try to supply the place\nby artificial, by make-believe ones, by any searching of highways and\nhedges. Oh yes, they had acquaintances enough--but a marriage was an\nintimate thing. You asked acquaintances when you HAD your kith and\nkin--you asked them over and above. But you didn\'t ask them alone, to\ncover your nudity and look like what they weren\'t. She knew what she\nmeant and what she liked, and he was all ready to take from her, finding\na good omen in both of the facts. He expected her, desired her, to have\ncharacter; his wife SHOULD have it, and he wasn\'t afraid of her having\nmuch. He had had, in his earlier time, to deal with plenty of people who\nhad had it; notably with the three four ecclesiastics, his great-uncle,\nthe Cardinal, above all, who had taken a hand and played a part in his\neducation: the effect of all of which had never been to upset him. He\nwas thus fairly on the look-out for the characteristic in this most\nintimate, as she was to come, of his associates. He encouraged it when\nit appeared.\n\nHe felt therefore, just at present, as if his papers were in order, as\nif his accounts so balanced as they had never done in his life before\nand he might close the portfolio with a snap. It would open again,\ndoubtless, of itself, with the arrival of the Romans; it would even\nperhaps open with his dining to-night in Portland Place, where Mr.\nVerver had pitched a tent suggesting that of Alexander furnished with\nthe spoils of Darius. But what meanwhile marked his crisis, as I have\nsaid, was his sense of the immediate two or three hours. He paused\non corners, at crossings; there kept rising for him, in waves, that\nconsciousness, sharp as to its source while vague as to its end, which I\nbegan by speaking of--the consciousness of an appeal to do something\nor other, before it was too late, for himself. By any friend to whom\nhe might have mentioned it the appeal could have been turned to frank\nderision. For what, for whom indeed but himself and the high advantages\nattached, was he about to marry an extraordinarily charming girl, whose\n\"prospects,\" of the solid sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability?\nHe wasn\'t to do it, assuredly, all for her. The Prince, as happened,\nhowever, was so free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose\nbefore him after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had\noften found ironic. He withheld the tribute of attention from passing\nfaces only to let his impulse accumulate. Youth and beauty made him\nscarcely turn, but the image of Mrs. Assingham made him presently stop a\nhansom. HER youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past,\nbut to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be \"doing\" what\nhe still had time for, would put something of a reason into his\nrestlessness and thereby probably soothe it. To recognise the propriety\nof this particular pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long Cadogan\nPlace--was already in fact to work it off a little. A perception of the\npropriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as he\nhappened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was obviously all\nthat had been the matter with him. It was true that he had mistaken the\nmood of the moment, misread it rather, superficially, as an impulse\nto look the other way--the other way from where his pledges had\naccumulated. Mrs. Assingham, precisely, represented, embodied his\npledges--was, in her pleasant person, the force that had set them\nsuccessively in motion. She had MADE his marriage, quite as truly as his\npapal ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she\nhad made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic. He had\nneither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing--scarce\neven till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to think of it\nvulgarly--must have all had to come from the Ververs.\n\nYet he was far, he could still remind himself, from supposing that she\nhad been grossly remunerated. He was wholly sure she hadn\'t; for if\nthere were people who took presents and people who didn\'t she would be\nquite on the right side and of the proud class. Only then, on the other\nhand, her disinterestedness was rather awful--it implied, that is,\nsuch abysses of confidence. She was admirably attached to Maggie--whose\npossession of such a friend might moreover quite rank as one of her\n\"assets\"; but the great proof of her affection had been in bringing\nthem, with her design, together. Meeting him during a winter in Rome,\nmeeting him afterwards in Paris, and \"liking\" him, as she had in time\nfrankly let him know from the first, she had marked him for her young\nfriend\'s own and had then, unmistakably, presented him in a light. But\nthe interest in Maggie--that was the point--would have achieved\nbut little without her interest in HIM. On what did that sentiment,\nunsolicited and unrecompensed, rest? what good, again--for it was much\nlike his question about Mr. Verver--should he ever have done her? The\nPrince\'s notion of a recompense to women--similar in this to his notion\nof an appeal--was more or less to make love to them. Now he hadn\'t, as\nhe believed, made love the least little bit to Mrs. Assingham--nor did\nhe think she had for a moment supposed it. He liked in these days, to\nmark them off, the women to whom he hadn\'t made love: it represented--\nand that was what pleased him in it--a different stage of existence\nfrom the time at which he liked to mark off the women to whom he\nhad. Neither, with all this, had Mrs. Assingham herself been either\naggressive or resentful. On what occasion, ever, had she appeared\nto find him wanting? These things, the motives of such people, were\nobscure--a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of\nthe impenetrable which alone slightly qualified his sense of his good\nfortune. He remembered to have read, as a boy, a wonderful tale by Allan\nPoe, his prospective wife\'s countryman-which was a thing to show, by the\nway, what imagination Americans COULD have: the story of the shipwrecked\nGordon Pym, who, drifting in a small boat further toward the North\nPole--or was it the South?--than anyone had ever done, found at a given\nmoment before him a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling\ncurtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of\nmilk or of snow. There were moments when he felt his own boat move upon\nsome such mystery. The state of mind of his new friends, including Mrs.\nAssingham herself, had resemblances to a great white curtain. He had\nnever known curtains but as purple even to blackness--but as producing\nwhere they hung a darkness intended and ominous. When they were so\ndisposed as to shelter surprises the surprises were apt to be shocks.\n\nShocks, however, from these quite different depths, were not what he saw\nreason to apprehend; what he rather seemed to himself not yet to have\nmeasured was something that, seeking a name for it, he would have called\nthe quantity of confidence reposed in him. He had stood still, at many\na moment of the previous month, with the thought, freshly determined or\nrenewed, of the general expectation--to define it roughly--of which he\nwas the subject. What was singular was that it seemed not so much\nan expectation of anything in particular as a large, bland, blank\nassumption of merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and\nvalue. It was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of\ngold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful,\nof which the \"worth\" in mere modern change, sovereigns and half crowns,\nwould be great enough, but as to which, since there were finer ways of\nusing it, such taking to pieces was superfluous. That was the image for\nthe security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a\npossession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts.\nWhat would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or\ntested? What would it mean but that, if they didn\'t \"change\" him,\nthey really wouldn\'t know--he wouldn\'t know himself--how many pounds,\nshillings and pence he had to give? These at any rate, for the present,\nwere unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was\ninvested with attributes. He was taken seriously. Lost there in the\nwhite mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him.\nIt was even in Mrs. Assingham, in spite of her having, as she had\nfrequently shown, a more mocking spirit. All he could say as yet was\nthat he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. What should\nhe do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally\nspeaking, behind their veil. It would come to asking what they expected\nhim to do. She would answer him probably: \"Oh, you know, it\'s what we\nexpect you to be!\" on which he would have no resource but to deny his\nknowledge. Would that break the spell, his saying he had no idea? What\nidea in fact could he have? He also took himself seriously--made a\npoint of it; but it wasn\'t simply a question of fancy and pretension.\nHis own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with:\nbut theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the\npractical proof. As the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be\nproportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale\nthat he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. Who but a billionaire\ncould say what was fair exchange for a billion? That measure was the\nshrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in Cadogan\nPlace, a little nearer the shroud. He promised himself, virtually, to\ngive the latter a twitch.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\"They\'re not good days, you know,\" he had said to Fanny Assingham after\ndeclaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of\ntea, putting her in possession of the latest news--the documents signed\nan hour ago, de part et d\'autre, and the telegram from his backers, who\nhad reached Paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little,\npoor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. \"We\'re\nvery simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you,\" he had also\nobserved, \"and Paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the\nworld. London therefore will be more or less another planet. It has\nalways been, as with so many of us, quite their Mecca, but this is their\nfirst real caravan; they\'ve mainly known \'old England\' as a shop\nfor articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they\'ve dressed\nthemselves as much as possible. Which all means, however, that you\'ll\nsee them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. We must be very easy with\nthem. Maggie\'s too wonderful--her preparations are on a scale! She\ninsists on taking in the sposi and my uncle. The others will come to\nme. I\'ve been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and, with all those\nsolemn signatures of an hour ago, that brings the case home to me.\"\n\n\"Do you mean you\'re afraid?\" his hostess had amusedly asked.\n\n\"Terribly afraid. I\'ve now but to wait to see the monster come. They\'re\nnot good days; they\'re neither one thing nor the other. I\'ve really got\nnothing, yet I\'ve everything to lose. One doesn\'t know what still may\nhappen.\"\n\nThe way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came\nout, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. It was a sign, that\nis, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. And to\nbe soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to\nbe told what he could understand and believe--that was what he had\ncome for. \"Marriage then,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"is what you call the\nmonster? I admit it\'s a fearful thing at the best; but, for heaven\'s\nsake, if that\'s what you\'re thinking of, don\'t run away from it.\"\n\n\"Ah, to run away from it would be to run away from you,\" the Prince\nreplied; \"and I\'ve already told you often enough how I depend on you to\nsee me through.\" He so liked the way she took this, from the corner\nof her sofa, that he gave his sincerity--for it WAS sincerity--fuller\nexpression. \"I\'m starting on the great voyage--across the unknown sea;\nmy ship\'s all rigged and appointed, the cargo\'s stowed away and the\ncompany complete. But what seems the matter with me is that I can\'t sail\nalone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste of waters,\na--what do you call it?--a consort. I don\'t ask you to stay on board\nwith me, but I must keep your sail in sight for orientation. I don\'t in\nthe least myself know, I assure you, the points of the compass. But with\na lead I can perfectly follow. You MUST be my lead.\"\n\n\"How can you be sure,\" she asked, \"where I should take you?\"\n\n\"Why, from your having brought me safely thus far. I should never have\ngot here without you. You\'ve provided the ship itself, and, if you\'ve\nnot quite seen me aboard, you\'ve attended me, ever so kindly, to the\ndock. Your own vessel is, all conveniently, in the next berth, and you\ncan\'t desert me now.\"\n\nShe showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive,\nas if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated\nhim in fine as if he were not uttering truths, but making pretty figures\nfor her diversion. \"My vessel, dear Prince?\" she smiled. \"What vessel,\nin the world, have I? This little house is all our ship, Bob\'s and\nmine--and thankful we are, now, to have it. We\'ve wandered far, living,\nas you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our\nfeet. But the time has come for us at last to draw in.\"\n\nHe made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. \"You talk about\nrest--it\'s too selfish!--when you\'re just launching me on adventures?\"\n\nShe shook her head with her kind lucidity. \"Not adventures--heaven\nforbid! You\'ve had yours--as I\'ve had mine; and my idea has been, all\nalong, that we should neither of us begin again. My own last, precisely,\nhas been doing for you all you so prettily mention. But it consists\nsimply in having conducted you to rest. You talk about ships, but\nthey\'re not the comparison. Your tossings are over--you\'re practically\nIN port. The port,\" she concluded, \"of the Golden Isles.\"\n\nHe looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then,\nafter an hesitation, seemed to speak certain words instead of certain\nothers. \"Oh, I know where I AM--! I do decline to be left, but what I\ncame for, of course, was to thank you. If to-day has seemed, for the\nfirst time, the end of preliminaries, I feel how little there would have\nbeen any at all without you. The first were wholly yours.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"they were remarkably easy. I\'ve seen them,\nI\'ve HAD them,\" she smiled, \"more difficult. Everything, you must feel,\nwent of itself. So, you must feel, everything still goes.\"\n\nThe Prince quickly agreed. \"Oh, beautifully! But you had the\nconception.\"\n\n\"Ah, Prince, so had you!\"\n\nHe looked at her harder a moment. \"You had it first. You had it most.\"\n\nShe returned his look as if it had made her wonder. \"I LIKED it, if\nthat\'s what you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest, that\nI had easy work with you. I had only at last--when I thought it was\ntime--to speak for you.\"\n\n\"All that is quite true. But you\'re leaving me, all the same, you\'re\nleaving me--you\'re washing your hands of me,\" he went on. \"However, that\nwon\'t be easy; I won\'t BE left.\" And he had turned his eyes about again,\ntaking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final\nrefuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had\nlately retired with \"Bob.\" \"I shall keep this spot in sight. Say what\nyou will, I shall need you. I\'m not, you know,\" he declared, \"going to\ngive you up for anybody.\"\n\n\"If you\'re afraid--which of course you\'re not--are you trying to make me\nthe same?\" she asked after a moment.\n\nHe waited a minute too, then answered her with a question. \"You say you\n\'liked\' it, your undertaking to make my engagement possible. It remains\nbeautiful for me that you did; it\'s charming and unforgettable. But,\nstill more, it\'s mysterious and wonderful. WHY, you dear delightful\nwoman, did you like it?\"\n\n\"I scarce know what to make,\" she said, \"of such an inquiry. If you\nhaven\'t by this time found out yourself, what meaning can anything I say\nhave for you? Don\'t you really after all feel,\" she added while nothing\ncame from him--\"aren\'t you conscious every minute, of the perfection of\nthe creature of whom I\'ve put you into possession?\"\n\n\"Every minute--gratefully conscious. But that\'s exactly the ground of\nmy question. It wasn\'t only a matter of your handing me over--it was a\nmatter of your handing her. It was a matter of HER fate still more than\nof mine. You thought all the good of her that one woman can think of\nanother, and yet, by your account, you enjoyed assisting at her risk.\"\n\nShe had kept her eyes on him while he spoke, and this was what, visibly,\ndetermined a repetition for her. \"Are you trying to frighten me?\"\n\n\"Ah, that\'s a foolish view--I should be too vulgar. You apparently can\'t\nunderstand either my good faith or my humility. I\'m awfully humble,\"\nthe young man insisted; \"that\'s the way I\'ve been feeling to-day, with\neverything so finished and ready. And you won\'t take me for serious.\"\n\nShe continued to face him as if he really troubled her a little. \"Oh,\nyou deep old Italians!\"\n\n\"There you are,\" he returned--\"it\'s what I wanted you to come to. That\'s\nthe responsible note.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she went on--\"if you\'re \'humble\' you MUST be dangerous.\"\n\nShe had a pause while he only smiled; then she said: \"I don\'t in the\nleast want to lose sight of you. But even if I did I shouldn\'t think it\nright.\"\n\n\"Thank you for that--it\'s what I needed of you. I\'m sure, after all,\nthat the more you\'re with me the more I shall understand. It\'s the\nonly thing in the world I want. I\'m excellent, I really think, all\nround--except that I\'m stupid. I can do pretty well anything I SEE. But\nI\'ve got to see it first.\" And he pursued his demonstration. \"I don\'t\nin the least mind its having to be shown me--in fact I like that better.\nTherefore it is that I want, that I shall always want, your eyes.\nThrough THEM I wish to look--even at any risk of their showing me what I\nmayn\'t like. For then,\" he wound up, \"I shall know. And of that I shall\nnever be afraid.\"\n\nShe might quite have been waiting to see what he would come to, but she\nspoke with a certain impatience. \"What on earth are you talking about?\"\n\nBut he could perfectly say: \"Of my real, honest fear of being \'off\'\nsome day, of being wrong, WITHOUT knowing it. That\'s what I shall always\ntrust you for--to tell me when I am. No--with you people it\'s a sense.\nWe haven\'t got it--not as you have. Therefore--!\" But he had said\nenough. \"Ecco!\" he simply smiled.\n\nIt was not to be concealed that he worked upon her, but of course she\nhad always liked him. \"I should be interested,\" she presently remarked,\n\"to see some sense you don\'t possess.\"\n\nWell, he produced one on the spot. \"The moral, dear Mrs. Assingham. I\nmean, always, as you others consider it. I\'ve of course something that\nin our poor dear backward old Rome sufficiently passes for it. But it\'s\nno more like yours than the tortuous stone staircase--half-ruined into\nthe bargain!--in some castle of our quattrocento is like the `lightning\nelevator\' in one of Mr. Verver\'s fifteen-storey buildings. Your moral\nsense works by steam--it sends you up like a rocket. Ours is slow and\nsteep and unlighted, with so many of the steps missing that--well, that\nit\'s as short, in almost any case, to turn round and come down again.\"\n\n\"Trusting,\" Mrs. Assingham smiled, \"to get up some other way?\"\n\n\"Yes--or not to have to get up at all. However,\" he added, \"I told you\nthat at the beginning.\"\n\n\"Machiavelli!\" she simply exclaimed.\n\n\"You do me too much honour. I wish indeed I had his genius. However, if\nyou really believe I have his perversity you wouldn\'t say it. But it\'s\nall right,\" he gaily enough concluded; \"I shall always have you to come\nto.\"\n\nOn this, for a little, they sat face to face; after which, without\ncomment, she asked him if he would have more tea. All she would give\nhim, he promptly signified; and he developed, making her laugh, his idea\nthat the tea of the English race was somehow their morality, \"made,\"\nwith boiling water, in a little pot, so that the more of it one drank\nthe more moral one would become. His drollery served as a transition,\nand she put to him several questions about his sister and the others,\nquestions as to what Bob, in particular, Colonel Assingham, her husband,\ncould do for the arriving gentlemen, whom, by the Prince\'s leave, he\nwould immediately go to see. He was funny, while they talked, about\nhis own people too, whom he described, with anecdotes of their habits,\nimitations of their manners and prophecies of their conduct, as more\nrococo than anything Cadogan Place would ever have known. This, Mrs.\nAssingham professed, was exactly what would endear them to her, and\nthat, in turn, drew from her visitor a fresh declaration of all the\ncomfort of his being able so to depend on her. He had been with her, at\nthis point, some twenty minutes; but he had paid her much longer visits,\nand he stayed now as if to make his attitude prove his appreciation. He\nstayed moreover--THAT was really the sign of the hour--in spite of the\nnervous unrest that had brought him and that had in truth much rather\nfed on the scepticism by which she had apparently meant to soothe it.\nShe had not soothed him, and there arrived, remarkably, a moment when\nthe cause of her failure gleamed out. He had not frightened her, as she\ncalled it--he felt that; yet she was herself not at ease. She had been\nnervous, though trying to disguise it; the sight of him, following\non the announcement of his name, had shown her as disconcerted. This\nconviction, for the young man, deepened and sharpened; yet with the\neffect, too, of making him glad in spite of it. It was as if, in\ncalling, he had done even better than he intended. For it was somehow\nIMPORTANT--that was what it was--that there should be at this hour\nsomething the matter with Mrs. Assingham, with whom, in all their\nacquaintance, so considerable now, there had never been the least little\nthing the matter. To wait thus and watch for it was to know, of a truth,\nthat there was something the matter with HIM; since strangely, with so\nlittle to go upon--his heart had positively begun to beat to the tune\nof suspense. It fairly befell at last, for a climax, that they almost\nceased to pretend--to pretend, that is, to cheat each other with forms.\nThe unspoken had come up, and there was a crisis--neither could have\nsaid how long it lasted--during which they were reduced, for all\ninterchange, to looking at each other on quite an inordinate scale. They\nmight at this moment, in their positively portentous stillness, have\nbeen keeping it up for a wager, sitting for their photograph or even\nenacting a tableau-vivant.\n\nThe spectator of whom they would thus well have been worthy might have\nread meanings of his own into the intensity of their communion--or\nindeed, even without meanings, have found his account, aesthetically,\nin some gratified play of our modern sense of type, so scantly to be\ndistinguished from our modern sense of beauty. Type was there, at the\nworst, in Mrs. Assingham\'s dark, neat head, on which the crisp black\nhair made waves so fine and so numerous that she looked even more in the\nfashion of the hour than she desired. Full of discriminations against\nthe obvious, she had yet to accept a flagrant appearance and to make the\nbest of misleading signs. Her richness of hue, her generous nose, her\neyebrows marked like those of an actress--these things, with an added\namplitude of person on which middle age had set its seal, seemed to\npresent her insistently as a daughter of the south, or still more of the\neast, a creature formed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and\nwaited upon by slaves. She looked as if her most active effort might be\nto take up, as she lay back, her mandolin, or to share a sugared fruit\nwith a pet gazelle. She was in fact, however, neither a pampered Jewess\nnor a lazy Creole; New York had been, recordedly, her birthplace and\n\"Europe\" punctually her discipline. She wore yellow and purple because\nshe thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like\nthe Queen of Sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair\nand crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her\ntheory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course\nwas to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overdressing.\nSo she was covered and surrounded with \"things,\" which were frankly toys\nand shams, a part of the amusement with which she rejoiced to supply\nher friends. These friends were in the game that of playing with the\ndisparity between her aspect and her character. Her character was\nattested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the\nbeholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine,\nnot passive. She enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the\neyes of the American city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity\nof it, from under the lids of Jerusalem. With her false indolence, in\nshort, her false leisure, her false pearls and palms and courts and\nfountains, she was a person for whom life was multitudinous detail,\ndetail that left her, as it at any moment found her, unappalled and\nunwearied.\n\n\"Sophisticated as I may appear\"--it was her frequent phrase--she had\nfound sympathy her best resource. It gave her plenty to do; it made her,\nas she also said, sit up. She had in her life two great holes to fill,\nand she described herself as dropping social scraps into them as she had\nknown old ladies, in her early American time, drop morsels of silk\ninto the baskets in which they collected the material for some eventual\npatchwork quilt.\n\nOne of these gaps in Mrs. Assingham\'s completeness was her want of\nchildren; the other was her want of wealth. It was wonderful how little\neither, in the fulness of time, came to show; sympathy and curiosity\ncould render their objects practically filial, just as an English\nhusband who in his military years had \"run\" everything in his regiment\ncould make economy blossom like the rose. Colonel Bob had, a few years\nafter his marriage, left the army, which had clearly, by that time, done\nits laudable all for the enrichment of his personal experience, and\nhe could thus give his whole time to the gardening in question. There\nreigned among the younger friends of this couple a legend, almost\ntoo venerable for historical criticism, that the marriage itself,\nthe happiest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age,\na primitive period when such things--such things as American girls\naccepted as \"good enough\"--had not begun to be;--so that the pleasant\npair had been, as to the risk taken on either side, bold and original,\nhonourably marked, for the evening of life, as discoverers of a kind of\nhymeneal Northwest Passage. Mrs. Assingham knew better, knew there had\nbeen no historic hour, from that of Pocahontas down, when some young\nEnglishman hadn\'t precipitately believed and some American girl\nhadn\'t, with a few more gradations, availed herself to the full of\nher incapacity to doubt; but she accepted resignedly the laurel of the\nfounder, since she was in fact pretty well the doyenne, above ground,\nof her transplanted tribe, and since, above all, she HAD invented\ncombinations, though she had not invented Bob\'s own. It was he who had\ndone that, absolutely puzzled it out, by himself, from his first odd\nglimmer-resting upon it moreover, through the years to come, as proof\nenough, in him, by itself, of the higher cleverness. If she kept her own\ncleverness up it was largely that he should have full credit. There were\nmoments in truth when she privately felt how little--striking out as he\nhad done--he could have afforded that she should show the common limits.\nBut Mrs. Assingham\'s cleverness was in truth tested when her present\nvisitor at last said to her: \"I don\'t think, you know, that you\'re\ntreating me quite right. You\'ve something on your mind that you don\'t\ntell me.\"\n\nIt was positive too that her smile, in reply, was a trifle dim. \"Am I\nobliged to tell you everything I have on my mind?\"\n\n\"It isn\'t a question of everything, but it\'s a question of anything that\nmay particularly concern me. Then you shouldn\'t keep it back. You know\nwith what care I desire to proceed, taking everything into account and\nmaking no mistake that may possibly injure HER.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, at this, had after an instant an odd interrogation.\n\"\'Her\'?\"\n\n\"Her and him. Both our friends. Either Maggie or her father.\"\n\n\"I have something on my mind,\" Mrs. Assingham presently returned;\n\"something has happened for which I hadn\'t been prepared. But it isn\'t\nanything that properly concerns you.\"\n\nThe Prince, with immediate gaiety, threw back his head. \"What do you\nmean by \'properly\'? I somehow see volumes in it. It\'s the way people put\na thing when they put it--well, wrong. _I_ put things right. What is it\nthat has happened for me?\"\n\nHis hostess, the next moment, had drawn spirit from his tone.\n\n\"Oh, I shall be delighted if you\'ll take your share of it. Charlotte\nStant is in London. She has just been here.\"\n\n\"Miss Stant? Oh really?\" The Prince expressed clear surprise--a\ntransparency through which his eyes met his friend\'s with a certain\nhardness of concussion. \"She has arrived from America?\" he then quickly\nasked.\n\n\"She appears to have arrived this noon--coming up from Southampton; at\nan hotel. She dropped upon me after luncheon and was here for more than\nan hour.\"\n\nThe young man heard with interest, though not with an interest too great\nfor his gaiety. \"You think then I\'ve a share in it? What IS my share?\"\n\n\"Why, any you like--the one you seemed just now eager to take. It was\nyou yourself who insisted.\"\n\nHe looked at her on this with conscious inconsistency, and she could now\nsee that he had changed colour. But he was always easy.\n\n\"I didn\'t know then what the matter was.\"\n\n\"You didn\'t think it could be so bad?\"\n\n\"Do you call it very bad?\" the young man asked. \"Only,\" she smiled,\n\"because that\'s the way it seems to affect YOU.\"\n\nHe hesitated, still with the trace of his quickened colour, still\nlooking at her, still adjusting his manner. \"But you allowed you were\nupset.\"\n\n\"To the extent--yes--of not having in the least looked for her. Any\nmore,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"than I judge Maggie to have done.\"\n\nThe Prince thought; then as if glad to be able to say something very\nnatural and true: \"No--quite right. Maggie hasn\'t looked for her. But\nI\'m sure,\" he added, \"she\'ll be delighted to see her.\"\n\n\"That, certainly\"--and his hostess spoke with a different shade of\ngravity.\n\n\"She\'ll be quite overjoyed,\" the Prince went on. \"Has Miss Stant now\ngone to her?\"\n\n\"She has gone back to her hotel, to bring her things here. I can\'t have\nher,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"alone at an hotel.\"\n\n\"No; I see.\"\n\n\"If she\'s here at all she must stay with me.\" He quite took it in. \"So\nshe\'s coming now?\"\n\n\"I expect her at any moment. If you wait you\'ll see her.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he promptly declared--\"charming!\" But this word came out as if,\na little, in sudden substitution for some other. It sounded accidental,\nwhereas he wished to be firm. That accordingly was what he next showed\nhimself. \"If it wasn\'t for what\'s going on these next days Maggie would\ncertainly want to have her. In fact,\" he lucidly continued, \"isn\'t\nwhat\'s happening just a reason to MAKE her want to?\" Mrs. Assingham, for\nanswer, only looked at him, and this, the next instant, had apparently\nhad more effect than if she had spoken. For he asked a question that\nseemed incongruous. \"What has she come for!\"\n\nIt made his companion laugh. \"Why, for just what you say. For your\nmarriage.\"\n\n\"Mine?\"--he wondered.\n\n\"Maggie\'s--it\'s the same thing. It\'s \'for\' your great event. And then,\"\nsaid Mrs. Assingham, \"she\'s so lonely.\"\n\n\"Has she given you that as a reason?\"\n\n\"I scarcely remember--she gave me so many. She abounds, poor dear, in\nreasons. But there\'s one that, whatever she does, I always remember for\nmyself.\"\n\n\"And which is that?\" He looked as if he ought to guess but couldn\'t.\n\n\"Why, the fact that she has no home--absolutely none whatever. She\'s\nextraordinarily alone.\"\n\nAgain he took it in. \"And also has no great means.\"\n\n\"Very small ones. Which is not, however, with the expense of railways\nand hotels, a reason for her running to and fro.\"\n\n\"On the contrary. But she doesn\'t like her country.\"\n\n\"Hers, my dear man?--it\'s little enough \'hers.\'\" The attribution, for\nthe moment, amused his hostess. \"She has rebounded now--but she has had\nlittle enough else to do with it.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say hers,\" the Prince pleasantly explained, \"very much as, at\nthis time of day, I might say mine. I quite feel, I assure you, as if\nthe great place already more or less belonged to ME.\"\n\n\"That\'s your good fortune and your point of view. You own--or you soon\npractically WILL own--so much of it. Charlotte owns almost nothing in\nthe world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which I\nhave given her leave to introduce into this house. She\'ll depreciate to\nyou,\" Mrs. Assingham added, \"your property.\"\n\nHe thought of these things, he thought of every thing; but he had always\nhis resource at hand of turning all to the easy. \"Has she come with\ndesigns upon me?\" And then in a moment, as if even this were almost too\ngrave, he sounded the note that had least to do with himself. \"Est-elle\ntoujours aussi belle?\" That was the furthest point, somehow, to which\nCharlotte Stant could be relegated.\n\nMrs. Assingham treated it freely. \"Just the same. The person in the\nworld, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. It\'s\nall in the way she affects you. One admires her if one doesn\'t happen\nnot to. So, as well, one criticises her.\"\n\n\"Ah, that\'s not fair!\" said the Prince.\n\n\"To criticise her? Then there you are! You\'re answered.\"\n\n\"I\'m answered.\" He took it, humorously, as his lesson--sank his previous\nself-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. \"I only\nmeant that there are perhaps better things to be done with Miss Stant\nthan to criticise her. When once you begin THAT, with anyone--!\" He was\nvague and kind.\n\n\"I quite agree that it\'s better to keep out of it as long as one can.\nBut when one MUST do it--\"\n\n\"Yes?\" he asked as she paused. \"Then know what you mean.\"\n\n\"I see. Perhaps,\" he smiled, \"_I_ don\'t know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Well, it\'s what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know.\"\nMrs. Assingham, however, made no more of this, having, before anything\nelse, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used. \"I quite\nunderstand, of course, that, given her great friendship with Maggie, she\nshould have wanted to be present. She has acted impulsively--but she has\nacted generously.\"\n\n\"She has acted beautifully,\" said the Prince.\n\n\"I say \'generously\' because I mean she hasn\'t, in any way, counted the\ncost. She\'ll have it to count, in a manner, now,\" his hostess continued.\n\"But that doesn\'t matter.\"\n\nHe could see how little. \"You\'ll look after her.\"\n\n\"I\'ll look after her.\"\n\n\"So it\'s all right.\"\n\n\"It\'s all right,\" said Mrs. Assingham. \"Then why are you troubled?\"\n\nIt pulled her up--but only for a minute. \"I\'m not--any more than you.\"\n\nThe Prince\'s dark blue eyes were of the finest, and, on occasion,\nprecisely, resembled nothing so much as the high windows of a Roman\npalace, of an historic front by one of the great old designers, thrown\nopen on a feast-day to the golden air. His look itself, at such times,\nsuggested an image--that of some very noble personage who, expected,\nacclaimed by the crowd in the street and with old precious stuffs\nfalling over the sill for his support, had gaily and gallantly come to\nshow himself: always moreover less in his own interest than in that\nof spectators and subjects whose need to admire, even to gape, was\nperiodically to be considered. The young man\'s expression became,\nafter this fashion, something vivid and concrete--a beautiful personal\npresence, that of a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, patron,\nlighting up brave architecture and diffusing the sense of a function. It\nhad been happily said of his face that the figure thus appearing in\nthe great frame was the ghost of some proudest ancestor. Whoever the\nancestor now, at all events, the Prince was, for Mrs. Assingham\'s\nbenefit, in view of the people. He seemed, leaning on crimson damask,\nto take in the bright day. He looked younger than his years; he was\nbeautiful, innocent, vague.\n\n\"Oh, well, I\'M not!\" he rang out clear.\n\n\"I should like to SEE you, sir!\" she said. \"For you wouldn\'t have a\nshadow of excuse.\" He showed how he agreed that he would have been at a\nloss for one, and the fact of their serenity was thus made as important\nas if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. The only\nthing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established Mrs.\nAssingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to\nthis before they dropped the question. \"My first impulse is always to\nbehave, about everything, as if I feared complications. But I don\'t fear\nthem--I really like them. They\'re quite my element.\"\n\n He deferred, for her, to this account of herself. \"But still,\"\nhe said, \"if we\'re not in the presence of a complication.\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"A handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one is always\na complication.\"\n\nThe young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. \"And\nwill she stay very long?\"\n\nHis friend gave a laugh. \"How in the world can I know? I\'ve scarcely\nasked her.\"\n\n\"Ah yes. You can\'t.\"\n\nBut something in the tone of it amused her afresh. \"Do you think you\ncould?\"\n\n\"I?\" he wondered.\n\n\"Do you think you could get it out of her for me--the probable length of\nher stay?\"\n\nHe rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. \"I daresay, if\nyou were to give me the chance.\"\n\n\"Here it is then for you,\" she answered; for she had heard, within the\nminute, the stop of a cab at her door. \"She\'s back.\"\n\n\n\n III\n\nIt had been said as a joke, but as, after this, they awaited their\nfriend in silence, the effect of the silence was to turn the time to\ngravity--a gravity not dissipated even when the Prince next spoke. He\nhad been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome,\nclever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs. Assingham,\nso far, was right. But there were the facts--the good relations, from\nschooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which\none of them had arrived. \"She can come, you know, at any time, to US.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. \"You\'d like her\nfor your honeymoon?\"\n\n\"Oh no, you must keep her for that. But why not after?\"\n\nShe had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the\ncorridor, they had got up. \"Why not? You\'re splendid!\" Charlotte Stant,\nthe next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her\ncab, and prepared for not finding Mrs. Assingham alone--this would have\nbeen to be noticed--by the butler\'s answer, on the stairs, to a question\nput to him. She could have looked at her hostess with such straightness\nand brightness only from knowing that the Prince was also there--the\ndiscrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still\nbetter than if she had instantly faced him. He availed himself of the\nchance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. What he\naccordingly saw, for some seconds, with intensity, was a tall, strong,\ncharming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her\nadventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and\ngesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from\nthe becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of\nwinds and waves and custom-houses, of far countries and long journeys,\nthe knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience,\nof not being afraid. He was aware, at the same time, that of this\ncombination the \"strongminded\" note was not, as might have been\napprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with\nEnglish-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such\npossibilities, for a quick vision of differences. He had, besides, his\nown view of this young lady\'s strength of mind. It was great, he had\nground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her\nextremely personal, her always amusing taste. This last was the thing\nin her--for she threw it out positively, on the spot, like a light--that\nshe might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his\nworried eyes with. He saw her in her light that immediate, exclusive\naddress to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his\nbenefit and for his pleasure. It showed him everything--above all her\npresence in the world, so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with\nhis own: a sharp, sharp fact, sharper during these instants than any\nother at all, even than that of his marriage, but accompanied, in a\nsubordinate and controlled way, with those others, facial, physiognomic,\nthat Mrs. Assingham had been speaking of as subject to appreciation.\nSo they were, these others, as he met them again, and that was the\nconnection they instantly established with him. If they had to be\ninterpreted, this made at least for intimacy. There was but one way\ncertainly for HIM--to interpret them in the sense of the already known.\n\nMaking use then of clumsy terms of excess, the face was too narrow and\ntoo long, the eyes not large, and the mouth, on the other hand, by\nno means small, with substance in its lips and a slight, the very\nslightest, tendency to protrusion in the solid teeth, otherwise indeed\nwell arrayed and flashingly white. But it was, strangely, as a cluster\nof possessions of his own that these things, in Charlotte Stant, now\naffected him; items in a full list, items recognised, each of them, as\nif, for the long interval, they had been \"stored\" wrapped up, numbered,\nput away in a cabinet. While she faced Mrs. Assingham the door of the\ncabinet had opened of itself; he took the relics out, one by one, and it\nwas more and more, each instant, as if she were giving him time. He saw\nagain that her thick hair was, vulgarly speaking, brown, but that there\nwas a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it, for \"appreciation\"--a colour\nindescribable and of which he had known no other case, something that\ngave her at moments the sylvan head of a huntress. He saw the sleeves\nof her jacket drawn to her wrists, but he again made out the free arms\nwithin them to be of the completely rounded, the polished slimness that\nFlorentine sculptors, in the great time, had loved, and of which the\napparent firmness is expressed in their old silver and old bronze. He\nknew her narrow hands, he knew her long fingers and the shape and colour\nof her finger-nails, he knew her special beauty of movement and line\nwhen she turned her back, and the perfect working of all her main\nattachments, that of some wonderful finished instrument, something\nintently made for exhibition, for a prize. He knew above all the\nextraordinary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded\nflower, which gave her a likeness also to some long, loose silk purse,\nwell filled with gold pieces, but having been passed, empty, through a\nfinger-ring that held it together. It was as if, before she turned to\nhim, he had weighed the whole thing in his open palm and even heard\na little the chink of the metal. When she did turn to him it was to\nrecognise with her eyes what he might have been doing. She made no\ncircumstance of thus coming upon him, save so far as the intelligence in\nher face could at any moment make a circumstance of almost anything. If\nwhen she moved off she looked like a huntress, she looked when she came\nnearer like his notion, perhaps not wholly correct, of a muse. But what\nshe said was simply: \"You see you\'re not rid of me. How is dear Maggie?\"\n\nIt was to come soon enough by the quite unforced operation of chance,\nthe young man\'s opportunity to ask her the question suggested by Mrs.\nAssingham shortly before her entrance. The license, had he chosen to\nembrace it, was within a few minutes all there--the license given him\nliterally to inquire of this young lady how long she was likely to\nbe with them. For a matter of the mere domestic order had quickly\ndetermined, on Mrs. Assingham\'s part, a withdrawal, of a few moments,\nwhich had the effect of leaving her visitors free. \"Mrs. Betterman\'s\nthere?\" she had said to Charlotte in allusion to some member of the\nhousehold who was to have received her and seen her belongings settled;\nto which Charlotte had replied that she had encountered only the butler,\nwho had been quite charming. She had deprecated any action taken on\nbehalf of her effects; but her hostess, rebounding from accumulated\ncushions, evidently saw more in Mrs. Betterman\'s non-appearance\nthan could meet the casual eye. What she saw, in short, demanded her\nintervention, in spite of an earnest \"Let ME go!\" from the girl, and a\nprolonged smiling wail over the trouble she was giving. The Prince was\nquite aware, at this moment, that departure, for himself, was indicated;\nthe question of Miss Stant\'s installation didn\'t demand his presence;\nit was a case for one to go away--if one hadn\'t a reason for staying. He\nhad a reason, however--of that he was equally aware; and he had not\nfor a good while done anything more conscious and intentional than\nnot, quickly, to take leave. His visible insistence--for it came to\nthat--even demanded of him a certain disagreeable effort, the sort of\neffort he had mostly associated with acting for an idea. His idea was\nthere, his idea was to find out something, something he wanted much to\nknow, and to find it out not tomorrow, not at some future time, not in\nshort with waiting and wondering, but if possible before quitting the\nplace. This particular curiosity, moreover, confounded itself a little\nwith the occasion offered him to satisfy Mrs. Assingham\'s own; he\nwouldn\'t have admitted that he was staying to ask a rude question--there\nwas distinctly nothing rude in his having his reasons. It would be rude,\nfor that matter, to turn one\'s back, without a word or two, on an old\nfriend.\n\nWell, as it came to pass, he got the word or two, for Mrs. Assingham\'s\npreoccupation was practically simplifying. The little crisis was of\nshorter duration than our account of it; duration, naturally, would have\nforced him to take up his hat. He was somehow glad, on finding himself\nalone with Charlotte, that he had not been guilty of that inconsequence.\nNot to be flurried was the kind of consistency he wanted, just as\nconsistency was the kind of dignity. And why couldn\'t he have dignity\nwhen he had so much of the good conscience, as it were, on which such\nadvantages rested? He had done nothing he oughtn\'t--he had in fact\ndone nothing at all. Once more, as a man conscious of having known many\nwomen, he could assist, as he would have called it, at the recurrent,\nthe predestined phenomenon, the thing always as certain as sunrise or\nthe coming round of Saints\' days, the doing by the woman of the thing\nthat gave her away. She did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly--she\ncouldn\'t possibly not do it. It was her nature, it was her life, and the\nman could always expect it without lifting a finger. This was HIS, the\nman\'s, any man\'s, position and strength--that he had necessarily the\nadvantage, that he only had to wait, with a decent patience, to be\nplaced, in spite of himself, it might really be said, in the right. Just\nso the punctuality of performance on the part of the other creature\nwas her weakness and her deep misfortune--not less, no doubt, than her\nbeauty. It produced for the man that extraordinary mixture of pity and\nprofit in which his relation with her, when he was not a mere brute,\nmainly consisted; and gave him in fact his most pertinent ground of\nbeing always nice to her, nice about her, nice FOR her. She always\ndressed her act up, of course, she muffled and disguised and arranged\nit, showing in fact in these dissimulations a cleverness equal to but\none thing in the world, equal to her abjection: she would let it be\nknown for anything, for everything, but the truth of which it was made.\nThat was what, precisely, Charlotte Stant would be doing now; that was\nthe present motive and support, to a certainty, of each of her looks and\nmotions. She was the twentieth woman, she was possessed by her doom, but\nher doom was also to arrange appearances, and what now concerned him was\nto learn how she proposed. He would help her, would arrange WITH her to\nany point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance could\nbest be produced and best be preserved. Produced and preserved on her\npart of course; since on his own there had been luckily no folly to\ncover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation.\n\nThey stood there together, at all events, when the door had closed\nbehind their friend, with a conscious, strained smile and very much as\nif each waited for the other to strike the note or give the pitch. The\nyoung man held himself, in his silent suspense--only not more afraid\nbecause he felt her own fear. She was afraid of herself, however;\nwhereas, to his gain of lucidity, he was afraid only of her. Would she\nthrow herself into his arms, or would she be otherwise wonderful? She\nwould see what he would do--so their queer minute without words told\nhim; and she would act accordingly. But what could he do but just let\nher see that he would make anything, everything, for her, as honourably\neasy as possible? Even if she should throw herself into his arms he\nwould make that easy--easy, that is, to overlook, to ignore, not to\nremember, and not, by the same token, either, to regret. This was not\nwhat in fact happened, though it was also not at a single touch, but by\nthe finest gradations, that his tension subsided. \"It\'s too delightful\nto be back!\" she said at last; and it was all she definitely gave\nhim--being moreover nothing but what anyone else might have said. Yet\nwith two or three other things that, on his response, followed it, it\nquite pointed the path, while the tone of it, and her whole attitude,\nwere as far removed as need have been from the truth of her situation.\nThe abjection that was present to him as of the essence quite failed to\npeep out, and he soon enough saw that if she was arranging she could be\ntrusted to arrange. Good--it was all he asked; and all the more that he\ncould admire and like her for it.\n\nThe particular appearance she would, as they said, go in for was that\nof having no account whatever to give him--it would be in fact that of\nhaving none to give anybody--of reasons or of motives, of comings or of\ngoings. She was a charming young woman who had met him before, but she\nwas also a charming young woman with a life of her own. She would take\nit high--up, up, up, ever so high. Well then, he would do the same; no\nheight would be too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable\nto a young person so subtle. The dizziest seemed indeed attained when,\nafter another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology\nfor her abruptness.\n\n\"I\'ve been thinking of Maggie, and at last I yearned for her. I wanted\nto see her happy--and it doesn\'t strike me I find you too shy to tell me\nI SHALL.\"\n\n\"Of course she\'s happy, thank God! Only it\'s almost terrible, you know,\nthe happiness of young, good, generous creatures. It rather frightens\none. But the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints,\" said the Prince, \"have\nher in their keeping.\"\n\n\"Certainly they have. She\'s the dearest of the dear. But I needn\'t tell\nyou,\" the girl added.\n\n\"Ah,\" he returned with gravity, \"I feel that I\'ve still much to learn\nabout her.\" To which he subjoined \"She\'ll rejoice awfully in your being\nwith us.\"\n\n\"Oh, you don\'t need me!\" Charlotte smiled. \"It\'s her hour. It\'s a great\nhour. One has seen often enough, with girls, what it is. But that,\" she\nsaid, \"is exactly why. Why I\'ve wanted, I mean, not to miss it.\"\n\nHe bent on her a kind, comprehending face. \"You mustn\'t miss anything.\"\nHe had got it, the pitch, and he could keep it now, for all he had\nneeded was to have it given him. The pitch was the happiness of his wife\nthat was to be--the sight of that happiness as a joy for an old friend.\nIt was, yes, magnificent, and not the less so for its coming to him,\nsuddenly, as sincere, as nobly exalted. Something in Charlotte\'s eyes\nseemed to tell him this, seemed to plead with him in advance as to\nwhat he was to find in it. He was eager--and he tried to show her that\ntoo--to find what she liked; mindful as he easily could be of what the\nfriendship had been for Maggie. It had been armed with the wings of\nyoung imagination, young generosity; it had been, he believed--always\ncounting out her intense devotion to her father--the liveliest emotion\nshe had known before the dawn of the sentiment inspired by himself. She\nhad not, to his knowledge, invited the object of it to their wedding,\nhad not thought of proposing to her, for a matter of a couple of hours,\nan arduous and expensive journey. But she had kept her connected and\ninformed, from week to week, in spite of preparations and absorptions.\n\"Oh, I\'ve been writing to Charlotte--I wish you knew her better:\" he\ncould still hear, from recent weeks, this record of the fact, just as he\ncould still be conscious, not otherwise than queerly, of the gratuitous\nelement in Maggie\'s wish, which he had failed as yet to indicate to her.\nOlder and perhaps more intelligent, at any rate, why shouldn\'t Charlotte\nrespond--and be quite FREE to respond--to such fidelities with something\nmore than mere formal good manners? The relations of women with each\nother were of the strangest, it was true, and he probably wouldn\'t\nhave trusted here a young person of his own race. He was proceeding\nthroughout on the ground of the immense difference--difficult indeed as\nit might have been to disembroil in this young person HER race-quality.\nNothing in her definitely placed her; she was a rare, a special product.\nHer singleness, her solitude, her want of means, that is her want of\nramifications and other advantages, contributed to enrich her somehow\nwith an odd, precious neutrality, to constitute for her, so detached\nyet so aware, a sort of small social capital. It was the only one she\nhad--it was the only one a lonely, gregarious girl COULD have, since\nfew, surely, had in anything like the same degree arrived at it, and\nsince this one indeed had compassed it but through the play of some gift\nof nature to which you could scarce give a definite name.\n\nIt wasn\'t a question of her strange sense for tongues, with which she\njuggled as a conjuror at a show juggled with balls or hoops or lighted\nbrands--it wasn\'t at least entirely that, for he had known people\nalmost as polyglot whom their accomplishment had quite failed to make\ninteresting. He was polyglot himself, for that matter--as was the case\ntoo with so many of his friends and relations; for none of whom, more\nthan for himself, was it anything but a common convenience. The point\nwas that in this young woman it was a beauty in itself, and almost a\nmystery: so, certainly, he had more than once felt in noting, on her\nlips, that rarest, among the Barbarians, of all civil graces, a perfect\nfelicity in the use of Italian. He had known strangers--a few, and\nmostly men--who spoke his own language agreeably; but he had known\nneither man nor woman who showed for it Charlotte\'s almost mystifying\ninstinct. He remembered how, from the first of their acquaintance,\nshe had made no display of it, quite as if English, between them, his\nEnglish so matching with hers, were their inevitable medium. He had\nperceived all by accident--by hearing her talk before him to somebody\nelse that they had an alternative as good; an alternative in fact as\nmuch better as the amusement for him was greater in watching her for the\nslips that never came. Her account of the mystery didn\'t suffice: her\nrecall of her birth in Florence and Florentine childhood; her parents,\nfrom the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation,\ndemoralised, falsified, polyglot well before her, with the Tuscan balia\nwho was her first remembrance; the servants of the villa, the dear\ncontadini of the poder, the little girls and the other peasants of\nthe next podere, all the rather shabby but still ever so pretty human\nfurniture of her early time, including the good sisters of the poor\nconvent of the Tuscan hills, the convent shabbier than almost anything\nelse, but prettier too, in which she had been kept at school till the\nsubsequent phase, the phase of the much grander institution in Paris at\nwhich Maggie was to arrive, terribly frightened, and as a smaller\ngirl, three years before her own ending of her period of five. Such\nreminiscences, naturally, gave a ground, but they had not prevented him\nfrom insisting that some strictly civil ancestor--generations back, and\nfrom the Tuscan hills if she would-made himself felt, ineffaceably, in\nher blood and in her tone. She knew nothing of the ancestor, but she\nhad taken his theory from him, gracefully enough, as one of the little\npresents that make friendship flourish. These matters, however, all\nmelted together now, though a sense of them was doubtless concerned,\nnot unnaturally, in the next thing, of the nature of a surmise, that\nhis discretion let him articulate. \"You haven\'t, I rather gather,\nparticularly liked your country?\" They would stick, for the time, to\ntheir English.\n\n\"It doesn\'t, I fear, seem particularly mine. And it doesn\'t in the least\nmatter, over there, whether one likes it or not--that is to anyone but\none\'s self. But I didn\'t like it,\" said Charlotte Stant.\n\n\"That\'s not encouraging then to me, is it?\" the Prince went on.\n\n\"Do you mean because you\'re going?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, of course we\'re going. I\'ve wanted immensely to go.\" She\nhesitated. \"But now?--immediately?\"\n\n\"In a month or two--it seems to be the new idea.\" On which there was\nsomething in her face--as he imagined--that made him say: \"Didn\'t Maggie\nwrite to you?\"\n\n\"Not of your going at once. But of course you must go. And of course you\nmust stay\"--Charlotte was easily clear--\"as long as possible.\"\n\n\"Is that what you did?\" he laughed. \"You stayed as long as possible?\"\n\n\"Well, it seemed to me so--but I hadn\'t \'interests.\' You\'ll have\nthem--on a great scale. It\'s the country for interests,\" said Charlotte.\n\"If I had only had a few I doubtless wouldn\'t have left it.\"\n\nHe waited an instant; they were still on their feet. \"Yours then are\nrather here?\"\n\n\"Oh, mine!\"--the girl smiled. \"They take up little room, wherever they\nare.\"\n\nIt determined in him, the way this came from her and what it somehow\ndid for her-it determined in him a speech that would have seemed a few\nminutes before precarious and in questionable taste. The lead she\nhad given him made the difference, and he felt it as really a lift on\nfinding an honest and natural word rise, by its license, to his lips.\nNothing surely could be, for both of them, more in the note of a high\nbravery. \"I\'ve been thinking it all the while so probable, you know,\nthat you would have seen your way to marrying.\"\n\nShe looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for\nwhat he might have spoiled. \"To marrying whom?\"\n\n\"Why, some good, kind, clever, rich American.\"\n\nAgain his security hung in the balance--then she was, as he felt,\nadmirable.\n\n\"I tried everyone I came across. I did my best. I showed I had come,\nquite publicly, FOR that. Perhaps I showed it too much. At any rate\nit was no use. I had to recognise it. No one would have me.\" Then\nshe seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so\ndisconcerting. She pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed\nshe would cheer him up. \"Existence, you know, all the same, doesn\'t\ndepend on that. I mean,\" she smiled, \"on having caught a husband.\"\n\n\"Oh--existence!\" the Prince vaguely commented. \"You think I ought to\nargue for more than mere existence?\" she asked. \"I don\'t see why MY\nexistence--even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine--should\nbe so impossible. There are things, of sorts, I should be able to\nhave--things I should be able to be. The position of a single woman\nto-day is very favourable, you know.\"\n\n\"Favourable to what?\"\n\n\"Why, just TO existence--which may contain, after all, in one way\nand another, so much. It may contain, at the worst, even affections;\naffections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one\'s friends.\nI\'m extremely fond of Maggie, for instance--I quite adore her. How\ncould I adore her more if I were married to one of the people you speak\nof?\"\n\nThe Prince gave a laugh. \"You might adore HIM more--!\"\n\n\"Ah, but it isn\'t, is it?\" she asked, \"a question of that.\"\n\n\"My dear friend,\" he returned, \"it\'s always a question of doing the best\nfor one\'s self one can--without injury to others.\" He felt by this time\nthat they were indeed on an excellent basis; so he went on again, as\nif to show frankly his sense of its firmness. \"I venture therefore to\nrepeat my hope that you\'ll marry some capital fellow; and also to repeat\nmy belief that such a marriage will be more favourable to you, as you\ncall it, than even the spirit of the age.\"\n\nShe looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to\ntake it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to\ntake it with gaiety. \"Thank you very much,\" she simply said; but at that\nmoment their friend was with them again. It was undeniable that, as she\ncame in, Mrs. Assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from\none of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led\nCharlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. \"The Prince hopes\nso much I shall still marry some good person.\"\n\nWhether it worked for Mrs. Assingham or not, the Prince was himself, at\nthis, more than ever reassured. He was SAFE, in a word--that was what it\nall meant; and he had required to be safe. He was really safe enough for\nalmost any joke. \"It\'s only,\" he explained to their hostess, \"because\nof what Miss Stant has been telling me. Don\'t we want to keep up her\ncourage?\" If the joke was broad he had at least not begun it--not, that\nis, AS a joke; which was what his companion\'s address to their friend\nmade of it. \"She has been trying in America, she says, but hasn\'t\nbrought it off.\"\n\nThe tone was somehow not what Mrs. Assingham had expected, but she made\nthe best of it. \"Well then,\" she replied to the young man, \"if you take\nsuch an interest you must bring it off.\"\n\n\"And you must help, dear,\" Charlotte said unperturbed--\"as you\'ve\nhelped, so beautifully, in such things before.\" With which, before Mrs.\nAssingham could meet the appeal, she had addressed herself to the Prince\non a matter much nearer to him. \"YOUR marriage is on Friday?--on\nSaturday?\"\n\n\"Oh, on Friday, no! For what do you take us? There\'s not a vulgar\nomen we\'re neglecting. On Saturday, please, at the Oratory, at three\no\'clock--before twelve assistants exactly.\"\n\n\"Twelve including ME?\"\n\nIt struck him--he laughed. \"You\'ll make the thirteenth. It won\'t do!\"\n\n\"Not,\" said Charlotte, \"if you\'re going in for \'omens.\' Should you like\nme to stay away?\"\n\n\"Dear no--we\'ll manage. We\'ll make the round number--we\'ll have in some\nold woman. They must keep them there for that, don\'t they?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham\'s return had at last indicated for him his departure; he\nhad possessed himself again of his hat and approached her to take leave.\nBut he had another word for Charlotte. \"I dine to-night with Mr. Verver.\nHave you any message?\"\n\nThe girl seemed to wonder a little. \"For Mr. Verver?\"\n\n\"For Maggie--about her seeing you early. That, I know, is what she\'ll\nlike.\"\n\n\"Then I\'ll come early--thanks.\"\n\n\"I daresay,\" he went on, \"she\'ll send for you. I mean send a carriage.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t require that, thanks. I can go, for a penny, can\'t I?\" she\nasked of Mrs. Assingham, \"in an omnibus.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say!\" said the Prince while Mrs. Assingham looked at her blandly.\n\n\"Yes, love--and I\'ll give you the penny. She shall get there,\" the good\nlady added to their friend.\n\nBut Charlotte, as the latter took leave of her, thought of something\nelse. \"There\'s a great favour, Prince, that I want to ask of you. I\nwant, between this and Saturday, to make Maggie a marriage-present.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say!\" the young man again soothingly exclaimed.\n\n\"Ah, but I MUST,\" she went on. \"It\'s really almost for that I came back.\nIt was impossible to get in America what I wanted.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham showed anxiety. \"What is it then, dear, you want?\"\n\nBut the girl looked only at their companion. \"That\'s what the Prince, if\nhe\'ll be so good, must help me to decide.\"\n\n\"Can\'t _I_,\" Mrs. Assingham asked, \"help you to decide?\"\n\n\"Certainly, darling, we must talk it well over.\" And she kept her eyes\non the Prince. \"But I want him, if he kindly will, to go with me to\nlook. I want him to judge with me and choose. That, if you can spare the\nhour,\" she said, \"is the great favour I mean.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows at her--he wonderfully smiled. \"What you came\nback from America to ask? Ah, certainly then, I must find the hour!\" He\nwonderfully smiled, but it was rather more, after all, than he had been\nreckoning with. It went somehow so little with the rest that, directly,\nfor him, it wasn\'t the note of safety; it preserved this character, at\nthe best, but by being the note of publicity. Quickly, quickly, however,\nthe note of publicity struck him as better than any other. In another\nmoment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as\npublicity put their relation on the right footing? By this appeal to\nMrs. Assingham it was established as right, and she immediately showed\nthat such was her own understanding.\n\n\"Certainly, Prince,\" she laughed, \"you must find the hour!\" And it was\nreally so express a license from her, as representing friendly judgment,\npublic opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be,\nor whatever, that, after observing to Charlotte that, should she come to\nPortland Place in the morning, he would make a point of being there\nto see her and so, easily, arrange with her about a time, he took his\ndeparture with the absolutely confirmed impression of knowing, as he put\nit to himself, where he was. Which was what he had prolonged his visit\nfor. He was where he could stay.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\"I don\'t quite see, my dear,\" Colonel Assingham said to his wife the\nnight of Charlotte\'s arrival, \"I don\'t quite see, I\'m bound to say,\nwhy you take it, even at the worst, so ferociously hard. It isn\'t your\nfault, after all, is it? I\'ll be hanged, at any rate, if it\'s mine.\"\n\nThe hour was late, and the young lady who had disembarked at Southampton\nthat morning to come up by the \"steamer special,\" and who had then\nsettled herself at an hotel only to re-settle herself a couple of hours\nlater at a private house, was by this time, they might hope, peacefully\nresting from her exploits. There had been two men at dinner, rather\nbattered brothers-in-arms, of his own period, casually picked up by her\nhost the day before, and when the gentlemen, after the meal, rejoined\nthe ladies in the drawing-room, Charlotte, pleading fatigue, had already\nexcused herself. The beguiled warriors, however, had stayed till after\neleven--Mrs. Assingham, though finally quite without illusions, as\nshe said, about the military character, was always beguiling to old\nsoldiers; and as the Colonel had come in, before dinner, only in time\nto dress, he had not till this moment really been summoned to meet\nhis companion over the situation that, as he was now to learn, their\nvisitor\'s advent had created for them. It was actually more than\nmidnight, the servants had been sent to bed, the rattle of the wheels\nhad ceased to come in through a window still open to the August air, and\nRobert Assingham had been steadily learning, all the while, what it\nthus behoved him to know. But the words just quoted from him presented\nthemselves, for the moment, as the essence of his spirit and his\nattitude. He disengaged, he would be damned if he didn\'t--they were\nboth phrases he repeatedly used--his responsibility. The simplest, the\nsanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant\nlanguage. His wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of\nspeech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired\nGeneral whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and\nwinning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little\nfortresses of wood and little armies of tin. Her husband\'s exaggerated\nemphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. It harmlessly\ngratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct; bad\nwords, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their might, could\nrepresent battalions, squadrons, tremendous cannonades and glorious\ncharges of cavalry. It was natural, it was delightful--the romance, and\nfor her as well, of camp life and of the perpetual booming of guns. It\nwas fighting to the end, to the death, but no one was ever killed.\n\nLess fortunate than she, nevertheless, in spite of his wealth of\nexpression, he had not yet found the image that described her favourite\ngame; all he could do was practically to leave it to her, emulating\nher own philosophy. He had again and again sat up late to discuss those\nsituations in which her finer consciousness abounded, but he had never\nfailed to deny that anything in life, anything of hers, could be a\nsituation for himself. She might be in fifty at once if she liked--and\nit was what women did like, at their ease, after all; there always\nbeing, when they had too much of any, some man, as they were well\naware, to get them out. He wouldn\'t at any price, have one, of any sort\nwhatever, of his own, or even be in one along with her. He watched her,\naccordingly, in her favourite element, very much as he had sometimes\nwatched, at the Aquarium, the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though\ntight, bathing-suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of\nwater which looked so cold and uncomfortable to the non-amphibious. He\nlistened to his companion to-night, while he smoked his last pipe,\nhe watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a\nshilling. But it was true that, this being the case, he desired the\nvalue of his money. What was it, in the name of wonder, that she was so\nbent on being responsible FOR? What did she pretend was going to happen,\nand what, at the worst, could the poor girl do, even granting she\nwanted to do anything? What, at the worst, for that matter, could she be\nconceived to have in her head?\n\n\"If she had told me the moment she got here,\" Mrs. Assingham replied, \"I\nshouldn\'t have my difficulty in finding out. But she wasn\'t so obliging,\nand I see no sign at all of her becoming so. What\'s certain is that\nshe didn\'t come for nothing. She wants\"--she worked it out at her\nleisure--\"to see the Prince again. THAT isn\'t what troubles me. I mean\nthat such a fact, as a fact, isn\'t. But what I ask myself is, What does\nshe want it FOR?\"\n\n\"What\'s the good of asking yourself if you know you don\'t know?\" The\nColonel sat back at his own ease, with an ankle resting on the other\nknee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely\nslender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun\nblack silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to\nconsciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as\npolished and perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on\nparade. It went so far as to imply that someone or other would have\n\"got\" something or other, confinement to barracks or suppression of\npay, if it hadn\'t been just as it was. Bob Assingham was distinguished\naltogether by a leanness of person, a leanness quite distinct from\nphysical laxity, which might have been determined, on the part of\nsuperior powers, by views of transport and accommodation, and which in\nfact verged on the abnormal. He \"did\" himself as well as his friends\nmostly knew, yet remained hungrily thin, with facial, with abdominal\ncavities quite grim in their effect, and with a consequent looseness\nof apparel that, combined with a choice of queer light shades and of\nstrange straw-like textures, of the aspect of Chinese mats, provocative\nof wonder at his sources of supply, suggested the habit of tropic\nislands, a continual cane-bottomed chair, a governorship exercised on\nwide verandahs. His smooth round head, with the particular shade of\nits white hair, was like a silver pot reversed; his cheekbones and the\nbristle of his moustache were worthy of Attila the Hun. The hollows of\nhis eyes were deep and darksome, but the eyes within them, were like\nlittle blue flowers plucked that morning. He knew everything that could\nbe known about life, which he regarded as, for far the greater part, a\nmatter of pecuniary arrangement. His wife accused him of a want, alike,\nof moral and of intellectual reaction, or rather indeed of a complete\nincapacity for either. He never went even so far as to understand what\nshe meant, and it didn\'t at all matter, since he could be in spite\nof the limitation a perfectly social creature. The infirmities, the\npredicaments of men neither surprised nor shocked him, and indeed--which\nwas perhaps his only real loss in a thrifty career--scarce even amused;\nhe took them for granted without horror, classifying them after their\nkind and calculating results and chances. He might, in old bewildering\nclimates, in old campaigns of cruelty and license, have had such\nrevelations and known such amazements that he had nothing more to\nlearn. But he was wholly content, in spite of his fondness, in domestic\ndiscussion, for the superlative degree; and his kindness, in the oddest\nway, seemed to have nothing to do with his experience. He could deal\nwith things perfectly, for all his needs, without getting near them.\n\nThis was the way he dealt with his wife, a large proportion of whose\nmeanings he knew he could neglect. He edited, for their general economy,\nthe play of her mind, just as he edited, savingly, with the stump of a\npencil, her redundant telegrams. The thing in the world that was least\nof a mystery to him was his Club, which he was accepted as perhaps\ntoo completely managing, and which he managed on lines of perfect\npenetration. His connection with it was really a master-piece of\nediting. This was in fact, to come back, very much the process he might\nhave been proposing to apply to Mrs. Assingham\'s view of what was\nnow before them; that is to their connection with Charlotte Stant\'s\npossibilities. They wouldn\'t lavish on them all their little fortune\nof curiosity and alarm; certainly they wouldn\'t spend their cherished\nsavings so early in the day. He liked Charlotte, moreover, who was a\nsmooth and compact inmate, and whom he felt as, with her instincts that\nmade against waste, much more of his own sort than his wife. He could\ntalk with her about Fanny almost better than he could talk with Fanny\nabout Charlotte. However, he made at present the best of the latter\nnecessity, even to the pressing of the question he has been noted as\nhaving last uttered. \"If you can\'t think what to be afraid of, wait till\nyou can think. Then you\'ll do it much better. Or otherwise, if that\'s\nwaiting too long, find out from HER. Don\'t try to find out from ME. Ask\nher herself.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham denied, as we know, that her husband had a play of mind;\nso that she could, on her side, treat these remarks only as if they\nhad been senseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. She\noverlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom\nshe talked so persistently of such intimate things. \"It\'s her friendship\nwith Maggie that\'s the immense complication. Because THAT,\" she audibly\nmused, \"is so natural.\"\n\n\"Then why can\'t she have come out for it?\"\n\n\"She came out,\" Mrs. Assingham continued to meditate, \"because she hates\nAmerica. There was no place for her there--she didn\'t fit in. She wasn\'t\nin sympathy--no more were the people she saw. Then it\'s hideously dear;\nshe can\'t, on her means, begin to live there. Not at all as she can, in\na way, here.\"\n\n\"In the way, you mean, of living with US?\"\n\n\"Of living with anyone. She can\'t live by visits alone--and she doesn\'t\nwant to. She\'s too good for it even if she could. But she will--she\nMUST, sooner or later--stay with THEM. Maggie will want her--Maggie will\nmake her. Besides, she\'ll want to herself.\"\n\n\"Then why won\'t that do,\" the Colonel asked, \"for you to think it\'s what\nshe has come for?\"\n\n\"How will it do, HOW?\"--she went on as without hearing him.\n\n\"That\'s what one keeps feeling.\"\n\n\"Why shouldn\'t it do beautifully?\"\n\n\"That anything of the past,\" she brooded, \"should come back NOW? How\nwill it do, how will it do?\"\n\n\"It will do, I daresay, without your wringing your hands over it. When,\nmy dear,\" the Colonel pursued as he smoked, \"have you ever seen anything\nof yours--anything that you\'ve done--NOT do?\"\n\n\"Ah, I didn\'t do this!\" It brought her answer straight. \"I didn\'t bring\nher back.\"\n\n\"Did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?\"\n\n\"Not a bit--for I shouldn\'t have minded her coming after their\nmarriage. It\'s her coming, this way, before.\" To which she added with\ninconsequence: \"I\'m too sorry for her--of course she can\'t enjoy it. But\nI don\'t see what perversity rides her. She needn\'t have looked it all\nso in the face--as she doesn\'t do it, I suppose, simply for discipline.\nIt\'s almost--that\'s the bore of it--discipline to ME.\"\n\n\"Perhaps then,\" said Bob Assingham, \"that\'s what has been her idea. Take\nit, for God\'s sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will\ndo,\" he added, \"for discipline to me as well.\"\n\nShe was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with\nsuch different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in\njustice, be blind. \"It isn\'t in the least, you know, for instance, that\nI believe she\'s bad. Never, never,\" Mrs. Assingham declared. \"I don\'t\nthink that of her.\"\n\n\"Then why isn\'t that enough?\"\n\nNothing was enough, Mrs. Assingham signified, but that she should\ndevelop her thought. \"She doesn\'t deliberately intend, she doesn\'t\nconsciously wish, the least complication. It\'s perfectly true that she\nthinks Maggie a dear--as who doesn\'t? She\'s incapable of any PLAN to\nhurt a hair of her head. Yet here she is--and there THEY are,\" she wound\nup.\n\nHer husband again, for a little, smoked in silence. \"What in the world,\nbetween them, ever took place?\"\n\n\"Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why, nothing--except their having to\nrecognise that nothing COULD. That was their little romance--it was even\ntheir little tragedy.\"\n\n\"But what the deuce did they DO?\"\n\n\"Do? They fell in love with each other--but, seeing it wasn\'t possible,\ngave each other up.\"\n\n\"Then where was the romance?\"\n\n\"Why, in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the\nfacts in the face.\"\n\n\"What facts?\" the Colonel went on.\n\n\"Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means\nto marry. If she had had even a little--a little, I mean, for two--I\nbelieve he would bravely have done it.\" After which, as her husband but\nemitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. \"I mean if he himself\nhad had only a little--or a little more than a little, a little for a\nprince. They would have done what they could\"--she did them justice\"--if\nthere had been a way. But there wasn\'t a way, and Charlotte, quite to\nher honour, I consider, understood it. He HAD to have money--it was a\nquestion of life and death. It wouldn\'t have been a bit amusing, either,\nto marry him as a pauper--I mean leaving him one. That was what she\nhad--as HE had--the reason to see.\"\n\n\"And their reason is what you call their romance?\"\n\nShe looked at him a moment. \"What do you want more?\"\n\n\"Didn\'t HE,\" the Colonel inquired, \"want anything more? Or didn\'t, for\nthat matter, poor Charlotte herself?\"\n\nShe kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered.\n\"They were thoroughly in love. She might have been his--\" She checked\nherself; she even for a minute lost herself. \"She might have been\nanything she liked--except his wife.\"\n\n\"But she wasn\'t,\" said the Colonel very smokingly.\n\n\"She wasn\'t,\" Mrs. Assingham echoed.\n\nThe echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. He seemed to\nlisten to it die away; then he began again. \"How are you sure?\"\n\nShe waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite. \"There\nwasn\'t time.\"\n\nHe had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other.\n\"Does it take so much time?\"\n\nShe herself, however, remained serious. \"It takes more than they had.\"\n\nHe was detached, but he wondered. \"What was the matter with their time?\"\nAfter which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it\ntogether, she only considered, \"You mean that you came in with your\nidea?\" he demanded.\n\nIt brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to\nanswer herself. \"Not a bit of it--THEN. But you surely recall,\" she went\non, \"the way, a year ago, everything took place. They had parted before\nhe had ever heard of Maggie.\"\n\n\"Why hadn\'t he heard of her from Charlotte herself?\"\n\n\"Because she had never spoken of her.\"\n\n\"Is that also,\" the Colonel inquired, \"what she has told you?\"\n\n\"I\'m not speaking,\" his wife returned, \"of what she has told me. That\'s\none thing. I\'m speaking of what I know by myself. That\'s another.\"\n\n\"You feel, in other words, that she lies to you?\" Bob Assingham more\nsociably asked.\n\nShe neglected the question, treating it as gross. \"She never so much, at\nthe time, as named Maggie.\"\n\nIt was so positive that it appeared to strike him. \"It\'s he then who has\ntold you?\"\n\nShe after a moment admitted it. \"It\'s he.\"\n\n\"And he doesn\'t lie?\"\n\n\"No--to do him justice. I believe he absolutely doesn\'t. If I hadn\'t\nbelieved it,\" Mrs. Assingham declared, for her general justification, \"I\nwould have had nothing to do with him--that is in this connection. He\'s\na gentleman--I mean ALL as much of one as he ought to be. And he had\nnothing to gain. That helps,\" she added, \"even a gentleman. It was I\nwho named Maggie to him--a year from last May. He had never heard of her\nbefore.\"\n\n\"Then it\'s grave,\" said the Colonel.\n\nShe hesitated. \"Do you mean grave for me?\"\n\n\"Oh, that everything\'s grave for \'you\' is what we take for granted and\nare fundamentally talking about. It\'s grave--it WAS--for Charlotte. And\nit\'s grave for Maggie. That is it WAS--when he did see her. Or when she\ndid see HIM.\"\n\n\"You don\'t torment me as much as you would like,\" she presently went on,\n\"because you think of nothing that I haven\'t a thousand times thought\nof, and because I think of everything that you never will. It would\nall,\" she recognised, \"have been grave if it hadn\'t all been right. You\ncan\'t make out,\" she contended, \"that we got to Rome before the end of\nFebruary.\"\n\nHe more than agreed. \"There\'s nothing in life, my dear, that I CAN make\nout.\"\n\nWell, there was nothing in life, apparently, that she, at real need,\ncouldn\'t. \"Charlotte, who had been there, that year, from early, quite\nfrom November, left suddenly, you\'ll quite remember, about the 10th of\nApril. She was to have stayed on--she was to have stayed, naturally,\nmore or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the\nVervers, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in Paris, were at\nlast really coming. They were coming--that is Maggie was--largely to\nsee her, and above all to be with her THERE. It was all altered--by\nCharlotte\'s going to Florence. She went from one day to the other--you\nforget everything. She gave her reasons, but I thought it odd, at the\ntime; I had a sense that something must have happened. The difficulty\nwas that, though I knew a little, I didn\'t know enough. I didn\'t know\nher relation with him had been, as you say, a \'near\' thing--that is I\ndidn\'t know HOW near. The poor girl\'s departure was a flight--she went\nto save herself.\"\n\nHe had listened more than he showed--as came out in his tone. \"To save\nherself?\"\n\n\"Well, also, really, I think, to save HIM too. I saw it afterwards--I\nsee it all now. He would have been sorry--he didn\'t want to hurt her.\"\n\n\"Oh, I daresay,\" the Colonel laughed. \"They generally don\'t!\"\n\n\"At all events,\" his wife pursued, \"she escaped--they both did; for they\nhad had simply to face it. Their marriage couldn\'t be, and, if that was\nso, the sooner they put the Apennines between them the better. It had\ntaken them, it is true, some time to feel this and to find it out. They\nhad met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they\nhad met more than was known--though it was a good deal known. More,\ncertainly,\" she said, \"than I then imagined--though I don\'t know what\ndifference it would after all have made with me. I liked him, I thought\nhim charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more\nthan a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. And there are things he\nmight have done--things that many men easily would. Therefore I believe\nin him, and I was right, at first, in knowing I was going to. So I\nhaven\'t\"--and she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after\nadding up the items, the sum of a column of figures--\"so I haven\'t, I\nsay to myself, been a fool.\"\n\n\"Well, are you trying to make out that I\'ve said you have? All their\ncase wants, at any rate,\" Bob Assingham declared, \"is that you should\nleave it well alone. It\'s theirs now; they\'ve bought it, over the\ncounter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours.\"\n\n\"Of which case,\" she asked, \"are you speaking?\"\n\nHe smoked a minute: then with a groan: \"Lord, are there so many?\"\n\n\"There\'s Maggie\'s and the Prince\'s, and there\'s the Prince\'s and\nCharlotte\'s.\"\n\n\"Oh yes; and then,\" the Colonel scoffed, \"there\'s Charlotte\'s and the\nPrince\'s.\"\n\n\"There\'s Maggie\'s and Charlotte\'s,\" she went on--\"and there\'s also\nMaggie\'s and mine. I think too that there\'s Charlotte\'s and mine. Yes,\"\nshe mused, \"Charlotte\'s and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see,\nthere are plenty. But I mean,\" she said, \"to keep my head.\"\n\n\"Are we to settle them all,\" he inquired, \"to-night?\"\n\n\"I should lose it if things had happened otherwise--if I had acted\nwith any folly.\" She had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his\nquestion. \"I shouldn\'t be able to bear that now. But my good conscience\nis my strength; no one can accuse me. The Ververs came on to Rome\nalone--Charlotte, after their days with her in Florence, had decided\nabout America. Maggie, I daresay, had helped her; she must have made her\na present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. Charlotte\nleft them, came to England, \'joined\' somebody or other, sailed for New\nYork. I have still her letter from Milan, telling me; I didn\'t know at\nthe moment all that was behind it, but I felt in it nevertheless the\nundertaking of a new life. Certainly, in any case, it cleared THAT\nair--I mean the dear old Roman, in which we were steeped. It left the\nfield free--it gave me a free hand. There was no question for me of\nanybody else when I brought the two others together. More than that,\nthere was no question for them. So you see,\" she concluded, \"where that\nputs me.\" She got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue\ndaylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing\nher way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered\nalertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that\nshoots at last into the open. She turned about the room; she looked out\na moment into the August night; she stopped, here and there, before the\nflowers in bowls and vases. Yes, it was distinctly as if she had proved\nwhat was needing proof, as if the issue of her operation had been,\nalmost unexpectedly, a success. Old arithmetic had perhaps been\nfallacious, but the new settled the question. Her husband, oddly,\nhowever, kept his place without apparently measuring these results.\nAs he had been amused at her intensity, so he was not uplifted by her\nrelief; his interest might in fact have been more enlisted than he\nallowed. \"Do you mean,\" he presently asked, \"that he had already forgot\nabout Charlotte?\"\n\nShe faced round as if he had touched a spring. \"He WANTED to,\nnaturally--and it was much the best thing he could do.\" She was in\npossession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. \"He\nwas capable of the effort, and he took the best way. Remember too what\nMaggie then seemed to us.\"\n\n\"She\'s very nice; but she always seems to me, more than anything else,\nthe young woman who has a million a year. If you mean that that\'s what\nshe especially seemed to him, you of course place the thing in your\nlight. The effort to forget Charlotte couldn\'t, I grant you, have been\nso difficult.\"\n\nThis pulled her up but for an instant. \"I never said he didn\'t from the\nfirst--I never said that he doesn\'t more and more--like Maggie\'s money.\"\n\n\"I never said I shouldn\'t have liked it myself,\" Bob Assingham returned.\nHe made no movement; he smoked another minute. \"How much did Maggie\nknow?\"\n\n\"How much?\" She seemed to consider--as if it were between quarts and\ngallons--how best to express the quantity. \"She knew what Charlotte, in\nFlorence, had told her.\"\n\n\"And what had Charlotte told her?\"\n\n\"Very little.\"\n\n\"What makes you so sure?\"\n\n\"Why, this--that she couldn\'t tell her.\" And she explained a little what\nshe meant. \"There are things, my dear--haven\'t you felt it yourself,\ncoarse as you are?--that no one could tell Maggie. There are things\nthat, upon my word, I shouldn\'t care to attempt to tell her now.\"\n\nThe Colonel smoked on it. \"She\'d be so scandalised?\"\n\n\"She\'d be so frightened. She\'d be, in her strange little way, so hurt.\nShe wasn\'t born to know evil. She must never know it.\" Bob Assingham had\na queer grim laugh; the sound of which, in fact, fixed his wife before\nhim. \"We\'re taking grand ways to prevent it.\"\n\nBut she stood there to protest. \"We\'re not taking any ways. The ways are\nall taken; they were taken from the moment he came up to our carriage\nthat day in Villa Borghese--the second or third of her days in Rome,\nwhen, as you remember, you went off somewhere with Mr. Verver, and the\nPrince, who had got into the carriage with us, came home with us to tea.\nThey had met; they had seen each other well; they were in relation: the\nrest was to come of itself and as it could. It began, practically, I\nrecollect, in our drive. Maggie happened to learn, by some other man\'s\ngreeting of him, in the bright Roman way, from a streetcorner as we\npassed, that one of the Prince\'s baptismal names, the one always used\nfor him among his relations, was Amerigo: which (as you probably don\'t\nknow, however, even after a lifetime of ME), was the name, four hundred\nyears ago, or whenever, of the pushing man who followed, across the sea,\nin the wake of Columbus and succeeded, where Columbus had failed, in\nbecoming godfather, or name-father, to the new Continent; so that the\nthought of any connection with him can even now thrill our artless\nbreasts.\"\n\nThe Colonel\'s grim placidity could always quite adequately meet his\nwife\'s not infrequent imputation of ignorances, on the score of the land\nof her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even\nat the present moment not directly lighted by an inquiry that managed to\nbe curious without being apologetic. \"But where does the connection come\nin?\"\n\nHis wife was prompt. \"By the women--that is by some obliging woman,\nof old, who was a descendant of the pushing man, the make-believe\ndiscoverer, and whom the Prince is therefore luckily able to refer to\nas an ancestress. A branch of the other family had become great--great\nenough, at least, to marry into his; and the name of the navigator,\ncrowned with glory, was, very naturally, to become so the fashion among\nthem that some son, of every generation, was appointed to wear it. My\npoint is, at any rate, that I recall noticing at the time how the Prince\nwas, from the start, helped with the dear Ververs by his wearing it.\nThe connection became romantic for Maggie the moment she took it in; she\nfilled out, in a flash, every link that might be vague. \'By that sign,\'\nI quite said to myself, \'he\'ll conquer\'--with his good fortune, of\ncourse, of having the other necessary signs too. It really,\" said Mrs.\nAssingham, \"was, practically, the fine side of the wedge. Which struck\nme as also,\" she wound up, \"a lovely note for the candour of the\nVervers.\"\n\nThe Colonel took in the tale, but his comment was prosaic. \"He knew,\nAmerigo, what he was about. And I don\'t mean the OLD one.\"\n\n\"I know what you mean!\" his wife bravely threw off.\n\n\"The old one\"--he pointed his effect \"isn\'t the only discoverer in the\nfamily.\"\n\n\"Oh, as much as you like! If he discovered America--or got himself\nhonoured as if he had--his successors were, in due time, to discover the\nAmericans. And it was one of them in particular, doubtless, who was to\ndiscover how patriotic we are.\"\n\n\"Wouldn\'t this be the same one,\" the Colonel asked, \"who really\ndiscovered what you call the connection?\"\n\nShe gave him a look. \"The connection\'s a true thing--the connection\'s\nperfectly historic, Your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind.\nDon\'t you understand,\" she asked, \"that the history of such people is\nknown, root and branch, at every moment of its course?\"\n\n\"Oh, it\'s all right,\" said Bob Assingham.\n\n\"Go to the British Museum,\" his companion continued with spirit.\n\n\"And what am I to do there?\"\n\n\"There\'s a whole immense room, or recess, or department, or whatever,\nfilled with books written about his family alone. You can see for\nyourself.\"\n\n\"Have you seen for YOUR self?\"\n\nShe faltered but an instant. \"Certainly--I went one day with Maggie. We\nlooked him up, so to say. They were most civil.\" And she fell again into\nthe current her husband had slightly ruffled. \"The effect was produced,\nthe charm began to work, at all events, in Rome, from that hour of the\nPrince\'s drive with us. My only course, afterwards, had to be to make\nthe best of it. It was certainly good enough for that,\" Mrs. Assingham\nhastened to add, \"and I didn\'t in the least see my duty in making the\nworst. In the same situation, to-day; I wouldn\'t act differently. I\nentered into the case as it then appeared to me--and as, for the matter\nof that, it still does. I LIKED it, I thought all sorts of good of it,\nand nothing can even now,\" she said with some intensity, \"make me think\nanything else.\"\n\n\"Nothing can ever make you think anything you don\'t want to,\" the\nColonel, still in his chair, remarked over his pipe. \"You\'ve got a\nprecious power of thinking whatever you do want. You want also, from\nmoment to moment, to think such desperately different things. What\nhappened,\" he went on, \"was that you fell violently in love with the\nPrince yourself, and that as you couldn\'t get me out of the way you had\nto take some roundabout course. You couldn\'t marry him, any more than\nCharlotte could--that is not to yourself. But you could to somebody\nelse--it was always the Prince, it was always marriage. You could to\nyour little friend, to whom there were no objections.\"\n\n\"Not only there were no objections, but there were reasons, positive\nones--and all excellent, all charming.\" She spoke with an absence of\nall repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and\nthis abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost\nher nothing. \"It IS always the Prince; and it IS always, thank heaven,\nmarriage. And these are the things, God grant, that it will always be.\nThat I could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it\ncontinues to make me happy.\"\n\n\"Then why aren\'t you quiet?\"\n\n\"I AM quiet,\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\nHe looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she\nmoved about again, a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration\nof her tranquillity. He was as silent, at first, as if he had taken her\nanswer, but he was not to keep it long. \"What do you make of it that, by\nyour own show, Charlotte couldn\'t tell her all? What do you make of it\nthat the Prince didn\'t tell her anything? Say one understands that there\nare things she can\'t be told--since, as you put it, she is so easily\nscared and shocked.\" He produced these objections slowly, giving her\ntime, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. But she\nwas roaming still when he concluded his inquiry. \"If there hadn\'t been\nanything there shouldn\'t have been between the pair before Charlotte\nbolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there SHOULDN\'T be: why in\nthe world was what there HAD been too bad to be spoken of?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not\ndirectly meeting it even when at last she stopped.\n\n\"I thought you wanted me to be quiet.\"\n\n\"So I do--and I\'m trying to make you so much so that you won\'t worry\nmore. Can\'t you be quiet on THAT?\"\n\nShe thought a moment--then seemed to try. \"To relate that she had to\n\'bolt\' for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for\nher what she wished--THAT I can perfectly feel Charlotte\'s not wanting\nto do.\"\n\n\"Ah then, if it HAS done for her what she wished-!\" But the Colonel\'s\nconclusion hung by the \"if\" which his wife didn\'t take up. So it hung\nbut the longer when he presently spoke again. \"All one wonders, in that\ncase, is why then she has come back to him.\"\n\n\"Say she hasn\'t come back to him. Not really to HIM.\"\n\n\"I\'ll say anything you like. But that won\'t do me the same good as your\nsaying it.\"\n\n\"Nothing, my dear, will do you good,\" Mrs. Assingham returned. \"You\ndon\'t care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be\ngrossly amused because I don\'t keep washing my hands--!\"\n\n\"I thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this\nis precisely what you do.\"\n\nBut his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as\nshe had gone on before. \"You\'re perfectly indifferent, really; you\'re\nperfectly immoral. You\'ve taken part in the sack of cities, and I\'m sure\nyou\'ve done dreadful things yourself. But I DON\'T trouble my head, if\nyou like. \'So now there!\'\" she laughed.\n\nHe accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. \"Well, I back poor\nCharlotte.\"\n\n\"\'Back\' her?\"\n\n\"To know what she wants.\"\n\n\"Ah then, so do I. She does know what she wants.\" And Mrs. Assingham\nproduced this quantity, at last, on the girl\'s behalf, as the ripe\nresult of her late wanderings and musings. She had groped through\ntheir talk, for the thread, and now she had got it. \"She wants to be\nmagnificent.\"\n\n\"She is,\" said the Colonel almost cynically.\n\n\"She wants\"--his wife now had it fast \"to be thoroughly superior, and\nshe\'s capable of that.\"\n\n\"Of wanting to?\"\n\n\"Of carrying out her idea.\"\n\n\"And what IS her idea?\"\n\n\"To see Maggie through.\"\n\nBob Assingham wondered. \"Through what?\"\n\n\"Through everything. She KNOWS the Prince.\"\n\n\"And Maggie doesn\'t. No, dear thing\"--Mrs. Assingham had to recognise\nit--\"she doesn\'t.\"\n\n\"So that Charlotte has come out to give her lessons?\"\n\nShe continued, Fanny Assingham, to work out her thought. \"She has done\nthis great thing for him. That is, a year ago, she practically did it.\nShe practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himself--and helped me\nto help him. She kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what,\nmoreover, were her silences to Maggie but a direct aid to him? If she\nhad spoken in Florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had,\ncome back at any time--till within a few weeks ago; if she hadn\'t gone\nto New York and hadn\'t held out there: if she hadn\'t done these things\nall that has happened since would certainly have been different.\nTherefore she\'s in a position to be consistent now. She knows the\nPrince,\" Mrs. Assingham repeated. It involved even again her former\nrecognition. \"And Maggie, dear thing, doesn\'t.\"\n\nShe was high, she was lucid, she was almost inspired; and it was but\nthe deeper drop therefore to her husband\'s flat common sense. \"In other\nwords Maggie is, by her ignorance, in danger? Then if she\'s in danger,\nthere IS danger.\"\n\n\"There WON\'T be--with Charlotte\'s understanding of it. That\'s where she\nhas had her conception of being able to be heroic, of being able in fact\nto be sublime. She is, she will be\"--the good lady by this time glowed.\n\"So she sees it--to become, for her best friend, an element of POSITIVE\nsafety.\"\n\nBob Assingham looked at it hard. \"Which of them do you call her best\nfriend?\"\n\nShe gave a toss of impatience. \"I\'ll leave you to discover!\" But the\ngrand truth thus made out she had now completely adopted. \"It\'s for US,\ntherefore, to be hers.\"\n\n\"\'Hers\'?\"\n\n\"You and I. It\'s for us to be Charlotte\'s. It\'s for us, on our side, to\nsee HER through.\"\n\n\"Through her sublimity?\"\n\n\"Through her noble, lonely life. Only--that\'s essential--it mustn\'t be\nlonely. It will be all right if she marries.\"\n\n\"So we\'re to marry her?\"\n\n\"We\'re to marry her. It will be,\" Mrs. Assingham continued, \"the great\nthing I can do.\" She made it out more and more. \"It will make up.\"\n\n\"Make up for what?\" As she said nothing, however, his desire for\nlucidity renewed itself. \"If everything\'s so all right what is there to\nmake up for?\"\n\n\"Why, if I did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. If I made a\nmistake.\"\n\n\"You\'ll make up for it by making another?\" And then as she again took\nher time: \"I thought your whole point is just that you\'re sure.\"\n\n\"One can never be ideally sure of anything. There are always\npossibilities.\"\n\n\"Then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?\"\n\nIt made her again look at him. \"Where would you have been, my dear, if I\nhadn\'t meddled with YOU?\"\n\n\"Ah, that wasn\'t meddling--I was your own. I was your own,\" said the\nColonel, \"from the moment I didn\'t object.\"\n\n\"Well, these people won\'t object. They are my own too--in the sense that\nI\'m awfully fond of them. Also in the sense,\" she continued, \"that I\nthink they\'re not so very much less fond of me. Our relation, all round,\nexists--it\'s a reality, and a very good one; we\'re mixed up, so to\nspeak, and it\'s too late to change it. We must live IN it and with\nit. Therefore to see that Charlotte gets a good husband as soon as\npossible--that, as I say, will be one of my ways of living. It will\ncover,\" she said with conviction, \"all the ground.\" And then as his own\nconviction appeared to continue as little to match: \"The ground, I mean,\nof any nervousness I may ever feel. It will be in fact my duty and I\nshan\'t rest till my duty\'s performed.\" She had arrived by this time at\nsomething like exaltation. \"I shall give, for the next year or two if\nnecessary, my life to it. I shall have done in that case what I can.\"\n\nHe took it at last as it came. \"You hold there\'s no limit to what you\n\'can\'?\"\n\n\"I don\'t say there\'s no limit, or anything of the sort. I say there are\ngood chances--enough of them for hope. Why shouldn\'t there be when a\ngirl is, after all, all that she is?\"\n\n\"By after \'all\' you mean after she\'s in love with somebody else?\"\n\nThe Colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be\nfatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. \"She\'s not too much in love not\nherself to want to marry. She would now particularly like to.\"\n\n\"Has she told you so?\"\n\n\"Not yet. It\'s too soon. But she will. Meanwhile, however, I don\'t\nrequire the information. Her marrying will prove the truth.\"\n\n\"And what truth?\"\n\n\"The truth of everything I say.\"\n\n\"Prove it to whom?\"\n\n\"Well, to myself, to begin with. That will be enough for me--to work\nfor her. What it will prove,\" Mrs. Assingham presently went on, \"will be\nthat she\'s cured. That she accepts the situation.\"\n\nHe paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. \"The situation of\ndoing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?\"\n\nHis wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was\nmerely vulgar. \"The one thing she can do that will really make new\ntracks altogether. The thing that, before any other, will be wise and\nright. The thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.\"\n\nHe slowly emitted his smoke. \"And best give you, by the same token,\nyours to be magnificent with her?\"\n\n\"I shall be as magnificent, at least, as I can.\"\n\nBob Assingham got up. \"And you call ME immoral?\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"I\'ll call you stupid if you prefer. But stupidity pushed\nto a certain point IS, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality\nbut high intelligence?\" This he was unable to tell her; which left her\nmore definitely to conclude. \"Besides, it\'s all, at the worst, great\nfun.\"\n\n\"Oh, if you simply put it at THAT--!\"\n\nHis implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even\nthus he couldn\'t catch her by it. \"Oh, I don\'t mean,\" she said from the\nthreshold, \"the fun that you mean. Good-night.\" In answer to which, as\nhe turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a\ngrunt. He HAD apparently meant some particular kind.\n\n\n\n V\n\n\"Well, now I must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest.\" So\nCharlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park.\n\"I don\'t want to pretend, and I can\'t pretend a moment longer. You may\nthink of me what you will, but I don\'t care. I knew I shouldn\'t and I\nfind now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else.\nFor this,\" she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the Prince\nhad already come to a pause.\n\n\"For \'this\'?\" He spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were\nvague to him--or were, rather, a quantity that couldn\'t, at the most, be\nmuch.\n\nIt would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. \"To have\none hour alone with you.\" It had rained heavily in the night, and though\nthe pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the August\nmorning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was\ncool and grey. The multitudinous green of the Park had been deepened,\nand a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of\nodours less acceptable, rose from the earth. Charlotte had looked about\nher, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for\na deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart\nof London, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed English type. It was as\nif it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it,\nas if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as\nthis was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere\nvague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly,\nan American--as indeed you had to be, blessedly, an American for all\nsorts of things: so long as you hadn\'t, blessedly or not, to remain\nin America. The Prince had, by half-past ten--as also by definite\nappointment--called in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assingham\'s visitor, and\nthen, after brief delay, the two had walked together up Sloane Street\nand got straight into the Park from Knightsbridge. The understanding\nto this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably\nconsequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in\nMrs. Assingham\'s drawing-room. It was an appeal the couple of days\nhad done nothing to invalidate--everything, much rather, to place in a\nlight, and as to which, obviously, it wouldn\'t have fitted that anyone\nshould raise an objection. Who was there, for that matter, to raise\none, from the moment Mrs. Assingham, informed and apparently\nnot disapproving, didn\'t intervene? This the young man had asked\nhimself--with a very sufficient sense of what would have made him\nridiculous. He wasn\'t going to begin--that at least was certain--by\nshowing a fear. Even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover,\nit would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so\npropitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this\nrapid interval.\n\nThe time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own\nwedding-guests and by Maggie\'s scarce less absorbed entertainment of her\nfriend, whom she had kept for hours together in Portland Place; whom she\nhad not, as wouldn\'t have been convenient, invited altogether as yet to\nmigrate, but who had been present, with other persons, his contingent,\nat luncheon, at tea, at dinner, at perpetual repasts--he had never in\nhis life, it struck him, had to reckon with so much eating--whenever he\nhad looked in. If he had not again, till this hour, save for a minute,\nseen Charlotte alone, so, positively, all the while, he had not seen\neven Maggie; and if, therefore, he had not seen even Maggie, nothing was\nmore natural than that he shouldn\'t have seen Charlotte. The exceptional\nminute, a mere snatch, at the tail of the others, on the huge Portland\nPlace staircase had sufficiently enabled the girl to remind him--so\nready she assumed him to be--of what they were to do. Time pressed if\nthey were to do it at all. Everyone had brought gifts; his relations\nhad brought wonders--how did they still have, where did they still find,\nsuch treasures? She only had brought nothing, and she was ashamed; yet\neven by the sight of the rest of the tribute she wouldn\'t be put off.\nShe would do what she could, and he was, unknown to Maggie, he must\nremember, to give her his aid. He had prolonged the minute so far as\nto take time to hesitate, for a reason, and then to risk bringing his\nreason out. The risk was because he might hurt her--hurt her pride, if\nshe had that particular sort. But she might as well be hurt one way as\nanother; and, besides, that particular sort of pride was just what she\nhadn\'t. So his slight resistance, while they lingered, had been just\neasy enough not to be impossible.\n\n\"I hate to encourage you--and for such a purpose, after all--to spend\nyour money.\"\n\nShe had stood a stair or two below him; where, while she looked up at\nhim beneath the high, domed light of the hall, she rubbed with her\npalm the polished mahogany of the balustrade, which was mounted on fine\nironwork, eighteenth-century English. \"Because you think I must have\nso little? I\'ve enough, at any rate--enough for us to take our hour.\nEnough,\" she had smiled, \"is as good as a feast! And then,\" she had\nsaid, \"it isn\'t of course a question of anything expensive, gorged with\ntreasure as Maggie is; it isn\'t a question of competing or outshining.\nWhat, naturally, in the way of the priceless, hasn\'t she got? Mine is to\nbe the offering of the poor--something, precisely, that--no rich person\nCOULD ever give her, and that, being herself too rich ever to buy it,\nshe would therefore never have.\" Charlotte had spoken as if after so\nmuch thought. \"Only, as it can\'t be fine, it ought to be funny--and\nthat\'s the sort of thing to hunt for. Hunting in London, besides, is\namusing in itself.\"\n\nHe recalled even how he had been struck with her word. \"\'Funny\'?\" \"Oh,\nI don\'t mean a comic toy--I mean some little thing with a charm. But\nabsolutely RIGHT, in its comparative cheapness. That\'s what I call\nfunny,\" she had explained. \"You used,\" she had also added, \"to help me\nto get things cheap in Rome. You were splendid for beating down. I have\nthem all still, I needn\'t say--the little bargains I there owed you.\nThere are bargains in London in August.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I don\'t understand your English buying, and I confess I find\nit dull.\" So much as that, while they turned to go up together, he had\nobjected. \"I understood my poor dear Romans.\"\n\n\"It was they who understood you--that was your pull,\" she had laughed.\n\"Our amusement here is just that they don\'t understand us. We can make\nit amusing. You\'ll see.\"\n\nIf he had hesitated again it was because the point permitted. \"The\namusement surely will be to find our present.\"\n\n\"Certainly--as I say.\"\n\n\"Well, if they don\'t come down--?\"\n\n\"Then we\'ll come up. There\'s always something to be done. Besides,\nPrince,\" she had gone on, \"I\'m not, if you come to that, absolutely a\npauper. I\'m too poor for some things,\" she had said--yet, strange as\nshe was, lightly enough; \"but I\'m not too poor for others.\" And she had\npaused again at the top. \"I\'ve been saving up.\"\n\nHe had really challenged it. \"In America?\"\n\n\"Yes, even there--with my motive. And we oughtn\'t, you know,\" she had\nwound up, \"to leave it beyond to-morrow.\"\n\nThat, definitely, with ten words more, was what had passed--he feeling\nall the while how any sort of begging-off would only magnify it. He\nmight get on with things as they were, but he must do anything rather\nthan magnify. Besides which it was pitiful to make her beg of him. He\nWAS making her--she had begged; and this, for a special sensibility in\nhim, didn\'t at all do. That was accordingly, in fine, how they had come\nto where they were: he was engaged, as hard as possible, in the policy\nof not magnifying. He had kept this up even on her making a point--and\nas if it were almost the whole point--that Maggie of course was not to\nhave an idea. Half the interest of the thing at least would be that she\nshouldn\'t suspect; therefore he was completely to keep it from her--as\nCharlotte on her side would--that they had been anywhere at all together\nor had so much as seen each other for five minutes alone. The absolute\nsecrecy of their little excursion was in short of the essence; she\nappealed to his kindness to let her feel that he didn\'t betray her.\nThere had been something, frankly, a little disconcerting in such an\nappeal at such an hour, on the very eve of his nuptials: it was one\nthing to have met the girl casually at Mrs. Assingham\'s and another to\narrange with her thus for a morning practically as private as their old\nmornings in Rome and practically not less intimate. He had immediately\ntold Maggie, the same evening, of the minutes that had passed between\nthem in Cadogan Place--though not mentioning those of Mrs. Assingham\'s\nabsence any more than he mentioned the fact of what their friend had\nthen, with such small delay, proposed. But what had briefly checked his\nassent to any present, to any positive making of mystery--what had made\nhim, while they stood at the top of the stairs, demur just long enough\nfor her to notice it--was the sense of the resemblance of the little\nplan before him to occasions, of the past, from which he was quite\ndisconnected, from which he could only desire to be. This was like\nbeginning something over, which was the last thing he wanted. The\nstrength, the beauty of his actual position was in its being wholly a\nfresh start, was that what it began would be new altogether. These items\nof his consciousness had clustered so quickly that by the time Charlotte\nread them in his face he was in presence of what they amounted to. She\nhad challenged them as soon as read them, had met them with a \"Do you\nwant then to go and tell her?\" that had somehow made them ridiculous.\nIt had made him, promptly, fall back on minimizing it--that is on\nminimizing \"fuss.\" Apparent scruples were, obviously, fuss, and he had\non the spot clutched, in the light of this truth, at the happy principle\nthat would meet every case.\n\nThis principle was simply to be, with the girl, always simple--and with\nthe very last simplicity. That would cover everything. It had covered,\nthen and there, certainly, his immediate submission to the sight of what\nwas clearest. This was, really, that what she asked was little compared\nto what she gave. What she gave touched him, as she faced him, for it\nwas the full tune of her renouncing. She really renounced--renounced\neverything, and without even insisting now on what it had all been for\nher. Her only insistence was her insistence on the small matter of\ntheir keeping their appointment to themselves. That, in exchange for\n\"everything,\" everything she gave up, was verily but a trifle. He let\nhimself accordingly be guided; he so soon assented, for enlightened\nindulgence, to any particular turn she might wish the occasion to take,\nthat the stamp of her preference had been well applied to it even while\nthey were still in the Park. The application in fact presently required\nthat they should sit down a little, really to see where they were; in\nobedience to which propriety they had some ten minutes, of a quality\nquite distinct, in a couple of penny-chairs under one of the larger\ntrees. They had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened\ngrass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from\nthe broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of Park Lane, looked\nacross the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine\nupon their freedom. They helped Charlotte thus to make her position--her\ntemporary position--still more clear, and it was for this purpose,\nobviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down.\nHe stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not\nwasting time, the importance she herself had previously insisted on; but\nafter she had said a few words it was impossible for him not to resort\nagain to good-nature. He marked as he could, by this concession, that if\nhe had finally met her first proposal for what would be \"amusing\" in\nit, so any idea she might have would contribute to that effect. He\nhad consequently--in all consistency--to treat it as amusing that she\nreaffirmed, and reaffirmed again, the truth that was HER truth.\n\n\"I don\'t care what you make of it, and I don\'t ask anything whatever of\nyou--anything but this. I want to have said it--that\'s all; I want not\nto have failed to say it. To see you once and be with you, to be as we\nare now and as we used to be, for one small hour--or say for two--that\'s\nwhat I have had for weeks in my head. I mean, of course, to get it\nBEFORE--before what you\'re going to do. So, all the while, you see,\" she\nwent on with her eyes on him, \"it was a question for me if I should\nbe able to manage it in time. If I couldn\'t have come now I probably\nshouldn\'t have come at all--perhaps even ever. Now that I\'m here I shall\nstay, but there were moments, over there, when I despaired. It wasn\'t\neasy--there were reasons; but it was either this or nothing. So I didn\'t\nstruggle, you see, in vain. AFTER--oh, I didn\'t want that! I don\'t\nmean,\" she smiled, \"that it wouldn\'t have been delightful to see you\neven then--to see you at any time; but I would never have come for it.\nThis is different. This is what I wanted. This is what I\'ve got. This is\nwhat I shall always have. This is what I should have missed, of course,\"\nshe pursued, \"if you had chosen to make me miss it. If you had thought\nme horrid, had refused to come, I should, naturally, have been immensely\n\'sold.\' I had to take the risk. Well, you\'re all I could have hoped.\nThat\'s what I was to have said. I didn\'t want simply to get my time with\nyou, but I wanted you to know. I wanted you\"--she kept it up, slowly,\nsoftly, with a small tremor of voice, but without the least failure of\nsense or sequence--\"I wanted you to understand. I wanted you, that is,\nto hear. I don\'t care, I think, whether you understand or not. If I ask\nnothing of you I don\'t--I mayn\'t--ask even so much as that. What you may\nthink of me--that doesn\'t in the least matter. What I want is that it\nshall always be with you--so that you\'ll never be able quite to get rid\nof it--that I DID. I won\'t say that you did--you may make as little of\nthat as you like. But that I was here with you where we are and as\nwe are--I just saying this. Giving myself, in other words, away--and\nperfectly willing to do it for nothing. That\'s all.\"\n\nShe paused as if her demonstration was complete--yet, for the moment,\nwithout moving; as if in fact to give it a few minutes to sink in;\ninto the listening air, into the watching space, into the conscious\nhospitality of nature, so far as nature was, all Londonised, all\nvulgarised, with them there; or even, for that matter, into her own open\nears, rather than into the attention of her passive and prudent friend.\nHis attention had done all that attention could do; his handsome,\nslightly anxious, yet still more definitely \"amused\" face sufficiently\nplayed its part. He clutched, however, at what he could best clutch\nat--the fact that she let him off, definitely let him off. She let him\noff, it seemed, even from so much as answering; so that while he smiled\nback at her in return for her information he felt his lips remain closed\nto the successive vaguenesses of rejoinder, of objection, that rose for\nhim from within. Charlotte herself spoke again at last--\"You may want to\nknow what I get by it. But that\'s my own affair.\" He really didn\'t want\nto know even this--or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as\nif he didn\'t; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he\nhad taken refuge. He was glad when, finally--the point she had wished to\nmake seeming established to her satisfaction--they brought to what might\npass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to\nsay. Movement and progress, after this, with more impersonal talk, were\nnaturally a relief; so that he was not again, during their excursion, at\na loss for the right word. The air had been, as it were, cleared; they\nhad their errand itself to discuss, and the opportunities of London,\nthe sense of the wonderful place, the pleasures of prowling there, the\nquestion of shops, of possibilities, of particular objects, noticed by\neach in previous prowls. Each professed surprise at the extent of the\nother\'s knowledge; the Prince in especial wondered at his friend\'s\npossession of her London. He had rather prized his own possession, the\nguidance he could really often give a cabman; it was a whim of his own,\na part of his Anglomania, and congruous with that feature, which had,\nafter all, so much more surface than depth. When his companion, with the\nmemory of other visits and other rambles, spoke of places he hadn\'t\nseen and things he didn\'t know, he actually felt again--as half the\neffect--just a shade humiliated. He might even have felt a trifle\nannoyed--if it hadn\'t been, on this spot, for his being, even more,\ninterested. It was a fresh light on Charlotte and on her curious\nworld-quality, of which, in Rome, he had had his due sense, but\nwhich clearly would show larger on the big London stage. Rome was, in\ncomparison, a village, a family-party, a little old-world spinnet for\nthe fingers of one hand. By the time they reached the Marble Arch it was\nalmost as if she were showing him a new side, and that, in fact, gave\namusement a new and a firmer basis. The right tone would be easy for\nputting himself in her hands. Should they disagree a little--frankly\nand fairly--about directions and chances, values and authenticities, the\nsituation would be quite gloriously saved. They were none the less,\nas happened, much of one mind on the article of their keeping clear of\nresorts with which Maggie would be acquainted. Charlotte recalled it\nas a matter of course, named it in time as a condition--they would keep\naway from any place to which he had already been with Maggie.\n\nThis made indeed a scant difference, for though he had during the last\nmonth done few things so much as attend his future wife on her making\nof purchases, the antiquarii, as he called them with Charlotte, had not\nbeen the great affair. Except in Bond Street, really, Maggie had had\nno use for them: her situation indeed, in connection with that order of\ntraffic, was full of consequences produced by her father\'s. Mr. Verver,\none of the great collectors of the world, hadn\'t left his daughter to\nprowl for herself; he had little to do with shops, and was mostly, as\na purchaser, approached privately and from afar. Great people, all over\nEurope, sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high,\nand more of them than would ever be known, solemnly sworn as everyone\nwas, in such cases, to discretion, high personages made up to him as\nthe one man on the short authentic list likely to give the price. It had\ntherefore been easy to settle, as they walked, that the tracks of\nthe Ververs, daughter\'s as well as father\'s, were to be avoided; the\nimportance only was that their talk about it led for a moment to\nthe first words they had as yet exchanged on the subject of Maggie.\nCharlotte, still in the Park, proceeded to them--for it was she who\nbegan--with a serenity of appreciation that was odd, certainly, as a\nsequel to her words of ten minutes before. This was another note on\nher--what he would have called another light--for her companion, who,\nthough without giving a sign, admired, for what it was, the simplicity\nof her transition, a transition that took no trouble either to trace or\nto explain itself. She paused again an instant, on the grass, to make\nit; she stopped before him with a sudden \"Anything of course, dear as\nshe is, will do for her. I mean if I were to give her a pin-cushion from\nthe Baker-Street Bazaar.\"\n\n\"That\'s exactly what _I_ meant\"--the Prince laughed out this allusion to\ntheir snatch of talk in Portland Place. \"It\'s just what I suggested.\"\n\nShe took, however, no notice of the reminder; she went on in her own\nway. \"But it isn\'t a reason. In that case one would never do anything\nfor her. I mean,\" Charlotte explained, \"if one took advantage of her\ncharacter.\"\n\n\"Of her character?\"\n\n\"We mustn\'t take advantage of her character,\" the girl, again unheeding,\npursued. \"One mustn\'t, if not for HER, at least for one\'s self. She\nsaves one such trouble.\"\n\nShe had spoken thoughtfully, with her eyes on her friend\'s; she might\nhave been talking, preoccupied and practical, of someone with whom he\nwas comparatively unconnected. \"She certainly GIVES one no trouble,\"\nsaid the Prince. And then as if this were perhaps ambiguous or\ninadequate: \"She\'s not selfish--God forgive her!--enough.\"\n\n\"That\'s what I mean,\" Charlotte instantly said. \"She\'s not selfish\nenough. There\'s nothing, absolutely, that one NEED do for her. She\'s\nso modest,\" she developed--\"she doesn\'t miss things. I mean if you love\nher--or, rather, I should say, if she loves you. She lets it go.\"\n\nThe Prince frowned a little--as a tribute, after all, to seriousness.\n\"She lets what--?\"\n\n\"Anything--anything that you might do and that you don\'t. She lets\neverything go but her own disposition to be kind to you. It\'s of herself\nthat she asks efforts--so far as she ever HAS to ask them. She hasn\'t,\nmuch. She does everything herself. And that\'s terrible.\"\n\nThe Prince had listened; but, always with propriety, he didn\'t commit\nhimself. \"Terrible?\"\n\n\"Well, unless one is almost as good as she. It makes too easy terms for\none. It takes stuff, within one, so far as one\'s decency is concerned,\nto stand it. And nobody,\" Charlotte continued in the same manner, \"is\ndecent enough, good enough, to stand it--not without help from religion,\nor something of that kind. Not without prayer and fasting--that is\nwithout taking great care. Certainly,\" she said, \"such people as you and\nI are not.\"\n\nThe Prince, obligingly, thought an instant. \"Not good enough to stand\nit?\"\n\n\"Well, not good enough not rather to feel the strain. We happen each, I\nthink, to be of the kind that are easily spoiled.\"\n\nHer friend, again, for propriety, followed the argument. \"Oh, I don\'t\nknow. May not one\'s affection for her do something more for one\'s\ndecency, as you call it, than her own generosity--her own affection, HER\n\'decency\'--has the unfortunate virtue to undo?\"\n\n\"Ah, of course it must be all in that.\"\n\nBut she had made her question, all the same, interesting to him. \"What\nit comes to--one can see what you mean--is the way she believes in one.\nThat is if she believes at all.\"\n\n\"Yes, that\'s what it comes to,\" said Charlotte Stant.\n\n\"And why,\" he asked, almost soothingly, \"should it be terrible?\" He\ncouldn\'t, at the worst, see that.\n\n\"Because it\'s always so--the idea of having to pity people.\"\n\n\"Not when there\'s also, with it, the idea of helping them.\"\n\n\"Yes, but if we can\'t help them?\"\n\n\"We CAN--we always can. That is,\" he competently added, \"if we care for\nthem. And that\'s what we\'re talking about.\"\n\n\"Yes\"--she on the whole assented. \"It comes back then to our absolutely\nrefusing to be spoiled.\"\n\n\"Certainly. But everything,\" the Prince laughed as they went on--\"all\nyour \'decency,\' I mean--comes back to that.\"\n\nShe walked beside him a moment. \"It\'s just what _I_ meant,\" she then\nreasonably said.\n\n\n\n VI\n\nThe man in the little shop in which, well after this, they lingered\nlongest, the small but interesting dealer in the Bloomsbury street who\nwas remarkable for an insistence not importunate, inasmuch as it was\nmainly mute, but singularly, intensely coercive--this personage fixed\non his visitors an extraordinary pair of eyes and looked from one to the\nother while they considered the object with which he appeared mainly to\nhope to tempt them. They had come to him last, for their time was nearly\nup; an hour of it at least, from the moment of their getting into a\nhansom at the Marble Arch, having yielded no better result than the\namusement invoked from the first. The amusement, of course, was to have\nconsisted in seeking, but it had also involved the idea of finding;\nwhich latter necessity would have been obtrusive only if they had found\ntoo soon. The question at present was if they were finding, and they\nput it to each other, in the Bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the\nundiverted attention of the shopman. He was clearly the master, and\ndevoted to his business--the essence of which, in his conception,\nmight precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for\nworrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations\na sort of solemnity. He had not many things, none of the redundancy of\n\"rot\" they had elsewhere seen, and our friends had, on entering, even\nhad the sense of a muster so scant that, as high values obviously\nwouldn\'t reign, the effect might be almost pitiful. Then their\nimpression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces,\nseveral taken from the little window and others extracted from a\ncupboard behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place,\ndespite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke, however\nmodestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer\'s pretensions\nwas promptly enough given. His array was heterogeneous and not at all\nimposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they had hitherto seen.\n\nCharlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of several\nof which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the interest of\ntheir amusement--the benefit; and one of the impressions had been that\nthe man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at. The\nPrince was to reply to this that he himself hadn\'t looked at him; as,\nprecisely, in the general connection, Charlotte had more than once, from\nother days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below\na certain social plane, he never SAW. One kind of shopman was just like\nanother to him--which was oddly inconsequent on the part of a mind that,\nwhere it did notice, noticed so much. He took throughout, always, the\nmeaner sort for granted--the night of their meanness, or whatever name\none might give it for him, made all his cats grey. He didn\'t, no doubt,\nwant to hurt them, but he imaged them no more than if his eyes acted\nonly for the level of his own high head. Her own vision acted for\nevery relation--this he had seen for himself: she remarked beggars, she\nremembered servants, she recognised cabmen; she had often distinguished\nbeauty, when out with him, in dirty children; she had admired \"type\" in\nfaces at hucksters\' stalls. Therefore, on this occasion, she had found\ntheir antiquario interesting; partly because he cared so for his\nthings, and partly because he cared--well, so for them. \"He likes his\nthings--he loves them,\" she was to say; \"and it isn\'t only--it isn\'t\nperhaps even at all--that he loves to sell them. I think he would love\nto keep them if he could; and he prefers, at any rate, to sell them to\nright people. We, clearly, were right people--he knows them when he\nsees them; and that\'s why, as I say, you could make out, or at least _I_\ncould, that he cared for us. Didn\'t you see\"--she was to ask it with an\ninsistence--\"the way he looked at us and took us in? I doubt if either\nof us have ever been so well looked at before. Yes, he\'ll remember\nus\"--she was to profess herself convinced of that almost to uneasiness.\n\"But it was after all\"--this was perhaps reassuring--\"because, given his\ntaste, since he HAS taste, he was pleased with us, he was struck--he\nhad ideas about us. Well, I should think people might; we\'re\nbeautiful--aren\'t we?--and he knows. Then, also, he has his way;\nfor that way of saying nothing with his lips when he\'s all the while\npressing you so with his face, which shows how he knows you feel\nit--that is a regular way.\"\n\nOf decent old gold, old silver, old bronze, of old chased and jewelled\nartistry, were the objects that, successively produced, had ended by\nnumerously dotting the counter, where the shopman\'s slim, light fingers,\nwith neat nails, touched them at moments, briefly, nervously, tenderly,\nas those of a chess-player rest, a few seconds, over the board, on a\nfigure he thinks he may move and then may not: small florid ancientries,\nornaments, pendants, lockets, brooches, buckles, pretexts for dim\nbrilliants, bloodless rubies, pearls either too large or too opaque\nfor value; miniatures mounted with diamonds that had ceased to dazzle;\nsnuffboxes presented to--or by--the too-questionable great; cups, trays,\ntaper-stands, suggestive of pawn-tickets, archaic and brown, that\nwould themselves, if preserved, have been prized curiosities. A few\ncommemorative medals, of neat outline but dull reference; a classic\nmonument or two, things of the first years of the century; things\nconsular, Napoleonic, temples, obelisks, arches, tinily re-embodied,\ncompleted the discreet cluster; in which, however, even after tentative\nreinforcement from several quaint rings, intaglios, amethysts,\ncarbuncles, each of which had found a home in the ancient sallow satin\nof some weakly-snapping little box, there was, in spite of the due\nproportion of faint poetry, no great force of persuasion. They looked,\nthe visitors, they touched, they vaguely pretended to consider, but\nwith scepticism, so far as courtesy permitted, in the quality of their\nattention. It was impossible they shouldn\'t, after a little, tacitly\nagree as to the absurdity of carrying to Maggie a token from such a\nstock. It would be--that was the difficulty--pretentious without being\n\"good\"; too usual, as a treasure, to have been an inspiration of the\ngiver, and yet too primitive to be taken as tribute welcome on any\nterms. They had been out more than two hours and, evidently, had found\nnothing. It forced from Charlotte a kind of admission.\n\n\"It ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take its\nlittle value from having belonged to one\'s self.\"\n\n\"Ecco!\" said the Prince--just triumphantly enough. \"There you are.\"\n\nBehind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. Two or three\nof these Charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes found themselves\nresting on those he had not visited. But she completed her admission.\n\"There\'s nothing here she could wear.\"\n\nIt was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. \"Is there\nanything--do you think--that you could?\"\n\nIt made her just start. She didn\'t, at all events, look at the objects;\nshe but looked for an instant very directly at him. \"No.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" the Prince quietly exclaimed.\n\n\"Would it be,\" Charlotte asked, \"your idea to offer me something?\"\n\n\"Well, why not--as a small ricordo.\"\n\n\"But a ricordo of what?\"\n\n\"Why, of \'this\'--as you yourself say. Of this little hunt.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say it--but hasn\'t my whole point been that I don\'t ask you to.\nTherefore,\" she demanded--but smiling at him now--\"where\'s the logic?\"\n\n\"Oh, the logic--!\" he laughed.\n\n\"But logic\'s everything. That, at least, is how I feel it. A ricordo\nfrom you--from you to me--is a ricordo of nothing. It has no reference.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear!\" he vaguely protested. Their entertainer, meanwhile, stood\nthere with his eyes on them, and the girl, though at this minute more\ninterested in her passage with her friend than in anything else, again\nmet his gaze. It was a comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered\nwhat they said--and they might have appeared of course, as the Prince\nnow had one of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase.\n\n\"You don\'t refer,\" she went on to her companion. \"_I_ refer.\"\n\nHe had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it hard. \"Do\nyou mean by that then that you would be free--?\"\n\n\"\'Free\'--?\"\n\n\"To offer me something?\"\n\nThis gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have\nseemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. \"Would you allow me--?\"\n\n\"No,\" said the Prince into his little box.\n\n\"You wouldn\'t accept it from me?\"\n\n\"No,\" he repeated in the same way.\n\nShe exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. \"But you\'ve\ntouched an idea that HAS been mine. It\'s what I\'ve wanted.\" Then she\nadded: \"It was what I hoped.\"\n\nHe put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. He made nothing, clearly,\nof the little man\'s attention. \"It\'s what you brought me out for?\"\n\n\"Well, that\'s, at any rate,\" she returned, \"my own affair. But it won\'t\ndo?\"\n\n\"It won\'t do, cara mia.\"\n\n\"It\'s impossible?\"\n\n\"It\'s impossible.\" And he took up one of the brooches.\n\nShe had another pause, while the shopman only waited. \"If I were to\naccept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you suggest,\nwhat should I do with it?\"\n\nHe was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even--as if HE might\nunderstand--looked vaguely across at their host. \"Wear it, per Bacco!\"\n\n\"Where then, please? Under my clothes?\"\n\n\"Wherever you like. But it isn\'t then, if you will,\" he added, \"worth\ntalking about.\"\n\n\"It\'s only worth talking about, mio caro,\" she smiled, \"from your having\nbegun it. My question is only reasonable--so that your idea may stand\nor fall by your answer to it. If I should pin one of these things on\nfor you would it be, to your mind, that I might go home and show it to\nMaggie as your present?\"\n\nThey had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely,\ndescriptively applied, of \"old Roman.\" It had been, as a pleasantry,\nin the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing,\ntruly, had even seemed so old-Roman as the shrug in which he now\nindulged. \"Why in the world not?\"\n\n\"Because--on our basis--it would be impossible to give her an account of\nthe pretext.\"\n\n\"The pretext--?\" He wondered.\n\n\"The occasion. This ramble that we shall have had together and that\nwe\'re not to speak of.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he said after a moment \"I remember we\'re not to speak of it.\"\n\n\"That of course you\'re pledged to. And the one thing, you see, goes with\nthe other. So you don\'t insist.\"\n\nHe had again, at random, laid back his trinket; with which he quite\nturned to her, a little wearily at last--even a little impatiently. \"I\ndon\'t insist.\"\n\nIt disposed for the time of the question, but what was next apparent\nwas that it had seen them no further. The shopman, who had not stirred,\nstood there in his patience--which, his mute intensity helping, had\nalmost the effect of an ironic comment. The Prince moved to the glass\ndoor and, his back to the others, as with nothing more to contribute,\nlooked--though not less patiently--into the street. Then the\nshopman, for Charlotte, momentously broke silence. \"You\'ve seen,\ndisgraziatamente, signora principessa,\" he sadly said, \"too much\"--and\nit made the Prince face about. For the effect of the momentous came, if\nnot from the sense, from the sound of his words; which was that of\nthe suddenest, sharpest Italian. Charlotte exchanged with her friend a\nglance that matched it, and just for the minute they were held in check.\nBut their glance had, after all, by that time, said more than one thing;\nhad both exclaimed on the apprehension, by the wretch, of their intimate\nconversation, let alone of her possible, her impossible, title, and\nremarked, for mutual reassurance, that it didn\'t, all the same, matter.\nThe Prince remained by the door, but immediately addressing the speaker\nfrom where he stood.\n\n\"You\'re Italian then, are you?\"\n\nBut the reply came in English. \"Oh dear no.\"\n\n\"You\'re English?\"\n\nTo which the answer was this time, with a smile, in briefest Italian.\n\"Che!\" The dealer waived the question--he practically disposed of it by\nturning straightway toward a receptacle to which he had not yet resorted\nand from which, after unlocking it, he extracted a square box, of some\ntwenty inches in height, covered with worn-looking leather. He placed\nthe box on the counter, pushed back a pair of small hooks, lifted the\nlid and removed from its nest a drinking-vessel larger than a common\ncup, yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appearance, either of\nold fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. He handled it with\ntenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat.\n\"My Golden Bowl,\" he observed--and it sounded, on his lips, as if it\nsaid everything. He left the important object--for as \"important\" it\ndid somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. Simple, but\nsingularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a\nslightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its\ntitle by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface.\nIt might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its\nhappy curve, by half its original height. As formed of solid gold it was\nimpressive; it seemed indeed to warn off the prudent admirer. Charlotte,\nwith care, immediately took it up, while the Prince, who had after a\nminute shifted his position again, regarded it from a distance.\n\nIt was heavier than Charlotte had thought. \"Gold, really gold?\" she\nasked of their companion.\n\nHe hesitated. \"Look a little, and perhaps you\'ll make out.\"\n\nShe looked, holding it up in both her fine hands, turning it to the\nlight. \"It may be cheap for what it is, but it will be dear, I\'m afraid,\nfor me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the man, \"I can part with it for less than its value. I got\nit, you see, for less.\"\n\n\"For how much then?\"\n\nAgain he waited, always with his serene stare. \"Do you like it then?\"\n\nCharlotte turned to her friend. \"Do YOU like it?\" He came no nearer; he\nlooked at their companion. \"Cos\'e?\"\n\n\"Well, signori miei, if you must know, it\'s just a perfect crystal.\"\n\n\"Of course we must know, per Dio!\" said the Prince. But he turned away\nagain--he went back to his glass door.\n\nCharlotte set down the bowl; she was evidently taken. \"Do you mean it\'s\ncut out of a single crystal?\"\n\n\"If it isn\'t I think I can promise you that you\'ll never find any joint\nor any piecing.\"\n\nShe wondered. \"Even if I were to scrape off the gold?\"\n\nHe showed, though with due respect, that she amused him. \"You couldn\'t\nscrape it off--it has been too well put on; put on I don\'t know when and\nI don\'t know how. But by some very fine old worker and by some beautiful\nold process.\"\n\nCharlotte, frankly charmed with the cup, smiled back at him now. \"A lost\nart?\"\n\n\"Call it a lost art,\"\n\n\"But of what time then is the whole thing?\"\n\n\"Well, say also of a lost time.\"\n\nThe girl considered. \"Then if it\'s so precious, how comes it to be\ncheap?\"\n\nHer interlocutor once more hung fire, but by this time the Prince\nhad lost patience. \"I\'ll wait for you out in the air,\" he said to his\ncompanion, and, though he spoke without irritation, he pointed his\nremark by passing immediately into the street, where, during the next\nminutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically\nenough hover and light a fresh cigarette. Charlotte even took, a\nlittle, her time; she was aware of his funny Italian taste for London\nstreet-life.\n\nHer host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. \"Ah, I\'ve had\nit a long time without selling it. I think I must have been keeping it,\nmadam, for you.\"\n\n\"You\'ve kept it for me because you\'ve thought I mightn\'t see what\'s the\nmatter with it?\"\n\nHe only continued to face her--he only continued to appear to follow the\nplay of her mind. \"What IS the matter with it?\"\n\n\"Oh, it\'s not for me to say; it\'s for you honestly to tell me. Of course\nI know something must be.\"\n\n\"But if it\'s something you can\'t find out, isn\'t it as good as if it\nwere nothing?\"\n\n\"I probably SHOULD find out as soon as I had paid for it.\"\n\n\"Not,\" her host lucidly insisted, \"if you hadn\'t paid too much.\"\n\n\"What do you call,\" she asked, \"little enough?\"\n\n\"Well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?\"\n\n\"I should say,\" said Charlotte with the utmost promptitude, \"that it\'s\naltogether too much.\"\n\nThe dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. \"It\'s my price,\nmadam--and if you admire the thing I think it really might be yours.\nIt\'s not too much. It\'s too little. It\'s almost nothing. I can\'t go\nlower.\"\n\nCharlotte, wondering, but resisting, bent over the bowl again. \"Then\nit\'s impossible. It\'s more than I can afford.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" the man returned, \"one can sometimes afford for a present more\nthan one can afford for one\'s self.\" He said it so coaxingly that she\nfound herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his\nplace. \"Oh, of course it would be only for a present--!\"\n\n\"Then it would be a lovely one.\"\n\n\"Does one make a present,\" she asked, \"of an object that contains, to\none\'s knowledge, a flaw?\"\n\n\"Well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. The good faith,\"\nthe man smiled, \"is always there.\"\n\n\"And leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover\nit?\"\n\n\"He wouldn\'t discover it--if you\'re speaking of a gentleman.\"\n\n\"I\'m not speaking of anyone in particular,\" Charlotte said.\n\n\"Well, whoever it might be. He might know--and he might try. But he\nwouldn\'t find.\"\n\nShe kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet\nhad a fancy for the bowl. \"Not even if the thing should come to pieces?\"\nAnd then as he was silent: \"Not even if he should have to say to me \'The\nGolden Bowl is broken\'?\"\n\nHe was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. \"Ah, if\nanyone should WANT to smash it--!\"\n\nShe laughed; she almost admired the little man\'s expression. \"You mean\none could smash it with a hammer?\"\n\n\"Yes; if nothing else would do. Or perhaps even by dashing it with\nviolence--say upon a marble floor.\"\n\n\"Oh, marble floors!\" But she might have been thinking--for they were a\nconnection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old\nRome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of\nhers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of\nhis marriage, with the wealth of the Ververs. All the same, however,\nthere were other things; and they all together held for a moment her\nfancy. \"Does crystal then break--when it IS crystal? I thought its\nbeauty was its hardness.\"\n\nHer friend, in his way, discriminated. \"Its beauty is its BEING crystal.\nBut its hardness is certainly, its safety. It doesn\'t break,\" he went\non, \"like vile glass. It splits--if there is a split.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"--Charlotte breathed with interest. \"If there is a split.\" And\nshe looked down again at the bowl. \"There IS a split, eh? Crystal does\nsplit, eh?\"\n\n\"On lines and by laws of its own.\"\n\n\"You mean if there\'s a weak place?\"\n\nFor all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding\nit aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest, sweetest\nsound. \"Where is the weak place?\"\n\nShe then did the question justice. \"Well, for ME, only the price. I\'m\npoor, you see--very poor. But I thank you and I\'ll think.\" The Prince,\non the other side of the shop-window, had finally faced about and, as\nto see if she hadn\'t done, was trying to reach, with his eyes, the\ncomparatively dim interior. \"I like it,\" she said--\"I want it. But I\nmust decide what I can do.\"\n\nThe man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. \"Well, I\'ll keep it for\nyou.\"\n\nThe small quarter-of-an-hour had had its marked oddity--this she felt\neven by the time the open air and the Bloomsbury aspects had again, in\ntheir protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her\nmore or less their own. Yet the oddity might have been registered as\nsmall as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much\nfurther, she had, with her companion, to take account of. This latter\nwas simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer\ninevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. They\ndidn\'t say so, but it was on the line of giving up Maggie\'s present\nthat they practically proceeded--the line of giving it up without\nmore reference to it. The Prince\'s first reference was in fact quite\nindependently made. \"I hope you satisfied yourself, before you had done,\nof what was the matter with that bowl.\"\n\n\"No indeed, I satisfied myself of nothing. Of nothing at least but that\nthe more I looked at it the more I liked it, and that if you weren\'t so\nunaccommodating this would be just the occasion for your giving me the\npleasure of accepting it.\"\n\nHe looked graver for her, at this, than he had looked all the morning.\n\"Do you propose it seriously--without wishing to play me a trick?\"\n\nShe wondered. \"What trick would it be?\"\n\nHe looked at her harder. \"You mean you really don\'t know?\"\n\n\"But know what?\"\n\n\"Why, what\'s the matter with it. You didn\'t see, all the while?\"\n\nShe only continued, however, to stare. \"How could you see--out in the\nstreet?\"\n\n\"I saw before I went out. It was because I saw that I did go out. I\ndidn\'t want to have another scene with you, before that rascal, and I\njudged you would presently guess for yourself.\"\n\n\"Is he a rascal?\" Charlotte asked. \"His price is so moderate.\" She waited\nbut a moment. \"Five pounds. Really so little.\"\n\n\"Five pounds?\"\n\nHe continued to look at her. \"Five pounds.\"\n\nHe might have been doubting her word, but he was only, it appeared,\ngathering emphasis. \"It would be dear--to make a gift of--at five\nshillings. If it had cost you even but five pence I wouldn\'t take it\nfrom you.\"\n\n\"Then,\" she asked, \"what IS the matter?\"\n\n\"Why, it has a crack.\"\n\nIt sounded, on his lips, so sharp, it had such an authority, that she\nalmost started, while her colour, at the word, rose. It was as if he\nhad been right, though his assurance was wonderful. \"You answer for it\nwithout having looked?\"\n\n\"I did look. I saw the object itself. It told its story. No wonder it\'s\ncheap.\"\n\n\"But it\'s exquisite,\" Charlotte, as if with an interest in it now made\neven tenderer and stranger, found herself moved to insist.\n\n\"Of course it\'s exquisite. That\'s the danger.\" Then a light visibly came\nto her--a light in which her friend suddenly and intensely showed.\nThe reflection of it, as she smiled at him, was in her own face. \"The\ndanger--I see--is because you\'re superstitious.\"\n\n\"Per Dio, I\'m superstitious! A crack is a crack--and an omen\'s an omen.\"\n\n\"You\'d be afraid--?\"\n\n\"Per Bacco!\"\n\n\"For your happiness?\"\n\n\"For my happiness.\"\n\n\"For your safety?\"\n\n\"For my safety.\"\n\nShe just paused. \"For your marriage?\"\n\n\"For my marriage. For everything.\"\n\nShe thought again. \"Thank goodness then that if there BE a crack we know\nit! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we don\'t know--!\" And\nshe smiled with the sadness of it. \"We can never then give each other\nanything.\"\n\nHe considered, but he met it. \"Ah, but one does know. _I_ do, at\nleast--and by instinct. I don\'t fail. That will always protect me.\"\n\nIt was funny, the way he said such things; yet she liked him, really,\nthe more for it. They fell in for her with a general, or rather with a\nspecial, vision. But she spoke with a mild despair.\n\n\"What then will protect ME?\"\n\n\"Where I\'m concerned _I_ will. From me at least you\'ve nothing to fear,\"\nhe now quite amiably responded. \"Anything you consent to accept from\nme--\" But he paused.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Well, shall be perfect.\"\n\n\"That\'s very fine,\" she presently answered. \"It\'s vain, after all, for\nyou to talk of my accepting things when you\'ll accept nothing from me.\"\n\nAh, THERE, better still, he could meet her. \"You attach an impossible\ncondition. That, I mean, of my keeping your gift so to myself.\"\n\nWell, she looked, before him there, at the condition--then,\nabruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. She had a headshake of\ndisenchantment--so far as the idea had appealed to her. It all appeared\ntoo difficult. \"Oh, my \'condition\'--I don\'t hold to it. You may cry it\non the housetops--anything I ever do.\"\n\n\"Ah well, then--!\" This made, he laughed, all the difference.\n\nBut it was too late. \"Oh, I don\'t care now! I SHOULD have liked the\nBowl. But if that won\'t do there\'s nothing.\"\n\nHe considered this; he took it in, looking graver again; but after a\nmoment he qualified. \"Yet I shall want some day to give you something.\"\n\nShe wondered at him. \"What day?\"\n\n\"The day you marry. For you WILL marry. You must--SERIOUSLY--marry.\"\n\nShe took it from him, but it determined in her the only words she was\nto have uttered, all the morning, that came out as if a spring had been\npressed. \"To make you feel better?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he replied frankly, wonderfully--\"it will. But here,\" he added,\n\"is your hansom.\"\n\nHe had signalled--the cab was charging. She put out no hand for their\nseparation, but she prepared to get in. Before she did so, however, she\nsaid what had been gathering while she waited. \"Well, I would marry, I\nthink, to have something from you in all freedom.\"\n\n\n\n\nPART SECOND\n\n VII\n\nAdam Verver, at Fawns, that autumn Sunday, might have been observed to\nopen the door of the billiard-room with a certain freedom--might have\nbeen observed, that is, had there been a spectator in the field. The\njustification of the push he had applied, however, and of the push,\nequally sharp, that, to shut himself in, he again applied--the ground\nof this energy was precisely that he might here, however briefly, find\nhimself alone, alone with the handful of letters, newspapers and other\nunopened missives, to which, during and since breakfast, he had lacked\nopportunity to give an eye. The vast, square, clean apartment was\nempty, and its large clear windows looked out into spaces of terrace\nand garden, of park and woodland and shining artificial lake, of\nrichly-condensed horizon, all dark blue upland and church-towered\nvillage and strong cloudshadow, which were, together, a thing to create\nthe sense, with everyone else at church, of one\'s having the world to\none\'s self. We share this world, none the less, for the hour, with\nMr. Verver; the very fact of his striking, as he would have said,\nfor solitude, the fact of his quiet flight, almost on tiptoe, through\ntortuous corridors, investing him with an interest that makes our\nattention--tender indeed almost to compassion--qualify his achieved\nisolation. For it may immediately be mentioned that this amiable man\nbethought himself of his personal advantage, in general, only when it\nmight appear to him that other advantages, those of other persons, had\nsuccessfully put in their claim. It may be mentioned also that he always\nfigured other persons--such was the law of his nature--as a numerous\narray, and that, though conscious of but a single near tie, one\naffection, one duty deepest-rooted in his life, it had never, for many\nminutes together, been his portion not to feel himself surrounded\nand committed, never quite been his refreshment to make out where\nthe many-coloured human appeal, represented by gradations of tint,\ndiminishing concentric zones of intensity, of importunity, really faded\nto the blessed impersonal whiteness for which his vision sometimes\nached. It shaded off, the appeal--he would have admitted that; but he\nhad as yet noted no point at which it positively stopped.\n\nThus had grown in him a little habit--his innermost secret, not confided\neven to Maggie, though he felt she understood it, as she understood,\nto his view, everything--thus had shaped itself the innocent trick of\noccasionally making believe that he had no conscience, or at least that\nblankness, in the field of duty, did reign for an hour; a small game to\nwhich the few persons near enough to have caught him playing it, and of\nwhom Mrs. Assingham, for instance, was one, attached indulgently that\nidea of quaintness, quite in fact that charm of the pathetic, involved\nin the preservation by an adult of one of childhood\'s toys. When he took\na rare moment \"off,\" he did so with the touching, confessing eyes of\na man of forty-seven caught in the act of handling a relic of\ninfancy--sticking on the head of a broken soldier or trying the lock\nof a wooden gun. It was essentially, in him, the IMITATION of\ndepravity--which, for amusement, as might have been, he practised\n\"keeping up.\" In spite of practice he was still imperfect, for these so\nartlessly-artful interludes were condemned, by the nature of the case,\nto brevity. He had fatally stamped himself--it was his own fault--a\nman who could be interrupted with impunity. The greatest of wonders,\nmoreover, was exactly in this, that so interrupted a man should ever\nhave got, as the phrase was, should above all have got so early, to\nwhere he was. It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of\nthat. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward\nvagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of\na church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American\nbreeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made\nof the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This\nestablishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which,\nat hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers,\nperceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the\nscene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for\nproducing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge\ncould not have communicated even with the best intentions.\n\nThe essential pulse of the flame, the very action of the cerebral\ntemperature, brought to the highest point, yet extraordinarily\ncontained--these facts themselves were the immensity of the result; they\nwere one with perfection of machinery, they had constituted the kind of\nacquisitive power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all\noperations. A dim explanation of phenomena once vivid must at all events\nfor the moment suffice us; it being obviously no account of the\nmatter to throw on our friend\'s amiability alone the weight of the\ndemonstration of his economic history. Amiability, of a truth, is an\naid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large\naccumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally\nmissing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing\nmore insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every\nother. Variety of imagination--what is that but fatal, in the world of\naffairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from\nmonotony? Mr. Verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying,\nextraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous\nbehind an iridescent cloud. The cloud was his native envelope--the soft\nlooseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive\nenough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality\nunmistakable for sensitive feelers. He was still reduced, in fine, to\ngetting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. His real\ninability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been\nbetter instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day--his\nacceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of\nthat element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must\nreckon. A quarter-of-an-hour of egoism was about as much as he,\ntaking one situation with another, usually got. Mrs. Rance opened the\ndoor--more tentatively indeed than he himself had just done; but on\nthe other hand, as if to make up for this, she pushed forward even more\nbriskly on seeing him than he had been moved to do on seeing nobody.\nThen, with force, it came home to him that he had, definitely, a week\nbefore, established a precedent. He did her at least that justice--it\nwas a kind of justice he was always doing someone. He had on the\nprevious Sunday liked to stop at home, and he had exposed himself\nthereby to be caught in the act. To make this possible, that is, Mrs.\nRance had only had to like to do the same--the trick was so easily\nplayed. It had not occurred to him to plan in any way for her\nabsence--which would have destroyed, somehow, in principle, the\npropriety of his own presence. If persons under his roof hadn\'t a right\nnot to go to church, what became, for a fair mind, of his own right?\nHis subtlest manoeuvre had been simply to change from the library to\nthe billiard-room, it being in the library that his guest, or his\ndaughter\'s, or the guest of the Miss Lutches--he scarce knew in which\nlight to regard her--had then, and not unnaturally, of course, joined\nhim. It was urged on him by his memory of the duration of the visit she\nhad that time, as it were, paid him, that the law of recurrence would\nalready have got itself enacted. She had spent the whole morning with\nhim, was still there, in the library, when the others came back--thanks\nto her having been tepid about their taking, Mr. Verver and she, a\nturn outside. It had been as if she looked on that as a kind of\nsubterfuge--almost as a form of disloyalty. Yet what was it she had in\nmind, what did she wish to make of him beyond what she had already made,\na patient, punctilious host, mindful that she had originally arrived\nmuch as a stranger, arrived not at all deliberately or yearningly\ninvited?--so that one positively had her possible susceptibilities the\nMORE on one\'s conscience. The Miss Lutches, the sisters from the middle\nWest, were there as friends of Maggie\'s, friends of the earlier time;\nbut Mrs. Rance was there--or at least had primarily appeared--only as a\nfriend of the Miss Lutches.\n\nThis lady herself was not of the middle West--she rather insisted on\nit--but of New Jersey, Rhode Island or Delaware, one of the smallest and\nmost intimate States: he couldn\'t remember which, though she insisted\ntoo on that. It was not in him--we may say it for him--to go so far as\nto wonder if their group were next to be recruited by some friend of\nher own; and this partly because she had struck him, verily, rather\nas wanting to get the Miss Lutches themselves away than to extend the\nactual circle, and partly, as well as more essentially, because such\nconnection as he enjoyed with the ironic question in general resided\nsubstantially less in a personal use of it than in the habit of seeing\nit as easy to others. He was so framed by nature as to be able to keep\nhis inconveniences separate from his resentments; though indeed if\nthe sum of these latter had at the most always been small, that was\ndoubtless in some degree a consequence of the fewness of the former. His\ngreatest inconvenience, he would have admitted, had he analyzed, was in\nfinding it so taken for granted that, as he had money, he had force.\nIt pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of\npower. Everyone had need of one\'s power, whereas one\'s own need, at the\nbest, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it.\nThe effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most\ncases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore,\nthough it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite\nagent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might\ncomplain. Complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the\nimputation of greed. The other, the constant imputation, that of\nbeing able to \"do,\" would have no ground if he hadn\'t been, to start\nwith--this was the point--provably luxurious. His lips, somehow, were\nclosed--and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes\nthemselves. The latter showed him what he had done, showed him where he\nhad come out; quite at the top of his hill of difficulty, the tall sharp\nspiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty,\nand the apex of which was a platform looking down, if one would, on\nthe kingdoms of the earth and with standing-room for but half-a-dozen\nothers.\n\nHis eyes, in any case, now saw Mrs. Rance approach with an instant\nfailure to attach to the fact any grossness of avidity of Mrs. Rance\'s\nown--or at least to descry any triumphant use even for the luridest\nimpression of her intensity. What was virtually supreme would be her\nvision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to\nmislead her--which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had\ndesigned. It was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and\nfunnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the\none thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. The\nbilliard-room was NOT, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a\ngraceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to\nretire to--and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his\nvisitor wouldn\'t, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene. Should\nshe frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but\nhe was, after an instant, not afraid of that. Wouldn\'t she rather, as\nemphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly,\ntreat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?--show at least\nthat they needn\'t mind even though the vast table, draped in brown\nholland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. She\ncouldn\'t cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round\nit; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had\nto cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be\npursued, to be genially hunted. This last was a turn he was well aware\nthe occasion should on no account take; and there loomed before him--for\nthe mere moment--the prospect of her fairly proposing that they should\nknock about the balls. That danger certainly, it struck him, he should\nmanage in some way to deal with. Why too, for that matter, had he need\nof defences, material or other?--how was it a question of dangers really\nto be called such? The deep danger, the only one that made him, as\nan idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her\nseeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible\nissue. Here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so\nprovable against her that she had a husband in undiminished existence.\n\nShe had him, it was true, only in America, only in Texas, in Nebraska,\nin Arizona or somewhere--somewhere that, at old Fawns House, in the\ncounty of Kent, scarcely counted as a definite place at all; it showed\nsomehow, from afar, as so lost, so indistinct and illusory, in the great\nalkali desert of cheap Divorce. She had him even in bondage, poor man,\nhad him in contempt, had him in remembrance so imperfect as barely to\nassert itself, but she had him, none the less, in existence unimpeached:\nthe Miss Lutches had seen him in the flesh--as they had appeared\neager to mention; though when they were separately questioned their\ndescriptions failed to tally. He would be at the worst, should it come\nto the worst, Mrs. Rance\'s difficulty, and he served therefore quite\nenough as the stout bulwark of anyone else. This was in truth logic\nwithout a flaw, yet it gave Mr. Verver less comfort than it ought. He\nfeared not only danger--he feared the idea of danger, or in other words\nfeared, hauntedly, himself. It was above all as a symbol that Mrs. Rance\nactually rose before him--a symbol of the supreme effort that he should\nhave sooner or later, as he felt, to make. This effort would be to say\nNo--he lived in terror of having to. He should be proposed to at a given\nmoment--it was only a question of time--and then he should have to do\na thing that would be extremely disagreeable. He almost wished, on\noccasion, that he wasn\'t so sure he WOULD do it. He knew himself,\nhowever, well enough not to doubt: he knew coldly, quite bleakly, where\nhe would, at the crisis, draw the line. It was Maggie\'s marriage and\nMaggie\'s finer happiness--happy as he had supposed her before--that had\nmade the difference; he hadn\'t in the other time, it now seemed to him,\nhad to think of such things. They hadn\'t come up for him, and it was as\nif she, positively, had herself kept them down. She had only been his\nchild--which she was indeed as much as ever; but there were sides on\nwhich she had protected him as if she were more than a daughter. She had\ndone for him more than he knew--much, and blissfully, as he always HAD\nknown. If she did at present more than ever, through having what she\ncalled the change in his life to make up to him for, his situation\nstill, all the same, kept pace with her activity--his situation being\nsimply that there was more than ever to be done.\n\nThere had not yet been quite so much, on all the showing, as since their\nreturn from their twenty months in America, as since their settlement\nagain in England, experimental though it was, and the consequent sense,\nnow quite established for him, of a domestic air that had cleared and\nlightened, producing the effect, for their common personal life,\nof wider perspectives and large waiting spaces. It was as if his\nson-in-law\'s presence, even from before his becoming his son-in-law,\nhad somehow filled the scene and blocked the future--very richly and\nhandsomely, when all was said, not at all inconveniently or in ways not\nto have been desired: inasmuch as though the Prince, his measure now\npractically taken, was still pretty much the same \"big fact,\" the sky\nhad lifted, the horizon receded, the very foreground itself expanded,\nquite to match him, quite to keep everything in comfortable scale. At\nfirst, certainly, their decent little old-time union, Maggie\'s and his\nown, had resembled a good deal some pleasant public square, in the heart\nof an old city, into which a great Palladian church, say--something with\na grand architectural front--had suddenly been dropped; so that the rest\nof the place, the space in front, the way round, outside, to the east\nend, the margin of street and passage, the quantity of over-arching\nheaven, had been temporarily compromised. Not even then, of a truth, in\na manner disconcerting--given, that is, for the critical, or at least\nthe intelligent, eye, the great style of the facade and its high place\nin its class. The phenomenon that had since occurred, whether originally\nto have been pronounced calculable or not, had not, naturally, been the\nmiracle of a night, but had taken place so gradually, quietly, easily,\nthat from this vantage of wide, wooded Fawns, with its eighty rooms, as\nthey said, with its spreading park, with its acres and acres of garden\nand its majesty of artificial lake--though that, for a person\nso familiar with the \"great\" ones, might be rather ridiculous--no\nvisibility of transition showed, no violence of adjustment, in\nretrospect, emerged. The Palladian church was always there, but the\npiazza took care of itself. The sun stared down in his fulness, the air\ncirculated, and the public not less; the limit stood off, the way round\nwas easy, the east end was as fine, in its fashion, as the west,\nand there were also side doors for entrance, between the two--large,\nmonumental, ornamental, in their style--as for all proper great\nchurches. By some such process, in fine, had the Prince, for his\nfather-in-law, while remaining solidly a feature, ceased to be, at all\nominously, a block.\n\nMr. Verver, it may further be mentioned, had taken at no moment\nsufficient alarm to have kept in detail the record of his reassurance;\nbut he would none the less not have been unable, not really have been\nindisposed, to impart in confidence to the right person his notion of\nthe history of the matter. The right person--it is equally distinct--had\nnot, for this illumination, been wanting, but had been encountered in\nthe form of Fanny Assingham, not for the first time indeed admitted to\nhis counsels, and who would have doubtless at present, in any case, from\nplenitude of interest and with equal guarantees, repeated his secret.\nIt all came then, the great clearance, from the one prime fact that\nthe Prince, by good fortune, hadn\'t proved angular. He clung to that\ndescription of his daughter\'s husband as he often did to terms and\nphrases, in the human, the social connection, that he had found for\nhimself: it was his way to have times of using these constantly, as if\nthey just then lighted the world, or his own path in it, for him--even\nwhen for some of his interlocutors they covered less ground. It was true\nthat with Mrs. Assingham he never felt quite sure of the ground anything\ncovered; she disputed with him so little, agreed with him so much,\nsurrounded him with such systematic consideration, such predetermined\ntenderness, that it was almost--which he had once told her in irritation\nas if she were nursing a sick baby. He had accused her of not taking\nhim seriously, and she had replied--as from her it couldn\'t frighten\nhim--that she took him religiously, adoringly. She had laughed again,\nas she had laughed before, on his producing for her that good right word\nabout the happy issue of his connection with the Prince--with an effect\nthe more odd perhaps as she had not contested its value. She couldn\'t of\ncourse, however, be, at the best, as much in love with his discovery as\nhe was himself. He was so much so that he fairly worked it--to his own\ncomfort; came in fact sometimes near publicly pointing the moral of what\nmight have occurred if friction, so to speak, had occurred. He pointed\nit frankly one day to the personage in question, mentioned to the Prince\nthe particular justice he did him, was even explicit as to the danger\nthat, in their remarkable relation, they had thus escaped. Oh, if he\nHAD been angular!--who could say what might THEN have happened? He\nspoke--and it was the way he had spoken to Mrs. Assingham too--as if he\ngrasped the facts, without exception, for which angularity stood.\n\nIt figured for him, clearly, as a final idea, a conception of the last\nvividness. He might have been signifying by it the sharp corners and\nhard edges, all the stony pointedness, the grand right geometry of his\nspreading Palladian church. Just so, he was insensible to no feature of\nthe felicity of a contact that, beguilingly, almost confoundingly, was a\ncontact but with practically yielding lines and curved surfaces.\n\"You\'re round, my boy,\" he had said--\"you\'re ALL, you\'re variously\nand inexhaustibly round, when you might, by all the chances, have been\nabominably square. I\'m not sure, for that matter,\" he had added, \"that\nyou\'re not square in the general mass--whether abominably or not. The\nabomination isn\'t a question, for you\'re inveterately round--that\'s\nwhat I mean--in the detail. It\'s the sort of thing, in you, that one\nfeels--or at least I do--with one\'s hand. Say you had been formed, all\nover, in a lot of little pyramidal lozenges like that wonderful side of\nthe Ducal Palace in Venice--so lovely in a building, but so damnable,\nfor rubbing against, in a man, and especially in a near relation. I can\nsee them all from here--each of them sticking out by itself--all the\narchitectural cut diamonds that would have scratched one\'s softer sides.\nOne would have been scratched by diamonds--doubtless the neatest way\nif one was to be scratched at all--but one would have been more or less\nreduced to a hash. As it is, for living with, you\'re a pure and perfect\ncrystal. I give you my idea--I think you ought to have it--just as it\nhas come to me.\" The Prince had taken the idea, in his way, for he was\nwell accustomed, by this time, to taking; and nothing perhaps even could\nmore have confirmed Mr. Verver\'s account of his surface than the manner\nin which these golden drops evenly flowed over it. They caught in\nno interstice, they gathered in no concavity; the uniform smoothness\nbetrayed the dew but by showing for the moment a richer tone. The young\nman, in other words, unconfusedly smiled--though indeed as if assenting,\nfrom principle and habit, to more than he understood. He liked all signs\nthat things were well, but he cared rather less WHY they were.\n\nIn regard to the people among whom he had since his marriage been\nliving, the reasons they so frequently gave--so much oftener than he had\never heard reasons given before--remained on the whole the element by\nwhich he most differed from them; and his father-in-law and his wife\nwere, after all, only first among the people among whom he had been\nliving. He was never even yet sure of how, at this, that or the other\npoint, he would strike them; they felt remarkably, so often, things he\nhadn\'t meant, and missed not less remarkably, and not less often, things\nhe had. He had fallen back on his general explanation--\"We haven\'t the\nsame values;\" by which he understood the same measure of importance. His\n\"curves\" apparently were important because they had been unexpected,\nor, still more, unconceived; whereas when one had always, as in his\nrelegated old world, taken curves, and in much greater quantities too,\nfor granted, one was no more surprised at the resulting feasibility of\nintercourse than one was surprised at being upstairs in a house that had\na staircase. He had in fact on this occasion disposed alertly enough of\nthe subject of Mr. Verver\'s approbation. The promptitude of his answer,\nwe may in fact well surmise, had sprung not a little from a particular\nkindled remembrance; this had given his acknowledgment its easiest\nturn. \"Oh, if I\'m a crystal I\'m delighted that I\'m a perfect one, for I\nbelieve that they sometimes have cracks and flaws--in which case they\'re\nto be had very cheap!\" He had stopped short of the emphasis it would\nhave given his joke to add that there had been certainly no having\nHIM cheap; and it was doubtless a mark of the good taste practically\nreigning between them that Mr. Verver had not, on his side either,\ntaken up the opportunity. It is the latter\'s relation to such aspects,\nhowever, that now most concerns us, and the bearing of his pleased view\nof this absence of friction upon Amerigo\'s character as a representative\nprecious object. Representative precious objects, great ancient pictures\nand other works of art, fine eminent \"pieces\" in gold, in silver, in\nenamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied\nthemselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and\nappreciation, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the\ninstinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector, had fairly\nserved as a basis for his acceptance of the Prince\'s suit.\n\nOver and above the signal fact of the impression made on Maggie herself,\nthe aspirant to his daughter\'s hand showed somehow the great marks and\nsigns, stood before him with the high authenticities, he had learned to\nlook for in pieces of the first order. Adam Verver knew, by this time,\nknew thoroughly; no man in Europe or in America, he privately believed,\nwas less capable, in such estimates, of vulgar mistakes. He had never\nspoken of himself as infallible--it was not his way; but, apart from the\nnatural affections, he had acquainted himself with no greater joy, of\nthe intimately personal type, than the joy of his originally coming\nto feel, and all so unexpectedly, that he had in him the spirit of\nthe connoisseur. He had, like many other persons, in the course of\nhis reading, been struck with Keats\'s sonnet about stout Cortez in the\npresence of the Pacific; but few persons, probably, had so devoutly\nfitted the poet\'s grand image to a fact of experience. It consorted so\nwith Mr. Verver\'s consciousness of the way in which, at a given moment,\nhe had stared at HIS Pacific, that a couple of perusals of the immortal\nlines had sufficed to stamp them in his memory. His \"peak in Darien\"\nwas the sudden hour that had transformed his life, the hour of his\nperceiving with a mute inward gasp akin to the low moan of apprehensive\npassion, that a world was left him to conquer and that he might conquer\nit if he tried. It had been a turning of the page of the book of\nlife--as if a leaf long inert had moved at a touch and, eagerly\nreversed, had made such a stir of the air as sent up into his face the\nvery breath of the Golden Isles. To rifle the Golden Isles had, on\nthe spot, become the business of his future, and with the sweetness of\nit--what was most wondrous of all--still more even in the thought than\nin the act. The thought was that of the affinity of Genius, or at least\nof Taste, with something in himself--with the dormant intelligence of\nwhich he had thus almost violently become aware and that affected him as\nchanging by a mere revolution of the screw his whole intellectual\nplane. He was equal, somehow, with the great seers, the invokers and\nencouragers of beauty--and he didn\'t after all perhaps dangle so far\nbelow the great producers and creators. He had been nothing of that kind\nbefore-too decidedly, too dreadfully not; but now he saw why he had been\nwhat he had, why he had failed and fallen short even in huge success;\nnow he read into his career, in one single magnificent night, the\nimmense meaning it had waited for.\n\nIt was during his first visit to Europe after the death of his wife,\nwhen his daughter was ten years old, that the light, in his mind, had\nso broken--and he had even made out at that time why, on an earlier\noccasion, the journey of his honeymoon year, it had still been closely\ncovered. He had \"bought\" then, so far as he had been able, but he had\nbought almost wholly for the frail, fluttered creature at his side, who\nhad had her fancies, decidedly, but all for the art, then wonderful\nto both of them, of the Rue de la Paix, the costly authenticities of\ndressmakers and jewellers. Her flutter--pale disconcerted ghost as she\nactually was, a broken white flower tied round, almost grotesquely for\nhis present sense, with a huge satin \"bow\" of the Boulevard--her flutter\nhad been mainly that of ribbons, frills and fine fabrics; all funny,\npathetic evidence, for memory, of the bewilderments overtaking them as a\nbridal pair confronted with opportunity. He could wince, fairly, still,\nas he remembered the sense in which the poor girl\'s pressure had, under\nhis fond encouragement indeed, been exerted in favour of purchase and\ncuriosity. These were wandering images, out of the earlier dusk, that\nthrew her back, for his pity, into a past more remote than he liked\ntheir common past, their young affection, to appear. It would have had\nto be admitted, to an insistent criticism, that Maggie\'s mother, all too\nstrangely, had not so much failed of faith as of the right application\nof it; since she had exercised it eagerly and restlessly, made it a\npretext for innocent perversities in respect to which philosophic time\nwas at, last to reduce all groans to gentleness. And they had loved each\nother so that his own intelligence, on the higher line, had temporarily\npaid for it. The futilities, the enormities, the depravities, of\ndecoration and ingenuity, that, before his sense was unsealed, she had\nmade him think lovely! Musing, reconsidering little man that he was, and\naddicted to silent pleasures--as he was accessible to silent pains--he\neven sometimes wondered what would have become of his intelligence, in\nthe sphere in which it was to learn more and more exclusively to play,\nif his wife\'s influence upon it had not been, in the strange scheme of\nthings, so promptly removed. Would she have led him altogether, attached\nas he was to her, into the wilderness of mere mistakes? Would she have\nprevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous Peak?--or would she,\notherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence, where\nhe might have pointed out to her, as Cortez to HIS companions, the\nrevelation vouchsafed? No companion of Cortez had presumably been a real\nlady: Mr. Verver allowed that historic fact to determine his inference.\n\n\n\n\n VIII\n\nWhat was at all events not permanently hidden from him was a truth much\nless invidious about his years of darkness. It was the strange scheme of\nthings again: the years of darkness had been needed to render possible\nthe years of light. A wiser hand than he at first knew had kept him hard\nat acquisition of one sort as a perfect preliminary to acquisition of\nanother, and the preliminary would have been weak and wanting if the\ngood faith of it had been less. His comparative blindness had made\nthe good faith, which in its turn had made the soil propitious for the\nflower of the supreme idea. He had had to LIKE forging and sweating, he\nhad had to like polishing and piling up his arms. They were things at\nleast he had had to believe he liked, just as he had believed he liked\ntranscendent calculation and imaginative gambling all for themselves,\nthe creation of \"interests\" that were the extinction of other interests,\nthe livid vulgarity, even, of getting in, or getting out, first. That\nhad of course been so far from really the case--with the supreme idea,\nall the while, growing and striking deep, under everything, in the warm,\nrich earth. He had stood unknowing, he had walked and worked where it\nwas buried, and the fact itself, the fact of his fortune, would have\nbeen a barren fact enough if the first sharp tender shoot had never\nstruggled into day. There on one side was the ugliness his middle time\nhad been spared; there on the other, from all the portents, was the\nbeauty with which his age might still be crowned. He was happier,\ndoubtless, than he deserved; but THAT, when one was happy at all, it\nwas easy to be. He had wrought by devious ways, but he had reached the\nplace, and what would ever have been straighter, in any man\'s life,\nthan his way, now, of occupying it? It hadn\'t merely, his plan, all the\nsanctions of civilization; it was positively civilization condensed,\nconcrete, consummate, set down by his hands as a house on a rock--a\nhouse from whose open doors and windows, open to grateful, to thirsty\nmillions, the higher, the highest knowledge would shine out to bless the\nland. In this house, designed as a gift, primarily, to the people of his\nadoptive city and native State, the urgency of whose release from the\nbondage of ugliness he was in a position to measure--in this museum of\nmuseums, a palace of art which was to show for compact as a Greek temple\nwas compact, a receptacle of treasures sifted to positive sanctity, his\nspirit to-day almost altogether lived, making up, as he would have said,\nfor lost time and haunting the portico in anticipation of the final\nrites.\n\nThese would be the \"opening exercises,\" the august dedication of the\nplace. His imagination, he was well aware, got over the ground faster\nthan his judgment; there was much still to do for the production of his\nfirst effect. Foundations were laid and walls were rising, the structure\nof the shell all determined; but raw haste was forbidden him in a\nconnection so intimate with the highest effects of patience and piety;\nhe should belie himself by completing without a touch at least of the\nmajesty of delay a monument to the religion he wished to propagate, the\nexemplary passion, the passion for perfection at any price. He was far\nfrom knowing as yet where he would end, but he was admirably definite\nas to where he wouldn\'t begin. He wouldn\'t begin with a small show--he\nwould begin with a great, and he could scarce have indicated, even had\nhe wished to try, the line of division he had drawn. He had taken no\ntrouble to indicate it to his fellow-citizens, purveyors and consumers,\nin his own and the circumjacent commonwealths, of comic matter in large\nlettering, diurnally \"set up,\" printed, published, folded and delivered,\nat the expense of his presumptuous emulation of the snail. The snail\nhad become for him, under this ironic suggestion, the loveliest beast\nin nature, and his return to England, of which we are present witnesses,\nhad not been unconnected with the appreciation so determined. It marked\nwhat he liked to mark, that he needed, on the matter in question,\ninstruction from no one on earth. A couple of years of Europe again, of\nrenewed nearness to changes and chances, refreshed sensibility to the\ncurrents of the market, would fall in with the consistency of wisdom,\nthe particular shade of enlightened conviction, that he wished to\nobserve. It didn\'t look like much for a whole family to hang about\nwaiting-they being now, since the birth of his grandson, a whole\nfamily; and there was henceforth only one ground in all the world, he\nfelt, on which the question of appearance would ever really again count\nfor him. He cared that a work of art of price should \"look like\" the\nmaster to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed; but he had\nceased on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks.\n\nHe took life in general higher up the stream; so far as he was not\nactually taking it as a collector, he was taking it, decidedly, as a\ngrandfather. In the way of precious small pieces he had handled nothing\nso precious as the Principino, his daughter\'s first-born, whose Italian\ndesignation endlessly amused him and whom he could manipulate\nand dandle, already almost toss and catch again, as he couldn\'t a\ncorrespondingly rare morsel of an earlier pate tendre. He could take\nthe small clutching child from his nurse\'s arms with an iteration grimly\ndiscountenanced, in respect to their contents, by the glass doors of\nhigh cabinets. Something clearly beatific in this new relation had,\nmoreover, without doubt, confirmed for him the sense that none of his\nsilent answers to public detraction, to local vulgarity, had ever been\nso legitimately straight as the mere element of attitude--reduce it, he\nsaid, to that--in his easy weeks at Fawns. The element of attitude was\nall he wanted of these weeks, and he was enjoying it on the spot, even\nmore than he had hoped: enjoying it in spite of Mrs. Rance and the Miss\nLutches; in spite of the small worry of his belief that Fanny Assingham\nhad really something for him that she was keeping back; in spite of\nhis full consciousness, overflowing the cup like a wine too generously\npoured, that if he had consented to marry his daughter, and thereby to\nmake, as it were, the difference, what surrounded him now was, exactly,\nconsent vivified, marriage demonstrated, the difference, in fine,\ndefinitely made. He could call back his prior, his own wedded\nconsciousness--it was not yet out of range of vague reflection. He had\nsupposed himself, above all he had supposed his wife, as married as\nanyone could be, and yet he wondered if their state had deserved the\nname, or their union worn the beauty, in the degree to which the couple\nnow before him carried the matter. In especial since the birth of their\nboy, in New York--the grand climax of their recent American period,\nbrought to so right an issue--the happy pair struck him as having\ncarried it higher, deeper, further; to where it ceased to concern\nhis imagination, at any rate, to follow them. Extraordinary, beyond\nquestion, was one branch of his characteristic mute wonderment--it\ncharacterised above all, with its subject before it, his modesty: the\nstrange dim doubt, waking up for him at the end of the years, of whether\nMaggie\'s mother had, after all, been capable of the maximum. The maximum\nof tenderness he meant--as the terms existed for him; the maximum of\nimmersion in the fact of being married. Maggie herself was capable;\nMaggie herself at this season, was, exquisitely, divinely, the maximum:\nsuch was the impression that, positively holding off a little for the\npractical, the tactful consideration it inspired in him, a respect for\nthe beauty and sanctity of it almost amounting to awe--such was the\nimpression he daily received from her. She was her mother, oh yes--but\nher mother and something more; it becoming thus a new light for him,\nand in such a curious way too, that anything more than her mother should\nprove at this time of day possible.\n\nHe could live over again at almost any quiet moment the long process\nof his introduction to his present interests--an introduction that\nhad depended all on himself, like the \"cheek\" of the young man who\napproaches a boss without credentials or picks up an acquaintance, makes\neven a real friend, by speaking to a passer in the street. HIS real\nfriend, in all the business, was to have been his own mind, with which\nnobody had put him in relation. He had knocked at the door of that\nessentially private house, and his call, in truth, had not been\nimmediately answered; so that when, after waiting and coming back,\nhe had at last got in, it was, twirling his hat, as an embarrassed\nstranger, or, trying his keys, as a thief at night. He had gained\nconfidence only with time, but when he had taken real possession of\nthe place it had been never again to come away. All of which success\nrepresented, it must be allowed, his one principle of pride. Pride in\nthe mere original spring, pride in his money, would have been pride in\nsomething that had come, in comparison, so easily. The right ground\nfor elation was difficulty mastered, and his difficulty--thanks to his\nmodesty--had been to believe in his facility. THIS was the problem he\nhad worked out to its solution--the solution that was now doing more\nthan all else to make his feet settle and his days flush; and when he\nwished to feel \"good,\" as they said at American City, he had but to\nretrace his immense development. That was what the whole thing came back\nto--that the development had not been somebody\'s else passing falsely,\naccepted too ignobly, for his. To think how servile he might have been\nwas absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to\nadmire himself, as free. The very finest spring that ever responded\nto his touch was always there to press--the memory of his freedom as\ndawning upon him, like a sunrise all pink and silver, during a winter\ndivided between Florence, Rome and Naples some three years after his\nwife\'s death. It was the hushed daybreak of the Roman revelation in\nparticular that he could usually best recover, with the way that\nthere, above all, where the princes and Popes had been before him, his\ndivination of his faculty most went to his head. He was a plain American\ncitizen, staying at an hotel where, sometimes, for days together, there\nwere twenty others like him; but no Pope, no prince of them all had read\na richer meaning, he believed, into the character of the Patron of Art.\nHe was ashamed of them really, if he wasn\'t afraid, and he had on the\nwhole never so climbed to the tip-top as in judging, over a perusal\nof Hermann Grimm, where Julius II and Leo X were \"placed\" by their\ntreatment of Michael Angelo. Far below the plain American citizen--in\nthe case at least in which this personage happened not to be too plain\nto be Adam Verver. Going to our friend\'s head, moreover, some of the\nresults of such comparisons may doubtless be described as having stayed\nthere. His freedom to see--of which the comparisons were part--what\ncould it do but steadily grow and grow?\n\nIt came perhaps even too much to stand to him for ALL freedom--since,\nfor example, it was as much there as ever at the very time of Mrs.\nRance\'s conspiring against him, at Fawns, with the billiard-room and the\nSunday morning, on the occasion round which we have perhaps drawn our\ncircle too wide. Mrs. Rance at least controlled practically each other\nlicense of the present and the near future: the license to pass the hour\nas he would have found convenient; the license to stop remembering, for\na little, that, though if proposed to--and not only by this aspirant but\nby any other--he wouldn\'t prove foolish, the proof of wisdom was none\nthe less, in such a fashion, rather cruelly conditioned; the license\nin especial to proceed from his letters to his journals and insulate,\norientate, himself afresh by the sound, over his gained interval, of\nthe many-mouthed monster the exercise of whose lungs he so constantly\nstimulated. Mrs. Rance remained with him till the others came back from\nchurch, and it was by that time clearer than ever that his ordeal, when\nit should arrive, would be really most unpleasant. His impression--this\nwas the point--took somehow the form not so much of her wanting to press\nhome her own advantage as of her building better than she knew; that\nis of her symbolising, with virtual unconsciousness, his own special\ndeficiency, his unfortunate lack of a wife to whom applications could\nbe referred. The applications, the contingencies with which Mrs. Rance\nstruck him as potentially bristling, were not of a sort, really, to be\nmet by one\'s self. And the possibility of them, when his visitor said,\nor as good as said, \"I\'m restrained, you see, because of Mr. Rance, and\nalso because I\'m proud and refined; but if it WASN\'T for Mr. Rance and\nfor my refinement and my pride!\"--the possibility of them, I say, turned\nto a great murmurous rustle, of a volume to fill the future; a rustle\nof petticoats, of scented, many-paged letters, of voices as to which,\ndistinguish themselves as they might from each other, it mattered\nlittle in what part of the resounding country they had learned to make\nthemselves prevail. The Assinghams and the Miss Lutches had taken the\nwalk, through the park, to the little old church, \"on the property,\"\nthat our friend had often found himself wishing he were able to\ntransport, as it stood, for its simple sweetness, in a glass case, to\none of his exhibitory halls; while Maggie had induced her husband,\nnot inveterate in such practices, to make with her, by carriage, the\nsomewhat longer pilgrimage to the nearest altar, modest though it\nhappened to be, of the faith--her own as it had been her mother\'s, and\nas Mr. Verver himself had been loosely willing, always, to let it be\ntaken for his--without the solid ease of which, making the stage firm\nand smooth, the drama of her marriage might not have been acted out.\n\nWhat at last appeared to have happened, however, was that the divided\nparties, coming back at the same moment, had met outside and then\ndrifted together, from empty room to room, yet not in mere aimless quest\nof the pair of companions they had left at home. The quest had carried\nthem to the door of the billiard-room, and their appearance, as it\nopened to admit them, determined for Adam Verver, in the oddest way in\nthe world, a new and sharp perception. It was really remarkable: this\nperception expanded, on the spot, as a flower, one of the strangest,\nmight, at a breath, have suddenly opened. The breath, for that matter,\nwas more than anything else, the look in his daughter\'s eyes--the look\nwith which he SAW her take in exactly what had occurred in her absence:\nMrs. Rance\'s pursuit of him to this remote locality, the spirit and\nthe very form, perfectly characteristic, of his acceptance of the\ncomplication--the seal set, in short, unmistakably, on one of Maggie\'s\nanxieties. The anxiety, it was true, would have been, even though not\nimparted, separately shared; for Fanny Assingham\'s face was, by the\nsame stroke, not at all thickly veiled for him, and a queer light, of\na colour quite to match, fairly glittered in the four fine eyes of the\nMiss Lutches. Each of these persons--counting out, that is, the Prince\nand the Colonel, who didn\'t care, and who didn\'t even see that the\nothers did--knew something, or had at any rate had her idea; the idea,\nprecisely, that this was what Mrs. Rance, artfully biding her time,\nWOULD do. The special shade of apprehension on the part of the Miss\nLutches might indeed have suggested the vision of an energy supremely\nasserted. It was droll, in truth, if one came to that, the position\nof the Miss Lutches: they had themselves brought, they had guilelessly\nintroduced Mrs. Rance, strong in the fact of Mr. Rance\'s having been\nliterally beheld of them; and it was now for them, positively, as if\ntheir handful of flowers--since Mrs. Rance was a handful!--had been but\nthe vehicle of a dangerous snake. Mr. Verver fairly felt in the air the\nMiss Lutches\' imputation--in the intensity of which, really, his own\npropriety might have been involved.\n\nThat, none the less, was but a flicker; what made the real difference,\nas I have hinted, was his mute passage with Maggie. His daughter\'s\nanxiety alone had depths, and it opened out for him the wider that it\nwas altogether new. When, in their common past, when till this moment,\nhad she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? They\nhad had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at\nleast, had been for what equally concerned them. Here of a sudden was\na question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it\nsomehow marked a date. He was on her mind, he was even in a manner on\nher hands--as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always\nbeen, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it\nwere, to be disengaged, contrasted or opposed, in short objectively\npresented. But time finally had done it; their relation was altered:\nhe SAW, again, the difference lighted for her. This marked it to\nhimself--and it wasn\'t a question simply of a Mrs. Rance the more or the\nless. For Maggie too, at a stroke, almost beneficently, their visitor\nhad, from being an inconvenience, become a sign. They had made vacant,\nby their marriage, his immediate foreground, his personal precinct--they\nbeing the Princess and the Prince. They had made room in it for\nothers--so others had become aware. He became aware himself, for that\nmatter, during the minute Maggie stood there before speaking; and with\nthe sense, moreover, of what he saw her see, he had the sense of what\nshe saw HIM. This last, it may be added, would have been his intensest\nperception had there not, the next instant, been more for him in Fanny\nAssingham. Her face couldn\'t keep it from him; she had seen, on top of\neverything, in her quick way, what they both were seeing.\n\n\n\n\n IX\n\nSo much mute communication was doubtless, all this time, marvellous,\nand we may confess to having perhaps read into the scene, prematurely,\na critical character that took longer to develop. Yet the quiet hour of\nreunion enjoyed that afternoon by the father and the daughter did really\nlittle else than deal with the elements definitely presented to each\nin the vibration produced by the return of the church-goers. Nothing\nallusive, nothing at all insistent, passed between them either before or\nimmediately after luncheon--except indeed so far as their failure soon\nagain to meet might be itself an accident charged with reference. The\nhour or two after luncheon--and on Sundays with especial rigour, for\none of the domestic reasons of which it belonged to Maggie quite\nmultitudinously to take account--were habitually spent by the Princess\nwith her little boy, in whose apartment she either frequently found her\nfather already established or was sooner or later joined by him. His\nvisit to his grandson, at some hour or other, held its place, in his\nday, against all interventions, and this without counting his grandson\'s\nvisits to HIM, scarcely less ordered and timed, and the odd bits, as he\ncalled them, that they picked up together when they could--communions\nsnatched, for the most part, on the terrace, in the gardens or the park,\nwhile the Principino, with much pomp and circumstance of perambulator,\nparasol, fine lace over-veiling and incorruptible female attendance,\ntook the air. In the private apartments, which, occupying in the great\nhouse the larger part of a wing of their own, were not much more easily\naccessible than if the place had been a royal palace and the small\nchild an heir-apparent--in the nursery of nurseries the talk, at these\ninstituted times, was always so prevailingly with or about the master\nof the scene that other interests and other topics had fairly learned to\navoid the slighting and inadequate notice there taken of them. They came\nin, at the best, but as involved in the little boy\'s future, his past,\nor his comprehensive present, never getting so much as a chance to plead\ntheir own merits or to complain of being neglected. Nothing perhaps, in\ntruth, had done more than this united participation to confirm in the\nelder parties that sense of a life not only uninterrupted but more\ndeeply associated, more largely combined, of which, on Adam Verver\'s\nbehalf, we have made some mention. It was of course an old story and a\nfamiliar idea that a beautiful baby could take its place as a new link\nbetween a wife and a husband, but Maggie and her father had, with every\ningenuity, converted the precious creature into a link between a mamma\nand a grandpapa. The Principino, for a chance spectator of this process,\nmight have become, by an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with\nthe place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the next\nnearest sympathy.\n\nThey had no occasion thus, the conjoined worshippers, to talk of what\nthe Prince might be or might do for his son--the sum of service, in\nhis absence, so completely filled itself out. It was not in the least,\nmoreover, that there was doubt of him, for he was conspicuously addicted\nto the manipulation of the child, in the frank Italian way, at such\nmoments as he judged discreet in respect to other claims: conspicuously,\nindeed, that is, for Maggie, who had more occasion, on the whole, to\nspeak to her husband of the extravagance of her father than to speak\nto her father of the extravagance of her husband. Adam Verver had,\nall round, in this connection, his own serenity. He was sure of\nhis son-in-law\'s auxiliary admiration--admiration, he meant, of his\ngrand-son; since, to begin with, what else had been at work but the\ninstinct--or it might fairly have been the tradition--of the latter\'s\nmaking the child so solidly beautiful as to HAVE to be admired? What\ncontributed most to harmony in this play of relations, however, was the\nway the young man seemed to leave it to be gathered that, tradition\nfor tradition, the grandpapa\'s own was not, in any estimate, to go for\nnothing. A tradition, or whatever it was, that had flowered prelusively\nin the Princess herself--well, Amerigo\'s very discretions were his way\nof taking account of it. His discriminations in respect to his heir\nwere, in fine, not more angular than any others to be observed in him;\nand Mr. Verver received perhaps from no source so distinct an impression\nof being for him an odd and important phenomenon as he received from\nthis impunity of appropriation, these unchallenged nursery hours. It\nwas as if the grandpapa\'s special show of the character were but another\nside for the observer to study, another item for him to note. It came\nback, this latter personage knew, to his own previous perception--that\nof the Prince\'s inability, in any matter in which he was concerned,\nto CONCLUDE. The idiosyncrasy, for him, at each stage, had to be\ndemonstrated--on which, however, he admirably accepted it. This last\nwas, after all, the point; he really worked, poor young man, for\nacceptance, since he worked so constantly for comprehension. And how,\nwhen you came to that, COULD you know that a horse wouldn\'t shy at\na brass-band, in a country road, because it didn\'t shy at a\ntraction-engine? It might have been brought up to traction-engines\nwithout having been brought up to brass-bands. Little by little, thus,\nfrom month to month, the Prince was learning what his wife\'s father\nhad been brought up to; and now it could be checked off--he had been\nbrought, up to the romantic view of principini. Who would have thought\nit, and where would it all stop? The only fear somewhat sharp for Mr.\nVerver was a certain fear of disappointing him for strangeness. He felt\nthat the evidence he offered, thus viewed, was too much on the positive\nside. He didn\'t know--he was learning, and it was funny for him--to\nhow many things he HAD been brought up. If the Prince could only strike\nsomething to which he hadn\'t! This wouldn\'t, it seemed to him, ruffle\nthe smoothness, and yet MIGHT, a little, add to the interest.\n\nWhat was now clear, at all events, for the father and the daughter, was\ntheir simply knowing they wanted, for the time, to be together--at any\ncost, as it were; and their necessity so worked in them as to bear them\nout of the house, in a quarter hidden from that in which their friends\nwere gathered, and cause them to wander, unseen, unfollowed, along\na covered walk in the \"old\" garden, as it was called, old with an\nantiquity of formal things, high box and shaped yew and expanses of\nbrick wall that had turned at once to purple and to pink. They went out\nof a door in the wall, a door that had a slab with a date set above it,\n1713, but in the old multiplied lettering, and then had before them\na small white gate, intensely white and clean amid all the greenness,\nthrough which they gradually passed to where some of the grandest trees\nspaciously clustered and where they would find one of the quietest\nplaces. A bench had been placed, long ago, beneath a great oak that\nhelped to crown a mild eminence, and the ground sank away below it, to\nrise again, opposite, at a distance sufficient to enclose the solitude\nand figure a bosky horizon. Summer, blissfully, was with them yet, and\nthe low sun made a splash of light where it pierced the looser shade;\nMaggie, coming down to go out, had brought a parasol, which, as, over\nher charming bare head, she now handled it, gave, with the big straw\nhat that her father in these days always wore a good deal tipped\nback, definite intention to their walk. They knew the bench; it was\n\"sequestered\"--they had praised it for that together, before, and liked\nthe word; and after they had begun to linger there they could have\nsmiled (if they hadn\'t been really too serious, and if the question\nhadn\'t so soon ceased to matter), over the probable wonder of the others\nas to what would have become of them.\n\nThe extent to which they enjoyed their indifference to any judgment of\ntheir want of ceremony, what did that of itself speak but for the way\nthat, as a rule, they almost equally had others on their mind? They each\nknew that both were full of the superstition of not \"hurting,\" but might\nprecisely have been asking themselves, asking in fact each other, at\nthis moment, whether that was to be, after all, the last word of their\nconscientious development. Certain it was, at all events, that,\nin addition to the Assinghams and the Lutches and Mrs. Rance, the\nattendance at tea, just in the right place on the west terrace, might\nperfectly comprise the four or five persons--among them the very\npretty, the typically Irish Miss Maddock, vaunted, announced and now\nbrought--from the couple of other houses near enough, one of these the\nminor residence Of their proprietor, established, thriftily, while he\nhired out his ancestral home, within sight and sense of his profit.\nIt was not less certain, either, that, for once in a way, the group in\nquestion must all take the case as they found it. Fanny Assingham, at\nany time, for that matter, might perfectly be trusted to see Mr. Verver\nand his daughter, to see their reputation for a decent friendliness,\nthrough any momentary danger; might be trusted even to carry off their\nabsence for Amerigo, for Amerigo\'s possible funny Italian anxiety;\nAmerigo always being, as the Princess was well aware, conveniently\namenable to this friend\'s explanations, beguilements, reassurances,\nand perhaps in fact rather more than less dependent on them as his new\nlife--since that was his own name for it--opened out. It was no secret\nto Maggie--it was indeed positively a public joke for her--that she\ncouldn\'t explain as Mrs. Assingham did, and that, the Prince liking\nexplanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner\nof book-plates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition\nof this luxury had to be met. He didn\'t seem to want them as yet for\nuse--rather for ornament and amusement, innocent amusement of the\nkind he most fancied and that was so characteristic of his blessed,\nbeautiful, general, slightly indolent lack of more dissipated, or even\njust of more sophisticated, tastes.\n\nHowever that might be, the dear woman had come to be frankly and gaily\nrecognised--and not least by herself--as filling in the intimate little\ncircle an office that was not always a sinecure. It was almost as if she\nhad taken, with her kind, melancholy Colonel at her heels, a responsible\nengagement; to be within call, as it were, for all those appeals that\nsprang out of talk, that sprang not a little, doubtless too, out of\nleisure. It naturally led her position in the household, as, she called\nit, to considerable frequency of presence, to visits, from the good\ncouple, freely repeated and prolonged, and not so much as under form\nof protest. She was there to keep him quiet--it was Amerigo\'s own\ndescription of her influence; and it would only have needed a more\nvisible disposition to unrest in him to make the account perfectly fit.\nFanny herself limited indeed, she minimised, her office; you didn\'t\nneed a jailor, she contended, for a domesticated lamb tied up with pink\nribbon. This was not an animal to be controlled--it was an animal to\nbe, at the most, educated. She admitted accordingly that she was\neducative--which Maggie was so aware that she herself, inevitably,\nwasn\'t; so it came round to being true that what she was most in charge\nof was his mere intelligence. This left, goodness knew, plenty of\ndifferent calls for Maggie to meet--in a case in which so much pink\nribbon, as it might be symbolically named, was lavished on the creature.\nWhat it all amounted to, at any rate, was that Mrs. Assingham would be\nkeeping him quiet now, while his wife and his father-in-law carried out\ntheir own little frugal picnic; quite moreover, doubtless, not much less\nneededly in respect to the members of the circle that were with them\nthere than in respect to the pair they were missing almost for the first\ntime. It was present to Maggie that the Prince could bear, when he\nwas with his wife, almost any queerness on the part of people, strange\nEnglish types, who bored him, beyond convenience, by being so little\nas he himself was; for this was one of the ways in which a wife was\npractically sustaining. But she was as positively aware that she hadn\'t\nyet learned to see him as meeting such exposure in her absence. How did\nhe move and talk, how above all did he, or how WOULD he, look--he who,\nwith his so nobly handsome face, could look such wonderful things--in\ncase of being left alone with some of the subjects of his wonder?\nThere were subjects for wonder among these very neighbours; only Maggie\nherself had her own odd way--which didn\'t moreover the least irritate\nhim--of really liking them in proportion as they could strike her\nas strange. It came out in her by heredity, he amused himself with\ndeclaring, this love of chinoiseries; but she actually this evening\ndidn\'t mind--he might deal with her Chinese as he could.\n\nMaggie indeed would always have had for such moments, had they oftener\noccurred, the impression made on her by a word of Mrs. Assingham\'s, a\nword referring precisely to that appetite in Amerigo for the explanatory\nwhich we have just found in our path. It wasn\'t that the Princess could\nbe indebted to another person, even to so clever a one as this friend,\nfor seeing anything in her husband that she mightn\'t see unaided; but\nshe had ever, hitherto, been of a nature to accept with modest gratitude\nany better description of a felt truth than her little limits--terribly\nmarked, she knew, in the direction of saying the right things--enabled\nher to make. Thus it was, at any rate, that she was able to live more\nor less in the light of the fact expressed so lucidly by their common\ncomforter--the fact that the Prince was saving up, for some very\nmysterious but very fine eventual purpose, all the wisdom, all the\nanswers to his questions, all the impressions and generalisations, he\ngathered; putting them away and packing them down because he wanted his\ngreat gun to be loaded to the brim on the day he should decide to let it\noff. He wanted first to make sure of the whole of the subject that was\nunrolling itself before him; after which the innumerable facts he had\ncollected would find their use. He knew what he was about---trust him\nat last therefore to make, and to some effect, his big noise. And Mrs.\nAssingham had repeated that he knew what he was about. It was the happy\nform of this assurance that had remained with Maggie; it could always\ncome in for her that Amerigo knew what he was about. He might at moments\nseem vague, seem absent, seem even bored: this when, away from her\nfather, with whom it was impossible for him to appear anything but\nrespectfully occupied, he let his native gaiety go in outbreaks of\nsong, or even of quite whimsical senseless sound, either expressive of\nintimate relaxation or else fantastically plaintive. He might at times\nreflect with the frankest lucidity on the circumstance that the case was\nfor a good while yet absolutely settled in regard to what he still\nhad left, at home, of his very own; in regard to the main seat of his\naffection, the house in Rome, the big black palace, the Palazzo Nero, as\nhe was fond of naming it, and also on the question of the villa in the\nSabine hills, which she had, at the time of their engagement, seen and\nyearned over, and the Castello proper, described by him always as\nthe \"perched\" place, that had, as she knew, formerly stood up, on the\npedestal of its mountain-slope, showing beautifully blue from afar, as\nthe head and front of the princedom. He might rejoice in certain moods\nover the so long-estranged state of these properties, not indeed\nall irreclaimably alienated, but encumbered with unending leases and\ncharges, with obstinate occupants, with impossibilities of use--all\nwithout counting the cloud of mortgages that had, from far back, buried\nthem beneath the ashes of rage and remorse, a shroud as thick as the\nlayer once resting on the towns at the foot of Vesuvius, and actually\nmaking of any present restorative effort a process much akin to slow\nexcavation. Just so he might with another turn of his humour almost wail\nfor these brightest spots of his lost paradise, declaring that he was an\nidiot not to be able to bring himself to face the sacrifices--sacrifices\nresting, if definitely anywhere, with Mr. Verver--necessary for winning\nthem back.\n\nOne of the most comfortable things between the husband and the wife\nmeanwhile--one of those easy certitudes they could be merely gay\nabout--was that she never admired him so much, or so found him\nheartbreakingly handsome, clever, irresistible, in the very degree in\nwhich he had originally and fatally dawned upon her, as when she saw\nother women reduced to the same passive pulp that had then begun, once\nfor all, to constitute HER substance. There was really nothing they had\ntalked of together with more intimate and familiar pleasantry than of\nthe license and privilege, the boundless happy margin, thus established\nfor each: she going so far as to put it that, even should he some day\nget drunk and beat her, the spectacle of him with hated rivals would,\nafter no matter what extremity, always, for the sovereign charm of it,\ncharm of it in itself and as the exhibition of him that most deeply\nmoved her, suffice to bring her round. What would therefore be more open\nto him than to keep her in love with him? He agreed, with all his heart,\nat these light moments, that his course wouldn\'t then be difficult,\ninasmuch as, so simply constituted as he was on all the precious\nquestion--and why should he be ashamed of it?--he knew but one way with\nthe fair. They had to be fair--and he was fastidious and particular, his\nstandard was high; but when once this was the case what relation with\nthem was conceivable, what relation was decent, rudimentary, properly\nhuman, but that of a plain interest in the fairness? His interest, she\nalways answered, happened not to be \"plain,\" and plainness, all round,\nhad little to do with the matter, which was marked, on the contrary, by\nthe richest variety of colour; but the working basis, at all events, had\nbeen settled--the Miss Maddocks of life been assured of their importance\nfor him. How conveniently assured Maggie--to take him too into the\njoke--had more than once gone so far as to mention to her father; since\nit fell in easily with the tenderness of her disposition to remember she\nmight occasionally make him happy by an intimate confidence. This\nwas one of her rules-full as she was of little rules, considerations,\nprovisions. There were things she of course couldn\'t tell him, in so\nmany words, about Amerigo and herself, and about their happiness and\ntheir union and their deepest depths--and there were other things she\nneedn\'t; but there were also those that were both true and amusing,\nboth communicable and real, and of these, with her so conscious, so\ndelicately cultivated scheme of conduct as a daughter, she could make\nher profit at will. A pleasant hush, for that matter, had fallen on\nmost of the elements while she lingered apart with her companion; it\ninvolved, this serenity, innumerable complete assumptions: since so\nordered and so splendid a rest, all the tokens, spreading about them, of\nconfidence solidly supported, might have suggested for persons of poorer\npitch the very insolence of facility. Still, they weren\'t insolent--THEY\nweren\'t, our pair could reflect; they were only blissful and grateful\nand personally modest, not ashamed of knowing, with competence, when\ngreat things were great, when good things were good, and when safe\nthings were safe, and not, therefore, placed below their fortune by\ntimidity which would have been as bad as being below it by impudence.\nWorthy of it as they were, and as each appears, under our last possible\nanalysis, to have wished to make the other feel that they were, what\nthey most finally exhaled into the evening air as their eyes mildly\nmet may well have been a kind of helplessness in their felicity. Their\nrightness, the justification of everything--something they so felt\nthe pulse of--sat there with them; but they might have been asking\nthemselves a little blankly to what further use they could put anything\nso perfect. They had created and nursed and established it; they had\nhoused it here in dignity and crowned it with comfort; but mightn\'t the\nmoment possibly count for them--or count at least for us while we watch\nthem with their fate all before them--as the dawn of the discovery that\nit doesn\'t always meet ALL contingencies to be right? Otherwise why\nshould Maggie have found a word of definite doubt--the expression of the\nfine pang determined in her a few hours before--rise after a time to her\nlips? She took so for granted moreover her companion\'s intelligence\nof her doubt that the mere vagueness of her question could say it all.\n\"What is it, after all, that they want to do to you?\" \"They\" were for\nthe Princess too the hovering forces of which Mrs. Rance was the symbol,\nand her father, only smiling back now, at his ease, took no trouble to\nappear not to know what she meant. What she meant--when once she had\nspoken--could come out well enough; though indeed it was nothing, after\nthey had come to the point, that could serve as ground for a great\ndefensive campaign. The waters of talk spread a little, and Maggie\npresently contributed an idea in saying: \"What has really happened is\nthat the proportions, for us, are altered.\" He accepted equally, for\nthe time, this somewhat cryptic remark; he still failed to challenge her\neven when she added that it wouldn\'t so much matter if he hadn\'t been\nso terribly young. He uttered a sound of protest only when she went to\ndeclare that she ought as a daughter, in common decency, to have waited.\nYet by that time she was already herself admitting that she should have\nhad to wait long--if she waited, that is, till he was old. But there was\na way. \"Since you ARE an irresistible youth, we\'ve got to face it. That,\nsomehow, is what that woman has made me feel. There\'ll be others.\"\n\n\n\n X\n\nTo talk of it thus appeared at last a positive relief to him. \"Yes,\nthere\'ll be others. But you\'ll see me through.\"\n\nShe hesitated. \"Do you mean if you give in?\"\n\n\"Oh no. Through my holding out.\"\n\nMaggie waited again, but when she spoke it had an effect of abruptness.\n\"Why SHOULD you hold out forever?\"\n\nHe gave, none the less, no start--and this as from the habit of taking\nanything, taking everything, from her as harmonious. But it was quite\nwritten upon him too, for that matter, that holding out wouldn\'t be,\nso very completely, his natural, or at any rate his acquired, form.\nHis appearance would have testified that he might have to do so a long\ntime--for a man so greatly beset. This appearance, that is, spoke but\nlittle, as yet, of short remainders and simplified senses--and all in\nspite of his being a small, spare, slightly stale person, deprived of\nthe general prerogative of presence. It was not by mass or weight or\nvulgar immediate quantity that he would in the future, any more than\nhe had done in the past, insist or resist or prevail. There was even\nsomething in him that made his position, on any occasion, made his\nrelation to any scene or to any group, a matter of the back of the\nstage, of an almost visibly conscious want of affinity with the\nfootlights. He would have figured less than anything the stage-manager\nor the author of the play, who most occupy the foreground; he might be,\nat the best, the financial \"backer,\" watching his interests from the\nwing, but in rather confessed ignorance of the mysteries of mimicry.\nBarely taller than his daughter, he pressed at no point on the presumed\npropriety of his greater stoutness. He had lost early in life much of\nhis crisp, closely-curling hair, the fineness of which was repeated in a\nsmall neat beard, too compact to be called \"full,\" though worn equally,\nas for a mark where other marks were wanting, on lip and cheek and\nchin. His neat, colourless face, provided with the merely indispensable\nfeatures, suggested immediately, for a description, that it was CLEAR,\nand in this manner somewhat resembled a small decent room, clean-swept\nand unencumbered with furniture, but drawing a particular advantage,\nas might presently be noted, from the outlook of a pair of ample and\nuncurtained windows. There was something in Adam Verver\'s eyes that both\nadmitted the morning and the evening in unusual quantities and gave the\nmodest area the outward extension of a view that was \"big\" even when\nrestricted to stars. Deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically\nlarge, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their\nambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor\'s\nvision out or most opened themselves to your own. Whatever you might\nfeel, they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents\nsay; so that, on one side or the other, you were never out of their\nrange, were moving about, for possible community, opportunity, the sight\nof you scarce knew what, either before them or behind them. If other\nimportances, not to extend the question, kept themselves down, they\nwere in no direction less obtruded than in that of our friend\'s dress,\nadopted once for all as with a sort of sumptuary scruple. He wore every\nday of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black \"cut away\"\ncoat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking\ntrousers, chequered in black and white--the proper harmony with which,\nhe inveterately considered, was a sprigged blue satin necktie; and,\nover his concave little stomach, quaintly indifferent to climates and\nseasons, a white duck waistcoat. \"Should you really,\" he now asked,\n\"like me to marry?\" He spoke as if, coming from his daughter herself, it\nMIGHT be an idea; which, for that matter, he would be ready to carry out\nshould she definitely say so.\n\nDefinite, however, just yet, she was not prepared to be, though it\nseemed to come to her with force, as she thought, that there was a\ntruth, in the connection, to utter. \"What I feel is that there is\nsomehow something that used to be right and that I\'ve made wrong. It\nused to be right that you hadn\'t married, and that you didn\'t seem to\nwant to. It used also\"--she continued to make out \"to seem easy for the\nquestion not to come up. That\'s what I\'ve made different. It does come\nup. It WILL come up.\"\n\n\"You don\'t think I can keep it down?\" Mr. Verver\'s tone was cheerfully\npensive.\n\n\"Well, I\'ve given you, by MY move, all the trouble of having to.\"\n\nHe liked the tenderness of her idea, and it made him, as she sat near\nhim, pass his arm about her. \"I guess I don\'t feel as if you had \'moved\'\nvery far. You\'ve only moved next door.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she continued, \"I don\'t feel as if it were fair for me just to\nhave given you a push and left you so. If I\'ve made the difference for\nyou, I must think of the difference.\"\n\n\"Then what, darling,\" he indulgently asked, \"DO you think?\"\n\n\"That\'s just what I don\'t yet know. But I must find out. We must think\ntogether--as we\'ve always thought. What I mean,\" she went on after a\nmoment, \"is that it strikes me that I ought to at least offer you some\nalternative. I ought to have worked one out for you.\"\n\n\"An alternative to what?\"\n\n\"Well, to your simply missing what you\'ve lost--without anything being\ndone about it.\"\n\n\"But what HAVE I lost?\"\n\nShe thought a minute, as if it were difficult to say, yet as if she\nmore and more saw it. \"Well, whatever it was that, BEFORE, kept us from\nthinking, and kept you, really, as you might say, in the market. It\nwas as if you couldn\'t be in the market when you were married to me. Or\nrather as if I kept people off, innocently, by being married to you. Now\nthat I\'m married to some one else you\'re, as in consequence, married to\nnobody. Therefore you may be married to anybody, to everybody. People\ndon\'t see why you shouldn\'t be married to THEM.\"\n\n\"Isn\'t it enough of a reason,\" he mildly inquired, \"that I don\'t want to\nbe?\"\n\n\"It\'s enough of a reason, yes. But to BE enough of a reason it has to be\ntoo much of a trouble. I mean FOR you. It has to be too much of a fight.\nYou ask me what you\'ve lost,\" Maggie continued to explain. \"The not\nhaving to take the trouble and to make the fight--that\'s what you\'ve\nlost. The advantage, the happiness of being just as you were--because I\nwas just as _I_ was--that\'s what you miss.\"\n\n\"So that you think,\" her father presently said, \"that I had better get\nmarried just in order to be as I was before?\"\n\nThe detached tone of it--detached as if innocently to amuse her by\nshowing his desire to accommodate--was so far successful as to draw from\nher gravity a short, light laugh. \"Well, what I don\'t want you to feel\nis that if you were to I shouldn\'t understand. I SHOULD understand.\nThat\'s all,\" said the Princess gently.\n\nHer companion turned it pleasantly over. \"You don\'t go so far as to wish\nme to take somebody I don\'t like?\"\n\n\"Ah, father,\" she sighed, \"you know how far I go--how far I COULD go.\nBut I only wish that if you ever SHOULD like anybody, you may never\ndoubt of my feeling how I\'ve brought you to it. You\'ll always know that\nI know that it\'s my fault.\"\n\n\"You mean,\" he went on in his contemplative way, \"that it will be you\nwho\'ll take the consequences?\"\n\nMaggie just considered. \"I\'ll leave you all the good ones, but I\'ll take\nthe bad.\"\n\n\"Well, that\'s handsome.\" He emphasised his sense of it by drawing her\ncloser and holding her more tenderly. \"It\'s about all I could expect of\nyou. So far as you\'ve wronged me, therefore, we\'ll call it square. I\'ll\nlet you know in time if I see a prospect of your having to take it up.\nBut am I to understand meanwhile,\" he soon went on, \"that, ready as you\nare to see me through my collapse, you\'re not ready, or not AS ready,\nto see me through my resistance? I\'ve got to be a regular martyr before\nyou\'ll be inspired?\"\n\nShe demurred at his way of putting it. \"Why, if you like it, you know,\nit won\'t BE a collapse.\"\n\n\"Then why talk about seeing me through at all? I shall only collapse if\nI do like it. But what I seem to feel is that I don\'t WANT to like\nit. That is,\" he amended, \"unless I feel surer I do than appears very\nprobable. I don\'t want to have to THINK I like it in a case when I\nreally shan\'t. I\'ve had to do that in some cases,\" he confessed--\"when\nit has been a question of other things. I don\'t want,\" he wound up, \"to\nbe MADE to make a mistake.\"\n\n\"Ah, but it\'s too dreadful,\" she returned, \"that you should even have to\nFEAR--or just nervously to dream--that you may be. What does that show,\nafter all,\" she asked, \"but that you do really, well within, feel a\nwant? What does it show but that you\'re truly susceptible?\"\n\n\"Well, it may show that\"--he defended himself against nothing. \"But it\nshows also, I think, that charming women are, in the kind of life we\'re\nleading now, numerous and formidable.\"\n\nMaggie entertained for a moment the proposition; under cover of which,\nhowever, she passed quickly from the general to the particular. \"Do you\nfeel Mrs. Rance to be charming?\"\n\n\"Well, I feel her to be formidable. When they cast a spell it comes to\nthe same thing. I think she\'d do anything.\"\n\n\"Oh well, I\'d help you,\" the Princess said with decision, \"as against\nHER--if that\'s all you require. It\'s too funny,\" she went on before he\nagain spoke, \"that Mrs. Rance should be here at all. But if you talk\nof the life we lead, much of it is, altogether, I\'m bound to say, too\nfunny. The thing is,\" Maggie developed under this impression, \"that I\ndon\'t think we lead, as regards other people, any life at all. We don\'t\nat any rate, it seems to me, lead half the life we might. And so\nit seems, I think, to Amerigo. So it seems also, I\'m sure, to Fanny\nAssingham.\"\n\nMr. Verver-as if from due regard for these persons--considered a little.\n\"What life would they like us to lead?\"\n\n\"Oh, it\'s not a question, I think, on which they quite feel together.\nSHE thinks, dear Fanny, that we ought to be greater.\"\n\n\"Greater--?\" He echoed it vaguely. \"And Amerigo too, you say?\"\n\n\"Ah yes\"-her reply was prompt \"but Amerigo doesn\'t mind. He doesn\'t\ncare, I mean, what we do. It\'s for us, he considers, to see things\nexactly as we wish. Fanny herself,\" Maggie pursued, \"thinks he\'s\nmagnificent. Magnificent, I mean, for taking everything as it is, for\naccepting the \'social limitations\' of our life, for not missing what we\ndon\'t give him.\"\n\nMr. Verver attended. \"Then if he doesn\'t miss it his magnificence is\neasy.\"\n\n\"It IS easy-that\'s exactly what I think. If there were things he DID\nmiss, and if in spite of them he were always sweet, then, no doubt, he\nwould be a more or less unappreciated hero. He COULD be a Hero--he WILL\nbe one if it\'s ever necessary. But it will be about something better\nthan our dreariness. _I_ know,\" the Princess declared, \"where he\'s\nmagnificent.\" And she rested a minute on that. She ended, however, as\nshe had begun. \"We\'re not, all the same, committed to anything stupid.\nIf we ought to be grander, as Fanny thinks, we CAN be grander. There\'s\nnothing to prevent.\"\n\n\"Is it a strict moral obligation?\" Adam Verver inquired.\n\n\"No--it\'s for the amusement.\"\n\n\"For whose? For Fanny\'s own?\"\n\n\"For everyone\'s--though I dare say Fanny\'s would be a large part.\" She\nhesitated; she had now, it might have appeared, something more to bring\nout, which she finally produced. \"For yours in particular, say--if\nyou go into the question.\" She even bravely followed it up. \"I haven\'t\nreally, after all, had to think much to see that much more can be done\nfor you than is done.\"\n\nMr. Verver uttered an odd vague sound. \"Don\'t you think a good deal is\ndone when you come out and talk to me this way?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said his daughter, smiling at him, \"we make too much of that!\" And\nthen to explain: \"That\'s good, and it\'s natural--but it isn\'t great. We\nforget that we\'re as free as air.\"\n\n\"Well, THAT\'S great,\" Mr. Verver pleaded. \"Great if we act on it. Not if\nwe don\'t.\"\n\nShe continued to smile, and he took her smile; wondering again a little\nby this time, however; struck more and more by an intensity in it that\nbelied a light tone. \"What do you want,\" he demanded, \"to do to me?\" And\nhe added, as she didn\'t say: \"You\'ve got something in your mind.\" It had\ncome to him within the minute that from the beginning of their session\nthere she had been keeping something back, and that an impression of\nthis had more than once, in spite of his general theoretic respect for\nher present right to personal reserves and mysteries, almost ceased to\nbe vague in him. There had been from the first something in her anxious\neyes, in the way she occasionally lost herself, that it would perfectly\nexplain. He was therefore now quite sure.\n\n\"You\'ve got something up your sleeve.\"\n\nShe had a silence that made him right. \"Well, when I tell you you\'ll\nunderstand. It\'s only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter I\ngot this morning. All day, yes--it HAS been in my mind. I\'ve been asking\nmyself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you\nif you could stand just now another woman.\"\n\nIt relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner\nmade it in a degree portentous. \"Stand one--?\"\n\n\"Well, mind her coming.\"\n\nHe stared--then he laughed. \"It depends on who she is.\"\n\n\"There--you see! I\'ve at all events been thinking whether you\'d take\nthis particular person but as a worry the more. Whether, that is, you\'d\ngo so far with her in your notion of having to be kind.\"\n\nHe gave at this the quickest shake to his foot. How far would she go in\nHER notion of it.\n\n\"Well,\" his daughter returned, \"you know how far, in a general way,\nCharlotte Stant goes.\"\n\n\"Charlotte? Is SHE coming?\"\n\n\"She writes me, practically, that she\'d like to if we\'re so good as to\nask her.\"\n\nMr. Verver continued to gaze, but rather as if waiting for more. Then,\nas everything appeared to have come, his expression had a drop. If this\nwas all it was simple. \"Then why in the world not?\"\n\nMaggie\'s face lighted anew, but it was now another light. \"It isn\'t a\nwant of tact?\"\n\n\"To ask her?\"\n\n\"To propose it to you.\"\n\n\"That _I_ should ask her?\"\n\nHe put the question as an effect of his remnant of vagueness, but this\nhad also its own effect. Maggie wondered an instant; after which, as\nwith a flush of recognition, she took it up. \"It would be too beautiful\nif you WOULD!\"\n\nThis, clearly, had not been her first idea--the chance of his words had\nprompted it. \"Do you mean write to her myself?\"\n\n\"Yes--it would be kind. It would be quite beautiful of you. That is, of\ncourse,\" said Maggie, \"if you sincerely CAN.\"\n\nHe appeared to wonder an instant why he sincerely shouldn\'t, and indeed,\nfor that matter, where the question of sincerity came in. This virtue,\nbetween him and his daughter\'s friend, had surely been taken for\ngranted. \"My dear child,\" he returned, \"I don\'t think I\'m afraid of\nCharlotte.\"\n\n\"Well, that\'s just what it\'s lovely to have from you. From the moment\nyou\'re NOT--the least little bit--I\'ll immediately invite her.\"\n\n\"But where in the world is she?\" He spoke as if he had not thought of\nCharlotte, nor so much as heard her name pronounced, for a very long\ntime. He quite in fact amicably, almost amusedly, woke up to her.\n\n\"She\'s in Brittany, at a little bathing-place, with some people I don\'t\nknow. She\'s always with people, poor dear--she rather has to be; even\nwhen, as is sometimes the case; they\'re people she doesn\'t immensely\nlike.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess she likes US,\" said Adam Verver. \"Yes--fortunately she\nlikes us. And if I wasn\'t afraid of spoiling it for you,\" Maggie added,\n\"I\'d even mention that you\'re not the one of our number she likes\nleast.\"\n\n\"Why should that spoil it for me?\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear, you know. What else have we been talking about? It costs\nyou so much to be liked. That\'s why I hesitated to tell you of my\nletter.\"\n\nHe stared a moment--as if the subject had suddenly grown out of\nrecognition. \"But Charlotte--on other visits--never used to cost me\nanything.\"\n\n\"No--only her \'keep,\'\" Maggie smiled.\n\n\"Then I don\'t think I mind her keep--if that\'s all.\" The Princess,\nhowever, it was clear, wished to be thoroughly conscientious. \"Well, it\nmay not be quite all. If I think of its being pleasant to have her, it\'s\nbecause she WILL make a difference.\"\n\n\"Well, what\'s the harm in that if it\'s but a difference for the better?\"\n\n\"Ah then--there you are!\" And the Princess showed in her smile her small\ntriumphant wisdom. \"If you acknowledge a possible difference for the\nbetter we\'re not, after all, so tremendously right as we are. I mean\nwe\'re not--as satisfied and amused. We do see there are ways of being\ngrander.\"\n\n\"But will Charlotte Stant,\" her father asked with surprise, \"make us\ngrander?\"\n\nMaggie, on this, looking at him well, had a remarkable reply. \"Yes, I\nthink. Really grander.\"\n\nHe thought; for if this was a sudden opening he wished but the more to\nmeet it. \"Because she\'s so handsome?\"\n\n\"No, father.\" And the Princess was almost solemn. \"Because she\'s so\ngreat.\"\n\n\"Great--?\"\n\n\"Great in nature, in character, in spirit. Great in life.\"\n\n\"So?\" Mr. Verver echoed. \"What has she done--in life?\"\n\n\"Well, she has been brave and bright,\" said Maggie. \"That mayn\'t sound\nlike much, but she has been so in the face of things that might well\nhave made it too difficult for many other girls. She hasn\'t a\ncreature in the world really--that is nearly--belonging to her. Only\nacquaintances who, in all sorts of ways, make use of her, and distant\nrelations who are so afraid she\'ll make use of THEM that they seldom let\nher look at them.\"\n\nMr. Verver was struck--and, as usual, to some purpose. \"If we get her\nhere to improve us don\'t we too then make use of her?\"\n\nIt pulled the Princess up, however, but an instant. \"We\'re old,\nold friends--we do her good too. I should always, even at the\nworst--speaking for myself--admire her still more than I used her.\"\n\n\"I see. That always does good.\"\n\nMaggie hesitated. \"Certainly--she knows it. She knows, I mean, how\ngreat I think her courage and her cleverness. She\'s not afraid--not of\nanything; and yet she no more ever takes a liberty with you than if she\ntrembled for her life. And then she\'s INTERESTING--which plenty of\nother people with plenty of other merits never are a bit.\" In which fine\nflicker of vision the truth widened to the Princess\'s view. \"I myself of\ncourse don\'t take liberties, but then I do, always, by nature, tremble\nfor my life. That\'s the way I live.\"\n\n\"Oh I say, love!\" her father vaguely murmured.\n\n\"Yes, I live in terror,\" she insisted. \"I\'m a small creeping thing.\"\n\n\"You\'ll not persuade me that you\'re not as good as Charlotte Stant,\" he\nstill placidly enough remarked.\n\n\"I may be as good, but I\'m not so great--and that\'s what we\'re talking\nabout. She has a great imagination. She has, in every way, a great\nattitude. She has above all a great conscience.\" More perhaps than ever\nin her life before Maggie addressed her father at this moment with a\nshade of the absolute in her tone. She had never come so near telling\nhim what he should take it from her to believe. \"She has only twopence\nin the world--but that has nothing to do with it. Or rather indeed\"--she\nquickly corrected herself--\"it has everything. For she doesn\'t care. I\nnever saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. Her life has been\nharder than anyone knows.\"\n\nIt was moreover as if, thus unprecedentedly positive, his child had an\neffect upon him that Mr. Verver really felt as a new thing. \"Why then\nhaven\'t you told me about her before?\"\n\n\"Well, haven\'t we always known--?\"\n\n\"I should have thought,\" he submitted, \"that we had already pretty well\nsized her up.\"\n\n\"Certainly--we long ago quite took her for granted. But things change,\nwith time, and I seem to know that, after this interval, I\'m going to\nlike her better than ever. I\'ve lived more myself, I\'m older, and\none judges better. Yes, I\'m going to see in Charlotte,\" said the\nPrincess--and speaking now as with high and free expectation--\"more than\nI\'ve ever seen.\"\n\n\"Then I\'ll try to do so too. She WAS\"--it came back to Mr. Verver\nmore--\"the one of your friends I thought the best for you.\"\n\nHis companion, however, was so launched in her permitted liberty of\nappreciation that she for the moment scarce heard him. She was lost\nin the case she made out, the vision of the different ways in which\nCharlotte had distinguished herself.\n\n\"She would have liked for instance--I\'m sure she would have liked\nextremely--to marry; and nothing in general is more ridiculous, even\nwhen it has been pathetic, than a woman who has tried and has not been\nable.\"\n\nIt had all Mr. Verver\'s attention. \"She has \'tried\'--?\"\n\n\"She has seen cases where she would have liked to.\"\n\n\"But she has not been able?\"\n\n\"Well, there are more cases, in Europe, in which it doesn\'t come to\ngirls who are poor than in which it does come to them. Especially,\" said\nMaggie with her continued competence, \"when they\'re Americans.\"\n\nWell, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides.\n\"Unless you mean,\" he suggested, \"that when the girls are American there\nare more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor.\"\n\nShe looked at him good-humouredly. \"That may be--but I\'m not going to be\nsmothered in MY case. It ought to make me--if I were in danger of being\na fool--all the nicer to people like Charlotte. It\'s not hard for ME,\"\nshe practically explained, \"not to be ridiculous--unless in a very\ndifferent way. I might easily be ridiculous, I suppose, by behaving as\nif I thought I had done a great thing. Charlotte, at any rate, has done\nnothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it\'s rather strange;\nand yet no one--no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would\nlike, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite\nRIGHT. That\'s what it is to have something about you that carries things\noff.\"\n\nMr. Verver\'s silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused\nher story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps\neven sharper. \"And is it also what you mean by Charlotte\'s being\n\'great\'?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie, \"it\'s one of her ways. But she has many.\"\n\nAgain for a little her father considered. \"And who is it she has tried\nto marry?\"\n\nMaggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect;\nbut she after a minute either renounced or encountered an obstacle. \"I\'m\nafraid I\'m not sure.\"\n\n\"Then how do you know?\"\n\n\"Well, I don\'t KNOW\"--and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic.\n\"I only make it out for myself.\"\n\n\"But you must make it out about someone in particular.\"\n\nShe had another pause. \"I don\'t think I want even for myself to put\nnames and times, to pull away any veil. I\'ve an idea there has been,\nmore than once, somebody I\'m not acquainted with--and needn\'t be or\nwant to be. In any case it\'s all over, and, beyond giving her credit for\neverything, it\'s none of my business.\"\n\nMr. Verver deferred, yet he discriminated. \"I don\'t see how you can give\ncredit without knowing the facts.\"\n\n\"Can\'t I give it--generally--for dignity? Dignity, I mean, in\nmisfortune.\"\n\n\"You\'ve got to postulate the misfortune first.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie, \"I can do that. Isn\'t it always a misfortune to\nbe--when you\'re so fine--so wasted? And yet,\" she went on, \"not to wail\nabout it, not to look even as if you knew it?\"\n\nMr. Verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then,\nafter a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop.\n\"Well, she mustn\'t be wasted. We won\'t at least have waste.\"\n\nIt produced in Maggie\'s face another gratitude. \"Then, dear sir, that\'s\nall I want.\"\n\nAnd it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk\nif her father had not, after a little, shown the disposition to revert.\n\"How many times are you supposing that she has tried?\"\n\nOnce more, at this, and as if she hadn\'t been, couldn\'t be, hated to be,\nin such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. \"Oh, I\ndon\'t say she absolutely ever TRIED--!\"\n\nHe looked perplexed. \"But if she has so absolutely failed, what then had\nshe done?\"\n\n\"She has suffered--she has done that.\" And the Princess added: \"She has\nloved--and she has lost.\"\n\nMr. Verver, however, still wondered. \"But how many times.\"\n\nMaggie hesitated, but it cleared up. \"Once is enough. Enough, that is,\nfor one to be kind to her.\"\n\nHer father listened, yet not challenging--only as with a need of some\nbasis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm. \"But\nhas she told you nothing?\"\n\n\"Ah, thank goodness, no!\"\n\nHe stared. \"Then don\'t young women tell?\"\n\n\"Because, you mean, it\'s just what they\'re supposed to do?\" She looked\nat him, flushed again now; with which, after another hesitation, \"Do\nyoung men tell?\" she asked.\n\nHe gave a short laugh. \"How do I know, my dear, what young men do?\"\n\n\"Then how do _I_ know, father, what vulgar girls do?\"\n\n\"I see--I see,\" he quickly returned.\n\nBut she spoke the next moment as if she might, odiously, have been\nsharp. \"What happens at least is that where there\'s a great deal of\npride there\'s a great deal of silence. I don\'t know, I admit, what _I_\nshould do if I were lonely and sore--for what sorrow, to speak of, have\nI ever had in my life? I don\'t know even if I\'m proud--it seems to me\nthe question has never come up for me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I guess you\'re proud, Mag,\" her father cheerfully interposed. \"I\nmean I guess you\'re proud enough.\"\n\n\"Well then, I hope I\'m humble enough too. I might, at all events, for\nall I know, be abject under a blow. How can I tell? Do you realise,\nfather, that I\'ve never had the least blow?\"\n\nHe gave her a long, quiet look. \"Who SHOULD realise if I don\'t?\"\n\n\"Well, you\'ll realise when I HAVE one!\" she exclaimed with a short laugh\nthat resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a minute before. \"I\nwouldn\'t in any case have let her tell me what would have been dreadful\nto me. For such wounds and shames are dreadful: at least,\" she added,\ncatching herself up, \"I suppose they are; for what, as I say, do I know\nof them? I don\'t WANT to know!\"--she spoke quite with vehemence. \"There\nare things that are sacred whether they\'re joys or pains. But one\ncan always, for safety, be kind,\" she kept on; \"one feels when that\'s\nright.\"\n\nShe had got up with these last words; she stood there before him with\nthat particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit\nof their life together had not closed his sense, kept sharp, year after\nyear, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object\nwith fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite\nwith another--the appearance of some slight, slim draped \"antique\"\nof Vatican or Capitoline halls, late and refined, rare as a note and\nimmortal as a link, set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern\nimpulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps\nforsaken after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality,\nthe perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred, absent eyes, the\nsmoothed, elegant, nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost\nin an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a\nprecious vase. She had always had odd moments of striking him,\ndaughter of his very own though she was, as a figure thus simplified,\n\"generalised\" in its grace, a figure with which his human connection was\nfairly interrupted by some vague analogy of turn and attitude, something\nshyly mythological and nymphlike. The trick, he was not uncomplacently\naware, was mainly of his own mind; it came from his caring for precious\nvases only less than for precious daughters. And what was more to the\npoint still, it often operated while he was quite at the same time\nconscious that Maggie had been described, even in her prettiness, as\n\"prim\"--Mrs. Rance herself had enthusiastically used the word of\nher; while he remembered that when once she had been told before him,\nfamiliarly, that she resembled a nun, she had replied that she was\ndelighted to hear it and would certainly try to; while also, finally,\nit was present to him that, discreetly heedless, thanks to her long\nassociation with nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion,\nshe brought her hair down very straight and flat over her temples, in\nthe constant manner of her mother, who had not been a bit mythological.\nNymphs and nuns were certainly separate types, but Mr. Verver, when he\nreally amused himself, let consistency go. The play of vision was at all\nevents so rooted in him that he could receive impressions of sense even\nwhile positively thinking. He was positively thinking while Maggie stood\nthere, and it led for him to yet another question--which in its turn\nled to others still. \"Do you regard the condition as hers then that you\nspoke of a minute ago?\"\n\n\"The condition--?\"\n\n\"Why that of having loved so intensely that she\'s, as you say, \'beyond\neverything\'?\"\n\nMaggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so prompt. \"Oh no. She\'s\nbeyond nothing. For she has had nothing.\"\n\n\"I see. You must have had things to be them. It\'s a kind of law of\nperspective.\"\n\nMaggie didn\'t know about the law, but she continued definite. \"She\'s\nnot, for example, beyond help.\"\n\n\"Oh well then, she shall have all we can give her. I\'ll write to her,\"\nhe said, \"with pleasure.\"\n\n\"Angel!\" she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him.\n\nTrue as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was an\nangel with a human curiosity. \"Has she told you she likes me much?\"\n\n\"Certainly she has told me--but I won\'t pamper you. Let it be enough for\nyou it has always been one of my reasons for liking HER.\"\n\n\"Then she\'s indeed not beyond everything,\" Mr. Verver more or less\nhumorously observed.\n\n\"Oh it isn\'t, thank goodness, that she\'s in love with you. It\'s not, as\nI told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear.\"\n\nHe had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this\nreassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be\ncorrected. \"Oh, my dear, I\'ve always thought of her as a little girl.\"\n\n\"Ah, she\'s not a little girl,\" said the Princess.\n\n\"Then I\'ll write to her as a brilliant woman.\"\n\n\"It\'s exactly what she is.\"\n\nMr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing\ntheir steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really\narranged something. They had come out together for themselves, but it\nhad produced something more. What it had produced was in fact expressed\nby the words with which he met his companion\'s last emphasis. \"Well, she\nhas a famous friend in you, Princess.\"\n\nMaggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. \"Do you know what\nI\'m really thinking of?\" she asked.\n\nHe wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her freedom\nnow to talk; and he wasn\'t such a fool, he presently showed, as not,\nsuddenly, to arrive at it. \"Why, of your finding her at last yourself a\nhusband.\"\n\n\"Good for YOU!\" Maggie smiled. \"But it will take,\" she added, \"some\nlooking.\"\n\n\"Then let me look right here with you,\" her father said as they walked\non.\n\n\n\n XI\n\nMrs. Assingham and the Colonel, quitting Fawns before the end of\nSeptember, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after,\nthey were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question\nof their return left to depend, on matters that were rather hinted at\nthan importunately named. The Lutches and Mrs. Rance had also, by the\naction of Charlotte Stant\'s arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes\nand theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively\nexpression, awakening the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled,\ngalleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place,\nseemed still a property of the air. It was on this admirable spot that,\nbefore her October afternoon had waned, Fanny Assingham spent with her\neasy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her\nhusband\'s final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point\nthe moral of all vain reverberations. The double door of the house\nstood open to an effect of hazy autumn sunshine, a wonderful, windless,\nwaiting, golden hour, under the influence of which Adam Verver met his\ngenial friend as she came to drop into the post-box with her own hand\na thick sheaf of letters. They presently thereafter left the house\ntogether and drew out half-an-hour on the terrace in a manner they were\nto revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had\nbeen taking leave of each other at a parting of the ways. He traced his\nimpression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she\nhad begun by using about Charlotte Stant. She simply \"cleared them\nout\"--those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the\ngeneral golden peace that the Kentish October had gradually ushered in,\nthe \"halcyon\" days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out\nfor them after Charlotte\'s arrival. For it was during these days that\nMrs. Rance and the Miss Lutches had been observed to be gathering\nthemselves for departure, and it was with that difference made that the\nsense of the whole situation showed most fair--the sense of how right\nthey had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of all the\npleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap. This was\nwhat had occurred, that their lesson had been learned; and what Mrs.\nAssingham had dwelt upon was that without Charlotte it would have been\nlearned but half. It would certainly not have been taught by Mrs. Rance\nand the Miss Lutches if these ladies had remained with them as long as\nat one time seemed probable. Charlotte\'s light intervention had thus\nbecome a cause, operating covertly but none the less actively, and Fanny\nAssingham\'s speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within\nhim, fairly to startle him, as the indication of something irresistible.\nHe could see now how this superior force had worked, and he fairly liked\nto recover the sight--little harm as he dreamed of doing, little ill\nas he dreamed of wishing, the three ladies, whom he had after all\nentertained for a stiffish series of days. She had been so vague and\nquiet about it, wonderful Charlotte, that he hadn\'t known what was\nhappening--happening, that is, as a result of her influence. \"Their\nfires, as they felt her, turned to smoke,\" Mrs. Assingham remarked;\nwhich he was to reflect on indeed even while they strolled. He had\nretained, since his long talk with Maggie--the talk that had settled the\nmatter of his own direct invitation to her friend--an odd little taste,\nas he would have described it, for hearing things said about this young\nwoman, hearing, so to speak, what COULD be said about her: almost as it\nher portrait, by some eminent hand, were going on, so that he watched it\ngrow under the multiplication of touches. Mrs. Assingham, it struck him,\napplied two or three of the finest in their discussion of their young\nfriend--so different a figure now from that early playmate of Maggie\'s\nas to whom he could almost recall from of old the definite occasions\nof his having paternally lumped the two children together in the\nrecommendation that they shouldn\'t make too much noise nor eat too much\njam. His companion professed that in the light of Charlotte\'s prompt\ninfluence she had not been a stranger to a pang of pity for their recent\nvisitors. \"I felt in fact, privately, so sorry for them, that I kept my\nimpression to myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest\nof you on the scent; neither Maggie, nor the Prince, nor yourself,\nnor even Charlotte HERself, if you didn\'t happen to notice. Since you\ndidn\'t, apparently, I perhaps now strike you as extravagant. But I\'m\nnot--I followed it all. One SAW the consciousness I speak of come over\nthe poor things, very much as I suppose people at the court of the\nBorgias may have watched each other begin to look queer after having had\nthe honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. My comparison\'s\nonly a little awkward, for I don\'t in the least mean that Charlotte was\nconsciously dropping poison into their cup. She was just herself their\npoison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them--but she didn\'t\nknow it.\"\n\n\"Ah, she didn\'t know it?\" Mr. Verver had asked with interest.\n\n\"Well, I THINK she didn\'t\"--Mrs. Assingham had to admit that she\nhadn\'t pressingly sounded her. \"I don\'t pretend to be sure, in every\nconnection, of what Charlotte knows. She doesn\'t, certainly, like to\nmake people suffer--not, in general, as is the case with so many of us,\neven other women: she likes much rather to put them at their ease with\nher. She likes, that is--as all pleasant people do--to be liked.\"\n\n\"Ah, she likes to be liked?\" her companion had gone on.\n\n\"She did, at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us at our\nease. That is she wanted to put you--and to put Maggie about you. So far\nas that went she had a plan. But it was only AFTER--it was not before, I\nreally believe--that she saw how effectively she could work.\"\n\nAgain, as Mr. Verver felt, he must have taken it up. \"Ah, she wanted to\nhelp us?--wanted to help ME?\"\n\n\"Why,\" Mrs. Assingham asked after an instant, \"should it surprise you?\"\n\nHe just thought. \"Oh, it doesn\'t!\"\n\n\"She saw, of course, as soon as she came, with her quickness, where we\nall were. She didn\'t need each of us to go, by appointment, to her room\nat night, or take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. No\ndoubt even she was rather impatient.\"\n\n\"OF the poor things?\" Mr. Verver had here inquired while he waited.\n\n\"Well, of your not yourselves being so--and of YOUR not in particular.\nI haven\'t the least doubt in the world, par exemple, that she thinks you\ntoo meek.\"\n\n\"Oh, she thinks me too meek?\"\n\n\"And she had been sent for, on the very face of it, to work right in.\nAll she had to do, after all, was to be nice to you.\"\n\n\"To--a--ME?\" said Adam Verver.\n\nHe could remember now that his friend had positively had a laugh for his\ntone. \"To you and to every one. She had only to be what she is--and to\nbe it all round. If she\'s charming, how can she help it? So it was, and\nso only, that she \'acted\'-as the Borgia wine used to act. One saw it\ncome over them--the extent to which, in her particular way, a woman, a\nwoman other, and SO other, than themselves, COULD be charming. One saw\nthem understand and exchange looks, then one saw them lose heart and\ndecide to move. For what they had to take home was that it\'s she who\'s\nthe real thing.\"\n\n\"Ah, it\'s she who\'s the real thing?\" As HE had not hitherto taken it\nhome as completely as the Miss Lutches and Mrs. Rance, so, doubtless, he\nhad now, a little, appeared to offer submission in his appeal. \"I see,\nI see\"--he could at least simply take it home now; yet as not without\nwanting, at the same time, to be sure of what the real thing was. \"And\nwhat would it be--a--definitely that you understand by that?\"\n\nShe had only for an instant not found it easy to say. \"Why, exactly what\nthose women themselves want to be, and what her effect on them is to\nmake them recognise that they never will.\"\n\n\"Oh--of course never?\"\n\nIt not only remained and abode with them, it positively developed and\ndeepened, after this talk, that the luxurious side of his personal\nexistence was now again furnished, socially speaking, with the thing\nclassed and stamped as \"real\"--just as he had been able to think of it\nas not otherwise enriched in consequence of his daughter\'s marriage. The\nnote of reality, in so much projected light, continued to have for him\nthe charm and the importance of which the maximum had occasionally been\nreached in his great \"finds\"--continued, beyond any other, to keep him\nattentive and gratified. Nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer, had\nwe time to look into it, than this application of the same measure of\nvalue to such different pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say,\nand new human acquisitions; all the more indeed that the amiable man\nwas not without an inkling, on his own side, that he was, as a taster\nof life, economically constructed. He put into his one little glass\neverything he raised to his lips, and it was as if he had always carried\nin his pocket, like a tool of his trade, this receptacle, a little glass\ncut with a fineness of which the art had long since been lost, and kept\nin an old morocco case stamped in uneffaceable gilt with the arms of a\ndeposed dynasty. As it had served him to satisfy himself, so to speak,\nboth about Amerigo and about the Bernadino Luini he had happened to come\nto knowledge of at the time he was consenting to the announcement of\nhis daughter\'s betrothal, so it served him at present to satisfy himself\nabout Charlotte Stant and an extraordinary set of oriental tiles of\nwhich he had lately got wind, to which a provoking legend was attached,\nand as to which he had made out, contentedly, that further news was to\nbe obtained from a certain Mr. Gutermann-Seuss of Brighton. It was all,\nat bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn\nwith a cold, still flame; where it fed almost wholly on the material\ndirectly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic\nbeauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in\nspite of the general tendency of the \"devouring element\" to spread,\nthe rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with\nunconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds\nfrom the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires. Adam Verver had in\nother words learnt the lesson of the senses, to the end of his own\nlittle book, without having, for a day, raised the smallest scandal\nin his economy at large; being in this particular not unlike those\nfortunate bachelors, or other gentlemen of pleasure, who so manage\ntheir entertainment of compromising company that even the austerest\nhousekeeper, occupied and competent below-stairs, never feels obliged\nto give warning.\n\nThat figure has, however, a freedom that the occasion doubtless scarce\ndemands, though we may retain it for its rough negative value. It was to\ncome to pass, by a pressure applied to the situation wholly from within,\nthat before the first ten days of November had elapsed he found himself\npractically alone at Fawns with his young friend; Amerigo and Maggie\nhaving, with a certain abruptness, invited his assent to their going\nabroad for a month, since his amusement was now scarce less happily\nassured than his security. An impulse eminently natural had stirred\nwithin the Prince; his life, as for some time established, was\ndeliciously dull, and thereby, on the whole, what he best liked; but a\nsmall gust of yearning had swept over him, and Maggie repeated to her\nfather, with infinite admiration, the pretty terms in which, after it\nhad lasted a little, he had described to her this experience. He called\nit a \"serenade,\" a low music that, outside one of the windows of the\nsleeping house, disturbed his rest at night. Timid as it was, and\nplaintive, he yet couldn\'t close his eyes for it, and when finally,\nrising on tiptoe, he had looked out, he had recognised in the figure\nbelow with a mandolin, all duskily draped in her grace, the raised\nappealing eyes and the one irresistible voice of the ever-to-be-loved\nItaly. Sooner or later, that way, one had to listen; it was a hovering,\nhaunting ghost, as of a creature to whom one had done a wrong, a dim,\npathetic shade crying out to be comforted. For this there was obviously\nbut one way--as there were doubtless also many words for the simple\nfact that so prime a Roman had a fancy for again seeing Rome. They would\naccordingly--hadn\'t they better?--go for a little; Maggie meanwhile\nmaking the too-absurdly artful point with her father, so that he\nrepeated it, in his amusement, to Charlotte Stant, to whom he was by\nthis time conscious of addressing many remarks, that it was absolutely,\nwhen she came to think, the first thing Amerigo had ever asked of her.\n\"She doesn\'t count of course his having asked of her to marry him\"--\nthis was Mr. Verver\'s indulgent criticism; but he found Charlotte,\nequally touched by the ingenuous Maggie, in easy agreement with him over\nthe question. If the Prince had asked something of his wife every day\nin the year, this would be still no reason why the poor dear man should\nnot, in a beautiful fit of homesickness, revisit, without reproach, his\nnative country.\n\nWhat his father-in-law frankly counselled was that the reasonable, the\nreally too reasonable, pair should, while they were about it, take three\nor four weeks of Paris as well--Paris being always, for Mr. Verver, in\nany stress of sympathy, a suggestion that rose of itself to the lips.\nIf they would only do that, on their way back, or however they preferred\nit, Charlotte and he would go over to join them there for a small\nlook--though even then, assuredly, as he had it at heart to add, not in\nthe least because they should have found themselves bored at being left\ntogether. The fate of this last proposal indeed was that it reeled,\nfor the moment, under an assault of destructive analysis from Maggie,\nwho--having, as she granted, to choose between being an unnatural\ndaughter or an unnatural mother, and \"electing\" for the former--wanted\nto know what would become of the Principino if the house were cleared of\neveryone but the servants. Her question had fairly resounded, but it had\nafterwards, like many of her questions, dropped still more effectively\nthan it had risen: the highest moral of the matter being, before the\ncouple took their departure, that Mrs. Noble and Dr. Brady must mount\nunchallenged guard over the august little crib. If she hadn\'t supremely\nbelieved in the majestic value of the nurse, whose experience was in\nitself the amplest of pillows, just as her attention was a spreading\ncanopy from which precedent and reminiscence dropped as thickly as\nparted curtains--if she hadn\'t been able to rest in this confidence she\nwould fairly have sent her husband on his journey without her. In the\nsame manner, if the sweetest--for it was so she qualified him--of\nlittle country doctors hadn\'t proved to her his wisdom by rendering\nirresistible, especially on rainy days and in direct proportion to\nthe frequency of his calls, adapted to all weathers, that she should\nconverse with him for hours over causes and consequences, over what he\nhad found to answer with his little five at home, she would have\ndrawn scant support from the presence of a mere grandfather and a mere\nbrilliant friend. These persons, accordingly, her own predominance\nhaving thus, for the time, given way, could carry with a certain ease,\nand above all with mutual aid, their consciousness of a charge. So far\nas their office weighed they could help each other with it--which was\nin fact to become, as Mrs. Noble herself loomed larger for them, not a\nlittle of a relief and a diversion.\n\nMr. Verver met his young friend, at certain hours, in the day-nursery,\nvery much as he had regularly met the child\'s fond mother--Charlotte\nhaving, as she clearly considered, given Maggie equal pledges and\ndesiring never to fail of the last word for the daily letter she had\npromised to write. She wrote with high fidelity, she let her companion\nknow, and the effect of it was, remarkably enough, that he himself\ndidn\'t write. The reason of this was partly that Charlotte \"told all\nabout him\"--which she also let him know she did--and partly that\nhe enjoyed feeling, as a consequence, that he was generally, quite\nsystematically, eased and, as they said, \"done\" for. Committed, as it\nwere, to this charming and clever young woman, who, by becoming for him\na domestic resource, had become for him practically a new person--and\ncommitted, especially, in his own house, which somehow made his sense of\nit a deeper thing--he took an interest in seeing how far the connection\ncould carry him, could perhaps even lead him, and in thus putting to the\ntest, for pleasant verification, what Fanny Assingham had said, at the\nlast, about the difference such a girl could make. She was really making\none now, in their simplified existence, and a very considerable one,\nthough there was no one to compare her with, as there had been, so\nusefully, for Fanny--no Mrs. Rance, no Kitty, no Dotty Lutch, to help\nher to be felt, according to Fanny\'s diagnosis, as real. She was real,\ndecidedly, from other causes, and Mr. Verver grew in time even a little\namused at the amount of machinery Mrs. Assingham had seemed to see\nneeded for pointing it. She was directly and immediately real, real on\na pleasantly reduced and intimate scale, and at no moments more so than\nduring those--at which we have just glanced--when Mrs. Noble made\nthem both together feel that she, she alone, in the absence of the\nqueen-mother, was regent of the realm and governess of the heir. Treated\non such occasions as at best a pair of dangling and merely nominal\ncourt-functionaries, picturesque hereditary triflers entitled to the\npetites entrees but quite external to the State, which began and ended\nwith the Nursery, they could only retire, in quickened sociability,\nto what was left them of the Palace, there to digest their gilded\ninsignificance and cultivate, in regard to the true Executive, such\nsnuff-taking ironies as might belong to rococo chamberlains moving among\nchina lap-dogs.\n\nEvery evening, after dinner, Charlotte Stant played to him; seated\nat the piano and requiring no music, she went through his \"favourite\nthings\"--and he had many favourites--with a facility that never failed,\nor that failed but just enough to pick itself up at a touch from his\nfitful voice. She could play anything, she could play everything--always\nshockingly, she of course insisted, but always, by his own vague\nmeasure, very much as if she might, slim, sinuous and strong, and\nwith practised passion, have been playing lawn-tennis or endlessly and\nrhythmically waltzing. His love of music, unlike his other loves,\nowned to vaguenesses, but while, on his comparatively shaded sofa, and\nsmoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great Fawns drawing-room as\neverywhere, the cigars of his youth, rank with associations--while,\nI say, he so listened to Charlotte\'s piano, where the score was ever\nabsent but, between the lighted candles, the picture distinct, the\nvagueness spread itself about him like some boundless carpet, a surface\ndelightfully soft to the pressure of his interest. It was a manner of\npassing the time that rather replaced conversation, but the air, at the\nend, none the less, before they separated, had a way of seeming full\nof the echoes of talk. They separated, in the hushed house, not quite\neasily, yet not quite awkwardly either, with tapers that twinkled in the\nlarge dark spaces, and for the most part so late that the last solemn\nservant had been dismissed for the night.\n\nLate as it was on a particular evening toward the end of October, there\nhad been a full word or two dropped into the still-stirring sea of other\nvoices--a word or two that affected our friend even at the moment, and\nrather oddly, as louder and rounder than any previous sound; and then he\nhad lingered, under pretext of an opened window to be made secure, after\ntaking leave of his companion in the hall and watching her glimmer away\nup the staircase. He had for himself another impulse than to go to bed;\npicking up a hat in the hall, slipping his arms into a sleeveless cape\nand lighting still another cigar, he turned out upon the terrace through\none of the long drawing-room windows and moved to and fro there for an\nhour beneath the sharp autumn stars. It was where he had walked in the\nafternoon sun with Fanny Assingham, and the sense of that other hour,\nthe sense of the suggestive woman herself, was before him again as, in\nspite of all the previous degustation we have hinted at, it had not yet\nbeen. He thought, in a loose, an almost agitated order, of many things;\nthe power that was in them to agitate having been part of his conviction\nthat he should not soon sleep. He truly felt for a while that he should\nnever sleep again till something had come to him; some light, some idea,\nsome mere happy word perhaps, that he had begun to want, but had been\ntill now, and especially the last day or two, vainly groping for. \"Can\nyou really then come if we start early?\"--that was practically all he\nhad said to the girl as she took up her bedroom light. And \"Why in\nthe world not, when I\'ve nothing else to do, and should, besides, so\nimmensely like it?\"--this had as definitely been, on her side, the limit\nof the little scene. There had in fact been nothing to call a scene,\neven of the littlest, at all--though he perhaps didn\'t quite know why\nsomething like the menace of one hadn\'t proceeded from her stopping\nhalf-way upstairs to turn and say, as she looked down on him, that she\npromised to content herself, for their journey, with a toothbrush and\na sponge. There hovered about him, at all events, while he walked,\nappearances already familiar, as well as two or three that were new, and\nnot the least vivid of the former connected itself with that sense of\nbeing treated with consideration which had become for him, as we have\nnoted, one of the minor yet so far as there were any such, quite one of\nthe compensatory, incidents of being a father-in-law. It had struck him,\nup to now, that this particular balm was a mixture of which Amerigo, as\nthrough some hereditary privilege, alone possessed the secret; so\nthat he found himself wondering if it had come to Charlotte, who had\nunmistakably acquired it, through the young man\'s having amiably passed\nit on. She made use, for her so quietly grateful host, however this\nmight be, of quite the same shades of attention and recognition, was\nmistress in an equal degree of the regulated, the developed art of\nplacing him high in the scale of importance. That was even for his own\nthought a clumsy way of expressing the element of similarity in the\nagreeable effect they each produced on him, and it held him for a little\nonly because this coincidence in their felicity caused him vaguely to\nconnect or associate them in the matter of tradition, training, tact,\nor whatever else one might call it. It might almost have been--if such\na link between them was to be imagined--that Amerigo had, a little,\n\"coached\" or incited their young friend, or perhaps rather that she had\nsimply, as one of the signs of the general perfection Fanny Assingham\ncommended in her, profited by observing, during her short opportunity\nbefore the start of the travellers, the pleasant application by the\nPrince of his personal system. He might wonder what exactly it was that\nthey so resembled each other in treating him like--from what noble and\npropagated convention, in cases in which the exquisite \"importance\" was\nto be neither too grossly attributed nor too grossly denied, they had\ntaken their specific lesson; but the difficulty was here of course that\none could really never know--couldn\'t know without having been one\'s\nself a personage; whether a Pope, a King, a President, a Peer, a\nGeneral, or just a beautiful Author.\n\nBefore such a question, as before several others when they recurred, he\nwould come to a pause, leaning his arms on the old parapet and losing\nhimself in a far excursion. He had as to so many of the matters in hand\na divided view, and this was exactly what made him reach out, in his\nunrest, for some idea, lurking in the vast freshness of the night,\nat the breath of which disparities would submit to fusion, and so,\nspreading beneath him, make him feel that he floated. What he kept\nfinding himself return to, disturbingly enough, was the reflection,\ndeeper than anything else, that in forming a new and intimate tie\nhe should in a manner abandon, or at the best signally relegate, his\ndaughter. He should reduce to definite form the idea that he had lost\nher--as was indeed inevitable--by her own marriage; he should reduce to\ndefinite form the idea of his having incurred an injury, or at the\nbest an inconvenience, that required some makeweight and deserved some\namends. And he should do this the more, which was the great point, that\nhe should appear to adopt, in doing it, the sentiment, in fact the very\nconviction, entertained, and quite sufficiently expressed, by\nMaggie herself, in her beautiful generosity, as to what he had\nsuffered--putting it with extravagance--at her hands. If she put it with\nextravagance the extravagance was yet sincere, for it came--which she\nput with extravagance too--from her persistence, always, in thinking,\nfeeling, talking about him, as young. He had had glimpses of moments\nwhen to hear her thus, in her absolutely unforced compunction, one would\nhave supposed the special edge of the wrong she had done him to consist\nin his having still before him years and years to groan under it. She\nhad sacrificed a parent, the pearl of parents, no older than herself:\nit wouldn\'t so much have mattered if he had been of common parental\nage. That he wasn\'t, that he was just her extraordinary equal and\ncontemporary, this was what added to her act the long train of its\neffect. Light broke for him at last, indeed, quite as a consequence\nof the fear of breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her spiritual\ngarden. As at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue, which opened\nout so wide, for the minute, that he held his breath with wonder. He was\nafterwards to recall how, just then, the autumn night seemed to clear to\na view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace\nwhere he stood, the others, with their steps, below, the gardens, the\npark, the lake, the circling woods, lay there as under some strange\nmidnight sun. It all met him during these instants as a vast expanse of\ndiscovery, a world that looked, so lighted, extraordinarily new, and in\nwhich familiar objects had taken on a distinctness that, as if it had\nbeen a loud, a spoken pretension to beauty, interest, importance, to\nhe scarce knew what, gave them an inordinate quantity of character and,\nverily, an inordinate size. This hallucination, or whatever he might\nhave called it, was brief, but it lasted long enough to leave him\ngasping. The gasp of admiration had by this time, however, lost itself\nin an intensity that quickly followed--the way the wonder of it, since\nwonder was in question, truly had been the strange DELAY of his vision.\nHe had these several days groped and groped for an object that lay at\nhis feet and as to which his blindness came from his stupidly looking\nbeyond. It had sat all the while at his hearth-stone, whence it now\ngazed up in his face.\n\nOnce he had recognised it there everything became coherent. The sharp\npoint to which all his light converged was that the whole call of his\nfuture to him, as a father, would be in his so managing that Maggie\nwould less and less appear to herself to have forsaken him. And it not\nonly wouldn\'t be decently humane, decently possible, not to make\nthis relief easy to her--the idea shone upon him, more than that, as\nexciting, inspiring, uplifting. It fell in so beautifully with what\nmight be otherwise possible; it stood there absolutely confronted with\nthe material way in which it might be met. The way in which it might\nbe met was by his putting his child at peace, and the way to put her at\npeace was to provide for his future--that is for hers--by marriage, by\na marriage as good, speaking proportionately, as hers had been. As he\nfairly inhaled this measure of refreshment he tasted the meaning of\nrecent agitations. He had seen that Charlotte could contribute--what he\nhadn\'t seen was what she could contribute TO. When it had all supremely\ncleared up and he had simply settled this service to his daughter well\nbefore him as the proper direction of his young friend\'s leisure, the\ncool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was\nconstituted. It wasn\'t only moreover that the word, with a click, so\nfitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted\nthe word. He might have been equally in want and yet not have had his\nremedy. Oh, if Charlotte didn\'t accept him, of course the remedy would\nfail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to\nbe tried. And success would be great--that was his last throb--if the\nmeasure of relief effected for Maggie should at all prove to have been\ngiven by his own actual sense of felicity. He really didn\'t know when in\nhis life he had thought of anything happier. To think of it merely for\nhimself would have been, even as he had just lately felt, even doing\nall justice to that condition--yes, impossible. But there was a grand\ndifference in thinking of it for his child.\n\n\n\n XII\n\nIt was at Brighton, above all, that this difference came out; it was\nduring the three wonderful days he spent there with Charlotte that he\nhad acquainted himself further--though doubtless not even now quite\ncompletely--with the merits of his majestic scheme. And while, moreover,\nto begin with, he still but held his vision in place, steadying it\nfairly with his hands, as he had often steadied, for inspection, a\nprecarious old pot or kept a glazed picture in its right relation to\nthe light, the other, the outer presumptions in his favour, those\nindependent of what he might himself contribute and that therefore, till\nhe should \"speak,\" remained necessarily vague--that quantity, I say,\nstruck him as positively multiplying, as putting on, in the fresh\nBrighton air and on the sunny Brighton front, a kind of tempting\npalpability. He liked, in this preliminary stage, to feel that he should\nbe able to \"speak\" and that he would; the word itself being romantic,\npressing for him the spring of association with stories and plays where\nhandsome and ardent young men, in uniforms, tights, cloaks, high-boots,\nhad it, in soliloquies, ever on their lips; and the sense on the first\nday that he should probably have taken the great step before the second\nwas over conduced already to make him say to his companion that they\nmust spend more than their mere night or two. At his ease on the ground\nof what was before him he at all events definitely desired to be, and it\nwas strongly his impression that he was proceeding step by step. He was\nacting--it kept coming back to that--not in the dark, but in the high\ngolden morning; not in precipitation, flurry, fever, dangers these of\nthe path of passion properly so called, but with the deliberation of a\nplan, a plan that might be a thing of less joy than a passion, but that\nprobably would, in compensation for that loss, be found to have the\nessential property, to wear even the decent dignity, of reaching further\nand of providing for more contingencies. The season was, in local\nparlance, \"on,\" the elements were assembled; the big windy hotel, the\ndraughty social hall, swarmed with \"types,\" in Charlotte\'s constant\nphrase, and resounded with a din in which the wild music of gilded and\nbefrogged bands, Croatian, Dalmatian, Carpathian, violently exotic and\nnostalgic, was distinguished as struggling against the perpetual popping\nof corks. Much of this would decidedly have disconcerted our friends if\nit hadn\'t all happened, more preponderantly, to give them the brighter\nsurprise. The noble privacy of Fawns had left them--had left Mr. Verver\nat least--with a little accumulated sum of tolerance to spend on the\nhigh pitch and high colour of the public sphere. Fawns, as it had been\nfor him, and as Maggie and Fanny Assingham had both attested, was out\nof the world, whereas the scene actually about him, with the very sea a\nmere big booming medium for excursions and aquariums, affected him as so\nplump in the conscious centre that nothing could have been more complete\nfor representing that pulse of life which they had come to unanimity\nat home on the subject of their advisedly not hereafter forgetting.\nThe pulse of life was what Charlotte, in her way, at home, had lately\nreproduced, and there were positively current hours when it might have\nbeen open to her companion to feel himself again indebted to her for\nintroductions. He had \"brought\" her, to put it crudely, but it was\nalmost as if she were herself, in her greater gaiety, her livelier\ncuriosity and intensity, her readier, happier irony, taking him about\nand showing him the place. No one, really, when he came to think, had\never taken him about before--it had always been he, of old, who took\nothers and who in particular took Maggie. This quickly fell into its\nrelation with him as part of an experience--marking for him, no doubt,\nwhat people call, considerately, a time of life; a new and pleasant\norder, a flattered passive state, that might become--why shouldn\'t it?--\none of the comforts of the future.\n\nMr. Gutermann-Seuss proved, on the second day--our friend had waited\ntill then--a remarkably genial, a positively lustrous young man\noccupying a small neat house in a quarter of the place remote from the\nfront and living, as immediate and striking signs testified, in the\nbosom of his family. Our visitors found themselves introduced, by\nthe operation of close contiguity, to a numerous group of ladies and\ngentlemen older and younger, and of children larger and smaller, who\nmostly affected them as scarce less anointed for hospitality and\nwho produced at first the impression of a birthday party, of some\nanniversary gregariously and religiously kept, though they subsequently\nfell into their places as members of one quiet domestic circle,\npreponderantly and directly indebted for their being, in fact, to Mr.\nGutermann-Seuss. To the casual eye a mere smart and shining youth of\nless than thirty summers, faultlessly appointed in every particular, he\nyet stood among his progeny--eleven in all, as he confessed without a\nsigh, eleven little brown clear faces, yet with such impersonal old eyes\nastride of such impersonal old noses--while he entertained the great\nAmerican collector whom he had so long hoped he might meet, and whose\ncharming companion, the handsome, frank, familiar young lady, presumably\nMrs. Verver, noticed the graduated offspring, noticed the fat,\near-ringed aunts and the glossy, cockneyfied, familiar uncles,\ninimitable of accent and assumption, and of an attitude of cruder\nintention than that of the head of the firm; noticed the place in short,\nnoticed the treasure produced, noticed everything, as from the habit\nof a person finding her account at any time, according to a wisdom well\nlearned of life, in almost any \"funny\" impression. It really came home\nto her friend on the spot that this free range of observation in her,\npicking out the frequent funny with extraordinary promptness, would\nverily henceforth make a different thing for him of such experiences, of\nthe customary hunt for the possible prize, the inquisitive play of his\naccepted monomania; which different thing could probably be a lighter\nand perhaps thereby a somewhat more boisterously refreshing form\nof sport. Such omens struck him as vivid, in any case, when Mr.\nGutermann-Seuss, with a sharpness of discrimination he had at first\nscarce seemed to promise, invited his eminent couple into another\nroom, before the threshold of which the rest of the tribe, unanimously\nfaltering, dropped out of the scene. The treasure itself here, the\nobjects on behalf of which Mr. Verver\'s interest had been booked,\nestablished quickly enough their claim to engage the latter\'s attention;\nyet at what point of his past did our friend\'s memory, looking back\nand back, catch him, in any such place, thinking so much less of wares\nartfully paraded than of some other and quite irrelevant presence? Such\nplaces were not strange to him when they took the form of bourgeois\nback-parlours, a trifle ominously grey and grim from their north light,\nat watering-places prevailingly homes of humbug, or even when they wore\nsome aspect still less, if not perhaps still more, insidious. He had\nbeen everywhere, pried and prowled everywhere, going, on occasion, so\nfar as to risk, he believed, life, health and the very bloom of\nhonour; but where, while precious things, extracted one by one from\nthrice-locked yet often vulgar drawers and soft satchels of old oriental\nilk, were impressively ranged before him, had he, till now, let himself,\nin consciousness, wander like one of the vague?\n\nHe didn\'t betray it--ah THAT he knew; but two recognitions took place\nfor him at once, and one of them suffered a little in sweetness by the\nconfusion. Mr. Gutermann-Seuss had truly, for the crisis, the putting\ndown of his cards, a rare manner; he was perfect master of what not to\nsay to such a personage as Mr. Verver while the particular importance\nthat dispenses with chatter was diffused by his movements themselves,\nhis repeated act of passage between a featureless mahogany meuble and a\ntable so virtuously disinterested as to look fairly smug under a cotton\ncloth of faded maroon and indigo, all redolent of patriarchal teas.\nThe Damascene tiles, successively, and oh so tenderly, unmuffled and\nrevealed, lay there at last in their full harmony and their venerable\nsplendour, but the tribute of appreciation and decision was, while the\nspectator considered, simplified to a point that but just failed of\nrepresenting levity on the part of a man who had always acknowledged\nwithout shame, in such affairs, the intrinsic charm of what was called\ndiscussion. The infinitely ancient, the immemorial amethystine blue of\nthe glaze, scarcely more meant to be breathed upon, it would seem, than\nthe cheek of royalty--this property of the ordered and matched array\nhad inevitably all its determination for him, but his submission was,\nperhaps for the first time in his life, of the quick mind alone, the\nprocess really itself, in its way, as fine as the perfection perceived\nand admired: every inch of the rest of him being given to the\nforeknowledge that an hour or two later he should have \"spoken.\" The\nburning of his ships therefore waited too near to let him handle his\nopportunity with his usual firm and sentient fingers--waited somehow in\nthe predominance of Charlotte\'s very person, in her being there exactly\nas she was, capable, as Mr. Gutermann-Seuss himself was capable, of the\nright felicity of silence, but with an embracing ease, through it all,\nthat made deferred criticism as fragrant as some joy promised a lover by\nhis mistress, or as a big bridal bouquet held patiently behind her.\nHe couldn\'t otherwise have explained, surely, why he found himself\nthinking, to his enjoyment, of so many other matters than the felicity\nof his acquisition and the figure of his cheque, quite equally high; any\nmore than why, later on, with their return to the room in which they had\nbeen received and the renewed encompassment of the tribe, he felt quite\nmerged in the elated circle formed by the girl\'s free response to the\ncollective caress of all the shining eyes, and by her genial acceptance\nof the heavy cake and port wine that, as she was afterwards to note,\nadded to their transaction, for a finish, the touch of some mystic rite\nof old Jewry.\n\nThis characterisation came from her as they walked away--walked\ntogether, in the waning afternoon, back to the breezy sea and the\nbustling front, back to the nimble and the flutter and the shining shops\nthat sharpened the grin of solicitation on the mask of night. They were\nwalking thus, as he felt, nearer and nearer to where he should see his\nships burn, and it was meanwhile for him quite as if this red glow would\nimpart, at the harmonious hour, a lurid grandeur to his good faith. It\nwas meanwhile too a sign of the kind of sensibility often playing up\nin him that--fabulous as this truth may sound--he found a sentimental\nlink, an obligation of delicacy, or perhaps even one of the penalties\nof its opposite, in his having exposed her to the north light, the quite\nproperly hard business-light, of the room in which they had been alone\nwith the treasure and its master. She had listened to the name of\nthe sum he was capable of looking in the face. Given the relation of\nintimacy with him she had already, beyond all retractation, accepted,\nthe stir of the air produced at the other place by that high figure\nstruck him as a thing that, from the moment she had exclaimed or\nprotested as little as he himself had apologised, left him but one thing\nmore to do. A man of decent feeling didn\'t thrust his money, a huge lump\nof it, in such a way, under a poor girl\'s nose--a girl whose\npoverty was, after a fashion, the very basis of her enjoyment of his\nhospitality--without seeing, logically, a responsibility attached. And\nthis was to remain none the less true for the fact that twenty minutes\nlater, after he had applied his torch, applied it with a sign or two of\ninsistence, what might definitely result failed to be immediately clear.\nHe had spoken--spoken as they sat together on the out-of-the-way bench\nobserved during one of their walks and kept for the previous quarter of\nthe present hour well in his memory\'s eye; the particular spot to which,\nbetween intense pauses and intenser advances, he had all the while\nconsistently led her. Below the great consolidated cliff, well on to\nwhere the city of stucco sat most architecturally perched, with the\nrumbling beach and the rising tide and the freshening stars in front\nand above, the safe sense of the whole place yet prevailed in lamps\nand seats and flagged walks, hovering also overhead in the close\nneighbourhood of a great replete community about to assist anew at the\nremoval of dish-covers.\n\n\"We\'ve had, as it seems to me, such quite beautiful days together, that\nI hope it won\'t come to you too much as a shock when I ask if you think\nyou could regard me with any satisfaction as a husband.\" As if he had\nknown she wouldn\'t, she of course couldn\'t, at all gracefully, and\nwhether or no, reply with a rush, he had said a little more--quite as he\nhad felt he must in thinking it out in advance. He had put the question\non which there was no going back and which represented thereby the\nsacrifice of his vessels, and what he further said was to stand for the\nredoubled thrust of flame that would make combustion sure. \"This isn\'t\nsudden to me, and I\'ve wondered at moments if you haven\'t felt me coming\nto it. I\'ve been coming ever since we left Fawns--I really started while\nwe were there.\" He spoke slowly, giving her, as he desired, time to\nthink; all the more that it was making her look at him steadily, and\nmaking her also, in a remarkable degree, look \"well\" while she did\nso--a large and, so far, a happy, consequence. She wasn\'t at all events\nshocked--which he had glanced at but for a handsome humility--and he\nwould give her as many minutes as she liked. \"You mustn\'t think I\'m\nforgetting that I\'m not young.\"\n\n\"Oh, that isn\'t so. It\'s I that am old. You ARE young.\" This was what\nshe had at first answered--and quite in the tone too of having taken\nher minutes. It had not been wholly to the point, but it had been\nkind--which was what he most wanted. And she kept, for her next words,\nto kindness, kept to her clear, lowered voice and unshrinking face.\n\"To me too it thoroughly seems that these days have been beautiful. I\nshouldn\'t be grateful to them if I couldn\'t more or less have imagined\ntheir bringing us to this.\" She affected him somehow as if she had\nadvanced a step to meet him and yet were at the same time standing\nstill. It only meant, however, doubtless, that she was, gravely and\nreasonably, thinking--as he exactly desired to make her. If she would\nbut think enough she would probably think to suit him. \"It seems to me,\"\nshe went on, \"that it\'s for YOU to be sure.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I AM sure,\" said Adam Verver. \"On matters of importance I never\nspeak when I\'m not. So if you can yourself FACE such a union you needn\'t\nin the least trouble.\"\n\nShe had another pause, and she might have been felt as facing it while,\nthrough lamplight and dusk, through the breath of the mild, slightly\ndamp southwest, she met his eyes without evasion. Yet she had at the end\nof another minute debated only to the extent of saying: \"I won\'t pretend\nI don\'t think it would be good for me to marry. Good for me, I mean,\"\nshe pursued, \"because I\'m so awfully unattached. I should like to be a\nlittle less adrift. I should like to have a home. I should like to have\nan existence. I should like to have a motive for one thing more than\nanother--a motive outside of myself. In fact,\" she said, so sincerely\nthat it almost showed pain, yet so lucidly that it almost showed\nhumour, \"in fact, you know, I want to BE married. It\'s--well, it\'s the\ncondition.\"\n\n\"The condition--?\" He was just vague.\n\n\"It\'s the state, I mean. I don\'t like my own. \'Miss,\' among us all,\nis too dreadful--except for a shopgirl. I don\'t want to be a horrible\nEnglish old-maid.\"\n\n\"Oh, you want to be taken care of. Very well then, I\'ll do it.\"\n\n\"I dare say it\'s very much that. Only I don\'t see why, for what I speak\nof,\" she smiled--\"for a mere escape from my state--I need do quite so\nMUCH.\"\n\n\"So much as marry me in particular?\"\n\nHer smile was as for true directness. \"I might get what I want for\nless.\"\n\n\"You think it so much for you to do?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she presently said, \"I think it\'s a great deal.\"\n\nThen it was that, though she was so gentle, so quite perfect with him,\nand he felt he had come on far--then it was that of a sudden something\nseemed to fail and he didn\'t quite know where they were. There rose for\nhim, with this, the fact, to be sure, of their disparity, deny it as\nmercifully and perversely as she would. He might have been her father.\n\"Of course, yes--that\'s my disadvantage: I\'m not the natural, I\'m so\nfar from being the ideal match to your youth and your beauty. I\'ve the\ndrawback that you\'ve seen me always, so inevitably, in such another\nlight.\"\n\nBut she gave a slow headshake that made contradiction soft--made it\nalmost sad, in fact, as from having to be so complete; and he had\nalready, before she spoke, the dim vision of some objection in her mind\nbeside which the one he had named was light, and which therefore must be\nstrangely deep. \"You don\'t understand me. It\'s of all that it is for YOU\nto do--it\'s of that I\'m thinking.\"\n\nOh, with this, for him, the thing was clearer! \"Then you needn\'t think.\nI know enough what it is for me to do.\"\n\nBut she shook her head again. \"I doubt if you know. I doubt if you CAN.\"\n\n\"And why not, please--when I\'ve had you so before me? That I\'m old has\nat least THAT fact about it to the good--that I\'ve known you long and\nfrom far back.\"\n\n\"Do you think you\'ve \'known\' me?\" asked Charlotte Stant. He\nhesitated--for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him\ndoubt. Just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with\nhis fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow,\nprojected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and\ncrackling--this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own\ncould warn him. All that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to\nits advantage, by the pink glow. He wasn\'t rabid, but he wasn\'t either,\nas a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. \"What is that then--if\nI accept it--but as strong a reason as I can want for just LEARNING to\nknow you?\"\n\nShe faced him always--kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same\ntime, in her odd way, as for mercy. \"How can you tell whether if you did\nyou would?\"\n\nIt was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. \"I mean when\nit\'s a question of learning, one learns sometimes too late.\"\n\n\"I think it\'s a question,\" he promptly enough made answer, \"of liking\nyou the more just for your saying these things. You should make\nsomething,\" he added, \"of my liking you.\"\n\n\"I make everything. But are you sure of having exhausted all other\nways?\"\n\nThis, of a truth, enlarged his gaze. \"But what other ways?\"\n\n\"Why, you\'ve more ways of being kind than anyone I ever knew.\"\n\n\"Take it then,\" he answered, \"that I\'m simply putting them all together\nfor you.\" She looked at him, on this, long again--still as if it\nshouldn\'t be said she hadn\'t given him time or had withdrawn from his\nview, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. This at least she was\nfully to have exposed. It represented her as oddly conscientious, and he\nscarce knew in what sense it affected him. On the whole, however, with\nadmiration. \"You\'re very, very honourable.\"\n\n\"It\'s just what I want to be. I don\'t see,\" she added, \"why you\'re\nnot right, I don\'t see why you\'re not happy, as you are. I can not ask\nmyself, I can not ask YOU,\" she went on, \"if you\'re really as much at\nliberty as your universal generosity leads you to assume. Oughtn\'t\nwe,\" she asked, \"to think a little of others? Oughtn\'t I, at least,\nin loyalty--at any rate in delicacy--to think of Maggie?\" With which,\nintensely gentle, so as not to appear too much to teach him his duty,\nshe explained. \"She\'s everything to you--she has always been. Are you so\ncertain that there\'s room in your life--?\"\n\n\"For another daughter?--is that what you mean?\" She had not hung upon it\nlong, but he had quickly taken her up.\n\nHe had not, however, disconcerted her. \"For another young woman--very\nmuch of her age, and whose relation to her has always been so different\nfrom what our marrying would make it. For another companion,\" said\nCharlotte Stant.\n\n\"Can\'t a man be, all his life then,\" he almost fiercely asked, \"anything\nbut a father?\" But he went on before she could answer. \"You talk about\ndifferences, but they\'ve been already made--as no one knows better than\nMaggie. She feels the one she made herself by her own marriage--made, I\nmean, for me. She constantly thinks of it--it allows her no rest. To put\nher at peace is therefore,\" he explained, \"what I\'m trying, with you,\nto do. I can\'t do it alone, but I can do it with your help. You can make\nher,\" he said, \"positively happy about me.\"\n\n\"About you?\" she thoughtfully echoed. \"But what can I make her about\nherself?\"\n\n\"Oh, if she\'s at ease about me the rest will take care of itself. The\ncase,\" he declared, \"is in your hands. You\'ll effectually put out of her\nmind that I feel she has abandoned me.\"\n\nInterest certainly now was what he had kindled in her face, but it was\nall the more honourable to her, as he had just called it that she should\nwant to see each of the steps of his conviction. \"If you\'ve been driven\nto the \'likes\' of me, mayn\'t it show that you\'ve felt truly forsaken?\"\n\n\"Well, I\'m willing to suggest that, if I can show at the same time that\nI feel consoled.\"\n\n\"But HAVE you,\" she demanded, \"really felt so?\" He hesitated.\n\n\"Consoled?\"\n\n\"Forsaken.\"\n\n\"No--I haven\'t. But if it\'s her idea--!\" If it was her idea, in short,\nthat was enough. This enunciation of motive, the next moment, however,\nsounded to him perhaps slightly thin, so that he gave it another touch.\n\"That is if it\'s my idea. I happen, you see, to like my idea.\"\n\n\"Well, it\'s beautiful and wonderful. But isn\'t it, possibly,\" Charlotte\nasked, \"not quite enough to marry me for?\"\n\n\"Why so, my dear child? Isn\'t a man\'s idea usually what he does marry\nfor?\"\n\nCharlotte, considering, looked as if this might perhaps be a large\nquestion, or at all events something of an extension of one they were\nimmediately concerned with. \"Doesn\'t that a good deal depend on the sort\nof thing it may be?\" She suggested that, about marriage, ideas, as he\ncalled them, might differ; with which, however, giving no more time to\nit, she sounded another question. \"Don\'t you appear rather to put it to\nme that I may accept your offer for Maggie\'s sake? Somehow\"--she turned\nit over--\"I don\'t so clearly SEE her quite so much finding reassurance,\nor even quite so much needing it.\"\n\n\"Do you then make nothing at all of her having been so ready to leave\nus?\"\n\nAh, Charlotte on the contrary made much! \"She was ready to leave us\nbecause she had to be. From the moment the Prince wanted it she could\nonly go with him.\"\n\n\"Perfectly--so that, if you see your way, she will be able to \'go with\nhim\' in future as much as she likes.\"\n\nCharlotte appeared to examine for a minute, in Maggie\'s interest,\nthis privilege--the result of which was a limited concession. \"You\'ve\ncertainly worked it out!\"\n\n\"Of course I\'ve worked it out--that\'s exactly what I HAVE done. She\nhadn\'t for a long time been so happy about anything as at your being\nthere with me.\"\n\n\"I was to be with you,\" said Charlotte, \"for her security.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Adam Verver rang out, \"this IS her security. You\'ve only, if you\ncan\'t see it, to ask her.\"\n\n\"\'Ask\' her?\"--the girl echoed it in wonder. \"Certainly--in so many\nwords. Telling her you don\'t believe me.\"\n\nStill she debated. \"Do you mean write it to her?\"\n\n\"Quite so. Immediately. To-morrow.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t think I can write it,\" said Charlotte Stant. \"When I write\nto her\"--and she looked amused for so different a shade--\"it\'s about\nthe Principino\'s appetite and Dr. Brady\'s visits.\"\n\n\"Very good then--put it to her face to face. We\'ll go straight to Paris\nto meet them.\"\n\nCharlotte, at this, rose with a movement that was like a small cry; but\nher unspoken sense lost itself while she stood with her eyes on him--he\nkeeping his seat as for the help it gave him, a little, to make his\nappeal go up. Presently, however, a new sense had come to her, and she\ncovered him, kindly, with the expression of it. \"I do think, you know,\nyou must rather \'like\' me.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Adam Verver. \"You WILL put it to her yourself then?\"\n\nShe had another hesitation. \"We go over, you say, to meet them?\"\n\n\"As soon as we can get back to Fawns. And wait there for them, if\nnecessary, till they come.\"\n\n\"Wait--a--at Fawns?\"\n\n\"Wait in Paris. That will be charming in itself.\"\n\n\"You take me to pleasant places.\" She turned it over. \"You propose to me\nbeautiful things.\"\n\n\"It rests but with you to make them beautiful and pleasant. You\'ve made\nBrighton--!\"\n\n\"Ah!\"--she almost tenderly protested. \"With what I\'m doing now?\"\n\n\"You\'re promising me now what I want. Aren\'t you promising me,\" he\npressed, getting up, \"aren\'t you promising me to abide by what Maggie\nsays?\"\n\nOh, she wanted to be sure she was. \"Do you mean she\'ll ASK it of me?\"\n\nIt gave him indeed, as by communication, a sense of the propriety of\nbeing himself certain. Yet what was he but certain? \"She\'ll speak to\nyou. She\'ll speak to you FOR me.\"\n\nThis at last then seemed to satisfy her. \"Very good. May we wait again\nto talk of it till she has done so?\" He showed, with his hands down in\nhis pockets and his shoulders expressively up, a certain disappointment.\nSoon enough, none the less, his gentleness was all back and his patience\nonce more exemplary. \"Of course I give you time. Especially,\" he smiled,\n\"as it\'s time that I shall be spending with you. Our keeping on together\nwill help you perhaps to see. To see, I mean, how I need you.\"\n\n\"I already see,\" said Charlotte, \"how you\'ve persuaded yourself you do.\"\nBut she had to repeat it. \"That isn\'t, unfortunately, all.\"\n\n\"Well then, how you\'ll make Maggie right.\"\n\n\"\'Right\'?\" She echoed it as if the word went far. And \"O--oh!\" she still\ncritically murmured as they moved together away.\n\n\n\n XIII\n\nHe had talked to her of their waiting in Paris, a week later, but on\nthe spot there this period of patience suffered no great strain. He had\nwritten to his daughter, not indeed from Brighton, but directly after\ntheir return to Fawns, where they spent only forty-eight hours before\nresuming their journey; and Maggie\'s reply to his news was a telegram\nfrom Rome, delivered to him at noon of their fourth day and which he\nbrought out to Charlotte, who was seated at that moment in the court\nof the hotel, where they had agreed that he should join her for their\nproceeding together to the noontide meal. His letter, at Fawns--a letter\nof several pages and intended lucidly, unreservedly, in fact all but\ntriumphantly, to inform--had proved, on his sitting down to it, and a\nlittle to his surprise, not quite so simple a document to frame as\neven his due consciousness of its weight of meaning had allowed him to\nassume: this doubtless, however, only for reasons naturally latent in\nthe very wealth of that consciousness, which contributed to his message\nsomething of their own quality of impatience. The main result of their\ntalk, for the time, had been a difference in his relation to his young\nfriend, as well as a difference, equally sensible, in her relation\nto himself; and this in spite of his not having again renewed his\nundertaking to \"speak\" to her so far even as to tell her of the\ncommunication despatched to Rome. Delicacy, a delicacy more beautiful\nstill, all the delicacy she should want, reigned between them--it being\nrudimentary, in their actual order, that she mustn\'t be further worried\nuntil Maggie should have put her at her ease.\n\nIt was just the delicacy, however, that in Paris--which, suggestively,\nwas Brighton at a hundredfold higher pitch--made, between him and his\ncompanion, the tension, made the suspense, made what he would have\nconsented perhaps to call the provisional peculiarity, of present\nconditions. These elements acted in a manner of their own, imposing\nand involving, under one head, many abstentions and precautions, twenty\nanxieties and reminders--things, verily, he would scarce have known\nhow to express; and yet creating for them at every step an acceptance of\ntheir reality. He was hanging back, with Charlotte, till another person\nshould intervene for their assistance, and yet they had, by what had\nalready occurred, been carried on to something it was out of the\npower of other persons to make either less or greater. Common\nconventions--that was what was odd--had to be on this basis more thought\nof; those common conventions that, previous to the passage by the\nBrighton strand, he had so enjoyed the sense of their overlooking. The\nexplanation would have been, he supposed--or would have figured it with\nless of unrest--that Paris had, in its way, deeper voices and warnings,\nso that if you went at all \"far\" there it laid bristling traps, as they\nmight have been viewed, all smothered in flowers, for your going further\nstill. There were strange appearances in the air, and before you knew\nit you might be unmistakably matching them. Since he wished therefore\nto match no appearance but that of a gentleman playing with perfect\nfairness any game in life he might be called to, he found himself, on\nthe receipt of Maggie\'s missive, rejoicing with a certain inconsistency.\nThe announcement made her from home had, in the act, cost some biting of\nhis pen to sundry parts of him--his personal modesty, his imagination\nof her prepared state for so quick a jump, it didn\'t much matter\nwhich--and yet he was more eager than not for the drop of delay and for\nthe quicker transitions promised by the arrival of the imminent pair.\nThere was after all a hint of offence to a man of his age in being\ntaken, as they said at the shops, on approval. Maggie, certainly, would\nhave been as far as Charlotte herself from positively desiring this,\nand Charlotte, on her side, as far as Maggie from holding him light as\na real value. She made him fidget thus, poor girl, but from generous\nrigour of conscience.\n\nThese allowances of his spirit were, all the same, consistent with a\ngreat gladness at the sight of the term of his ordeal; for it was the\nend of his seeming to agree that questions and doubts had a place. The\nmore he had inwardly turned the matter over the more it had struck him\nthat they had in truth only an ugliness. What he could have best borne,\nas he now believed, would have been Charlotte\'s simply saying to him\nthat she didn\'t like him enough. This he wouldn\'t have enjoyed, but he\nwould quite have understood it and been able ruefully to submit. She\ndid like him enough--nothing to contradict that had come out for him; so\nthat he was restless for her as well as for himself. She looked at him\nhard a moment when he handed her his telegram, and the look, for what\nhe fancied a dim, shy fear in it, gave him perhaps his best moment of\nconviction that--as a man, so to speak--he properly pleased her. He said\nnothing--the words sufficiently did it for him, doing it again better\nstill as Charlotte, who had left her chair at his approach, murmured\nthem out. \"We start to-night to bring you all our love and joy and\nsympathy.\" There they were, the words, and what did she want more? She\ndidn\'t, however, as she gave him back the little unfolded leaf, say\nthey were enough--though he saw, the next moment, that her silence was\nprobably not disconnected from her having just visibly turned pale.\nHer extraordinarily fine eyes, as it was his present theory that he had\nalways thought them, shone at him the more darkly out of this change\nof colour; and she had again, with it, her apparent way of subjecting\nherself, for explicit honesty and through her willingness to face him,\nto any view he might take, all at his ease, and even to wantonness, of\nthe condition he produced in her. As soon as he perceived that emotion\nkept her soundless he knew himself deeply touched, since it proved that,\nlittle as she professed, she had been beautifully hoping. They stood\nthere a minute while he took in from this sign that, yes then, certainly\nshe liked him enough--liked him enough to make him, old as he was ready\nto brand himself, flush for the pleasure of it. The pleasure of it\naccordingly made him speak first. \"Do you begin, a little, to be\nsatisfied?\"\n\nStill, however, she had to think. \"We\'ve hurried them, you see. Why so\nbreathless a start?\"\n\n\"Because they want to congratulate us. They want,\" said Adam Verver, \"to\nSEE our happiness.\"\n\nShe wondered again--and this time also, for him, as publicly as\npossible. \"So much as that?\"\n\n\"Do you think it\'s too much?\"\n\nShe continued to think plainly. \"They weren\'t to have started for\nanother week.\"\n\n\"Well, what then? Isn\'t our situation worth the little sacrifice? We\'ll\ngo back to Rome as soon as you like WITH them.\"\n\nThis seemed to hold her--as he had previously seen her held, just a\ntrifle inscrutably, by his allusions to what they would do together on a\ncertain contingency. \"Worth it, the little sacrifice, for whom? For us,\nnaturally--yes,\" she said. \"We want to see them--for our reasons. That\nis,\" she rather dimly smiled, \"YOU do.\"\n\n\"And you do, my dear, too!\" he bravely declared. \"Yes then--I do too,\"\nshe after an instant ungrudging enough acknowledged. \"For us, however,\nsomething depends on it.\"\n\n\"Rather! But does nothing depend on it for them?\"\n\n\"What CAN--from the moment that, as appears, they don\'t want to nip\nus in the bud? I can imagine their rushing up to prevent us. But an\nenthusiasm for us that can wait so very little--such intense eagerness,\nI confess,\" she went on, \"more than a little puzzles me. You may think\nme,\" she also added, \"ungracious and suspicious, but the Prince can\'t\nat all want to come back so soon. He wanted quite too intensely to get\naway.\"\n\nMr. Verver considered. \"Well, hasn\'t he been away?\"\n\n\"Yes, just long enough to see how he likes it. Besides,\" said Charlotte,\n\"he may not be able to join in the rosy view of our case that you impute\nto her. It can\'t in the least have appeared to him hitherto a matter of\ncourse that you should give his wife a bouncing stepmother.\"\n\nAdam Verver, at this, looked grave. \"I\'m afraid then he\'ll just have\nto accept from us whatever his wife accepts; and accept it--if he can\nimagine no better reason--just because she does. That,\" he declared,\n\"will have to do for him.\"\n\nHis tone made her for a moment meet his face; after which, \"Let me,\" she\nabruptly said, \"see it again\"--taking from him the folded leaf that she\nhad given back and he had kept in his hand. \"Isn\'t the whole thing,\"\nshe asked when she had read it over, \"perhaps but a way like another for\ntheir gaining time?\"\n\nHe again stood staring; but the next minute, with that upward spring of\nhis shoulders and that downward pressure of his pockets which she had\nalready, more than once, at disconcerted moments, determined in him, he\nturned sharply away and wandered from her in silence. He looked about\nin his small despair; he crossed the hotel court, which, overarched and\nglazed, muffled against loud sounds and guarded against crude sights,\nheated, gilded, draped, almost carpeted, with exotic trees in tubs,\nexotic ladies in chairs, the general exotic accent and presence\nsuspended, as with wings folded or feebly fluttering, in the superior,\nthe supreme, the inexorably enveloping Parisian medium, resembled some\ncritical apartment of large capacity, some \"dental,\" medical, surgical\nwaiting-room, a scene of mixed anxiety and desire, preparatory, for\ngathered barbarians, to the due amputation or extraction of excrescences\nand redundancies of barbarism. He went as far as the porte-cochere,\ntook counsel afresh of his usual optimism, sharpened even, somehow,\njust here, by the very air he tasted, and then came back smiling to\nCharlotte. \"It is incredible to you that when a man is still as much in\nlove as Amerigo his most natural impulse should be to feel what his wife\nfeels, to believe what she believes, to want what she wants?--in the\nabsence, that is, of special impediments to his so doing.\" The manner\nof it operated--she acknowledged with no great delay this natural\npossibility. \"No--nothing is incredible to me of people immensely in\nlove.\"\n\n\"Well, isn\'t Amerigo immensely in love?\"\n\nShe hesitated but as for the right expression of her sense of the\ndegree--but she after all adopted Mr. Verver\'s. \"Immensely.\"\n\n\"Then there you are!\"\n\nShe had another smile, however--she wasn\'t there quite yet. \"That isn\'t\nall that\'s wanted.\"\n\n\"But what more?\"\n\n\"Why that his wife shall have made him really believe that SHE really\nbelieves.\" With which Charlotte became still more lucidly logical. \"The\nreality of his belief will depend in such a case on the reality of hers.\nThe Prince may for instance now,\" she went on, \"have made out to his\nsatisfaction that Maggie may mainly desire to abound in your sense,\nwhatever it is you do. He may remember that he has never seen her do\nanything else.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Adam Verver, \"what kind of a warning will he have found in\nthat? To what catastrophe will he have observed such a disposition in\nher to lead?\"\n\n\"Just to THIS one!\" With which she struck him as rising straighter and\nclearer before him than she had done even yet.\n\n\"Our little question itself?\" Her appearance had in fact, at the moment,\nsuch an effect on him that he could answer but in marvelling mildness.\n\"Hadn\'t we better wait a while till we call it a catastrophe?\"\n\nHer rejoinder to this was to wait--though by no means as long as he\nmeant. When at the end of her minute she spoke, however, it was mildly\ntoo. \"What would you like, dear friend, to wait for?\" It lingered\nbetween them in the air, this demand, and they exchanged for the time\na look which might have made each of them seem to have been watching in\nthe other the signs of its overt irony. These were indeed immediately so\nvisible in Mr. Verver\'s face that, as if a little ashamed of having\nso markedly produced them--and as if also to bring out at last, under\npressure, something she had all the while been keeping back--she took\na jump to pure plain reason. \"You haven\'t noticed for yourself, but I\ncan\'t quite help noticing, that in spite of what you assume--WE assume,\nif you like--Maggie wires her joy only to you. She makes no sign of its\noverflow to me.\"\n\nIt was a point--and, staring a moment, he took account of it. But he\nhad, as before, his presence of mind--to say nothing of his kindly\nhumour. \"Why, you complain of the very thing that\'s most charmingly\nconclusive! She treats us already as ONE.\"\n\nClearly now, for the girl, in spite of lucidity and logic, there was\nsomething in the way he said things--! She faced him in all her desire\nto please him, and then her word quite simply and definitely showed it.\n\"I do like you, you know.\"\n\nWell, what could this do but stimulate his humour? \"I see what\'s the\nmatter with you. You won\'t be quiet till you\'ve heard from the Prince\nhimself. I think,\" the happy man added, \"that I\'ll go and secretly wire\nto him that you\'d like, reply paid, a few words for yourself.\"\n\nIt could apparently but encourage her further to smile. \"Reply paid for\nhim, you mean--or for me?\"\n\n\"Oh, I\'ll pay, with pleasure, anything back for you--as many words as\nyou like.\" And he went on, to keep it up. \"Not requiring either to see\nyour message.\"\n\nShe could take it, visibly, as he meant it. \"Should you require to see\nthe Prince\'s?\"\n\n\"Not a bit. You can keep that also to yourself.\"\n\nOn his speaking, however, as if his transmitting the hint were a\nreal question, she appeared to consider--and almost as if for good\ntaste--that the joke had gone far enough. \"It doesn\'t matter. Unless he\nspeaks of his own movement--! And why should it be,\" she asked, \"a thing\nthat WOULD occur to him?\"\n\n\"I really think,\" Mr. Verver concurred, \"that it naturally wouldn\'t. HE\ndoesn\'t know you\'re morbid.\"\n\nShe just wondered--but she agreed. \"No--he hasn\'t yet found it out.\nPerhaps he will, but he hasn\'t yet; and I\'m willing to give him\nmeanwhile the benefit of the doubt.\" So with this the situation, to her\nview, would appear to have cleared had she not too quickly had one\nof her restless relapses. \"Maggie, however, does know I\'m morbid. SHE\nhasn\'t the benefit.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Adam Verver a little wearily at last, \"I think I feel\nthat you\'ll hear from her yet.\" It had even fairly come over him, under\nrecurrent suggestion, that his daughter\'s omission WAS surprising. And\nMaggie had never in her life been wrong for more than three minutes.\n\n\"Oh, it isn\'t that I hold that I\'ve a RIGHT to it,\" Charlotte the next\ninstant rather oddly qualified--and the observation itself gave him a\nfurther push.\n\n\"Very well--I shall like it myself.\"\n\nAt this then, as if moved by his way of constantly--and more or less\nagainst his own contention--coming round to her, she showed how she\ncould also always, and not less gently, come half way. \"I speak of it\nonly as the missing GRACE--the grace that\'s in everything that Maggie\ndoes. It isn\'t my due\"--she kept it up--\"but, taking from you that we\nmay still expect it, it will have the touch. It will be beautiful.\"\n\n\"Then come out to breakfast.\" Mr. Verver had looked at his watch. \"It\nwill be here when we get back.\"\n\n\"If it isn\'t\"--and Charlotte smiled as she looked about for a feather\nboa that she had laid down on descending from her room--\"if it isn\'t it\nwill have had but THAT slight fault.\"\n\nHe saw her boa on the arm of the chair from which she had moved to\nmeet him, and, after he had fetched it, raising it to make its charming\nsoftness brush his face--for it was a wondrous product of Paris,\npurchased under his direct auspices the day before--he held it there a\nminute before giving it up. \"Will you promise me then to be at peace?\"\n\nShe looked, while she debated, at his admirable present. \"I promise\nyou.\"\n\n\"Quite for ever?\"\n\n\"Quite for ever.\"\n\n\"Remember,\" he went on, to justify his demand, \"remember that in wiring\nyou she\'ll naturally speak even more for her husband than she has done\nin wiring me.\"\n\nIt was only at a word that Charlotte had a demur. \"\'Naturally\'--?\"\n\n\"Why, our marriage puts him for you, you see--or puts you for him--into\na new relation, whereas it leaves his relation to me unchanged. It\ntherefore gives him more to say to you about it.\"\n\n\"About its making me his stepmother-in-law--or whatever I SHOULD\nbecome?\" Over which, for a little, she not undivertedly mused. \"Yes,\nthere may easily be enough for a gentleman to say to a young woman about\nthat.\"\n\n\"Well, Amerigo can always be, according to the case, either as funny or\nas serious as you like; and whichever he may be for you, in sending you\na message, he\'ll be it ALL.\" And then as the girl, with one of her so\ndeeply and oddly, yet so tenderly, critical looks at him, failed to take\nup the remark, he found himself moved, as by a vague anxiety, to add a\nquestion. \"Don\'t you think he\'s charming?\"\n\n\"Oh, charming,\" said Charlotte Stant. \"If he weren\'t I shouldn\'t mind.\"\n\n\"No more should I!\" her friend harmoniously returned.\n\n\"Ah, but you DON\'T mind. You don\'t have to. You don\'t have to, I mean,\nas I have. It\'s the last folly ever to care, in an anxious way, the\nleast particle more than one is absolutely forced. If I were you,\" she\nwent on--\"if I had in my life, for happiness and power and peace, even\na small fraction of what you have, it would take a great deal to make me\nwaste my worry. I don\'t know,\" she said, \"what in the world--that didn\'t\ntouch my luck--I should trouble my head about.\"\n\n\"I quite understand you--yet doesn\'t it just depend,\" Mr. Verver asked,\n\"on what you call one\'s luck? It\'s exactly my luck that I\'m talking\nabout. I shall be as sublime as you like when you\'ve made me all right.\nIt\'s only when one is right that one really has the things you speak of.\nIt isn\'t they,\" he explained, \"that make one so: it\'s the something else\nI want that makes THEM right. If you\'ll give me what I ask, you\'ll see.\"\n\nShe had taken her boa and thrown it over her shoulders, and her eyes,\nwhile she still delayed, had turned from him, engaged by another\ninterest, though the court was by this time, the hour of dispersal for\nluncheon, so forsaken that they would have had it, for free talk, should\nthey have been moved to loudness, quite to themselves. She was ready\nfor their adjournment, but she was also aware of a pedestrian youth,\nin uniform, a visible emissary of the Postes et Telegraphes, who had\napproached, from the street, the small stronghold of the concierge and\nwho presented there a missive taken from the little cartridge-box slung\nover his shoulder. The portress, meeting him on the threshold, met\nequally, across the court, Charlotte\'s marked attention to his visit,\nso that, within the minute, she had advanced to our friends with her\ncap-streamers flying and her smile of announcement as ample as her\nbroad white apron. She raised aloft a telegraphic message and, as she\ndelivered it, sociably discriminated. \"Cette fois-ci pour madame!\"--with\nwhich she as genially retreated, leaving Charlotte in possession.\nCharlotte, taking it, held it at first unopened. Her eyes had come back\nto her companion, who had immediately and triumphantly greeted it. \"Ah,\nthere you are!\"\n\nShe broke the envelope then in silence, and for a minute, as with the\nmessage he himself had put before her, studied its contents without\na sign. He watched her without a question, and at last she looked up.\n\"I\'ll give you,\" she simply said, \"what you ask.\"\n\nThe expression of her face was strange--but since when had a woman\'s at\nmoments of supreme surrender not a right to be? He took it in with his\nown long look and his grateful silence--so that nothing more, for some\ninstants, passed between them. Their understanding sealed itself--he\nalready felt that she had made him right. But he was in presence too\nof the fact that Maggie had made HER so; and always, therefore, without\nMaggie, where, in fine, would he be? She united them, brought them\ntogether as with the click of a silver spring, and, on the spot, with\nthe vision of it, his eyes filled, Charlotte facing him meanwhile with\nher expression made still stranger by the blur of his gratitude. Through\nit all, however, he smiled. \"What my child does for me--!\"\n\nThrough it all as well, that is still through the blur, he saw\nCharlotte, rather than heard her, reply. She held her paper wide open,\nbut her eyes were all for his. \"It isn\'t Maggie. It\'s the Prince.\"\n\n\"I SAY!\"--he gaily rang out. \"Then it\'s best of all.\"\n\n\"It\'s enough.\"\n\n\"Thank you for thinking so!\" To which he added \"It\'s enough for\nour question, but it isn\'t--is it? quite enough for our breakfast?\nDejeunons.\"\n\nShe stood there, however, in spite of this appeal, her document always\nbefore them. \"Don\'t you want to read it?\"\n\nHe thought. \"Not if it satisfies you. I don\'t require it.\"\n\nBut she gave him, as for her conscience, another chance. \"You can if you\nlike.\"\n\nHe hesitated afresh, but as for amiability, not for curiosity. \"Is it\nfunny?\"\n\nThus, finally, she again dropped her eyes on it, drawing in her lips a\nlittle. \"No--I call it grave.\"\n\n\"Ah, then, I don\'t want it.\"\n\n\"Very grave,\" said Charlotte Stant.\n\n\"Well, what did I tell you of him?\" he asked, rejoicing, as they\nstarted: a question for all answer to which, before she took his arm,\nthe girl thrust her paper, crumpled, into the pocket of her coat.\n\n\n\n\nPART THIRD\n\n XIV\n\nCharlotte, half way up the \"monumental\" staircase, had begun by waiting\nalone--waiting to be rejoined by her companion, who had gone down all\nthe way, as in common kindness bound, and who, his duty performed, would\nknow where to find her. She was meanwhile, though extremely apparent,\nnot perhaps absolutely advertised; but she would not have cared if she\nhad been--so little was it, by this time, her first occasion of facing\nsociety with a consciousness materially, with a confidence quite\nsplendidly, enriched. For a couple of years now she had known as never\nbefore what it was to look \"well\"--to look, that is, as well as she had\nalways felt, from far back, that, in certain conditions, she might.\nOn such an evening as this, that of a great official party in the\nfull flush of the London spring-time, the conditions affected her, her\nnerves, her senses, her imagination, as all profusely present; so that\nperhaps at no moment yet had she been so justified of her faith as at\nthe particular instant of our being again concerned with her, that of\nher chancing to glance higher up from where she stood and meeting in\nconsequence the quiet eyes of Colonel Assingham, who had his elbows on\nthe broad balustrade of the great gallery overhanging the staircase and\nwho immediately exchanged with her one of his most artlessly familiar\nsignals. This simplicity of his visual attention struck her, even with\nthe other things she had to think about, as the quietest note in the\nwhole high pitch--much, in fact, as if she had pressed a finger on a\nchord or a key and created, for the number of seconds, an arrest of\nvibration, a more muffled thump. The sight of him suggested indeed that\nFanny would be there, though so far as opportunity went she had not seen\nher. This was about the limit of what it could suggest.\n\nThe air, however, had suggestions enough--it abounded in them, many of\nthem precisely helping to constitute those conditions with which, for\nour young woman, the hour was brilliantly crowned. She was herself in\ntruth crowned, and it all hung together, melted together, in light and\ncolour and sound: the unsurpassed diamonds that her head so happily\ncarried, the other jewels, the other perfections of aspect and\narrangement that made her personal scheme a success, the PROVED private\ntheory that materials to work with had been all she required and that\nthere were none too precious for her to understand and use--to which\nmight be added lastly, as the strong-scented flower of the total\nsweetness, an easy command, a high enjoyment, of her crisis. For a\ncrisis she was ready to take it, and this ease it was, doubtless, that\nhelped her, while she waited, to the right assurance, to the right\nindifference, to the right expression, and above all, as she felt,\nto the right view of her opportunity for happiness--unless indeed the\nopportunity itself, rather, were, in its mere strange amplitude, the\nproducing, the precipitating cause. The ordered revellers, rustling and\nshining, with sweep of train and glitter of star and clink of sword, and\nyet, for all this, but so imperfectly articulate, so vaguely vocal--the\ndouble stream of the coming and the going, flowing together where she\nstood, passed her, brushed her, treated her to much crude contemplation\nand now and then to a spasm of speech, an offered hand, even in some\ncases to an unencouraged pause; but she missed no countenance and\ninvited no protection: she fairly liked to be, so long as she might,\njust as she was--exposed a little to the public, no doubt, in her\nunaccompanied state, but, even if it were a bit brazen, careless of\nqueer reflections on the dull polish of London faces, and exposed, since\nit was a question of exposure, to much more competent recognitions\nof her own. She hoped no one would stop--she was positively keeping\nherself; it was her idea to mark in a particular manner the importance\nof something that had just happened. She knew how she should mark it,\nand what she was doing there made already a beginning.\n\nWhen presently, therefore, from her standpoint, she saw the Prince come\nback she had an impression of all the place as higher and wider and\nmore appointed for great moments; with its dome of lustres lifted,\nits ascents and descents more majestic, its marble tiers more vividly\noverhung, its numerosity of royalties, foreign and domestic, more\nunprecedented, its symbolism of \"State\" hospitality both emphasised and\nrefined. This was doubtless a large consequence of a fairly familiar\ncause, a considerable inward stir to spring from the mere vision,\nstriking as that might be, of Amerigo in a crowd; but she had her\nreasons, she held them there, she carried them in fact, responsibly and\novertly, as she carried her head, her high tiara, her folded fan, her\nindifferent, unattended eminence; and it was when he reached her and she\ncould, taking his arm, show herself as placed in her relation, that she\nfelt supremely justified. It was her notion of course that she gave a\nglimpse of but few of her grounds for this discrimination--indeed of the\nmost evident alone; yet she would have been half willing it should be\nguessed how she drew inspiration, drew support, in quantity sufficient\nfor almost anything, from the individual value that, through all the\npicture, her husband\'s son-in-law kept for the eye, deriving it from\nhis fine unconscious way, in the swarming social sum, of outshining,\noverlooking and overtopping. It was as if in separation, even the\nshortest, she half forgot or disbelieved how he affected her sight, so\nthat reappearance had, in him, each time, a virtue of its own--a kind of\ndisproportionate intensity suggesting his connection with occult sources\nof renewal. What did he do when he was away from her that made him\nalways come back only looking, as she would have called it, \"more so?\"\nSuperior to any shade of cabotinage, he yet almost resembled an actor\nwho, between his moments on the stage, revisits his dressing-room and,\nbefore the glass, pressed by his need of effect, retouches his make-up.\nThe Prince was at present, for instance, though he had quitted her but\nten minutes before, still more than then the person it pleased her to be\nleft with--a truth that had all its force for her while he made her\nhis care for their conspicuous return together to the upper rooms.\nConspicuous beyond any wish they could entertain was what, poor\nwonderful man, he couldn\'t help making it; and when she raised her eyes\nagain, on the ascent, to Bob Assingham, still aloft in his gallery and\nstill looking down at her, she was aware that, in spite of hovering and\nwarning inward voices, she even enjoyed the testimony rendered by his\nlonely vigil to the lustre she reflected.\n\nHe was always lonely at great parties, the dear Colonel--it wasn\'t in\nsuch places that the seed he sowed at home was ever reaped by him; but\nnobody could have seemed to mind it less, to brave it with more bronzed\nindifference; so markedly that he moved about less like one of the\nguests than like some quite presentable person in charge of the police\narrangements or the electric light. To Mrs. Verver, as will be seen,\nhe represented, with the perfect good faith of his apparent blankness,\nsomething definite enough; though her bravery was not thereby too\nblighted for her to feel herself calling him to witness that the only\nwitchcraft her companion had used, within the few minutes, was that of\nattending Maggie, who had withdrawn from the scene, to her carriage.\nNotified, at all events, of Fanny\'s probable presence, Charlotte was,\nfor a while after this, divided between the sense of it as a fact\nsomehow to reckon with and deal with, which was a perception that made,\nin its degree, for the prudence, the pusillanimity of postponement, of\navoidance--and a quite other feeling, an impatience that presently ended\nby prevailing, an eagerness, really, to BE suspected, sounded, veritably\narraigned, if only that she might have the bad moment over, if only that\nshe might prove to herself, let alone to Mrs. Assingham also, that she\ncould convert it to good; if only, in short, to be \"square,\" as they\nsaid, with her question. For herself indeed, particularly, it wasn\'t a\nquestion; but something in her bones told her that Fanny would treat it\nas one, and there was truly nothing that, from this friend, she was not\nbound in decency to take. She might hand things back with every tender\nprecaution, with acknowledgments and assurances, but she owed it to\nthem, in any case, and it to all Mrs. Assingham had done for her, not to\nget rid of them without having well unwrapped and turned them over.\n\nTo-night, as happened--and she recognised it more and more, with the\nebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her--to-night\nexactly, she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she\nmight at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process\nwith the right temper and tone. She said, after a little, to the Prince,\n\"Stay with me; let no one take you; for I want her, yes, I do want her\nto see us together, and the sooner the better\"--said it to keep her hand\non him through constant diversions, and made him, in fact, by saying\nit, profess a momentary vagueness. She had to explain to him that it was\nFanny Assingham, she wanted to see--who clearly would be there, since\nthe Colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned\nhimself for her fate; and she had, further, after Amerigo had met\nher with \"See us together? why in the world? hasn\'t she often seen us\ntogether?\" to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened\ndidn\'t now matter and that she at any rate well knew, for the occasion,\nwhat she was about. \"You\'re strange, cara mia,\" he consentingly enough\ndropped; but, for whatever strangeness, he kept her, as they circulated,\nfrom being waylaid, even remarking to her afresh as he had often done\nbefore, on the help rendered, in such situations, by the intrinsic\noddity of the London \"squash,\" a thing of vague, slow, senseless eddies,\nrevolving as in fear of some menace of conversation suspended over it,\nthe drop of which, with some consequent refreshing splash or spatter,\nyet never took place. Of course she was strange; this, as they went,\nCharlotte knew for herself: how could she be anything else when the\nsituation holding her, and holding him, for that matter, just as much,\nhad so the stamp of it? She had already accepted her consciousness, as\nwe have already noted, that a crisis, for them all, was in the air; and\nwhen such hours were not depressing, which was the form indeed in\nwhich she had mainly known them, they were apparently in a high degree\nexhilarating.\n\nLater on, in a corner to which, at sight of an empty sofa, Mrs.\nAssingham had, after a single attentive arrest, led her with a certain\nearnestness, this vision of the critical was much more sharpened than\nblurred. Fanny had taken it from her: yes, she was there with Amerigo\nalone, Maggie having come with them and then, within ten minutes,\nchanged her mind, repented and departed. \"So you\'re staying on together\nwithout her?\" the elder woman had asked; and it was Charlotte\'s answer\nto this that had determined for them, quite indeed according to the\nlatter\'s expectation, the need of some seclusion and her companion\'s\npounce at the sofa. They were staying on together alone, and--oh\ndistinctly!--it was alone that Maggie had driven away, her father, as\nusual, not having managed to come. \"\'As usual\'--?\" Mrs. Assingham had\nseemed to wonder; Mr. Verver\'s reluctances not having, she in fact quite\nintimated, hitherto struck her. Charlotte responded, at any rate, that\nhis indisposition to go out had lately much increased--even though\nto-night, as she admitted, he had pleaded his not feeling well. Maggie\nhad wished to stay with him--for the Prince and she, dining out, had\nafterwards called in Portland Place, whence, in the event, they\nhad brought her, Charlotte, on. Maggie had come but to oblige her\nfather--she had urged the two others to go without her; then she had\nyielded, for the time, to Mr. Verver\'s persuasion. But here, when they\nhad, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up\nthe stairs, with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing\nher: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present\ntherefore, as Charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together\na little party at home. But it was all right--so Charlotte also put it:\nthere was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched\nfelicities, little parties, long talks, with \"I\'ll come to you\nto-morrow,\" and \"No, I\'ll come to you,\" make-believe renewals of their\nold life. They were fairly, at times, the dear things, like children\nplaying at paying visits, playing at \"Mr. Thompson\" and \"Mrs. Fane,\"\neach hoping that the other would really stay to tea. Charlotte was sure\nshe should find Maggie there on getting home--a remark in which Mrs.\nVerver\'s immediate response to her friend\'s inquiry had culminated. She\nhad thus, on the spot, the sense of having given her plenty to think\nabout, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had\nexpected. She had plenty to think about herself, and there was already\nsomething in Fanny that made it seem still more.\n\n\"You say your husband\'s ill? He felt too ill to come?\"\n\n\"No, my dear--I think not. If he had been too ill I wouldn\'t have left\nhim.\"\n\n\"And yet Maggie was worried?\" Mrs. Assingham asked.\n\n\"She worries, you know, easily. She\'s afraid of influenza--of which\nhe has had, at different times, though never with the least gravity,\nseveral attacks.\"\n\n\"But you\'re not afraid of it?\"\n\nCharlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her\nthat really to have her case \"out,\" as they said, with the person in\nthe world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred\nthemselves, would help her, on the whole, more than hinder; and under\nthat feeling all her opportunity, with nothing kept back; with a thing\nor two perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. Besides,\ndidn\'t Fanny at bottom half expect, absolutely at the bottom half WANT,\nthings?--so that she would be disappointed if, after what must just\nhave occurred for her, she didn\'t get something to put between the teeth\nof her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which\nour young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have \"gone\ntoo far\" in her irrepressible interest in other lives. What had\njust happened--it pieced itself together for Charlotte--was that the\nAssingham pair, drifting like everyone else, had had somewhere in\nthe gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the\nColonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high\nlight, her public junction with the Prince. His very dryness, in this\nencounter, had, as always, struck a spark from his wife\'s curiosity,\nand, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he had\nthrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of\nher young friends was \"going on\" with another. He knew perfectly--such\nat least was Charlotte\'s liberal assumption--that she wasn\'t going on\nwith anyone, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was\ninevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous\nintercourse of the inimitable couple. The Prince meanwhile had also,\nunder coercion, sacrificed her; the Ambassador had come up to him with\na message from Royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had\ntalked for five minutes with Sir John Brinder, who had been of the\nAmbassador\'s company and who had rather artlessly remained with her.\nFanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as someone\nelse she didn\'t know, someone who knew Mrs. Assingham and also knew Sir\nJohn. Charlotte had left it to her friend\'s competence to throw the two\nothers immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in\ncloser quarters. This was the little history of the vision, in her, that\nwas now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance\nthat mightn\'t again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. Her\npoint was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was\nher own. She had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even\nAmerigo--Amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it--had\ngiven her aid. To make it now with force for Fanny Assingham\'s benefit\nwould see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned,\nthan any other spring she should, yet awhile, doubtless, be able to\npress. The direction was that of her greater freedom--which was all in\nthe world she had in mind. Her opportunity had accordingly, after a few\nminutes of Mrs. Assingham\'s almost imprudently interested expression\nof face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may, for\nourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding\nout a small mirror at arm\'s length and consulting it with a special turn\nof the head. It was, in a word, with this value of her chance that\nshe was intelligently playing when she said in answer to Fanny\'s last\nquestion: \"Don\'t you remember what you told me, on the occasion of\nsomething or other, the other day? That you believe there\'s nothing I\'m\nafraid of? So, my dear, don\'t ask me!\"\n\n\"Mayn\'t I ask you,\" Mrs. Assingham returned, \"how the case stands with\nyour poor husband?\"\n\n\"Certainly, dear. Only, when you ask me as if I mightn\'t perhaps know\nwhat to think, it seems to me best to let you see that I know perfectly\nwhat to think.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham hesitated; then, blinking a little, she took her risk.\n\"You didn\'t think that if it was a question of anyone\'s returning to\nhim, in his trouble, it would be better you yourself should have gone?\"\n\nWell, Charlotte\'s answer to this inquiry visibly shaped itself in the\ninterest of the highest considerations. The highest considerations were\ngood humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the REAL truth. \"If we\ncouldn\'t be perfectly frank and dear with each other, it would be ever\nso much better, wouldn\'t it? that we shouldn\'t talk about anything at\nall; which, however, would be dreadful--and we certainly, at any rate,\nhaven\'t yet come to it. You can ask me anything under the sun you like,\nbecause, don\'t you see? you can\'t upset me.\"\n\n\"I\'m sure, my dear Charlotte,\" Fanny Assingham laughed, \"I don\'t want to\nupset you.\"\n\n\"Indeed, love, you simply COULDN\'T even if you thought it\nnecessary--that\'s all I mean. Nobody could, for it belongs to my\nsituation that I\'m, by no merit of my own, just fixed--fixed as fast as\na pin stuck, up to its head, in a cushion. I\'m placed--I can\'t imagine\nanyone MORE placed. There I AM!\"\n\nFanny had indeed never listened to emphasis more firmly applied, and it\nbrought into her own eyes, though she had reasons for striving to keep\nthem from betrayals, a sort of anxiety of intelligence. \"I dare say--but\nyour statement of your position, however you see it, isn\'t an answer to\nmy inquiry. It seems to me, at the same time, I confess,\" Mrs. Assingham\nadded, \"to give but the more reason for it. You speak of our being\n\'frank.\' How can we possibly be anything else? If Maggie has gone off\nthrough finding herself too distressed to stay, and if she\'s willing to\nleave you and her husband to show here without her, aren\'t the grounds\nof her preoccupation more or less discussable?\"\n\n\"If they\'re not,\" Charlotte replied, \"it\'s only from their being, in\na way, too evident. They\'re not grounds for me--they weren\'t when I\naccepted Adam\'s preference that I should come to-night without him: just\nas I accept, absolutely, as a fixed rule, ALL his preferences. But that\ndoesn\'t alter the fact, of course, that my husband\'s daughter, rather\nthan his wife, should have felt SHE could, after all, be the one to\nstay with him, the one to make the sacrifice of this hour--seeing,\nespecially, that the daughter has a husband of her own in the field.\"\nWith which she produced, as it were, her explanation. \"I\'ve simply to\nsee the truth of the matter--see that Maggie thinks more, on the whole,\nof fathers than of husbands. And my situation is such,\" she went on,\n\"that this becomes immediately, don\'t you understand? a thing I have to\ncount with.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, vaguely heaving, panting a little but trying not to show\nit, turned about, from some inward spring, in her seat. \"If you mean\nsuch a thing as that she doesn\'t adore the Prince--!\"\n\n\"I don\'t say she doesn\'t adore him. What I say is that she doesn\'t think\nof him. One of those conditions doesn\'t always, at all stages, involve\nthe other. This is just HOW she adores him,\" Charlotte said. \"And what\nreason is there, in the world, after all, why he and I shouldn\'t, as\nyou say, show together? We\'ve shown together, my dear,\" she smiled,\n\"before.\"\n\nHer friend, for a little, only looked at her--speaking then with\nabruptness. \"You ought to be absolutely happy. You live with such GOOD\npeople.\"\n\nThe effect of it, as well, was an arrest for Charlotte; whose face,\nhowever, all of whose fine and slightly hard radiance, it had caused,\nthe next instant, further to brighten. \"Does one ever put into words\nanything so fatuously rash? It\'s a thing that must be said, in prudence,\nFOR one--by somebody who\'s so good as to take the responsibility: the\nmore that it gives one always a chance to show one\'s best manners by\nnot contradicting it. Certainly, you\'ll never have the distress, or\nwhatever, of hearing me complain.\"\n\n\"Truly, my dear, I hope in all conscience not!\" and the elder woman\'s\nspirit found relief in a laugh more resonant than was quite advised by\ntheir pursuit of privacy.\n\nTo this demonstration her friend gave no heed. \"With all our absence\nafter marriage, and with the separation from her produced in particular\nby our so many months in America, Maggie has still arrears, still losses\nto make up--still the need of showing how, for so long, she simply kept\nmissing him. She missed his company--a large allowance of which is, in\nspite of everything else, of the first necessity to her. So she puts it\nin when she can--a little here, a little there, and it ends by making up\na considerable amount. The fact of our distinct establishments--which\nhas, all the same, everything in its favour,\" Charlotte hastened to\ndeclare, \"makes her really see more of him than when they had the same\nhouse. To make sure she doesn\'t fail of it she\'s always arranging for\nit--which she didn\'t have to do while they lived together. But she likes\nto arrange,\" Charlotte steadily proceeded; \"it peculiarly suits her; and\nthe result of our separate households is really, for them, more contact\nand more intimacy. To-night, for instance, has been practically an\narrangement. She likes him best alone. And it\'s the way,\" said our young\nwoman, \"in which he best likes HER. It\'s what I mean therefore by being\n\'placed.\' And the great thing is, as they say, to \'know\' one\'s place.\nDoesn\'t it all strike you,\" she wound up, \"as rather placing the Prince\ntoo?\"\n\nFanny Assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish\npresented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast--so thick were\nthe notes of intention in this remarkable speech. But she also felt that\nto plunge at random, to help herself too freely, would--apart from there\nnot being at such a moment time for it--tend to jostle the ministering\nhand, confound the array and, more vulgarly speaking, make a mess. So\nshe picked out, after consideration, a solitary plum. \"So placed that\nYOU have to arrange?\"\n\n\"Certainly I have to arrange.\"\n\n\"And the Prince also--if the effect for him is the same?\"\n\n\"Really, I think, not less.\"\n\n\"And does he arrange,\" Mrs. Assingham asked, \"to make up HIS arrears?\"\nThe question had risen to her lips--it was as if another morsel, on the\ndish, had tempted her. The sound of it struck her own ear, immediately,\nas giving out more of her thought than she had as yet intended; but she\nquickly saw that she must follow it up, at any risk, with simplicity,\nand that what was simplest was the ease of boldness. \"Make them up, I\nmean, by coming to see YOU?\"\n\nCharlotte replied, however, without, as her friend would have phrased\nit, turning a hair. She shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle.\n\"He never comes.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Fanny Assingham: with which she felt a little stupid. \"There\nit is. He might so well, you know, otherwise.\"\n\n\"\'Otherwise\'?\"--and Fanny was still vague.\n\nIt passed, this time, over her companion, whose eyes, wandering, to\na distance, found themselves held. The Prince was at hand again; the\nAmbassador was still at his side; they were stopped a moment by a\nuniformed personage, a little old man, of apparently the highest\nmilitary character, bristling with medals and orders. This gave\nCharlotte time to go on. \"He has not been for three months.\" And then as\nwith her friend\'s last word in her ear: \"\'Otherwise\'--yes. He arranges\notherwise. And in my position,\" she added, \"I might too. It\'s too absurd\nwe shouldn\'t meet.\"\n\n\"You\'ve met, I gather,\" said Fanny Assingham, \"to-night.\"\n\n\"Yes--as far as that goes. But what I mean is that I might--placed for\nit as we both are--go to see HIM.\"\n\n\"And do you?\" Fanny asked with almost mistaken solemnity.\n\nThe perception of this excess made Charlotte, whether for gravity or for\nirony, hang fire a minute. \"I HAVE been. But that\'s nothing,\" she said,\n\"in itself, and I tell you of it only to show you how our situation\nworks. It essentially becomes one, a situation, for both of us. The\nPrince\'s, however, is his own affair--I meant but to speak of mine.\"\n\n\"Your situation\'s perfect,\" Mrs. Assingham presently declared.\n\n\"I don\'t say it isn\'t. Taken, in fact, all round, I think it is. And I\ndon\'t, as I tell you, complain of it. The only thing is that I have to\nact as it demands of me.\"\n\n\"To \'act\'?\" said Mrs. Assingham with an irrepressible quaver.\n\n\"Isn\'t it acting, my dear, to accept it? I do accept it. What do you\nwant me to do less?\"\n\n\"I want you to believe that you\'re a very fortunate person.\"\n\n\"Do you call that LESS?\" Charlotte asked with a smile. \"From the point\nof view of my freedom I call it more. Let it take, my position, any name\nyou like.\"\n\n\"Don\'t let it, at any rate\"--and Mrs. Assingham\'s impatience prevailed\nat last over her presence of mind--\"don\'t let it make you think too much\nof your freedom.\"\n\n\"I don\'t know what you call too much--for how can I not see it as it\nis? You\'d see your own quickly enough if the Colonel gave you the same\nliberty--and I haven\'t to tell you, with your so much greater knowledge\nof everything, what it is that gives such liberty most. For yourself\npersonally of course,\" Charlotte went on, \"you only know the state of\nneither needing it nor missing it. Your husband doesn\'t treat you as of\nless importance to him than some other woman.\"\n\n\"Ah, don\'t talk to me of other women!\" Fanny now overtly panted. \"Do you\ncall Mr. Verver\'s perfectly natural interest in his daughter--?\"\n\n\"The greatest affection of which he is capable?\" Charlotte took it up\nin all readiness. \"I do distinctly--and in spite of my having done all I\ncould think of--to make him capable of a greater. I\'ve done, earnestly,\neverything I could--I\'ve made it, month after month, my study. But I\nhaven\'t succeeded--it has been vividly brought home to me to-night.\nHowever,\" she pursued, \"I\'ve hoped against hope, for I recognise that,\nas I told you at the time, I was duly warned.\" And then as she met in\nher friend\'s face the absence of any such remembrance: \"He did tell me\nthat he wanted me just BECAUSE I could be useful about her.\" With which\nCharlotte broke into a wonderful smile. \"So you see I AM!\"\n\nIt was on Fanny Assingham\'s lips for the moment to reply that this was,\non the contrary, exactly what she didn\'t see; she came in fact within an\nace of saying: \"You strike me as having quite failed to help his idea to\nwork--since, by your account, Maggie has him not less, but so much more,\non her mind. How in the world, with so much of a remedy, comes there\nto remain so much of what was to be obviated?\" But she saved herself\nin time, conscious above all that she was in presence of still deeper\nthings than she had yet dared to fear, that there was \"more in it\"\nthan any admission she had made represented--and she had held herself\nfamiliar with admissions: so that, not to seem to understand where she\ncouldn\'t accept, and not to seem to accept where she couldn\'t approve,\nand could still less, with precipitation, advise, she invoked the mere\nappearance of casting no weight whatever into the scales of her young\nfriend\'s consistency. The only thing was that, as she was quickly\nenough to feel, she invoked it rather to excess. It brought her, her\ninvocation, too abruptly to her feet. She brushed away everything. \"I\ncan\'t conceive, my dear, what you\'re talking about!\"\n\nCharlotte promptly rose then, as might be, to meet it, and her colour,\nfor the first time, perceptibly heightened. She looked, for the minute,\nas her companion had looked--as if twenty protests, blocking each\nother\'s way, had surged up within her. But when Charlotte had to make a\nselection, her selection was always the most effective possible. It was\nhappy now, above all, for being made not in anger but in sorrow. \"You\ngive me up then?\"\n\n\"Give you up--?\"\n\n\"You forsake me at the hour of my life when it seems to me I most\ndeserve a friend\'s loyalty? If you do you\'re not just, Fanny; you\'re\neven, I think,\" she went on, \"rather cruel; and it\'s least of all\nworthy of you to seem to wish to quarrel with me in order to cover your\ndesertion.\" She spoke, at the same time, with the noblest moderation of\ntone, and the image of high, pale, lighted disappointment she meanwhile\npresented, as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour, was an\nimpression so firmly imposed that she could fill her measure to the\nbrim and yet enjoy the last word, as it is called in such cases, with a\nperfection void of any vulgarity of triumph. She merely completed,\nfor truth\'s sake, her demonstration. \"What is a quarrel with me but a\nquarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain? But I\ncan carry them out alone,\" she said as she turned away. She turned\nto meet the Ambassador and the Prince, who, their colloquy with their\nField-Marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she\nwas aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden\nglow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed. She had made\nher point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it\nthoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and\nher success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction\nbefore her, unmistakably moved to admiration by her exceptional\nradiance. She at first but watched this reflection, taking no note of\nany less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor Fanny--poor\nFanny left to stare at her incurred \"score,\" chalked up in so few\nstrokes on the wall; then she took in what the Ambassador was saying, in\nFrench, what he was apparently repeating to her.\n\n\"A desire for your presence, Madame, has been expressed en tres-haut\nlieu, and I\'ve let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of\nthe honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that\nso august an impatience is not kept waiting.\" The greatest possible\nPersonage had, in short, according to the odd formula of societies\nsubject to the greatest personages possible, \"sent for\" her, and she\nasked, in her surprise, \"What in the world does he want to do to me?\"\nonly to know, without looking, that Fanny\'s bewilderment was called to\na still larger application, and to hear the Prince say with authority,\nindeed with a certain prompt dryness: \"You must go immediately--it\'s a\nsummons.\" The Ambassador, using authority as well, had already somehow\npossessed himself of her hand, which he drew into his arm, and she was\nfurther conscious as she went off with him that, though still speaking\nfor her benefit, Amerigo had turned to Fanny Assingham. He would explain\nafterwards--besides which she would understand for herself. To\nFanny, however, he had laughed--as a mark, apparently, that for this\ninfallible friend no explanation at all would be necessary.\n\n\n\n\n XV\n\nIt may be recorded none the less that the Prince was the next moment to\nsee how little any such assumption was founded. Alone with him now Mrs.\nAssingham was incorruptible. \"They send for Charlotte through YOU?\"\n\n\"No, my dear; as you see, through the Ambassador.\"\n\n\"Ah, but the Ambassador and you, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, have\nbeen for them as one. He\'s YOUR ambassador.\" It may indeed be further\nmentioned that the more Fanny looked at it the more she saw in it.\n\"They\'ve connected her with you--she\'s treated as your appendage.\"\n\n\"Oh, my \'appendage,\'\" the Prince amusedly exclaimed--\"cara mia, what a\nname! She\'s treated, rather, say, as my ornament and my glory. And it\'s\nso remarkable a case for a mother-in-law that you surely can\'t find\nfault with it.\"\n\n\"You\'ve ornaments enough, it seems to me--as you\'ve certainly glories\nenough--without her. And she\'s not the least little bit,\" Mrs. Assingham\nobserved, \"your mother-in-law. In such a matter a shade of difference is\nenormous. She\'s no relation to you whatever, and if she\'s known in\nhigh quarters but as going about with you, then--then--!\" She failed,\nhowever, as from positive intensity of vision. \"Then, then what?\" he\nasked with perfect good-nature.\n\n\"She had better in such a case not be known at all.\"\n\n\"But I assure you I never, just now, so much as mentioned her. Do you\nsuppose I asked them,\" said the young man, still amused, \"if they didn\'t\nwant to see her? You surely don\'t need to be shown that Charlotte speaks\nfor herself--that she does so above all on such an occasion as this and\nlooking as she does to-night. How, so looking, can she pass unnoticed?\nHow can she not have \'success\'? Besides,\" he added as she but watched\nhis face, letting him say what he would, as if she wanted to see how he\nwould say it, \"besides, there IS always the fact that we\'re of the same\nconnection, of--what is your word?--the same \'concern.\' We\'re\ncertainly not, with the relation of our respective sposi, simply formal\nacquaintances. We\'re in the same boat\"--and the Prince smiled with a\ncandour that added an accent to his emphasis.\n\nFanny Assingham was full of the special sense of his manner: it\ncaused her to turn for a moment\'s refuge to a corner of her general\nconsciousness in which she could say to herself that she was glad SHE\nwasn\'t in love with such a man. As with Charlotte just before, she was\nembarrassed by the difference between what she took in and what she\ncould say, what she felt and what she could show. \"It only appears to\nme of great importance that--now that you all seem more settled\nhere--Charlotte should be known, for any presentation, any further\ncirculation or introduction, as, in particular, her husband\'s wife;\nknown in the least possible degree as anything else. I don\'t know what\nyou mean by the \'same\' boat. Charlotte is naturally in Mr. Verver\'s\nboat.\"\n\n\"And, pray, am _I_ not in Mr. Verver\'s boat too? Why, but for Mr.\nVerver\'s boat, I should have been by this time\"--and his quick Italian\ngesture, an expressive direction and motion of his forefinger, pointed\nto deepest depths--\"away down, down, down.\" She knew of course what he\nmeant--how it had taken his father-in-law\'s great fortune, and taken no\nsmall slice, to surround him with an element in which, all too fatally\nweighted as he had originally been, he could pecuniarily float; and with\nthis reminder other things came to her--how strange it was that, with\nall allowance for their merit, it should befall some people to be so\ninordinately valued, quoted, as they said in the stock-market, so high,\nand how still stranger, perhaps, that there should be cases in which,\nfor some reason, one didn\'t mind the so frequently marked absence in\nthem of the purpose really to represent their price. She was thinking,\nfeeling, at any rate, for herself; she was thinking that the pleasure\nSHE could take in this specimen of the class didn\'t suffer from his\nconsent to be merely made buoyant: partly because it was one of those\npleasures (he inspired them) that, by their nature, COULDN\'T suffer, to\nwhatever proof they were put; and partly because, besides, he after all\nvisibly had on his conscience some sort of return for services\nrendered. He was a huge expense assuredly--but it had been up to now her\nconviction that his idea was to behave beautifully enough to make the\nbeauty well nigh an equivalent. And that he had carried out his idea,\ncarried it out by continuing to lead the life, to breathe the air, very\nnearly to think the thoughts, that best suited his wife and her father--\nthis she had till lately enjoyed the comfort of so distinctly perceiving\nas to have even been moved more than once, to express to him the\nhappiness it gave her. He had that in his favour as against other\nmatters; yet it discouraged her too, and rather oddly, that he should so\nkeep moving, and be able to show her that he moved, on the firm ground\nof the truth. His acknowledgment of obligation was far from unimportant,\nbut she could find in his grasp of the real itself a kind of ominous\nintimation. The intimation appeared to peep at her even out of his next\nword, lightly as he produced it.\n\n\"Isn\'t it rather as if we had, Charlotte and I, for bringing\nus together, a benefactor in common?\" And the effect, for his\ninterlocutress, was still further to be deepened. \"I somehow feel, half\nthe time, as if he were her father-in-law too. It\'s as if he had saved\nus both--which is a fact in our lives, or at any rate in our hearts, to\nmake of itself a link. Don\'t you remember\"--he kept it up--\"how, the day\nshe suddenly turned up for you, just before my wedding, we so frankly\nand funnily talked, in her presence, of the advisability, for her, of\nsome good marriage?\" And then as his friend\'s face, in her extremity,\nquite again as with Charlotte, but continued to fly the black flag of\ngeneral repudiation: \"Well, we really began then, as it seems to me, the\nwork of placing her where she is. We were wholly right--and so was she.\nThat it was exactly the thing is shown by its success. We recommended\na good marriage at almost any price, so to speak, and, taking us at our\nword, she has made the very best. That was really what we meant, wasn\'t\nit? Only--what she has got--something thoroughly good. It would be\ndifficult, it seems to me, for her to have anything better--once you\nallow her the way it\'s to be taken. Of course if you don\'t allow her\nthat the case is different. Her offset is a certain decent freedom--\nwhich, I judge, she\'ll be quite contented with. You may say that will be\nvery good of her, but she strikes me as perfectly humble about it.\nShe proposes neither to claim it nor to use it with any sort of\nretentissement. She would enjoy it, I think, quite as quietly as it\nmight be given. The \'boat,\' you see\"--the Prince explained it no less\nconsiderately and lucidly--\"is a good deal tied up at the dock, or\nanchored, if you like, out in the stream. I have to jump out from time\nto time to stretch my legs, and you\'ll probably perceive, if you give it\nyour attention, that Charlotte really can\'t help occasionally doing\nthe same. It isn\'t even a question, sometimes, of one\'s getting to the\ndock--one has to take a header and splash about in the water. Call our\nhaving remained here together to-night, call the accident of my\nhaving put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my\ncompanion\'s track--for I grant you this as a practical result of our\ncombination--call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off\nthe deck, inevitable for each of us. Why not take them, when they occur,\nas inevitable--and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? We\nshan\'t drown, we shan\'t sink--at least I can answer for myself. Mrs.\nVerver too, moreover--do her the justice--visibly knows how to swim.\"\n\nHe could easily go on, for she didn\'t interrupt him; Fanny felt now that\nshe wouldn\'t have interrupted him for the world. She found his eloquence\nprecious; there was not a drop of it that she didn\'t, in a manner,\ncatch, as it came, for immediate bottling, for future preservation. The\ncrystal flask of her innermost attention really received it on the spot,\nand she had even already the vision of how, in the snug laboratory of\nher afterthought, she should be able chemically to analyse it. There\nwere moments, positively, still beyond this, when, with the meeting of\ntheir eyes, something as yet unnamable came out for her in his look,\nwhen something strange and subtle and at variance with his words,\nsomething that GAVE THEM AWAY, glimmered deep down, as an appeal, almost\nan incredible one, to her finer comprehension. What, inconceivably,\nwas it like? Wasn\'t it, however gross, such a rendering of anything so\noccult, fairly like a quintessential wink, a hint of the possibility\nof their REALLY treating their subject--of course on some better\noccasion--and thereby, as well, finding it much more interesting? If\nthis far red spark, which might have been figured by her mind as the\nhead-light of an approaching train seen through the length of a tunnel,\nwas not, on her side, an ignis fatuus, a mere subjective phenomenon, it\ntwinkled there at the direct expense of what the Prince was inviting\nher to understand. Meanwhile too, however, and unmistakably, the real\ntreatment of their subject did, at a given moment, sound. This was when\nhe proceeded, with just the same perfect possession of his thought--on\nthe manner of which he couldn\'t have improved--to complete his\nsuccessful simile by another, in fact by just the supreme touch, the\ntouch for which it had till now been waiting. \"For Mrs. Verver to be\nknown to people so intensely and exclusively as her husband\'s wife,\nsomething is wanted that, you know, they haven\'t exactly got. He should\nmanage to be known--or at least to be seen--a little more as his wife\'s\nhusband. You surely must by this time have seen for yourself that he has\nhis own habits and his own ways, and that he makes, more and more--as\nof course he has a perfect right to do--his own discriminations. He\'s so\nperfect, so ideal a father, and, doubtless largely by that very fact,\na generous, a comfortable, an admirable father-in-law, that I should\nreally feel it base to avail myself of any standpoint whatever to\ncriticise him. To YOU, nevertheless, I may make just one remark; for\nyou\'re not stupid--you always understand so blessedly what one means.\"\n\nHe paused an instant, as if even this one remark might be difficult for\nhim should she give no sign of encouraging him to produce it. Nothing\nwould have induced her, however, to encourage him; she was now conscious\nof having never in her life stood so still or sat, inwardly, as it were,\nso tight; she felt like the horse of the adage, brought--and brought by\nher own fault--to the water, but strong, for the occasion, in the one\nfact that she couldn\'t be forced to drink. Invited, in other words, to\nunderstand, she held her breath for fear of showing she did, and this\nfor the excellent reason that she was at last fairly afraid to. It was\nsharp for her, at the same time, that she was certain, in advance, of\nhis remark; that she heard it before it had sounded, that she\nalready tasted, in fine, the bitterness it would have for her special\nsensibility. But her companion, from an inward and different need of his\nown, was presently not deterred by her silence. \"What I really don\'t see\nis why, from his own point of view--given, that is, his conditions, so\nfortunate as they stood--he should have wished to marry at all.\" There\nit was then--exactly what she knew would come, and exactly, for reasons\nthat seemed now to thump at her heart, as distressing to her. Yet she\nwas resolved, meanwhile, not to suffer, as they used to say of the\nmartyrs, then and there; not to suffer, odiously, helplessly, in\npublic--which could be prevented but by her breaking off, with whatever\ninconsequence; by her treating their discussion as ended and getting\naway. She suddenly wanted to go home much as she had wanted, an hour\nor two before, to come. She wanted to leave well behind her both her\nquestion and the couple in whom it had, abruptly, taken such vivid\nform--but it was dreadful to have the appearance of disconcerted flight.\nDiscussion had of itself, to her sense, become danger--such light, as\nfrom open crevices, it let in; and the overt recognition of danger was\nworse than anything else. The worst in fact came while she was thinking\nhow she could retreat and still not overtly recognise. Her face had\nbetrayed her trouble, and with that she was lost. \"I\'m afraid, however,\"\nthe Prince said, \"that I, for some reason, distress you--for which I beg\nyour pardon. We\'ve always talked so well together--it has been, from\nthe beginning, the greatest pull for me.\" Nothing so much as such a tone\ncould have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now at his mercy,\nand he showed, as he went on, that he knew it. \"We shall talk again, all\nthe same, better than ever--I depend on it too much. Don\'t you remember\nwhat I told you, so definitely, one day before my marriage?--that,\nmoving as I did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions,\nexpectations, assumptions different from any I had known, I looked to\nyou, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through. I\nbeg you to believe,\" he added, \"that I look to you yet.\"\n\nHis very insistence had, fortunately, the next moment, affected her as\nbringing her help; with which, at least, she could hold up her head to\nspeak. \"Ah, you ARE through--you were through long ago. Or if you aren\'t\nyou ought to be.\"\n\n\"Well then, if I ought to be it\'s all the more reason why you should\ncontinue to help me. Because, very distinctly, I assure you, I\'m not.\nThe new things or ever so many of them--are still for me new things;\nthe mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense\nelement that I\'ve failed to puzzle out. As we\'ve happened, so luckily,\nto find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as\nsoon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good, kind\nhour. If you refuse it me\"--and he addressed himself to her continued\nreserve--\"I shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your\nresponsibility.\"\n\nAt this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved an inadequate\nvessel. She could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on\nher mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press. \"Oh,\nI deny responsibility--to YOU. So far as I ever had it I\'ve done with\nit.\"\n\nHe had been, all the while, beautifully smiling; but she made his look,\nnow, penetrate her again more. \"As to whom then do you confess it?\"\n\n\"Ah, mio caro, that\'s--if to anyone--my own business!\"\n\nHe continued to look at her hard. \"You give me up then?\"\n\nIt was what Charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming\nfrom him so much in the same way shook her in her place. She was on the\npoint of replying \"Do you and she agree together for what you\'ll say\nto me?\"--but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time,\nlittle as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it. \"I think I don\'t\nknow what to make of you.\"\n\n\"You must receive me at least,\" he said.\n\n\"Oh, please, not till I\'m ready for you!\"--and, though she found a laugh\nfor it, she had to turn away. She had never turned away from him before,\nand it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of\nhim.\n\n\n\n XVI\n\nLater on, when their hired brougham had, with the long vociferation that\ntormented her impatience, been extricated from the endless rank, she\nrolled into the London night, beside her husband, as into a sheltering\ndarkness where she could muffle herself and draw breath. She had stood\nfor the previous half-hour in a merciless glare, beaten upon, stared out\nof countenance, it fairly seemed to her, by intimations of her mistake.\nFor what she was most immediately feeling was that she had, in the past,\nbeen active, for these people, to ends that were now bearing fruit and\nthat might yet bear a larger crop. She but brooded, at first, in her\ncorner of the carriage: it was like burying her exposed face, a face too\nhelplessly exposed, in the cool lap of the common indifference, of the\ndispeopled streets, of the closed shops and darkened houses seen\nthrough the window of the brougham, a world mercifully unconscious\nand unreproachful. It wouldn\'t, like the world she had just left, know\nsooner or later what she had done, or would know it, at least, only if\nthe final consequence should be some quite overwhelming publicity. She\nfixed this possibility itself so hard, however, for a few moments, that\nthe misery of her fear produced the next minute a reaction; and when the\ncarriage happened, while it grazed a turn, to catch the straight shaft\nfrom the lamp of a policeman in the act of playing his inquisitive\nflash over an opposite house-front, she let herself wince at being thus\nincriminated only that she might protest, not less quickly, against\nmere blind terror. It had become, for the occasion, preposterously,\nterror--of which she must shake herself free before she could properly\nmeasure her ground. The perception of this necessity had in truth soon\naided her; since she found, on trying, that, lurid as her prospect\nmight hover there, she could none the less give it no name. The sense of\nseeing was strong in her, but she clutched at the comfort of not being\nsure of what she saw. Not to know what it would represent on a longer\nview was a help, in turn, to not making out that her hands were embrued;\nsince if she had stood in the position of a producing cause she should\nsurely be less vague about what she had produced. This, further, in its\nway, was a step toward reflecting that when one\'s connection with any\nmatter was too indirect to be traced it might be described also as too\nslight to be deplored. By the time they were nearing Cadogan Place she\nhad in fact recognised that she couldn\'t be as curious as she desired\nwithout arriving at some conviction of her being as innocent. But there\nhad been a moment, in the dim desert of Eaton Square, when she broke\ninto speech.\n\n\"It\'s only their defending themselves so much more than they need--it\'s\nonly THAT that makes me wonder. It\'s their having so remarkably much to\nsay for themselves.\"\n\nHer husband had, as usual, lighted his cigar, remaining apparently as\nbusy with it as she with her agitation. \"You mean it makes you feel that\nyou have nothing?\" To which, as she made no answer, the Colonel added:\n\"What in the world did you ever suppose was going to happen? The man\'s\nin a position in which he has nothing in life to do.\"\n\nHer silence seemed to characterise this statement as superficial, and\nher thoughts, as always in her husband\'s company, pursued an independent\ncourse. He made her, when they were together, talk, but as if for\nsome other person; who was in fact for the most part herself. Yet she\naddressed herself with him as she could never have done without him.\n\"He has behaved beautifully--he did from the first. I\'ve thought it,\nall along, wonderful of him; and I\'ve more than once, when I\'ve had a\nchance, told him so. Therefore, therefore--!\" But it died away as she\nmused.\n\n\"Therefore he has a right, for a change, to kick up his heels?\"\n\n\"It isn\'t a question, of course, however,\" she undivertedly went on, \"of\ntheir behaving beautifully apart. It\'s a question of their doing as they\nshould when together--which is another matter.\"\n\n\"And how do you think then,\" the Colonel asked with interest, \"that,\nwhen together, they SHOULD do? The less they do, one would say, the\nbetter--if you see so much in it.\"\n\nHis wife, at this, appeared to hear him. \"I don\'t see in it what YOU\'D\nsee. And don\'t, my dear,\" she further answered, \"think it necessary to\nbe horrid or low about them. They\'re the last people, really, to make\nanything of that sort come in right.\"\n\n\"I\'m surely never horrid or low,\" he returned, \"about anyone but my\nextravagant wife. I can do with all our friends--as I see them myself:\nwhat I can\'t do with is the figures you make of them. And when you take\nto adding your figures up--!\" But he exhaled it again in smoke.\n\n\"My additions don\'t matter when you\'ve not to pay the bill.\" With which\nher meditation again bore her through the air. \"The great thing was that\nwhen it so suddenly came up for her he wasn\'t afraid. If he had been\nafraid he could perfectly have prevented it. And if I had seen he\nwas--if I hadn\'t seen he wasn\'t--so,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"could I.\nSo,\" she declared, \"WOULD I. It\'s perfectly true,\" she went on--\"it was\ntoo good a thing for her, such a chance in life, not to be accepted.\nAnd I LIKED his not keeping her out of it merely from a fear of his own\nnature. It was so wonderful it should come to her. The only thing would\nhave been if Charlotte herself couldn\'t have faced it. Then, if SHE had\nnot had confidence, we might have talked. But she had it to any amount.\"\n\n\"Did you ask her how much?\" Bob Assingham patiently inquired.\n\nHe had put the question with no more than his usual modest hope of\nreward, but he had pressed, this time, the sharpest spring of response.\n\"Never, never--it wasn\'t a time to \'ask.\' Asking is suggesting--and it\nwasn\'t a time to suggest. One had to make up one\'s mind, as quietly as\npossible, by what one could judge. And I judge, as I say, that Charlotte\nfelt she could face it. For which she struck me at the time as--for so\nproud a creature--almost touchingly grateful. The thing I should never\nforgive her for would be her forgetting to whom it is her thanks have\nremained most due.\"\n\n\"That is to Mrs. Assingham?\"\n\nShe said nothing for a little--there were, after all, alternatives.\n\"Maggie herself of course--astonishing little Maggie.\"\n\n\"Is Maggie then astonishing too?\"--and he gloomed out of his window.\n\nHis wife, on her side now, as they rolled, projected the same look. \"I\'m\nnot sure that I don\'t begin to see more in her than--dear little person\nas I\'ve always thought--I ever supposed there was. I\'m not sure that,\nputting a good many things together, I\'m not beginning to make her out\nrather extraordinary.\"\n\n\"You certainly will if you can,\" the Colonel resignedly remarked.\n\nAgain his companion said nothing; then again she broke out. \"In fact--I\ndo begin to feel it--Maggie\'s the great comfort. I\'m getting hold of it.\nIt will be SHE who\'ll see us through. In fact she\'ll have to. And she\'ll\nbe able.\"\n\nTouch by touch her meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative\neffect for her husband\'s general sense of her method that caused him\nto overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now\nfrequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like\nthe present, it gave him, and that Fanny had critically traced to the\nquaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, still so delightful, of Mr.\nVerver. \"Oh, Lordy, Lordy!\"\n\n\"If she is, however,\" Mrs. Assingham continued, \"she\'ll be extraordinary\nenough--and that\'s what I\'m thinking of. But I\'m not indeed so very\nsure,\" she added, \"of the person to whom Charlotte ought in decency to\nbe most grateful. I mean I\'m not sure if that person is even almost the\nincredible little idealist who has made her his wife.\"\n\n\"I shouldn\'t think you would be, love,\" the Colonel with some promptness\nresponded. \"Charlotte as the wife of an incredible little idealist--!\"\nHis cigar, in short, once more, could alone express it.\n\n\"Yet what is that, when one thinks, but just what she struck one as\nmore or less persuaded that she herself was really going to be?\"--this\nmemory, for the full view, Fanny found herself also invoking.\n\nIt made her companion, in truth, slightly gape. \"An incredible little\nidealist--Charlotte herself?\"\n\n\"And she was sincere,\" his wife simply proceeded \"she was unmistakably\nsincere. The question is only how much is left of it.\"\n\n\"And that--I see--happens to be another of the questions you can\'t ask\nher. You have to do it all,\" said Bob Assingham, \"as if you were playing\nsome game with its rules drawn up--though who\'s to come down on you\nif you break them I don\'t quite see. Or must you do it in three\nguesses--like forfeits on Christmas eve?\" To which, as his ribaldry but\ndropped from her, he further added: \"How much of anything will have to\nbe left for you to be able to go on with it?\"\n\n\"I shall go on,\" Fanny Assingham a trifle grimly declared, \"while\nthere\'s a scrap as big as your nail. But we\'re not yet, luckily, reduced\nonly to that.\" She had another pause, holding the while the thread of\nthat larger perception into which her view of Mrs. Verver\'s obligation\nto Maggie had suddenly expanded. \"Even if her debt was not to the\nothers--even then it ought to be quite sufficiently to the Prince\nhimself to keep her straight. For what, really, did the Prince do,\" she\nasked herself, \"but generously trust her? What did he do but take\nit from her that if she felt herself willing it was because she felt\nherself strong? That creates for her, upon my word,\" Mrs. Assingham\npursued, \"a duty of considering him, of honourably repaying his trust,\nwhich--well, which she\'ll be really a fiend if she doesn\'t make the law\nof her conduct. I mean of course his trust that she wouldn\'t interfere\nwith him--expressed by his holding himself quiet at the critical time.\"\n\nThe brougham was nearing home, and it was perhaps this sense of ebbing\nopportunity that caused the Colonel\'s next meditation to flower in a\nfashion almost surprising to his wife. They were united, for the most\npart, but by his exhausted patience; so that indulgent despair was\ngenerally, at the best, his note. He at present, however, actually\ncompromised with his despair to the extent of practically admitting that\nhe had followed her steps. He literally asked, in short, an intelligent,\nwell nigh a sympathising, question. \"Gratitude to the Prince for not\nhaving put a spoke in her wheel--that, you mean, should, taking it in\nthe right way, be precisely the ballast of her boat?\"\n\n\"Taking it in the right way.\" Fanny, catching at this gleam, emphasised\nthe proviso.\n\n\"But doesn\'t it rather depend on what she may most feel to BE the right\nway?\"\n\n\"No--it depends on nothing. Because there\'s only one way--for duty or\ndelicacy.\"\n\n\"Oh--delicacy!\" Bob Assingham rather crudely murmured.\n\n\"I mean the highest kind--moral. Charlotte\'s perfectly capable of\nappreciating that. By every dictate of moral delicacy she must let him\nalone.\"\n\n\"Then you\'ve made up your mind it\'s all poor Charlotte?\" he asked with\nan effect of abruptness.\n\nThe effect, whether intended or not, reached her--brought her face short\nround. It was a touch at which she again lost her balance, at which,\nsomehow, the bottom dropped out of her recovered comfort. \"Then\nyou\'ve made up yours differently? It really struck you that there IS\nsomething?\"\n\nThe movement itself, apparently, made him once more stand off. He\nhad felt on his nearer approach the high temperature of the question.\n\"Perhaps that\'s just what she\'s doing: showing him how much she\'s\nletting him alone--pointing it out to him from day to day.\"\n\n\"Did she point it out by waiting for him to-night on the stair-case in\nthe manner you described to me?\"\n\n\"I really, my dear, described to you a manner?\" the Colonel, clearly,\nfrom want of habit, scarce recognised himself in the imputation.\n\n\"Yes--for once in a way; in those few words we had after you had watched\nthem come up you told me something of what you had seen. You didn\'t\ntell me very much--THAT you couldn\'t for your life; but I saw for myself\nthat, strange to say, you had received your impression, and I felt\ntherefore that there must indeed have been something out of the way for\nyou so to betray it.\" She was fully upon him now, and she confronted him\nwith his proved sensibility to the occasion--confronted him because of\nher own uneasy need to profit by it. It came over her still more than at\nthe time, it came over her that he had been struck with something, even\nHE, poor dear man; and that for this to have occurred there must have\nbeen much to be struck with. She tried in fact to corner him, to\npack him insistently down, in the truth of his plain vision, the very\nplainness of which was its value; for so recorded, she felt, none of\nit would escape--she should have it at hand for reference. \"Come, my\ndear--you thought what you thought: in the presence of what you saw you\ncouldn\'t resist thinking. I don\'t ask more of it than that. And your\nidea is worth, this time, quite as much as any of mine--so that you\ncan\'t pretend, as usual, that mine has run away with me. I haven\'t\ncaught up with you. I stay where I am. But I see,\" she concluded, \"where\nyou are, and I\'m much obliged to you for letting me. You give me a point\nde repere outside myself--which is where I like it. Now I can work round\nyou.\"\n\nTheir conveyance, as she spoke, stopped at their door, and it was, on\nthe spot, another fact of value for her that her husband, though seated\non the side by which they must alight, made no movement. They were in a\nhigh degree votaries of the latch-key, so that their household had gone\nto bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman\nwaited in peace. It was so indeed that for a minute Bob Assingham\nwaited--conscious of a reason for replying to this address otherwise\nthan by the so obvious method of turning his back. He didn\'t turn\nhis face, but he stared straight before him, and his wife had already\nperceived in the fact of his not moving all the proof she could desire--\nproof, that is, of her own contention. She knew he never cared what\nshe said, and his neglect of his chance to show it was thereby the more\neloquent. \"Leave it,\" he at last remarked, \"to THEM.\"\n\n\"\'Leave\' it--?\" She wondered.\n\n\"Let them alone. They\'ll manage.\"\n\n\"They\'ll manage, you mean, to do everything they want? Ah, there then\nyou are!\"\n\n\"They\'ll manage in their own way,\" the Colonel almost cryptically\nrepeated.\n\nIt had its effect for her: quite apart from its light on the familiar\nphenomenon of her husband\'s indurated conscience, it gave her, full in\nher face, the particular evocation of which she had made him guilty.\nIt was wonderful truly, then, the evocation. \"So cleverly--THAT\'S your\nidea?--that no one will be the wiser? It\'s your idea that we shall have\ndone all that\'s required of us if we simply protect them?\"\n\nThe Colonel, still in his place, declined, however, to be drawn into a\nstatement of his idea. Statements were too much like theories, in\nwhich one lost one\'s way; he only knew what he said, and what he said\nrepresented the limited vibration of which his confirmed old toughness\nhad been capable. Still, none the less, he had his point to make--for\nwhich he took another instant. But he made it, for the third time, in\nthe same fashion. \"They\'ll manage in their own way.\" With which he got\nout.\n\nOh yes, at this, for his companion, it had indeed its effect, and while\nhe mounted their steps she but stared, without following him, at his\nopening of their door. Their hall was lighted, and as he stood in the\naperture looking back at her, his tall lean figure outlined in darkness\nand with his crush-hat, according to his wont, worn cavalierly, rather\ndiabolically, askew, he seemed to prolong the sinister emphasis of his\nmeaning. In general, on these returns, he came back for her when he had\nprepared their entrance; so that it was now as if he were ashamed to\nface her in closer quarters. He looked at her across the interval,\nand, still in her seat, weighing his charge, she felt her whole view\nof everything flare up. Wasn\'t it simply what had been written in the\nPrince\'s own face BENEATH what he was saying?--didn\'t it correspond with\nthe mocking presence there that she had had her troubled glimpse of?\nWasn\'t, in fine, the pledge that they would \"manage in their own way\"\nthe thing he had been feeling for his chance to invite her to take from\nhim? Her husband\'s tone somehow fitted Amerigo\'s look--the one that had,\nfor her, so strangely, peeped, from behind, over the shoulder of the one\nin front. She had not then read it--but wasn\'t she reading it when she\nnow saw in it his surmise that she was perhaps to be squared? She wasn\'t\nto be squared, and while she heard her companion call across to her\n\"Well, what\'s the matter?\" she also took time to remind herself that\nshe had decided she couldn\'t be frightened. The \"matter\"?--why, it was\nsufficiently the matter, with all this, that she felt a little sick. For\nit was not the Prince that she had been prepared to regard as primarily\nthe shaky one. Shakiness in Charlotte she had, at the most, perhaps\npostulated--it would be, she somehow felt, more easy to deal with.\nTherefore if HE had come so far it was a different pair of sleeves.\nThere was nothing to choose between them. It made her so helpless that,\nas the time passed without her alighting, the Colonel came back\nand fairly drew her forth; after which, on the pavement, under the\nstreet-lamp, their very silence might have been the mark of something\ngrave--their silence eked out for her by his giving her his arm and\ntheir then crawling up their steps quite mildly and unitedly together,\nlike some old Darby and Joan who have had a disappointment. It almost\nresembled a return from a funeral--unless indeed it resembled more the\nhushed approach to a house of mourning. What indeed had she come home\nfor but to bury, as decently as possible, her mistake?\n\n\n\n XVII\n\nIt appeared thus that they might enjoy together extraordinary freedom,\nthe two friends, from the moment they should understand their position\naright. With the Prince himself, from an early stage, not unnaturally,\nCharlotte had made a great point of their so understanding it; she had\nfound frequent occasion to describe to him this necessity, and, her\nresignation tempered, or her intelligence at least quickened, by\nirrepressible irony, she applied at different times different names to\nthe propriety of their case. The wonderful thing was that her sense of\npropriety had been, from the first, especially alive about it. There\nwere hours when she spoke of their taking refuge in what she called the\ncommonest tact--as if this principle alone would suffice to light their\nway; there were others when it might have seemed, to listen to her, that\ntheir course would demand of them the most anxious study and the most\nindependent, not to say original, interpretation of signs. She talked\nnow as if it were indicated, at every turn, by finger-posts of almost\nridiculous prominence; she talked again as if it lurked in devious\nways and were to be tracked through bush and briar; and she even, on\noccasion, delivered herself in the sense that, as their situation was\nunprecedented, so their heaven was without stars. \"\'Do\'?\" she once\nhad echoed to him as the upshot of passages covertly, though briefly,\noccurring between them on her return from the visit to America that had\nimmediately succeeded her marriage, determined for her by this event as\npromptly as an excursion of the like strange order had been prescribed\nin his own case. \"Isn\'t the immense, the really quite matchless beauty\nof our position that we have to \'do\' nothing in life at all?--nothing\nexcept the usual, necessary, everyday thing which consists in one\'s not\nbeing more of a fool than one can help. That\'s all--but that\'s as true\nfor one time as for another. There has been plenty of \'doing,\' and there\nwill doubtless be plenty still; but it\'s all theirs, every inch of it;\nit\'s all a matter of what they\'ve done TO us.\" And she showed how\nthe question had therefore been only of their taking everything as\neverything came, and all as quietly as might be. Nothing stranger\nsurely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly\npassive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched\nagainst such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a\nrelation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid.\n\nShe was to remember not a little, meanwhile, the particular prolonged\nsilent look with which the Prince had met her allusion to these primary\nefforts at escape. She was inwardly to dwell on the element of the\nunuttered that her tone had caused to play up into his irresistible\neyes; and this because she considered with pride and joy that she had,\non the spot, disposed of the doubt, the question, the challenge, or\nwhatever else might have been, that such a look could convey. He had\nbeen sufficiently off his guard to show some little wonder as to their\nhaving plotted so very hard against their destiny, and she knew well\nenough, of course, what, in this connection, was at the bottom of his\nthought, and what would have sounded out more or less if he had not\nhappily saved himself from words. All men were brutes enough to catch\nwhen they might at such chances for dissent--for all the good it really\ndid them; but the Prince\'s distinction was in being one of the few who\ncould check himself before acting on the impulse. This, obviously, was\nwhat counted in a man as delicacy. If her friend had blurted or bungled\nhe would have said, in his simplicity, \"Did we do \'everything to avoid\'\nit when we faced your remarkable marriage?\"--quite handsomely of course\nusing the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute\nof memory to the telegram she had received from him in Paris after\nMr. Verver had despatched to Rome the news of their engagement.\nThat telegram, that acceptance of the prospect proposed to them--an\nacceptance quite other than perfunctory--she had never destroyed; though\nreserved for no eyes but her own it was still carefully reserved. She\nkept it in a safe place--from which, very privately, she sometimes took\nit out to read it over. \"A la guerre comme a la guerre then\"--it had\nbeen couched in the French tongue. \"We must lead our lives as we see\nthem; but I am charmed with your courage and almost surprised at my\nown.\" The message had remained ambiguous; she had read it in more lights\nthan one; it might mean that even without her his career was up-hill\nwork for him, a daily fighting-matter on behalf of a good appearance,\nand that thus, if they were to become neighbours again, the event would\ncompel him to live still more under arms. It might mean on the other\nhand that he found he was happy enough, and that accordingly, so far as\nshe might imagine herself a danger, she was to think of him as prepared\nin advance, as really seasoned and secure. On his arrival in Paris with\nhis wife, none the less, she had asked for no explanation, just as he\nhimself had not asked if the document were still in her possession. Such\nan inquiry, everything implied, was beneath him--just as it was beneath\nherself to mention to him, uninvited, that she had instantly offered,\nand in perfect honesty, to show the telegram to Mr. Verver, and that if\nthis companion had but said the word she would immediately have put\nit before him. She had thereby forborne to call his attention to\nher consciousness that such an exposure would, in all probability,\nstraightway have dished her marriage; that all her future had in fact,\nfor the moment, hung by the single hair of Mr. Verver\'s delicacy (as\nshe supposed they must call it); and that her position, in the matter of\nresponsibility, was therefore inattackably straight.\n\nFor the Prince himself, meanwhile, time, in its measured allowance, had\noriginally much helped him--helped him in the sense of there not\nbeing enough of it to trip him up; in spite of which it was just this\naccessory element that seemed, at present, with wonders of patience,\nto lie in wait. Time had begotten at first, more than anything else,\nseparations, delays and intervals; but it was troublesomely less of\nan aid from the moment it began so to abound that he had to meet the\nquestion of what to do with it. Less of it was required for the state of\nbeing married than he had, on the whole, expected; less, strangely, for\nthe state of being married even as he was married. And there was a\nlogic in the matter, he knew; a logic that but gave this truth a sort\nof solidity of evidence. Mr. Verver, decidedly, helped him with it--with\nhis wedded condition; helped him really so much that it made all the\ndifference. In the degree in which he rendered it the service on Mr.\nVerver\'s part was remarkable--as indeed what service, from the first\nof their meeting, had not been? He was living, he had been living these\nfour or five years, on Mr. Verver\'s services: a truth scarcely less\nplain if he dealt with them, for appreciation, one by one, than if he\npoured them all together into the general pot of his gratitude and let\nthe thing simmer to a nourishing broth. To the latter way with them he\nwas undoubtedly most disposed; yet he would even thus, on occasion, pick\nout a piece to taste on its own merits. Wondrous at such hours could\nseem the savour of the particular \"treat,\" at his father-in-law\'s\nexpense, that he more and more struck himself as enjoying. He had\nneeded months and months to arrive at a full appreciation--he couldn\'t\noriginally have given offhand a name to his deepest obligation; but by\nthe time the name had flowered in his mind he was practically living at\nthe ease guaranteed him. Mr. Verver then, in a word, took care of his\nrelation to Maggie, as he took care, and apparently always would, of\neverything else. He relieved him of all anxiety about his married\nlife in the same manner in which he relieved him on the score of his\nbank-account. And as he performed the latter office by communicating\nwith the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his\ngood understanding with his daughter. This understanding had,\nwonderfully--THAT was in high evidence--the same deep intimacy as the\ncommercial, the financial association founded, far down, on a community\nof interest. And the correspondence, for the Prince, carried itself\nout in identities of character the vision of which, fortunately, rather\ntended to amuse than to--as might have happened--irritate him. Those\npeople--and his free synthesis lumped together capitalists and\nbankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors, American\nfathers-in-law, American fathers, little American daughters, little\nAmerican wives--those people were of the same large lucky group, as one\nmight say; they were all, at least, of the same general species and had\nthe same general instincts; they hung together, they passed each other\nthe word, they spoke each other\'s language, they did each other \"turns.\"\nIn this last connection it of course came up for our young man at a\ngiven moment that Maggie\'s relation with HIM was also, on the perceived\nbasis, taken care of. Which was in fact the real upshot of the matter.\nIt was a \"funny\" situation--that is it was funny just as it stood. Their\nmarried life was in question, but the solution was, not less strikingly,\nbefore them. It was all right for himself, because Mr. Verver worked\nit so for Maggie\'s comfort; and it was all right for Maggie, because he\nworked it so for her husband\'s.\n\nThe fact that time, however, was not, as we have said, wholly on the\nPrince\'s side might have shown for particularly true one dark day on\nwhich, by an odd but not unprecedented chance, the reflections just\nnoted offered themselves as his main recreation. They alone, it\nappeared, had been appointed to fill the hours for him, and even to fill\nthe great square house in Portland Place, where the scale of one of the\nsmaller saloons fitted them but loosely. He had looked into this room\non the chance that he might find the Princess at tea; but though the\nfireside service of the repast was shiningly present the mistress of the\ntable was not, and he had waited for her, if waiting it could be called,\nwhile he measured again and again the stretch of polished floor. He\ncould have named to himself no pressing reason for seeing her at this\nmoment, and her not coming in, as the half-hour elapsed, became in fact\nquite positively, however perversely, the circumstance that kept him on\nthe spot. Just there, he might have been feeling, just there he could\nbest take his note. This observation was certainly by itself meagre\namusement for a dreary little crisis; but his walk to and fro, and in\nparticular his repeated pause at one of the high front windows, gave\neach of the ebbing minutes, none the less, after a time, a little more\nof the quality of a quickened throb of the spirit. These throbs scarce\nexpressed, however, the impatience of desire, any more than they stood\nfor sharp disappointment: the series together resembled perhaps more\nthan anything else those fine waves of clearness through which, for\na watcher of the east, dawn at last trembles into rosy day. The\nillumination indeed was all for the mind, the prospect revealed by it a\nmere immensity of the world of thought; the material outlook was all the\nwhile a different matter. The March afternoon, judged at the window,\nhad blundered back into autumn; it had been raining for hours, and the\ncolour of the rain, the colour of the air, of the mud, of the opposite\nhouses, of life altogether, in so grim a joke, so idiotic a masquerade,\nwas an unutterable dirty brown. There was at first even, for the\nyoung man, no faint flush in the fact of the direction taken, while\nhe happened to look out, by a slow-jogging four-wheeled cab which,\nawkwardly deflecting from the middle course, at the apparent instance\nof a person within, began to make for the left-hand pavement and so at\nlast, under further instructions, floundered to a full stop before the\nPrince\'s windows. The person within, alighting with an easier motion,\nproved to be a lady who left the vehicle to wait and, putting up no\numbrella, quickly crossed the wet interval that separated her from\nthe house. She but flitted and disappeared; yet the Prince, from his\nstandpoint, had had time to recognise her, and the recognition kept him\nfor some minutes motionless.\n\nCharlotte Stant, at such an hour, in a shabby four-wheeler and a\nwaterproof, Charlotte Stant turning up for him at the very climax of\nhis special inner vision, was an apparition charged with a congruity at\nwhich he stared almost as if it had been a violence. The effect of her\ncoming to see him, him only, had, while he stood waiting, a singular\nintensity--though after some minutes had passed the certainty of this\nbegan to drop. Perhaps she had NOT come, or had come only for Maggie;\nperhaps, on learning below that the Princess had not returned, she was\nmerely leaving a message, writing a word on a card. He should see, at\nany rate; and meanwhile, controlling himself, would do nothing. This\nthought of not interfering took on a sudden force for him; she would\ndoubtless hear he was at home, but he would let her visit to him be all\nof her own choosing. And his view of a reason for leaving her free was\nthe more remarkable that, though taking no step, he yet intensely hoped.\nThe harmony of her breaking into sight while the superficial conditions\nwere so against her was a harmony with conditions that were far from\nsuperficial and that gave, for his imagination, an extraordinary value\nto her presence. The value deepened strangely, moreover, with the rigour\nof his own attitude--with the fact too that, listening hard, he neither\nheard the house-door close again nor saw her go back to her cab; and\nit had risen to a climax by the time he had become aware, with his\nquickened sense, that she had followed the butler up to the landing from\nwhich his room opened. If anything could further then have added to\nit, the renewed pause outside, as if she had said to the man \"Wait a\nmoment!\" would have constituted this touch. Yet when the man had shown\nher in, had advanced to the tea-table to light the lamp under the kettle\nand had then busied himself, all deliberately, with the fire, she made\nit easy for her host to drop straight from any height of tension and\nto meet her, provisionally, on the question of Maggie. While the butler\nremained it was Maggie that she had come to see and Maggie that--in\nspite of this attendant\'s high blankness on the subject of all\npossibilities on that lady\'s part--she would cheerfully, by the fire,\nwait for. As soon as they were alone together, however, she mounted, as\nwith the whizz and the red light of a rocket, from the form to the fact,\nsaying straight out, as she stood and looked at him: \"What else, my\ndear, what in the world else can we do?\"\n\nIt was as if he then knew, on the spot, why he had been feeling, for\nhours, as he had felt--as if he in fact knew, within the minute, things\nhe had not known even while she was panting, as from the effect of the\nstaircase, at the door of the room. He knew at the same time, none the\nless, that she knew still more than he--in the sense, that is, of all\nthe signs and portents that might count for them; and his vision\nof alternative--she could scarce say what to call them, solutions,\nsatisfactions--opened out, altogether, with this tangible truth of her\nattitude by the chimney-place, the way she looked at him as through the\ngained advantage of it; her right hand resting on the marble and her\nleft keeping her skirt from the fire while she held out a foot to dry.\nHe couldn\'t have told what particular links and gaps had at the end of\na few minutes found themselves renewed and bridged; for he remembered\nno occasion, in Rome, from which the picture could have been so exactly\ncopied. He remembered, that is, none of her coming to see him in the\nrain while a muddy four-wheeler waited, and while, though having\nleft her waterproof downstairs, she was yet invested with the odd\neloquence--the positive picturesqueness, yes, given all the rest of the\nmatter--of a dull dress and a black Bowdlerised hat that seemed to make\na point of insisting on their time of life and their moral intention,\nthe hat\'s and the frock\'s own, as well as on the irony of indifference\nto them practically playing in her so handsome rain-freshened face. The\nsense of the past revived for him nevertheless as it had not yet done:\nit made that other time somehow meet the future close, interlocking with\nit, before his watching eyes, as in a long embrace of arms and lips,\nand so handling and hustling the present that this poor quantity scarce\nretained substance enough, scarce remained sufficiently THERE, to be\nwounded or shocked.\n\nWhat had happened, in short, was that Charlotte and he had, by a single\nturn of the wrist of fate--\"led up\" to indeed, no doubt, by steps and\nstages that conscious computation had missed--been placed face to face\nin a freedom that partook, extraordinarily, of ideal perfection, since\nthe magic web had spun itself without their toil, almost without their\ntouch. Above all, on this occasion, once more, there sounded through\ntheir safety, as an undertone, the very voice he had listened to on the\neve of his marriage with such another sort of unrest. Dimly, again and\nagain, from that period on, he had seemed to hear it tell him why it\nkept recurring; but it phrased the large music now in a way that filled\nthe room. The reason was--into which he had lived, quite intimately, by\nthe end of a quarter-of-an-hour--that just this truth of their safety\noffered it now a kind of unexampled receptacle, letting it spread and\nspread, but at the same time elastically enclosing it, banking it in,\nfor softness, as with billows of eiderdown. On that morning; in the Park\nthere had been, however dissimulated, doubt and danger, whereas the tale\nthis afternoon was taken up with a highly emphasised confidence. The\nemphasis, for their general comfort, was what Charlotte had come to\napply; inasmuch as, though it was not what she definitely began with, it\nhad soon irrepressibly shaped itself. It was the meaning of the question\nshe had put to him as soon as they were alone--even though indeed, as\nfrom not quite understanding, he had not then directly replied; it was\nthe meaning of everything else, down to the conscious quaintness of\nher ricketty \"growler\" and the conscious humility of her dress. It had\nhelped him a little, the question of these eccentricities, to let her\nimmediate appeal pass without an answer. He could ask her instead what\nhad become of her carriage and why, above all, she was not using it in\nsuch weather.\n\n\"It\'s just because of the weather,\" she explained. \"It\'s my little idea.\nIt makes me feel as I used to--when I could do as I liked.\"\n\n\n\n XVIII\n\nThis came out so straight that he saw at once how much truth it\nexpressed; yet it was truth that still a little puzzled him. \"But did\nyou ever like knocking about in such discomfort?\"\n\n\"It seems to me now that I then liked everything. It\'s the charm, at\nany rate,\" she said from her place at the fire, \"of trying again the\nold feelings. They come back--they come back. Everything,\" she went on,\n\"comes back. Besides,\" she wound up, \"you know for yourself.\"\n\nHe stood near her, his hands in his pockets; but not looking at her,\nlooking hard at the tea-table. \"Ah, I haven\'t your courage. Moreover,\"\nhe laughed, \"it seems to me that, so far as that goes, I do live in\nhansoms. But you must awfully want your tea,\" he quickly added; \"so let\nme give you a good stiff cup.\"\n\nHe busied himself with this care, and she sat down, on his pushing up\na low seat, where she had been standing; so that, while she talked, he\ncould bring her what she further desired. He moved to and fro before\nher, he helped himself; and her visit, as the moments passed, had more\nand more the effect of a signal communication that she had come, all\nresponsibly and deliberately, as on the clear show of the clock-face\nof their situation, to make. The whole demonstration, none the less,\npresented itself as taking place at a very high level of debate--in the\ncool upper air of the finer discrimination, the deeper sincerity, the\nlarger philosophy. No matter what were the facts invoked and arrayed,\nit was only a question, as yet, of their seeing their way together: to\nwhich indeed, exactly, the present occasion appeared to have so much to\ncontribute. \"It\'s not that you haven\'t my courage,\" Charlotte said,\n\"but that you haven\'t, I rather think, my imagination. Unless indeed\nit should turn out after all,\" she added, \"that you haven\'t even my\nintelligence. However, I shall not be afraid of that till you\'ve given\nme more proof.\" And she made again, but more clearly, her point of a\nmoment before. \"You knew, besides, you knew to-day, I would come. And\nif you knew that you know everything.\" So she pursued, and if he didn\'t\nmeanwhile, if he didn\'t even at this, take her up, it might be that she\nwas so positively fitting him again with the fair face of temporising\nkindness that he had given her, to keep her eyes on, at the other\nimportant juncture, and the sense of which she might ever since have\nbeen carrying about with her like a precious medal--not exactly blessed\nby the Pope suspended round her neck. She had come back, however this\nmight be, to her immediate account of herself, and no mention of their\ngreat previous passage was to rise to the lips of either. \"Above all,\"\nshe said, \"there has been the personal romance of it.\"\n\n\"Of tea with me over the fire? Ah, so far as that goes I don\'t think\neven my intelligence fails me.\"\n\n\"Oh, it\'s further than that goes; and if I\'ve had a better day than you\nit\'s perhaps, when I come to think of it, that I AM braver. You bore\nyourself, you see. But I don\'t. I don\'t, I don\'t,\" she repeated.\n\n\"It\'s precisely boring one\'s self without relief,\" he protested, \"that\ntakes courage.\"\n\n\"Passive then--not active. My romance is that, if you want to know, I\'ve\nbeen all day on the town. Literally on the town--isn\'t that what they\ncall it? I know how it feels.\" After which, as if breaking off, \"And\nyou, have you never been out?\" she asked.\n\nHe still stood there with his hands in his pockets. \"What should I have\ngone out for?\"\n\n\"Oh, what should people in our case do anything for? But you\'re\nwonderful, all of YOU--you know how to live. We\'re clumsy brutes, we\nother\'s, beside you--we must always be \'doing\' something. However,\"\nCharlotte pursued, \"if you had gone out you might have missed the chance\nof me--which I\'m sure, though you won\'t confess it, was what you didn\'t\nwant; and might have missed, above all, the satisfaction that, look\nblank about it as you will, I\'ve come to congratulate you on. That\'s\nreally what I can at last do. You can\'t not know at least, on such a day\nas this--you can\'t not know,\" she said, \"where you are.\" She waited as\nfor him either to grant that he knew or to pretend that he didn\'t;\nbut he only drew a long deep breath which came out like a moan of\nimpatience. It brushed aside the question of where he was or what he\nknew; it seemed to keep the ground clear for the question of his visitor\nherself, that of Charlotte Verver exactly as she sat there. So, for some\nmoments, with their long look, they but treated the matter in silence;\nwith the effect indeed, by the end of the time, of having considerably\nbrought it on. This was sufficiently marked in what Charlotte next said.\n\"There it all is--extraordinary beyond words. It makes such a relation\nfor us as, I verily believe, was never before in the world thrust upon\ntwo well-meaning creatures. Haven\'t we therefore to take things as we\nfind them?\" She put the question still more directly than that of\na moment before, but to this one, as well, he returned no immediate\nanswer. Noticing only that she had finished her tea, he relieved her\nof her cup, carried it back to the table, asked her what more she would\nhave; and then, on her \"Nothing, thanks,\" returned to the fire and\nrestored a displaced log to position by a small but almost too effectual\nkick. She had meanwhile got up again, and it was on her feet that she\nrepeated the words she had first frankly spoken. \"What else can we do,\nwhat in all the world else?\"\n\nHe took them up, however, no more than at first. \"Where then have you\nbeen?\" he asked as from mere interest in her adventure.\n\n\"Everywhere I could think of--except to see people. I didn\'t\nwant people--I wanted too much to think. But I\'ve been back at\nintervals--three times; and then come away again. My cabman must think\nme crazy--it\'s very amusing; I shall owe him, when we come to settle,\nmore money than he has ever seen. I\'ve been, my dear,\" she went on, \"to\nthe British Museum--which, you know, I always adore. And I\'ve been to\nthe National Gallery, and to a dozen old booksellers\', coming across\ntreasures, and I\'ve lunched, on some strange nastiness, at a cookshop\nin Holborn. I wanted to go to the Tower, but it was too far--my old\nman urged that; and I would have gone to the Zoo if it hadn\'t been too\nwet--which he also begged me to observe. But you wouldn\'t believe--I\ndid put in St. Paul\'s. Such days,\" she wound up, \"are expensive; for,\nbesides the cab, I\'ve bought quantities of books.\" She immediately\npassed, at any rate, to another point: \"I can\'t help wondering when you\nmust last have laid eyes on them.\" And then as it had apparently for her\ncompanion an effect of abruptness: \"Maggie, I mean, and the child. For I\nsuppose you know he\'s with her.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I know he\'s with her. I saw them this morning.\"\n\n\"And did they then announce their programme?\"\n\n\"She told me she was taking him, as usual, da nonno.\"\n\n\"And for the whole day?\"\n\nHe hesitated, but it was as if his attitude had slowly shifted.\n\n\"She didn\'t say. And I didn\'t ask.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she went on, \"it can\'t have been later than half-past ten--I\nmean when you saw them. They had got to Eaton Square before eleven.\nYou know we don\'t formally breakfast, Adam and I; we have tea in our\nrooms--at least I have; but luncheon is early, and I saw my husband,\nthis morning, by twelve; he was showing the child a picture-book. Maggie\nhad been there with them, had left them settled together. Then she had\ngone out--taking the carriage for something he had been intending but\nthat she offered to do instead.\"\n\nThe Prince appeared to confess, at this, to his interest.\n\n\"Taking, you mean, YOUR carriage?\"\n\n\"I don\'t know which, and it doesn\'t matter. It\'s not a question,\" she\nsmiled, \"of a carriage the more or the less. It\'s not a question even,\nif you come to that, of a cab. It\'s so beautiful,\" she said, \"that it\'s\nnot a question of anything vulgar or horrid.\" Which she gave him time to\nagree about; and though he was silent it was, rather remarkably, as if\nhe fell in. \"I went out--I wanted to. I had my idea. It seemed to me\nimportant. It has BEEN--it IS important. I know as I haven\'t known\nbefore the way they feel. I couldn\'t in any other way have made so sure\nof it.\"\n\n\"They feel a confidence,\" the Prince observed.\n\nHe had indeed said it for her. \"They feel a confidence.\" And she\nproceeded, with lucidity, to the fuller illustration of it; speaking\nagain of the three different moments that, in the course of her wild\nramble, had witnessed her return--for curiosity, and even really a\nlittle from anxiety--to Eaton Square. She was possessed of a latch-key,\nrarely used: it had always irritated Adam--one of the few things that\ndid--to find servants standing up so inhumanly straight when they came\nhome, in the small hours, after parties. \"So I had but to slip in, each\ntime, with my cab at the door, and make out for myself, without their\nknowing it, that Maggie was still there. I came, I went--without their\nso much as dreaming. What do they really suppose,\" she asked, \"becomes\nof one?--not so much sentimentally or morally, so to call it, and since\nthat doesn\'t matter; but even just physically, materially, as a mere\nwandering woman: as a decent harmless wife, after all; as the best\nstepmother, after all, that really ever was; or at the least simply as\na maitresse de maison not quite without a conscience. They must even in\ntheir odd way,\" she declared, \"have SOME idea.\"\n\n\"Oh, they\'ve a great deal of idea,\" said the Prince. And nothing was\neasier than to mention the quantity. \"They think so much of us. They\nthink in particular so much of you.\"\n\n\"Ah, don\'t put it all on \'me\'!\" she smiled.\n\nBut he was putting it now where she had admirably prepared the place.\n\"It\'s a matter of your known character.\"\n\n\"Ah, thank you for \'known\'!\" she still smiled.\n\n\"It\'s a matter of your wonderful cleverness and wonderful charm. It\'s\na matter of what those things have done for you in the world--I mean in\nTHIS world and this place. You\'re a Personage for them--and Personages\ndo go and come.\"\n\n\"Oh no, my dear; there you\'re quite wrong.\" And she laughed now in the\nhappier light they had diffused. \"That\'s exactly what Personages don\'t\ndo: they live in state and under constant consideration; they haven\'t\nlatch-keys, but drums and trumpets announce them; and when they go out\nin growlers it makes a greater noise still. It\'s you, caro mio,\" she\nsaid, \"who, so far as that goes, are the Personage.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" he in turn protested, \"don\'t put it all on me! What, at any rate,\nwhen you get home,\" he added, \"shall you say that you\'ve been doing?\"\n\n\"I shall say, beautifully, that I\'ve been here.\"\n\n\"All day?\"\n\n\"Yes--all day. Keeping you company in your solitude. How can we\nunderstand anything,\" she went on, \"without really seeing that this\nis what they must like to think I do for you?--just as, quite as\ncomfortably, you do it for me. The thing is for us to learn to take them\nas they are.\"\n\nHe considered this a while, in his restless way, but with his eyes\nnot turning from her; after which, rather disconnectedly, though very\nvehemently, he brought out: \"How can I not feel more than anything else\nhow they adore together my boy?\" And then, further, as if, slightly\ndisconcerted, she had nothing to meet this and he quickly perceived the\neffect: \"They would have done the same for one of yours.\"\n\n\"Ah, if I could have had one--! I hoped and I believed,\" said Charlotte,\n\"that that would happen. It would have been better. It would have made\nperhaps some difference. He thought so too, poor duck--that it might\nhave been. I\'m sure he hoped and intended so. It\'s not, at any rate,\"\nshe went on, \"my fault. There it is.\" She had uttered these statements,\none by one, gravely, sadly and responsibly, owing it to her friend to\nbe clear. She paused briefly, but, as if once for all, she made her\nclearness complete. \"And now I\'m too sure. It will never be.\"\n\nHe waited for a moment. \"Never?\"\n\n\"Never.\" They treated the matter not exactly with solemnity, but with\na certain decency, even perhaps urgency, of distinctness. \"It would\nprobably have been better,\" Charlotte added. \"But things turn out--! And\nit leaves us\"--she made the point--\"more alone.\"\n\nHe seemed to wonder. \"It leaves you more alone.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she again returned, \"don\'t put it all on me! Maggie would have\ngiven herself to his child, I\'m sure, scarcely less than he gives\nhimself to yours. It would have taken more than any child of mine,\" she\nexplained--\"it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could I\nhave had them--to keep our sposi apart.\" She smiled as for the breadth\nof the image, but, as he seemed to take it, in spite of this, for\nimportant, she then spoke gravely enough. \"It\'s as strange as you like,\nbut we\'re immensely alone.\" He kept vaguely moving, but there were\nmoments when, again, with an awkward ease and his hands in his pockets,\nhe was more directly before her. He stood there at these last words,\nwhich had the effect of making him for a little throw back his head and,\nas thinking something out, stare up at the ceiling. \"What will you\nsay,\" she meanwhile asked, \"that you\'ve been doing?\" This brought his\nconsciousness and his eyes back to her, and she pointed her question. \"I\nmean when she comes in--for I suppose she WILL, some time, come in. It\nseems to me we must say the same thing.\"\n\nWell, he thought again. \"Yet I can scarce pretend to have had what I\nhaven\'t.\"\n\n\"Ah, WHAT haven\'t you had?--what aren\'t you having?\"\n\nHer question rang out as they lingered face to face, and he still took\nit, before he answered, from her eyes. \"We must at least then, not to be\nabsurd together, do the same thing. We must act, it would really seem,\nin concert.\"\n\n\"It would really seem!\" Her eyebrows, her shoulders went up, quite in\ngaiety, as for the relief this brought her. \"It\'s all in the world I\npretend. We must act in concert. Heaven knows,\" she said, \"THEY do!\"\n\nSo it was that he evidently saw and that, by his admission, the case,\ncould fairly be put. But what he evidently saw appeared to come over\nhim, at the same time, as too much for him, so that he fell back\nsuddenly to ground where she was not awaiting him. \"The difficulty is,\nand will always be, that I don\'t understand them. I didn\'t at first, but\nI thought I should learn to. That was what I hoped, and it appeared then\nthat Fanny Assingham might help me.\"\n\n\"Oh, Fanny Assingham!\" said Charlotte Verver.\n\nHe stared a moment at her tone. \"She would do anything for us.\"\n\nTo which Charlotte at first said nothing--as if from the sense of too\nmuch. Then, indulgently enough, she shook her head. \"We\'re beyond her.\"\n\nHe thought a moment--as of where this placed them. \"She\'d do anything\nthen for THEM.\"\n\n\"Well, so would we--so that doesn\'t help us. She has broken down. She\ndoesn\'t understand us. And really, my dear,\" Charlotte added, \"Fanny\nAssingham doesn\'t matter.\"\n\nHe wondered again. \"Unless as taking care of THEM.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Charlotte instantly said, \"isn\'t it for us, only, to do that?\" She\nspoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty. \"I\nthink we want no one\'s aid.\"\n\nShe spoke indeed with a nobleness not the less effective for coming in\nso oddly; with a sincerity visible even through the complicated twist\nby which any effort to protect the father and the daughter seemed\nnecessarily conditioned for them. It moved him, in any case, as if some\nspring of his own, a weaker one, had suddenly been broken by it. These\nthings, all the while, the privilege, the duty, the opportunity, had\nbeen the substance of his own vision; they formed the note he had been\nkeeping back to show her that he was not, in their so special situation,\nwithout a responsible view. A conception that he could name, and could\nact on, was something that now, at last, not to be too eminent a fool,\nhe was required by all the graces to produce, and the luminous idea\nshe had herself uttered would have been his expression of it. She had\nanticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty,\nnothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged. A large\nresponse, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited\nperception all his own, in the glory of which--as it almost might be\ncalled--what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him.\n\"They\'re extraordinarily happy.\"\n\nOh, Charlotte\'s measure of it was only too full. \"Beatifically.\"\n\n\"That\'s the great thing,\" he went on; \"so that it doesn\'t matter,\nreally, that one doesn\'t understand. Besides, you do--enough.\"\n\n\"I understand my husband perhaps,\" she after an instant conceded. \"I\ndon\'t understand your wife.\"\n\n\"You\'re of the same race, at any rate--more or less; of the same general\ntradition and education, of the same moral paste. There are things you\nhave in common with them. But I, on my side, as I\'ve gone on trying to\nsee if I haven\'t some of these things too--I, on my side, have more and\nmore failed. There seem at last to be none worth mentioning. I can\'t\nhelp seeing it--I\'m decidedly too different.\"\n\n\"Yet you\'re not\"--Charlotte made the important point--\"too different\nfrom ME.\"\n\n\"I don\'t know--as we\'re not married. That brings things out. Perhaps if\nwe were,\" he said, \"you WOULD find some abyss of divergence.\"\n\n\"Since it depends on that then,\" she smiled, \"I\'m safe--as you are\nanyhow. Moreover, as one has so often had occasion to feel, and even to\nremark, they\'re very, very simple. That makes,\" she added, \"a difficulty\nfor belief; but when once one has taken it in it makes less difficulty\nfor action. I HAVE at last, for myself, I think, taken it in. I\'m not\nafraid.\"\n\nHe wondered a moment. \"Not afraid of what?\"\n\n\"Well, generally, of some beastly mistake. Especially of any mistake\nfounded on one\'s idea of their difference. For that idea,\" Charlotte\ndeveloped, \"positively makes one so tender.\"\n\n\"Ah, but rather!\"\n\n\"Well then, there it is. I can\'t put myself into Maggie\'s skin--I can\'t,\nas I say. It\'s not my fit--I shouldn\'t be able, as I see it, to breathe\nin it. But I can feel that I\'d do anything--to shield it from a bruise.\nTender as I am for her too,\" she went on, \"I think I\'m still more so for\nmy husband. HE\'S in truth of a sweet simplicity--!\"\n\nThe Prince turned over a while the sweet simplicity of Mr. Verver.\n\"Well, I don\'t know that I can choose. At night all cats are grey. I\nonly see how, for so many reasons, we ought to stand toward them--and\nhow, to do ourselves justice, we do. It represents for us a conscious\ncare--\"\n\n\"Of every hour, literally,\" said Charlotte. She could rise to the\nhighest measure of the facts. \"And for which we must trust each\nother--!\"\n\n\"Oh, as we trust the saints in glory. Fortunately,\" the Prince hastened\nto add, \"we can.\" With which, as for the full assurance and the pledge\nit involved, their hands instinctively found their hands. \"It\'s all too\nwonderful.\"\n\nFirmly and gravely she kept his hand. \"It\'s too beautiful.\"\n\nAnd so for a minute they stood together, as strongly held and as closely\nconfronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. They\nwere silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped,\nonly meeting and met. \"It\'s sacred,\" he said at last.\n\n\"It\'s sacred,\" she breathed back to him. They vowed it, gave it out and\ntook it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. Then of\na sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow\nstrait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way,\nmelted and mingled. Their lips sought their lips, their pressure their\nresponse and their response their pressure; with a violence that had\nsighed itself the next moment to the longest and deepest of stillnesses\nthey passionately sealed their pledge.\n\n\n\n XIX\n\nHe had taken it from her, as we have seen, moreover, that Fanny\nAssingham didn\'t now matter--the \"now\" he had even himself supplied, as\nno more than fair to his sense of various earlier stages; and, though\nhis assent remained scarce more than tacit, his behaviour, for the hour,\nso fell into line that, for many days, he kept postponing the visit he\nhad promised his old friend on the occasion of their talk at the\nForeign Office. With regret, none the less, would he have seen it quite\nextinguished, that theory of their relation as attached pupil and kind\ninstructress in which they had from the first almost equally found a\nconvenience. It had been he, no doubt, who had most put it forward,\nsince his need of knowledge fairly exceeded her mild pretension; but he\nhad again and again repeated to her that he should never, without her,\nhave been where he was, and she had not successfully concealed the\npleasure it might give her to believe it, even after the question of\nwhere he was had begun to show itself as rather more closed than open\nto interpretation. It had never indeed, before that evening, come up as\nduring the passage at the official party, and he had for the first\ntime at those moments, a little disappointedly, got the impression of a\ncertain failure, on the dear woman\'s part, of something he was aware of\nhaving always rather freely taken for granted in her. Of what exactly\nthe failure consisted he would still perhaps have felt it a little harsh\nto try to say; and if she had in fact, as by Charlotte\'s observation,\n\"broken down,\" the details of the collapse would be comparatively\nunimportant. They came to the same thing, all such collapses--the\nfailure of courage, the failure of friendship, or the failure just\nsimply of tact; for didn\'t any one of them by itself amount really to\nthe failure of wit?--which was the last thing he had expected of her\nand which would be but another name for the triumph of stupidity. It had\nbeen Charlotte\'s remark that they were at last \"beyond\" her; whereas he\nhad ever enjoyed believing that a certain easy imagination in her would\nkeep up with him to the end. He shrank from affixing a label to Mrs.\nAssingham\'s want of faith; but when he thought, at his ease, of the\nway persons who were capable really entertained--or at least with any\nrefinement--the passion of personal loyalty, he figured for them a play\nof fancy neither timorous nor scrupulous. So would his personal loyalty,\nif need be, have accepted the adventure for the good creature herself;\nto that definite degree that he had positively almost missed the luxury\nof some such call from her. That was what it all came back to again with\nthese people among whom he was married--that one found one used one\'s\nimagination mainly for wondering how they contrived so little to appeal\nto it. He felt at moments as if there were never anything to do for them\nthat was worthy--to call worthy--of the personal relation; never any\ncharming charge to take of any confidence deeply reposed. He might\nvulgarly have put it that one had never to plot or to lie for them;\nhe might humourously have put it that one had never, as by the higher\nconformity, to lie in wait with the dagger or to prepare, insidiously,\nthe cup. These were the services that, by all romantic tradition, were\nconsecrated to affection quite as much as to hate. But he could amuse\nhimself with saying--so far as the amusement went--that they were what\nhe had once for all turned his back on.\n\nFanny was meanwhile frequent, it appeared, in Eaton Square; so much\nhe gathered from the visitor who was not infrequent, least of all at\ntea-time, during the same period, in Portland Place; though they had\nlittle need to talk of her after practically agreeing that they had\noutlived her. To the scene of these conversations and suppressions Mrs.\nAssingham herself made, actually, no approach; her latest view of her\nutility seeming to be that it had found in Eaton Square its most urgent\nfield. It was finding there in fact everything and everyone but the\nPrince, who mostly, just now, kept away, or who, at all events, on the\ninterspaced occasions of his calling, happened not to encounter the\nonly person from whom he was a little estranged. It would have been\nall prodigious if he had not already, with Charlotte\'s aid, so very\nconsiderably lived into it--it would have been all indescribably\nremarkable, this fact that, with wonderful causes for it so operating on\nthe surface, nobody else, as yet, in the combination, seemed estranged\nfrom anybody. If Mrs. Assingham delighted in Maggie she knew by\nthis time how most easily to reach her, and if she was unhappy about\nCharlotte she knew, by the same reasoning, how most probably to miss\nthat vision of her on which affliction would feed. It might feed of\ncourse on finding her so absent from her home--just as this particular\nphenomenon of her domestic detachment could be, by the anxious mind,\nbest studied there. Fanny was, however, for her reasons, \"shy\" of\nPortland Place itself--this was appreciable; so that she might well,\nafter all, have no great light on the question of whether Charlotte\'s\nappearances there were frequent or not, any more than on that of the\naccount they might be keeping of the usual solitude (since it came\nto this) of the head of that house. There was always, to cover all\nambiguities, to constitute a fund of explanation for the divisions of\nMrs. Verver\'s day, the circumstance that, at the point they had all\nreached together, Mrs. Verver was definitely and by general acclamation\nin charge of the \"social relations\" of the family, literally of those of\nthe two households; as to her genius for representing which in the\ngreat world and in the grand style vivid evidence had more and more\naccumulated. It had been established in the two households at an early\nstage, and with the highest good-humour, that Charlotte was a, was THE,\n\"social success,\" whereas the Princess, though kind, though punctilious,\nthough charming, though in fact the dearest little creature in the world\nand the Princess into the bargain, was distinctly not, would distinctly\nnever be, and might as well, practically, give it up: whether through\nbeing above it or below it, too much outside of it or too much lost in\nit, too unequipped or too indisposed, didn\'t especially matter. What\nsufficed was that the whole thing, call it appetite or call it\npatience, the act of representation at large and the daily business of\nintercourse, fell in with Charlotte\'s tested facility and, not much less\nvisibly, with her accommodating, her generous, view of her domestic use.\nShe had come, frankly, into the connection, to do and to be what she\ncould, \"no questions asked,\" and she had taken over, accordingly, as it\nstood, and in the finest practical spirit, the burden of a visiting-list\nthat Maggie, originally, left to herself, and left even more to the\nPrincipino, had suffered to get inordinately out of hand.\n\nShe had in a word not only mounted, cheerfully, the London\ntreadmill--she had handsomely professed herself, for the further comfort\nof the three others, sustained in the effort by a \"frivolous side,\" if\nthat were not too harsh a name for a pleasant constitutional curiosity.\nThere were possibilities of dulness, ponderosities of practice, arid\nsocial sands, the bad quarters-of-an-hour that turned up like false\npieces in a debased currency, of which she made, on principle, very\nnearly as light as if she had not been clever enough to distinguish. The\nPrince had, on this score, paid her his compliment soon after her\nreturn from her wedding-tour in America, where, by all accounts, she\nhad wondrously borne the brunt; facing brightly, at her husband\'s side,\neverything that came up--and what had come, often, was beyond words:\njust as, precisely, with her own interest only at stake, she had thrown\nup the game during the visit paid before her marriage. The discussion of\nthe American world, the comparison of notes, impressions and adventures,\nhad been all at hand, as a ground of meeting for Mrs. Verver and her\nhusband\'s son-in-law, from the hour of the reunion of the two couples.\nThus it had been, in short, that Charlotte could, for her friend\'s\nappreciation, so promptly make her point; even using expressions from\nwhich he let her see, at the hour, that he drew amusement of his own.\n\"What could be more simple than one\'s going through with everything,\"\nshe had asked, \"when it\'s so plain a part of one\'s contract? I\'ve got so\nmuch, by my marriage\"--for she had never for a moment concealed from him\nhow \"much\" she had felt it and was finding it \"that I should deserve\nno charity if I stinted my return. Not to do that, to give back on the\ncontrary all one can, are just one\'s decency and one\'s honour and one\'s\nvirtue. These things, henceforth, if you\'re interested to know, are my\nrule of life, the absolute little gods of my worship, the holy images\nset up on the wall. Oh yes, since I\'m not a brute,\" she had wound\nup, \"you shall see me as I AM!\" Which was therefore as he had seen\nher--dealing always, from month to month, from day to day and from one\noccasion to the other, with the duties of a remunerated office.\nHer perfect, her brilliant efficiency had doubtless, all the while,\ncontributed immensely to the pleasant ease in which her husband and her\nhusband\'s daughter were lapped. It had in fact probably done something\nmore than this--it had given them a finer and sweeter view of the\npossible scope of that ease. They had brought her in--on the crudest\nexpression of it--to do the \"worldly\" for them, and she had done it with\nsuch genius that they had themselves in consequence renounced it even\nmore than they had originally intended. In proportion as she did it,\nmoreover, was she to be relieved of other and humbler doings; which\nminor matters, by the properest logic, devolved therefore upon Maggie,\nin whose chords and whose province they more naturally lay. Not less\nnaturally, by the same token, they included the repair, at the hands of\nthe latter young woman, of every stitch conceivably dropped by Charlotte\nin Eaton Square. This was homely work, but that was just what made it\nMaggie\'s. Bearing in mind dear Amerigo, who was so much of her own great\nmundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question didn\'t, no doubt,\nquite equally provide for--that would be, to balance, just in a manner\nCharlotte\'s very most charming function, from the moment Charlotte could\nbe got adequately to recognise it.\n\nWell, that Charlotte might be appraised as at last not ineffectually\nrecognising it, was a reflection that, during the days with which we are\nactually engaged, completed in the Prince\'s breast these others, these\nimages and ruminations of his leisure, these gropings and fittings of\nhis conscience and his experience, that we have attempted to set in\norder there. They bore him company, not insufficiently--considering, in\nespecial, his fuller resources in that line--while he worked out--to the\nlast lucidity the principle on which he forbore either to seek Fanny out\nin Cadogan Place or to perpetrate the error of too marked an assiduity\nin Eaton Square. This error would be his not availing himself to the\nutmost of the convenience of any artless theory of his constitution, or\nof Charlotte\'s, that might prevail there. That artless theories could\nand did prevail was a fact he had ended by accepting, under copious\nevidence, as definite and ultimate; and it consorted with common\nprudence, with the simplest economy of life, not to be wasteful of any\nodd gleaning. To haunt Eaton Square, in fine, would be to show that\nhe had not, like his brilliant associate, a sufficiency of work in the\nworld. It was just his having that sufficiency, it was just their having\nit together, that, so strangely and so blessedly, made, as they put it\nto each other, everything possible. What further propped up the case,\nmoreover, was that the \"world,\" by still another beautiful perversity of\ntheir chance, included Portland Place without including to anything like\nthe same extent Eaton Square. The latter residence, at the same time, it\nmust promptly be added, did, on occasion, wake up to opportunity and,\nas giving itself a frolic shake, send out a score of invitations--one\nof which fitful flights, precisely, had, before Easter, the effect of\ndisturbing a little our young man\'s measure of his margin. Maggie, with\na proper spirit, held that her father ought from time to time to give a\nreally considered dinner, and Mr. Verver, who had as little idea as ever\nof not meeting expectation, was of the harmonious opinion that his wife\nought. Charlotte\'s own judgment was, always, that they were ideally\nfree--the proof of which would always be, she maintained, that everyone\nthey feared they might most have alienated by neglect would arrive,\nwreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal. Wreathed\nin smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck\nAmerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked,\nin the great London bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own,\nan investing amenity and humanity. Everybody came, everybody rushed;\nbut all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere\nmultitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot\nof the fine staircase, with the overcoats and shawls. The entertainment\noffered a few evenings before Easter, and at which Maggie and he\nwere inevitably present as guests, was a discharge of obligations not\ninsistently incurred, and had thereby, possibly, all the more, the note\nof this almost Arcadian optimism: a large, bright, dull, murmurous,\nmild-eyed, middle-aged dinner, involving for the most part very bland,\nthough very exalted, immensely announceable and hierarchically placeable\ncouples, and followed, without the oppression of a later contingent, by\na brief instrumental concert, over the preparation of which, the Prince\nknew, Maggie\'s anxiety had conferred with Charlotte\'s ingenuity and both\nhad supremely revelled, as it were, in Mr. Verver\'s solvency.\n\nThe Assinghams were there, by prescription, though quite at the foot of\nthe social ladder, and with the Colonel\'s wife, in spite of her humility\nof position, the Prince was more inwardly occupied than with any other\nperson except Charlotte. He was occupied with Charlotte because, in the\nfirst place, she looked so inordinately handsome and held so high, where\nso much else was mature and sedate, the torch of responsive youth and\nthe standard of passive grace; and because of the fact that, in the\nsecond, the occasion, so far as it referred itself with any confidence\nof emphasis to a hostess, seemed to refer itself preferentially,\nwell-meaningly and perversely, to Maggie. It was not indistinguishable\nto him, when once they were all stationed, that his wife too had in\nperfection her own little character; but he wondered how it managed so\nvisibly to simplify itself--and this, he knew, in spite of any desire\nshe entertained--to the essential air of having overmuch on her mind the\nfelicity, and indeed the very conduct and credit, of the feast. He knew,\nas well, the other things of which her appearance was at any time--and\nin Eaton Square especially--made up: her resemblance to her father, at\ntimes so vivid, and coming out, in the delicate warmth of occasions,\nlike the quickened fragrance of a flower; her resemblance, as he had\nhit it off for her once in Rome, in the first flushed days, after their\nengagement, to a little dancing-girl at rest, ever so light of movement\nbut most often panting gently, even a shade compunctiously, on a bench;\nher approximation, finally--for it was analogy, somehow, more than\nidentity--to the transmitted images of rather neutral and negative\npropriety that made up, in his long line, the average of wifehood and\nmotherhood. If the Roman matron had been, in sufficiency, first and\nlast, the honour of that line, Maggie would no doubt, at fifty, have\nexpanded, have solidified to some such dignity, even should she suggest\na little but a Cornelia in miniature. A light, however, broke for him in\nseason, and when once it had done so it made him more than ever aware\nof Mrs. Verver\'s vaguely, yet quite exquisitely, contingent\nparticipation--a mere hinted or tendered discretion; in short of Mrs.\nVerver\'s indescribable, unfathomable relation to the scene. Her placed\ncondition, her natural seat and neighbourhood, her intenser presence,\nher quieter smile, her fewer jewels, were inevitably all as nothing\ncompared with the preoccupation that burned in Maggie like a small flame\nand that had in fact kindled in each of her cheeks a little attesting,\nbut fortunately by no means unbecoming, spot. The party was her father\'s\nparty, and its greater or smaller success was a question having for her\nall the importance of his importance; so that sympathy created for her\na sort of visible suspense, under pressure of which she bristled with\nfilial reference, with little filial recalls of expression, movement,\ntone. It was all unmistakable, and as pretty as possible, if one would,\nand even as funny; but it put the pair so together, as undivided by the\nmarriage of each, that the Princess il n\'y avait pas a dire--might sit\nwhere she liked: she would still, always, in that house, be irremediably\nMaggie Verver. The Prince found himself on this occasion so beset with\nthat perception that its natural complement for him would really have\nbeen to wonder if Mr. Verver had produced on people something of the\nsame impression in the recorded cases of his having dined with his\ndaughter.\n\nThis backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have\nbeen easily arrested; for it was at present to come over Amerigo as\nnever before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world\nleast equipped with different appearances for different hours. He was\nsimple, he was a revelation of simplicity, and that was the end of him\nso far as he consisted of an appearance at all--a question that might\nverily, for a weakness in it, have been argued. It amused our young man,\nwho was taking his pleasure to-night, it will be seen, in sundry occult\nways, it amused him to feel how everything else the master of the\nhouse consisted of, resources, possessions, facilities and amiabilities\namplified by the social legend, depended, for conveying the effect of\nquantity, on no personal \"equation,\" no mere measurable medium. Quantity\nwas in the air for these good people, and Mr. Verver\'s estimable quality\nwas almost wholly in that pervasion. He was meagre and modest and\nclearbrowed, and his eyes, if they wandered without fear, yet stayed\nwithout defiance; his shoulders were not broad, his chest was not high,\nhis complexion was not fresh, and the crown of his head was not covered;\nin spite of all of which he looked, at the top of his table, so nearly\nlike a little boy shyly entertaining in virtue of some imposed rank,\nthat he COULD only be one of the powers, the representative of a\nforce--quite as an infant king is the representative of a dynasty. In\nthis generalised view of his father-in-law, intensified to-night but\nalways operative, Amerigo had now for some time taken refuge. The\nrefuge, after the reunion of the two households in England, had more and\nmore offered itself as the substitute for communities, from man to man,\nthat, by his original calculation, might have become possible, but\nthat had not really ripened and flowered. He met the decent family eyes\nacross the table, met them afterwards in the music-room, but only to\nread in them still what he had learned to read during his first months,\nthe time of over-anxious initiation, a kind of apprehension in which\nthe terms and conditions were finally fixed and absolute. This directed\nregard rested at its ease, but it neither lingered nor penetrated,\nand was, to the Prince\'s fancy, much of the same order as any glance\ndirected, for due attention, from the same quarter, to the figure of a\ncheque received in the course of business and about to be enclosed to a\nbanker. It made sure of the amount--and just so, from time to time,\nthe amount of the Prince was made sure. He was being thus, in renewed\ninstalments, perpetually paid in; he already reposed in the bank as a\nvalue, but subject, in this comfortable way, to repeated, to infinite\nendorsement. The net result of all of which, moreover, was that the\nyoung man had no wish to see his value diminish. He himself, after all,\nhad not fixed it--the \"figure\" was a conception all of Mr. Verver\'s own.\nCertainly, however, everything must be kept up to it; never so much as\nto-night had the Prince felt this. He would have been uncomfortable, as\nthese quiet expressions passed, had the case not been guaranteed for him\nby the intensity of his accord with Charlotte. It was impossible that he\nshould not now and again meet Charlotte\'s eyes, as it was also visible\nthat she too now and again met her husband\'s. For her as well, in all\nhis pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. It put them, it kept them\ntogether, through the vain show of their separation, made the two other\nfaces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the\nflowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge\nbetween them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for\nthat intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of\n\"care,\" would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound.\n\n\n\n XX\n\nThe main interest of these hours for us, however, will have been in\nthe way the Prince continued to know, during a particular succession of\nothers, separated from the evening in Eaton Square by a short interval,\na certain persistent aftertaste. This was the lingering savour of a\ncup presented to him by Fanny Assingham\'s hand after dinner, while the\nclustered quartette kept their ranged companions, in the music-room,\nmoved if one would, but conveniently motionless. Mrs. Assingham\ncontrived, after a couple of pieces, to convey to her friend that, for\nher part, she was moved--by the genius of Brahms--beyond what she could\nbear; so that, without apparent deliberation, she had presently floated\naway, at the young man\'s side, to such a distance as permitted them\nto converse without the effect of disdain. It was the twenty minutes\nenjoyed with her, during the rest of the concert, in the less associated\nelectric glare of one of the empty rooms--it was their achieved and, as\nhe would have said, successful, most pleasantly successful, talk on one\nof the sequestered sofas, it was this that was substantially to underlie\nhis consciousness of the later occasion. The later occasion, then mere\nmatter of discussion, had formed her ground for desiring--in a light\nundertone into which his quick ear read indeed some nervousness--these\nindependent words with him: she had sounded, covertly but distinctly, by\nthe time they were seated together, the great question of what it might\ninvolve. It had come out for him before anything else, and so abruptly\nthat this almost needed an explanation. Then the abruptness itself\nhad appeared to explain--which had introduced, in turn, a slight\nawkwardness. \"Do you know that they\'re not, after all, going to Matcham;\nso that, if they don\'t--if, at least, Maggie doesn\'t--you won\'t, I\nsuppose, go by yourself?\" It was, as I say, at Matcham, where the event\nhad placed him, it was at Matcham during the Easter days, that it most\nbefell him, oddly enough, to live over, inwardly, for its wealth of\nspecial significance, this passage by which the event had been really\na good deal determined. He had paid, first and last, many an English\ncountry visit; he had learned, even from of old, to do the English\nthings, and to do them, all sufficiently, in the English way; if he\ndidn\'t always enjoy them madly he enjoyed them at any rate as much,\nto an appearance, as the good people who had, in the night of time,\nunanimously invented them, and who still, in the prolonged afternoon of\ntheir good faith, unanimously, even if a trifle automatically, practised\nthem; yet, with it all, he had never so much as during such sojourns the\ntrick of a certain detached, the amusement of a certain inward critical,\nlife; the determined need, which apparently all participant, of\nreturning upon itself, of backing noiselessly in, far in again, and\nrejoining there, as it were, that part of his mind that was not engaged\nat the front. His body, very constantly, was engaged at the front--in\nshooting, in riding, in golfing, in walking, over the fine diagonals\nof meadow-paths or round the pocketed corners of billiard-tables; it\nsufficiently, on the whole, in fact, bore the brunt of bridge-playing,\nof breakfasting, lunching, tea-drinking, dining, and of the nightly\nclimax over the bottigliera, as he called it, of the bristling tray; it\nmet, finally, to the extent of the limited tax on lip, on gesture,\non wit, most of the current demands of conversation and expression.\nTherefore something of him, he often felt at these times, was left\nout; it was much more when he was alone, or when he was with his own\npeople--or when he was, say, with Mrs. Verver and nobody else--that he\nmoved, that he talked, that he listened, that he felt, as a congruous\nwhole.\n\n\"English society,\" as he would have said, cut him, accordingly, in\ntwo, and he reminded himself often, in his relations with it, of a\nman possessed of a shining star, a decoration, an order of some sort,\nsomething so ornamental as to make his identity not complete, ideally,\nwithout it, yet who, finding no other such object generally worn, should\nbe perpetually, and the least bit ruefully, unpinning it from his breast\nto transfer it to his pocket. The Prince\'s shining star may, no doubt,\nhaving been nothing more precious than his private subtlety; but\nwhatever the object was he just now fingered it a good deal, out of\nsight--amounting as it mainly did for him to a restless play of memory\nand a fine embroidery of thought. Something had rather momentously\noccurred, in Eaton Square, during his enjoyed minutes with his old\nfriend: his present perspective made definitely clear to him that she\nhad plumped out for him her first little lie. That took on--and he could\nscarce have said why--a sharpness of importance: she had never lied\nto him before--if only because it had never come up for her, properly,\nintelligibly, morally, that she must. As soon as she had put to him the\nquestion of what he would do--by which she meant of what Charlotte would\nalso do--in that event of Maggie\'s and Mr. Verver\'s not embracing the\nproposal they had appeared for a day or two resignedly to entertain; as\nsoon as she had betrayed her curiosity as to the line the other pair, so\nleft to themselves, might take, a desire to avoid the appearance of\nat all too directly prying had become marked in her. Betrayed by the\nsolicitude of which she had, already, three weeks before, given him a\nview, she had been obliged, on a second thought, to name, intelligibly,\na reason for her appeal; while the Prince, on his side, had had, not\nwithout mercy, his glimpse of her momentarily groping for one and yet\nremaining unprovided. Not without mercy because, absolutely, he had on\nthe spot, in his friendliness, invented one for her use, presenting it\nto her with a look no more significant than if he had picked up, to hand\nback to her, a dropped flower. \"You ask if I\'m likely also to back\nout then, because it may make a difference in what you and the Colonel\ndecide?\"--he had gone as far as that for her, fairly inviting her\nto assent, though not having had his impression, from any indication\noffered him by Charlotte, that the Assinghams were really in question\nfor the large Matcham party. The wonderful thing, after this, was that\nthe active couple had, in the interval, managed to inscribe themselves\non the golden roll; an exertion of a sort that, to do her justice,\nhe had never before observed Fanny to make. This last passage of the\nchapter but proved, after all, with what success she could work when she\nwould.\n\nOnce launched, himself, at any rate, as he had been directed by all the\nterms of the intercourse between Portland Place and Eaton Square, once\nsteeped, at Matcham, in the enjoyment of a splendid hospitality, he\nfound everything, for his interpretation, for his convenience, fall\neasily enough into place; and all the more that Mrs. Verver was at hand\nto exchange ideas and impressions with. The great house was full of\npeople, of possible new combinations, of the quickened play of possible\npropinquity, and no appearance, of course, was less to be cultivated\nthan that of his having sought an opportunity to foregather with his\nfriend at a safe distance from their respective sposi. There was a happy\nboldness, at the best, in their mingling thus, each unaccompanied,\nin the same sustained sociability--just exactly a touch of that\neccentricity of associated freedom which sat so lightly on the\nimagination of the relatives left behind. They were exposed as much\nas one would to its being pronounced funny that they should, at such a\nrate, go about together--though, on the other hand, this consideration\ndrew relief from the fact that, in their high conditions and with\nthe easy tradition, the almost inspiring allowances, of the house in\nquestion, no individual line, however freely marked, was pronounced\nanything more than funny. Both our friends felt afresh, as they had felt\nbefore, the convenience of a society so placed that it had only its own\nsensibility to consider--looking as it did well over the heads of all\nlower growths; and that moreover treated its own sensibility quite as\nthe easiest, friendliest, most informal and domesticated party to the\ngeneral alliance. What anyone \"thought\" of anyone else--above all of\nanyone else with anyone else--was a matter incurring in these lulls so\nlittle awkward formulation that hovering judgment, the spirit with the\nscales, might perfectly have been imaged there as some rather snubbed\nand subdued, but quite trained and tactful poor relation, of equal, of\nthe properest, lineage, only of aspect a little dingy, doubtless from\ntoo limited a change of dress, for whose tacit and abstemious presence,\nnever betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine, a room in the attic and\na plate at the side-table were decently usual. It was amusing, in such\nlightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to\nspeak for the Princess, so unfortunately unable, again, to leave home;\nand that Mrs. Verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a\nbeautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality\nand humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had\ngrown up that he couldn\'t bear, with the height of his standards and the\ntone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept\nby him, the irritation and depression to which promiscuous visiting,\neven at pompous houses, had been found to expose him. That was all\nright, the noted working harmony of the clever son-in-law and the\ncharming stepmother, so long as the relation was, for the effect in\nquestion, maintained at the proper point between sufficiency and excess.\n\nWhat with the noble fairness of the place, meanwhile, the generous mood\nof the sunny, gusty, lusty English April, all panting and heaving with\nimpatience, or kicking and crying, even, at moments, like some infant\nHercules who wouldn\'t be dressed; what with these things and the bravery\nof youth and beauty, the insolence of fortune and appetite so diffused\namong his fellow-guests that the poor Assinghams, in their comparatively\nmarked maturity and their comparatively small splendour, were the only\napproach to a false note in the concert, the stir of the air was\nsuch, for going, in a degree, to one\'s head, that, as a mere matter of\nexposure, almost grotesque in its flagrancy, his situation resembled\nsome elaborate practical joke carried out at his expense. Every voice in\nthe great bright house was a call to the ingenuities and impunities\nof pleasure; every echo was a defiance of difficulty, doubt or danger;\nevery aspect of the picture, a glowing plea for the immediate, and as\nwith plenty more to come, was another phase of the spell. For a world so\nconstituted was governed by a spell, that of the smile of the gods and\nthe favour of the powers; the only handsome, the only gallant, in fact\nthe only intelligent acceptance of which was a faith in its guarantees\nand a high spirit for its chances. Its demand--to that the thing came\nback--was above all for courage and good-humour; and the value of\nthis as a general assurance--that is for seeing one through at the\nworst--had not even in the easiest hours of his old Roman life struck\nthe Prince so convincingly. His old Roman life had had more poetry, no\ndoubt, but as he looked back upon it now it seemed to hang in the air\nof mere iridescent horizons, to have been loose and vague and thin, with\nlarge languorous unaccountable blanks. The present order, as it spread\nabout him, had somehow the ground under its feet, and a trumpet in its\nears, and a bottomless bag of solid shining British sovereigns--which\nwas much to the point--in its hand. Courage and good-humour therefore\nwere the breath of the day; though for ourselves at least it would have\nbeen also much to the point that, with Amerigo, really, the innermost\neffect of all this perceptive ease was perhaps a strange final\nirritation. He compared the lucid result with the extraordinary\nsubstitute for perception that presided, in the bosom of his wife, at\nso contented a view of his conduct and course--a state of mind that was\npositively like a vicarious good conscience, cultivated ingeniously on\nhis behalf, a perversity of pressure innocently persisted in; and this\nwonder of irony became on occasion too intense to be kept wholly to\nhimself. It wasn\'t that, at Matcham, anything particular, anything\nmonstrous, anything that had to be noticed permitted itself, as they\nsaid, to \"happen\"; there were only odd moments when the breath of the\nday, as it has been called, struck him so full in the face that he broke\nout with all the hilarity of \"What indeed would THEY have made of it?\"\n\"They\" were of course Maggie and her father, moping--so far as they\never consented to mope in monotonous Eaton Square, but placid too in the\nbelief that they knew beautifully what their expert companions were\nin for. They knew, it might have appeared in these lights, absolutely\nnothing on earth worth speaking of--whether beautifully or cynically;\nand they would perhaps sometimes be a little less trying if they would\nonly once for all peacefully admit that knowledge wasn\'t one of their\nneeds and that they were in fact constitutionally inaccessible to it.\nThey were good children, bless their hearts, and the children of good\nchildren; so that, verily, the Principino himself, as less consistently\nof that descent, might figure to the fancy as the ripest genius of the\ntrio.\n\nThe difficulty was, for the nerves of daily intercourse with Maggie in\nparticular, that her imagination was clearly never ruffled by the sense\nof any anomaly. The great anomaly would have been that her husband, or\neven that her father\'s wife, should prove to have been made, for the\nlong run, after the pattern set from so far back to the Ververs. If one\nwas so made one had certainly no business, on any terms, at Matcham;\nwhereas if one wasn\'t one had no business there on the particular\nterms--terms of conformity with the principles of Eaton Square--under\nwhich one had been so absurdly dedicated. Deep at the heart of that\nresurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves\nwith calling his irritation--deep in the bosom of this falsity of\nposition glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher\nand braver propriety. There were situations that were ridiculous, but\nthat one couldn\'t yet help, as for instance when one\'s wife chose, in\nthe most usual way, to make one so. Precisely here, however, was the\ndifference; it had taken poor Maggie to invent a way so extremely\nunusual--yet to which, none the less, it would be too absurd that he\nshould merely lend himself. Being thrust, systematically, with another\nwoman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to\nlike, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one\nas idiotic or incapable--this WAS a predicament of which the dignity\ndepended all on one\'s own handling. What was supremely grotesque, in\nfact, was the essential opposition of theories--as if a galantuomo, as\nHE at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything\nBUT blush to \"go about\" at such a rate with such a person as Mrs. Verver\nin a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents\nbefore the Fall. The grotesque theory, as he would have called it, was\nperhaps an odd one to resent with violence, and he did it--also as a man\nof the world--all merciful justice; but, assuredly, none the less, there\nwas but one way REALLY to mark, and for his companion as much as for\nhimself, the commiseration in which they held it. Adequate comment on it\ncould only be private, but it could also at least be active, and of rich\nand effectual comment Charlotte and he were fortunately alike capable.\nWasn\'t this consensus literally their only way not to be ungracious? It\nwas positively as if the measure of their escape from that danger were\ngiven by the growth between them, during their auspicious visit, of an\nexquisite sense of complicity.\n\n\n\n XXI\n\nHe found himself therefore saying, with gaiety, even to Fanny Assingham,\nfor their common, concerned glance at Eaton Square, the glance that was\nso markedly never, as it might have been, a glance at Portland Place:\n\"What WOULD our cari sposi have made of it here? what would they, you\nknow, really?\"--which overflow would have been reckless if, already, and\nsurprisingly perhaps even to himself, he had not got used to thinking of\nthis friend as a person in whom the element of protest had of late been\nunmistakably allayed. He exposed himself of course to her replying:\n\"Ah, if it would have been so bad for them, how can it be so good for\nyou?\"--but, quite apart from the small sense the question would have had\nat the best, she appeared already to unite with him in confidence and\ncheer. He had his view, as well--or at least a partial one--of the inner\nspring of this present comparative humility, which was all consistent\nwith the retraction he had practically seen her make after Mr. Verver\'s\nlast dinner. Without diplomatising to do so, with no effort to square\nher, none to bribe her to an attitude for which he would have had no\nuse in her if it were not sincere, he yet felt how he both held her and\nmoved her by the felicity of his taking pity, all instinctively, on her\njust discernible depression. By just so much as he guessed that she felt\nherself, as the slang was, out of it, out of the crystal current and the\nexpensive picture, by just so much had his friendship charmingly made\nup to her, from hour to hour, for the penalties, as they might have been\ngrossly called, of her mistake. Her mistake had only been, after all,\nin her wanting to seem to him straight; she had let herself in for\nbeing--as she had made haste, for that matter, during the very first\nhalf-hour, at tea, to proclaim herself--the sole and single frump of\nthe party. The scale of everything was so different that all her minor\nvalues, her quainter graces, her little local authority, her humour and\nher wardrobe alike, for which it was enough elsewhere, among her bons\namis, that they were hers, dear Fanny Assingham\'s--these matters and\nothers would be all, now, as nought: five minutes had sufficed to give\nher the fatal pitch. In Cadogan Place she could always, at the worst,\nbe picturesque--for she habitually spoke of herself as \"local\" to Sloane\nStreet whereas at Matcham she should never be anything but horrible. And\nit all would have come, the disaster, from the real refinement, in her,\nof the spirit of friendship. To prove to him that she wasn\'t really\nwatching him--ground for which would have been too terribly grave--she\nhad followed him in his pursuit of pleasure: SO she might, precisely,\nmark her detachment. This was handsome trouble for her to take--the\nPrince could see it all: it wasn\'t a shade of interference that a\ngood-natured man would visit on her. So he didn\'t even say, when she\ntold him how frumpy she knew herself, how frumpy her very maid, odiously\ngoing back on her, rubbed it into her, night and morning, with unsealed\neyes and lips, that she now knew her--he didn\'t then say \"Ah, see what\nyou\'ve done: isn\'t it rather your own fault?\" He behaved differently\naltogether: eminently distinguished himself--for she told him she had\nnever seen him so universally distinguished--he yet distinguished her\nin her obscurity, or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and\nfrankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all\nthe importance of her wit. That wit, as discriminated from stature and\ncomplexion, a sense for \"bridge\" and a credit for pearls, could have\nimportance was meanwhile but dimly perceived at Matcham; so that his\n\"niceness\" to her--she called it only niceness, but it brought tears\ninto her eyes--had the greatness of a general as well as of a special\ndemonstration.\n\n\"She understands,\" he said, as a comment on all this, to Mrs.\nVerver--\"she understands all she needs to understand. She has taken her\ntime, but she has at last made it out for herself: she sees how all we\ncan desire is to give them the life they prefer, to surround them with\nthe peace and quiet, and above all with the sense of security, most\nfavourable to it. She can\'t of course very well put it to us that\nwe have, so far as she is concerned, but to make the best of our\ncircumstances; she can\'t say in so many words \'Don\'t think of me, for\nI too must make the best of mine: arrange as you can, only, and live as\nyou must.\' I don\'t get quite THAT from her, any more than I ask for it.\nBut her tone and her whole manner mean nothing at all unless they mean\nthat she trusts us to take as watchful, to take as artful, to take as\ntender care, in our way, as she so anxiously takes in hers. So that\nshe\'s--well,\" the Prince wound up, \"what you may call practically all\nright.\" Charlotte in fact, however, to help out his confidence, didn\'t\ncall it anything; return as he might to the lucidity, the importance, or\nwhatever it was, of this lesson, she gave him no aid toward reading it\naloud. She let him, two or three times over, spell it out for himself;\nonly on the eve of their visit\'s end was she, for once, clear or direct\nin response. They had found a minute together in the great hall of the\nhouse during the half-hour before dinner; this easiest of chances they\nhad already, a couple of times, arrived at by waiting persistently\ntill the last other loiterers had gone to dress, and by being prepared\nthemselves to dress so expeditiously that they might, a little later on,\nbe among the first to appear in festal array. The hall then was\nempty, before the army of rearranging, cushion-patting housemaids were\nmarshalled in, and there was a place by the forsaken fire, at one end,\nwhere they might imitate, with art, the unpremeditated. Above all, here,\nfor the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that\nthe interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the\nunion and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. They\nhad prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they had\nslow approximations that counted as long caresses. The quality of these\npassages, in truth, made the spoken word, and especially the spoken word\nabout other people, fall below them; so that our young woman\'s tone had\neven now a certain dryness. \"It\'s very good of her, my dear, to trust\nus. But what else can she do?\"\n\n\"Why, whatever people do when they don\'t trust. Let one see they don\'t.\"\n\n\"But let whom see?\"\n\n\"Well, let ME, say, to begin with.\"\n\n\"And should you mind that?\"\n\nHe had a slight show of surprise. \"Shouldn\'t you?\"\n\n\"Her letting you see? No,\" said Charlotte; \"the only thing I can imagine\nmyself minding is what you yourself, if you don\'t look out, may let HER\nsee.\" To which she added: \"You may let her see, you know, that you\'re\nafraid.\"\n\n\"I\'m only afraid of you, a little, at moments,\" he presently returned.\n\"But I shan\'t let Fanny see that.\"\n\nIt was clear, however, that neither the limits nor the extent of\nMrs. Assingham\'s vision were now a real concern to her, and she gave\nexpression to this as she had not even yet done. \"What in the world\ncan she do against us? There\'s not a word that she can breathe. She\'s\nhelpless; she can\'t speak; she would be herself the first to be dished\nby it.\" And then as he seemed slow to follow: \"It all comes back to her.\nIt all began with her. Everything, from the first. She introduced you to\nMaggie. She made your marriage.\"\n\nThe Prince might have had his moment of demur, but at this, after a\nlittle, as with a smile dim but deep, he came on. \"Mayn\'t she also\nbe said, a good deal, to have made yours? That was intended, I think,\nwasn\'t it? for a kind of rectification.\"\n\nCharlotte, on her side, for an instant, hesitated; then she was prompter\nstill. \"I don\'t mean there was anything to rectify; everything was as it\nhad to be, and I\'m not speaking of how she may have been concerned for\nyou and me. I\'m speaking of how she took, in her way, each time, THEIR\nlives in hand, and how, therefore, that ties her up to-day. She can\'t go\nto them and say \'It\'s very awkward of course, you poor dear things, but\nI was frivolously mistaken.\'\"\n\nHe took it in still, with his long look at her. \"All the more that she\nwasn\'t. She was right. Everything\'s right,\" he went on, \"and everything\nwill stay so.\"\n\n\"Then that\'s all I say.\"\n\nBut he worked it out, for the deeper satisfaction, even to superfluous\nlucidity. \"We\'re happy, and they\'re happy. What more does the position\nadmit of? What more need Fanny Assingham want?\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear,\" said Charlotte, \"it\'s not I who say that she need want\nanything. I only say that she\'s FIXED, that she must stand exactly where\neverything has, by her own act, placed her. It\'s you who have seemed\nhaunted with the possibility, for her, of some injurious alternative,\nsomething or other we must be prepared for.\" And she had, with her high\nreasoning, a strange cold smile. \"We ARE prepared--for anything, for\neverything; and AS we are, practically, so she must take us. She\'s\ncondemned to consistency; she\'s doomed, poor thing, to a genial\noptimism. That, luckily for her, however, is very much the law of her\nnature. She was born to soothe and to smooth. Now then, therefore,\" Mrs.\nVerver gently laughed, \"she has the chance of her life!\"\n\n\"So that her present professions may, even at the best, not be\nsincere?--may be but a mask for doubts and fears, and for gaining time?\"\n\nThe Prince had looked, with the question, as if this, again, could\ntrouble him, and it determined in his companion a slight impatience.\n\"You keep talking about such things as if they were our affair at all. I\nfeel, at any rate, that I\'ve nothing to do with her doubts and fears, or\nwith anything she may feel. She must arrange all that for herself. It\'s\nenough for me that she\'ll always be, of necessity, much more afraid for\nherself, REALLY, either to see or to speak, than we should be to\nhave her do it even if we were the idiots and cowards we aren\'t.\" And\nCharlotte\'s face, with these words--to the mitigation of the slightly\nhard ring there might otherwise have been in them--fairly lightened,\nsoftened, shone out. It reflected as really never yet the rare felicity\nof their luck. It made her look for the moment as if she had actually\npronounced that word of unpermitted presumption--so apt is the\ncountenance, as with a finer consciousness than the tongue, to betray a\nsense of this particular lapse. She might indeed, the next instant, have\nseen her friend wince, in advance, at her use of a word that was already\non her lips; for it was still unmistakable with him that there were\nthings he could prize, forms of fortune he could cherish, without at\nall proportionately liking their names. Had all this, however, been\neven completely present to his companion, what other term could she\nhave applied to the strongest and simplest of her ideas but the one that\nexactly fitted it? She applied it then, though her own instinct moved\nher, at the same time, to pay her tribute to the good taste from which\nthey hadn\'t heretofore by a hair\'s breadth deviated. \"If it didn\'t sound\nso vulgar I should say that we\'re--fatally, as it were--SAFE. Pardon the\nlow expression--since it\'s what we happen to be. We\'re so because they\nare. And they\'re so because they can\'t be anything else, from the moment\nthat, having originally intervened for them, she wouldn\'t now be able to\nbear herself if she didn\'t keep them so. That\'s the way she\'s inevitably\nWITH us,\" said Charlotte over her smile. \"We hang, essentially,\ntogether.\"\n\nWell, the Prince candidly allowed she did bring it home to him. Every\nway it worked out. \"Yes, I see. We hang, essentially, together.\"\n\nHis friend had a shrug--a shrug that had a grace. \"Cosa volete?\" The\neffect, beautifully, nobly, was more than Roman. \"Ah, beyond doubt, it\'s\na case.\"\n\nHe stood looking at her. \"It\'s a case. There can\'t,\" he said, \"have been\nmany.\"\n\n\"Perhaps never, never, never any other. That,\" she smiled, \"I confess I\nshould like to think. Only ours.\"\n\n\"Only ours--most probably. Speriamo.\" To which, as after hushed\nconnections, he presently added: \"Poor Fanny!\" But Charlotte had\nalready, with a start and a warning hand, turned from a glance at\nthe clock. She sailed away to dress, while he watched her reach the\nstaircase. His eyes followed her till, with a simple swift look round\nat him, she vanished. Something in the sight, however, appeared to have\nrenewed the spring of his last exclamation, which he breathed again upon\nthe air. \"Poor, poor Fanny!\"\n\nIt was to prove, however, on the morrow, quite consistent with the\nspirit of these words that, the party at Matcham breaking up and\nmultitudinously dispersing, he should be able to meet the question of\nthe social side of the process of repatriation with due presence of\nmind. It was impossible, for reasons, that he should travel to town with\nthe Assinghams; it was impossible, for the same reasons, that he\nshould travel to town save in the conditions that he had for the\nlast twenty-four hours been privately, and it might have been said\nprofoundly, thinking out. The result of his thought was already precious\nto him, and this put at his service, he sufficiently believed, the right\ntone for disposing of his elder friend\'s suggestion, an assumption in\nfact equally full and mild, that he and Charlotte would conveniently\ntake the same train and occupy the same compartment as the Colonel and\nherself. The extension of the idea to Mrs. Verver had been, precisely,\na part of Mrs. Assingham\'s mildness, and nothing could better have\ncharacterised her sense for social shades than her easy perception that\nthe gentleman from Portland Place and the lady from Eaton Square might\nnow confess, quite without indiscretion, to simultaneity of movement.\nShe had made, for the four days, no direct appeal to the latter\npersonage, but the Prince was accidental witness of her taking a fresh\nstart at the moment the company were about to scatter for the last night\nof their stay. There had been, at this climax, the usual preparatory\ntalk about hours and combinations, in the midst of which poor\nFanny gently approached Mrs. Verver. She said \"You and the Prince,\nlove,\"--quite, apparently, without blinking; she took for granted their\npublic withdrawal together; she remarked that she and Bob were alike\nready, in the interest of sociability, to take any train that would\nmake them all one party. \"I feel really as if, all this time, I had seen\nnothing of you\"--that gave an added grace to the candour of the dear\nthing\'s approach. But just then it was, on the other hand, that the\nyoung man found himself borrow most effectively the secret of the right\ntone for doing as he preferred. His preference had, during the evening,\nnot failed of occasion to press him with mute insistences; practically\nwithout words, without any sort of straight telegraphy, it had arrived\nat a felt identity with Charlotte\'s own. She spoke all for their friend\nwhile she answered their friend\'s question, but she none the less\nsignalled to him as definitely as if she had fluttered a white\nhandkerchief from a window. \"It\'s awfully sweet of you, darling--our\ngoing together would be charming. But you mustn\'t mind us--you must\nsuit yourselves we\'ve settled, Amerigo and I, to stay over till after\nluncheon.\"\n\nAmerigo, with the chink of this gold in his ear, turned straight away,\nso as not to be instantly appealed to; and for the very emotion of the\nwonder, furthermore, of what divination may achieve when winged by a\ncommunity of passion. Charlotte had uttered the exact plea that he had\nbeen keeping ready for the same foreseen necessity, and had uttered\nit simply as a consequence of their deepening unexpressed need of each\nother and without the passing between them of a word. He hadn\'t, God\nknew, to take it from her--he was too conscious of what he wanted; but\nthe lesson for him was in the straight clear tone that Charlotte could\nthus distil, in the perfect felicity of her adding no explanation, no\ntouch for plausibility, that she wasn\'t strictly obliged to add, and\nin the truly superior way in which women, so situated, express\nand distinguish themselves. She had answered Mrs. Assingham quite\nadequately; she had not spoiled it by a reason a scrap larger than the\nsmallest that would serve, and she had, above all, thrown off, for his\nstretched but covered attention, an image that flashed like a mirror\nplayed at the face of the sun. The measure of EVERYTHING, to all his\nsense, at these moments, was in it--the measure especially of the\nthought that had been growing with him a positive obsession and that\nbegan to throb as never yet under this brush of her having, by perfect\nparity of imagination, the match for it. His whole consciousness had by\nthis time begun almost to ache with a truth of an exquisite order,\nat the glow of which she too had, so unmistakably then, been warming\nherself--the truth that the occasion constituted by the last few days\ncouldn\'t possibly, save by some poverty of their own, refuse them some\nstill other and still greater beauty. It had already told them, with\nan hourly voice, that it had a meaning--a meaning that their associated\nsense was to drain even as thirsty lips, after the plough through the\nsands and the sight, afar, of the palm-cluster, might drink in at last\nthe promised well in the desert. There had been beauty, day after day,\nand there had been, for the spiritual lips, something of the pervasive\ntaste of it; yet it was all, none the less, as if their response had\nremained below their fortune. How to bring it, by some brave, free\nlift, up to the same height was the idea with which, behind and beneath\neverything, he was restlessly occupied, and in the exploration of which,\nas in that of the sun-chequered greenwood of romance, his spirit thus,\nat the opening of a vista, met hers. They were already, from that\nmoment, so hand-in-hand in the place that he found himself making use,\nfive minutes later, of exactly the same tone as Charlotte\'s for telling\nMrs. Assingham that he was likewise, in the matter of the return to\nLondon, sorry for what mightn\'t be.\n\nThis had become, of a sudden, the simplest thing in the world--the\nsense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he\nshould feel, forevermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease\nwith her. He went in fact a step further than Charlotte--put the latter\nforward as creating his necessity. She was staying over luncheon to\noblige their hostess--as a consequence of which he must also stay to see\nher decently home. He must deliver her safe and sound, he felt, in Eaton\nSquare. Regret as he might, too, the difference made by this obligation,\nhe frankly didn\'t mind, inasmuch as, over and above the pleasure itself,\nhis scruple would certainly gratify both Mr. Verver and Maggie.\nThey never yet had absolutely and entirely learned, he even found\ndeliberation to intimate, how little he really neglected the first--as\nit seemed nowadays quite to have become--of his domestic duties:\ntherefore he still constantly felt how little he must remit his effort\nto make them remark it. To which he added with equal lucidity that\nthey would return in time for dinner, and if he didn\'t, as a last word,\nsubjoin that it would be \"lovely\" of Fanny to find, on her own return,\na moment to go to Eaton Square and report them as struggling bravely on,\nthis was not because the impulse, down to the very name for the amiable\nact, altogether failed to rise. His inward assurance, his general plan,\nhad at moments, where she was concerned, its drops of continuity, and\nnothing would less have pleased him than that she should suspect in\nhim, however tempted, any element of conscious \"cheek.\" But he was\nalways--that was really the upshot--cultivating thanklessly the\nconsiderate and the delicate: it was a long lesson, this unlearning,\nwith people of English race, all the little superstitions that accompany\nfriendship. Mrs. Assingham herself was the first to say that she would\nunfailingly \"report\"; she brought it out in fact, he thought, quite\nwonderfully--having attained the summit of the wonderful during the\nbrief interval that had separated her appeal to Charlotte from this\npassage with himself. She had taken the five minutes, obviously, amid\nthe rest of the talk and the movement, to retire into her tent for\nmeditation--which showed, among several things, the impression Charlotte\nhad made on her. It was from the tent she emerged, as with arms\nrefurbished; though who indeed could say if the manner in which she now\nmet him spoke most, really, of the glitter of battle or of the white\nwaver of the flag of truce? The parley was short either way; the\ngallantry of her offer was all sufficient.\n\n\"I\'ll go to our friends then--I\'ll ask for luncheon. I\'ll tell them when\nto expect you.\"\n\n\"That will be charming. Say we\'re all right.\"\n\n\"All right--precisely. I can\'t say more,\" Mrs. Assingham smiled.\n\n\"No doubt.\" But he considered, as for the possible importance of it.\n\"Neither can you, by what I seem to feel, say less.\"\n\n\"Oh, I WON\'T say less!\" Fanny laughed; with which, the next moment, she\nhad turned away. But they had it again, not less bravely, on the\nmorrow, after breakfast, in the thick of the advancing carriages and the\nexchange of farewells. \"I think I\'ll send home my maid from Euston,\" she\nwas then prepared to amend, \"and go to Eaton Square straight. So you can\nbe easy.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think we\'re easy,\" the Prince returned. \"Be sure to say, at any\nrate, that we\'re bearing up.\"\n\n\"You\'re bearing up--good. And Charlotte returns to dinner?\"\n\n\"To dinner. We\'re not likely, I think, to make another night away.\"\n\n\"Well then, I wish you at least a pleasant day,\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he laughed as they separated, \"we shall do our best for\nit!\"--after which, in due course, with the announcement of their\nconveyance, the Assinghams rolled off.\n\n\n\n XXII\n\nIt was quite, for the Prince, after this, as if the view had further\ncleared; so that the half-hour during which he strolled on the terrace\nand smoked--the day being lovely--overflowed with the plenitude of its\nparticular quality. Its general brightness was composed, doubtless, of\nmany elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time\nhad been a great picture, from the hand of genius, presented to him as\na prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to\nhang up--what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was\nhis extraordinarily unchallenged, his absolutely appointed and enhanced\npossession of it. Poor Fanny Assingham\'s challenge amounted to nothing:\none of the things he thought of while he leaned on the old marble\nbalustrade--so like others that he knew in still more nobly-terraced\nItaly--was that she was squared, all-conveniently even to herself, and\nthat, rumbling toward London with this contentment, she had become an\nimage irrelevant to the scene. It further passed across him, as\nhis imagination was, for reasons, during the time, unprecedentedly\nactive,--that he had, after all, gained more from women than he had ever\nlost by them; there appeared so, more and more, on those mystic books\nthat are kept, in connection with such commerce, even by men of the\nloosest business habits, a balance in his favour that he could pretty\nwell, as a rule, take for granted. What were they doing at this\nvery moment, wonderful creatures, but combine and conspire for his\nadvantage?--from Maggie herself, most wonderful, in her way, of all, to\nhis hostess of the present hour, into whose head it had so inevitably\ncome to keep Charlotte on, for reasons of her own, and who had asked,\nin this benevolent spirit, why in the world, if not obliged, without\nplausibility, to hurry, her husband\'s son-in-law should not wait over\nin her company. He would at least see, Lady Castledean had said, that\nnothing dreadful should happen to her, either while still there or\nduring the exposure of the run to town; and, for that matter, if they\nexceeded a little their license it would positively help them to have\ndone so together. Each of them would, in this way, at home, have the\nother comfortably to blame. All of which, besides, in Lady Castledean as\nin Maggie, in Fanny Assingham as in Charlotte herself, was working;\nfor him without provocation or pressure, by the mere play of some\nvague sense on their part--definite and conscious at the most only in\nCharlotte--that he was not, as a nature, as a character, as a gentleman,\nin fine, below his remarkable fortune.\n\nBut there were more things before him than even these; things that\nmelted together, almost indistinguishably, to feed his sense of beauty.\nIf the outlook was in every way spacious--and the towers of three\ncathedrals, in different counties, as had been pointed out to\nhim, gleamed discernibly, like dim silver, in the rich sameness of\ntone--didn\'t he somehow the more feel it so because, precisely, Lady\nCastledean had kept over a man of her own, and that this offered a\ncertain sweet intelligibility as the note of the day? It made everything\nfit; above all it diverted him to the extent of keeping up, while he\nlingered and waited, his meditative smile. She had detained Charlotte\nbecause she wished to detain Mr. Blint, and she couldn\'t detain Mr.\nBlint, disposed though he clearly was to oblige her, without spreading\nover the act some ampler drapery. Castledean had gone up to London; the\nplace was all her own; she had had a fancy for a quiet morning with Mr.\nBlint, a sleek, civil, accomplished young man--distinctly younger than\nher ladyship--who played and sang delightfully (played even \"bridge\"\nand sang the English-comic as well as the French-tragic), and the\npresence--which really meant the absence--of a couple of other friends,\nif they were happily chosen, would make everything all right. The Prince\nhad the sense, all good-humouredly, of being happily chosen, and it was\nnot spoiled for him even by another sense that followed in its train\nand with which, during his life in England, he had more than once had\nreflectively to deal: the state of being reminded how, after all, as\nan outsider, a foreigner, and even as a mere representative husband and\nson-in-law, he was so irrelevant to the working of affairs that he\ncould be bent on occasion to uses comparatively trivial. No other of her\nguests would have been thus convenient for their hostess; affairs,\nof whatever sorts, had claimed, by early trains, every active, easy,\nsmoothly-working man, each in his way a lubricated item of the great\nsocial, political, administrative engrenage--claimed most of all\nCastledean himself, who was so very oddly, given the personage and the\ntype, rather a large item. If he, on the other hand, had an affair, it\nwas not of that order; it was of the order, verily, that he had been\nreduced to as a not quite glorious substitute.\n\nIt marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision\nof being \"reduced\" interfered not at all with the measure of his actual\nease. It kept before him again, at moments, the so familiar fact of his\nsacrifices--down to the idea of the very relinquishment, for his wife\'s\nconvenience, of his real situation in the world; with the consequence,\nthus, that he was, in the last analysis, among all these so often\ninferior people, practically held cheap and made light of. But though\nall this was sensible enough there was a spirit in him that could rise\nabove it, a spirit that positively played with the facts, with all of\nthem; from that of the droll ambiguity of English relations to that\nof his having in mind something quite beautiful and independent and\nharmonious, something wholly his own. He couldn\'t somehow take Mr. Blint\nseriously--he was much more an outsider, by the larger scale, even than\na Roman prince who consented to be in abeyance. Yet it was past finding\nout, either, how such a woman as Lady Castledean could take him--since\nthis question but sank for him again into the fathomless depths of\nEnglish equivocation. He knew them all, as was said, \"well\"; he had\nlived with them, stayed with them, dined, hunted, shot and done various\nother things with them; but the number of questions about them he\ncouldn\'t have answered had much rather grown than shrunken, so that\nexperience struck him for the most part as having left in him but one\nresidual impression. They didn\'t like les situations nettes--that was\nall he was very sure of. They wouldn\'t have them at any price; it had\nbeen their national genius and their national success to avoid them\nat every point. They called it themselves, with complacency, their\nwonderful spirit of compromise--the very influence of which actually so\nhung about him here, from moment to moment, that the earth and the air,\nthe light and the colour, the fields and the hills and the sky, the\nblue-green counties and the cold cathedrals, owed to it every accent of\ntheir tone. Verily, as one had to feel in presence of such a picture, it\nhad succeeded; it had made, up to now, for that seated solidity, in the\nrich sea-mist, on which the garish, the supposedly envious, peoples have\never cooled their eyes. But it was at the same time precisely why even\nmuch initiation left one, at given moments, so puzzled as to the element\nof staleness in all the freshness and of freshness in all the staleness,\nof innocence in the guilt and of guilt in the innocence. There were\nother marble terraces, sweeping more purple prospects, on which he would\nhave known what to think, and would have enjoyed thereby at least\nthe small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between a given\nappearance and a taken meaning. The inquiring mind, in these present\nconditions, might, it was true, be more sharply challenged; but the\nresult of its attention and its ingenuity, it had unluckily learned to\nknow, was too often to be confronted with a mere dead wall, a lapse\nof logic, a confirmed bewilderment. And moreover, above all,\nnothing mattered, in the relation of the enclosing scene to his own\nconsciousness, but its very most direct bearings.\n\nLady Castledean\'s dream of Mr. Blint for the morning was doubtless\nalready, with all the spacious harmonies re-established, taking the\nform of \"going over\" something with him, at the piano, in one of the\nnumerous smaller rooms that were consecrated to the less gregarious\nuses; what she had wished had been effected--her convenience had\nbeen assured. This made him, however, wonder the more where Charlotte\nwas--since he didn\'t at all suppose her to be making a tactless third,\nwhich would be to have accepted mere spectatorship, in the duet of their\ncompanions. The upshot of everything for him, alike of the less and of\nthe more, was that the exquisite day bloomed there like a large fragrant\nflower that he had only to gather. But it was to Charlotte he wished\nto make the offering, and as he moved along the terrace, which rendered\nvisible parts of two sides of the house, he looked up at all the windows\nthat were open to the April morning, and wondered which of them would\nrepresent his friend\'s room. It befell thus that his question, after\nno long time, was answered; he saw Charlotte appear above as if she had\nbeen called by the pausing of his feet on the flags. She had come to the\nsill, on which she leaned to look down, and she remained there a minute\nsmiling at him. He had been immediately struck with her wearing a hat\nand a jacket--which conduced to her appearance of readiness not so much\nto join him, with a beautiful uncovered head and a parasol, where he\nstood, as to take with him some larger step altogether. The larger step\nhad been, since the evening before, intensely in his own mind, though\nhe had not fully thought out, even yet, the slightly difficult detail of\nit; but he had had no chance, such as he needed, to speak the definite\nword to her, and the face she now showed affected him, accordingly, as\na notice that she had wonderfully guessed it for herself. They had these\nidentities of impulse--they had had them repeatedly before; and if such\nunarranged but unerring encounters gave the measure of the degree in\nwhich people were, in the common phrase, meant for each other, no union\nin the world had ever been more sweetened with rightness. What in fact\nmost often happened was that her rightness went, as who should say, even\nfurther than his own; they were conscious of the same necessity at the\nsame moment, only it was she, as a general thing, who most clearly saw\nher way to it. Something in her long look at him now out of the old\ngrey window, something in the very poise of her hat, the colour of her\nnecktie, the prolonged stillness of her smile, touched into sudden light\nfor him all the wealth of the fact that he could count on her. He had\nhis hand there, to pluck it, on the open bloom of the day; but what\ndid the bright minute mean but that her answering hand was already\nintelligently out? So, therefore, while the minute lasted, it passed\nbetween them that their cup was full; which cup their very eyes, holding\nit fast, carried and steadied and began, as they tasted it, to praise.\nHe broke, however, after a moment, the silence.\n\n\"It only wants a moon, a mandolin, and a little danger, to be a\nserenade.\"\n\n\"Ah, then,\" she lightly called down, \"let it at least have THIS!\" With\nwhich she detached a rich white rosebud from its company with another\nin the front of her dress and flung it down to him. He caught it in\nits fall, fixing her again after she had watched him place it in his\nbuttonhole. \"Come down quickly!\" he said in an Italian not loud but\ndeep.\n\n\"Vengo, vengo!\" she as clearly, but more lightly, tossed out; and she\nhad left him the next minute to wait for her.\n\nHe came along the terrace again, with pauses during which his eyes\nrested, as they had already often done, on the brave darker wash of\nfar-away watercolour that represented the most distant of the cathedral\ntowns. This place, with its great church and its high accessibility,\nits towers that distinguishably signalled, its English history, its\nappealing type, its acknowledged interest, this place had sounded its\nname to him half the night through, and its name had become but another\nname, the pronounceable and convenient one, for that supreme sense of\nthings which now throbbed within him. He had kept saying to himself\n\"Gloucester, Gloucester, Gloucester,\" quite as if the sharpest meaning\nof all the years just passed were intensely expressed in it. That\nmeaning was really that his situation remained quite sublimely\nconsistent with itself, and that they absolutely, he and Charlotte,\nstood there together in the very lustre of this truth. Every present\ncircumstance helped to proclaim it; it was blown into their faces as by\nthe lips of the morning. He knew why, from the first of his marriage,\nhe had tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had\ngiven up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he, at any rate,\nhad gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having, in\na manner, sold himself, for a situation nette. It had all been just\nin order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his\nfreedom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous\nas some huge precious pearl. He hadn\'t struggled nor snatched; he was\ntaking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its\nexquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. Here, precisely,\nit was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as Mrs. Verver appeared,\nafar off, in one of the smaller doorways. She came toward him in\nsilence, while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular\nfront, at Matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of\ntheir meeting and the successions of their consciousness. It wasn\'t\ntill she had come quite close that he produced for her his \"Gloucester,\nGloucester, Gloucester,\" and his \"Look at it over there!\"\n\nShe knew just where to look. \"Yes--isn\'t it one of the best? There are\ncloisters or towers or some thing.\" And her eyes, which, though her lips\nsmiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance; came back to\nhim. \"Or the tomb of some old king.\"\n\n\"We must see the old king; we must \'do\' the cathedral,\" he said; \"we\nmust know all about it. If we could but take,\" he exhaled, \"the full\nopportunity!\" And then while, for all they seemed to give him, he\nsounded again her eyes: \"I feel the day like a great gold cup that we\nmust somehow drain together.\"\n\n\"I feel it, as you always make me feel everything, just as you do; so\nthat I know ten miles off how you feel! But do you remember,\" she asked,\n\"apropos of great gold cups, the beautiful one, the real one, that I\noffered you so long ago and that you wouldn\'t have? Just before your\nmarriage\"--she brought it back to him: \"the gilded crystal bowl in the\nlittle Bloomsbury shop.\"\n\n\"Oh yes!\"--but it took, with a slight surprise on the \'Prince\'s part,\nsome small recollecting. \"The treacherous cracked thing you wanted to\npalm off on me, and the little swindling Jew who understood Italian and\nwho backed you up! But I feel this an occasion,\" he immediately added,\n\"and I hope you don\'t mean,\" he smiled, \"that AS an occasion it\'s also\ncracked.\"\n\nThey spoke, naturally, more low than loud, overlooked as they were,\nthough at a respectful distance, by tiers of windows; but it made each\nfind in the other\'s voice a taste as of something slowly and deeply\nabsorbed. \"Don\'t you think too much of \'cracks,\' and aren\'t you too\nafraid of them? I risk the cracks,\" said Charlotte, \"and I\'ve often\nrecalled the bowl and the little swindling Jew, wondering if they\'ve\nparted company. He made,\" she said, \"a great impression on me.\"\n\n\"Well, you also, no doubt, made a great impression on him, and I dare\nsay that if you were to go back to him you\'d find he has been keeping\nthat treasure for you. But as to cracks,\" the Prince went on--\"what\ndid you tell me the other day you prettily call them in English?-\'rifts\nwithin the lute\'?--risk them as much as you like for yourself, but\ndon\'t risk them for me.\" He spoke it in all the gaiety of his just\nbarely-tremulous serenity. \"I go, as you know, by my superstitions. And\nthat\'s why,\" he said, \"I know where we are. They\'re every one, to-day,\non our side.\"\n\nResting on the parapet; toward the great view, she was silent a little,\nand he saw the next moment that her eyes were closed. \"I go but by one\nthing.\" Her hand was on the sun-warmed stone; so that, turned as they\nwere away from the house, he put his own upon it and covered it. \"I go\nby YOU,\" she said. \"I go by you.\"\n\nSo they remained a moment, till he spoke again with a gesture that\nmatched. \"What is really our great necessity, you know, is to go by my\nwatch. It\'s already eleven\"--he had looked at the time; \"so that if we\nstop here to luncheon what becomes of our afternoon?\"\n\nTo this Charlotte\'s eyes opened straight. \"There\'s not the slightest\nneed of our stopping here to luncheon. Don\'t you see,\" she asked, \"how\nI\'m ready?\" He had taken it in, but there was always more and more of\nher. \"You mean you\'ve arranged--?\"\n\n\"It\'s easy to arrange. My maid goes up with my things. You\'ve only to\nspeak to your man about yours, and they can go together.\"\n\n\"You mean we can leave at once?\"\n\nShe let him have it all. \"One of the carriages, about which I spoke,\nwill already have come back for us. If your superstitions are on our\nside,\" she smiled, \"so my arrangements are, and I\'ll back my support\nagainst yours.\"\n\n\"Then you had thought,\" he wondered, \"about Gloucester?\"\n\nShe hesitated--but it was only her way. \"I thought you would think. We\nhave, thank goodness, these harmonies. They are food for superstition if\nyou like. It\'s beautiful,\" she went on, \"that it should be Gloucester;\n\'Glo\'ster, Glo\'ster,\' as you say, making it sound like an old song.\nHowever, I\'m sure Glo\'ster, Glo\'ster will be charming,\" she still added;\n\"we shall be able easily to lunch there, and, with our luggage and our\nservants off our hands, we shall have at least three or four hours. We\ncan wire,\" she wound up, \"from there.\"\n\nEver so quietly she had brought it, as she had thought it, all out, and\nit had to be as covertly that he let his appreciation expand. \"Then Lady\nCastledean--?\"\n\n\"Doesn\'t dream of our staying.\"\n\nHe took it, but thinking yet. \"Then what does she dream--?\"\n\n\"Of Mr. Blint, poor dear; of Mr. Blint only.\" Her smile for him--for\nthe Prince himself--was free. \"Have I positively to tell you that she\ndoesn\'t want us? She only wanted us for the others--to show she wasn\'t\nleft alone with him. Now that that\'s done, and that they\'ve all gone,\nshe of course knows for herself--!\"\n\n\"\'Knows\'?\" the Prince vaguely echoed.\n\n\"Why, that we like cathedrals; that we inevitably stop to see them, or\ngo round to take them in, whenever we\'ve a chance; that it\'s what our\nrespective families quite expect of us and would be disappointed for\nus to fail of. This, as forestieri,\" Mrs. Verver pursued, \"would be our\npull--if our pull weren\'t indeed so great all round.\"\n\nHe could only keep his eyes on her. \"And have you made out the very\ntrain--?\"\n\n\"The very one. Paddington--the 6.50 \'in.\' That gives us oceans; we can\ndine, at the usual hour, at home; and as Maggie will of course be in\nEaton Square I hereby invite you.\"\n\nFor a while he still but looked at her; it was a minute before he spoke.\n\"Thank you very much. With pleasure.\" To which he in a moment added:\n\"But the train for Gloucester?\"\n\n\"A local one--11.22; with several stops, but doing it a good deal, I\nforget how much, within the hour. So that we\'ve time. Only,\" she said,\n\"we must employ our time.\"\n\nHe roused himself as from the mere momentary spell of her; he looked\nagain at his watch while they moved back to the door through which she\nhad advanced. But he had also again questions and stops--all as for the\nmystery and the charm. \"You looked it up--without my having asked you?\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear,\" she laughed, \"I\'ve seen you with Bradshaw! It takes\nAnglo-Saxon blood.\"\n\n\"\'Blood\'?\" he echoed. \"You\'ve that of every race!\" It kept her before\nhim. \"You\'re terrible.\"\n\nWell, he could put it as he liked. \"I know the name of the inn.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\"\n\n\"There are two--you\'ll see. But I\'ve chosen the right one. And I think I\nremember the tomb,\" she smiled.\n\n\"Oh, the tomb--!\" Any tomb would do for him. \"But I mean I had been\nkeeping my idea so cleverly for you, while there you already were with\nit.\"\n\n\"You had been keeping it \'for\' me as much as you like. But how do you\nmake out,\" she asked, \"that you were keeping it FROM me?\"\n\n\"I don\'t--now. How shall I ever keep anything--some day when I shall\nwish to?\"\n\n\"Ah, for things I mayn\'t want to know, I promise you shall find me\nstupid.\" They had reached their door, where she herself paused to\nexplain. \"These days, yesterday, last night, this morning, I\'ve wanted\neverything.\"\n\nWell, it was all right. \"You shall have everything.\"\n\n\n\n XXIII\n\nFanny, on her arrival in town, carried out her second idea, despatching\nthe Colonel to his club for luncheon and packing her maid into a cab,\nfor Cadogan Place, with the variety of their effects. The result of this\nfor each of the pair was a state of occupation so unbroken that the day\npractically passed without fresh contact between them. They dined out\ntogether, but it was both in going to their dinner and in coming back\nthat they appeared, on either side, to have least to communicate.\nFanny was wrapped in her thoughts still more closely than in the\nlemon-coloured mantle that protected her bare shoulders, and her\nhusband, with her silence to deal with, showed himself not less disposed\nthan usual, when so challenged, to hold up, as he would have said, his\nend of it. They had, in general, in these days, longer pauses and more\nabrupt transitions; in one of which latter they found themselves, for a\nclimax, launched at midnight. Mrs. Assingham, rather wearily housed\nagain, ascended to the first floor, there to sink, overburdened, on the\nlanding outside the drawing-room, into a great gilded Venetian chair--of\nwhich at first, however, she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of\nthrone of meditation. She would thus have recalled a little, with her so\nfree orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless Sphinx about at\nlast to become articulate. The Colonel, not unlike, on his side, some\nold pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went, by\nway of reconnoissance, into the drawing-room. He visited, according to\nhis wont, the windows and their fastenings; he cast round the place the\neye, all at once, of the master and the manager, the commandant and the\nrate-payer; then he came back to his wife, before whom, for a moment, he\nstood waiting. But she herself, for a time, continued to wait, only\nlooking up at him inscrutably. There was in these minor manoeuvres and\nconscious patiences something of a suspension of their old custom of\ndivergent discussion, that intercourse by misunderstanding which had\ngrown so clumsy now. This familiar pleasantry seemed to desire to show\nit could yield, on occasion, to any clear trouble; though it was also\nsensibly, and just incoherently, in the air that no trouble was at\npresent to be vulgarly recognised as clear.\n\nThere might, for that matter, even have been in Mr. Assingham\'s face a\nmild perception of some finer sense--a sense for his wife\'s situation,\nand the very situation she was, oddly enough, about to repudiate--that\nshe had fairly caused to grow in him. But it was a flower to breathe\nupon gently, and this was very much what she finally did. She knew he\nneeded no telling that she had given herself, all the afternoon, to her\nfriends in Eaton Square, and that her doing so would have been but\nthe prompt result of impressions gathered, in quantities, in brimming\nbaskets, like the purple grapes of the vintage, at Matcham; a process\nsurrounded by him, while it so unmistakably went on, with abstentions\nand discretions that might almost have counted as solemnities. The\nsolemnities, at the same time, had committed him to nothing--to nothing\nbeyond this confession itself of a consciousness of deep waters. She had\nbeen out on these waters, for him, visibly; and his tribute to the fact\nhad been his keeping her, even if without a word, well in sight. He had\nnot quitted for an hour, during her adventure, the shore of the mystic\nlake; he had on the contrary stationed himself where she could signal\nto him at need. Her need would have arisen if the planks of her bark had\nparted--THEN some sort of plunge would have become his immediate duty.\nHis present position, clearly, was that of seeing her in the centre of\nher sheet of dark water, and of wondering if her actual mute gaze at him\ndidn\'t perhaps mean that her planks WERE now parting. He held himself\nso ready that it was quite as if the inward man had pulled off coat and\nwaistcoat. Before he had plunged, however--that is before he had uttered\na question--he perceived, not without relief, that she was making for\nland. He watched her steadily paddle, always a little nearer, and at\nlast he felt her boat bump. The bump was distinct, and in fact she\nstepped ashore. \"We were all wrong. There\'s nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing--?\" It was like giving her his hand up the bank.\n\n\"Between Charlotte Verver and the Prince. I was uneasy--but I\'m\nsatisfied now. I was in fact quite mistaken. There\'s nothing.\"\n\n\"But I thought,\" said Bob Assingham, \"that that was just what you did\npersistently asseverate. You\'ve guaranteed their straightness from the\nfirst.\"\n\n\"No--I\'ve never till now guaranteed anything but my own disposition to\nworry. I\'ve never till now,\" Fanny went on gravely from her chair, \"had\nsuch a chance to see and to judge. I had it at that place--if I had, in\nmy infatuation and my folly,\" she added with expression, \"nothing\nelse. So I did see--I HAVE seen. And now I know.\" Her emphasis, as she\nrepeated the word, made her head, in her seat of infallibility, rise\nhigher. \"I know.\"\n\nThe Colonel took it--but took it at first in silence. \"Do you mean\nthey\'ve TOLD you--?\"\n\n\"No--I mean nothing so absurd. For in the first place I haven\'t asked\nthem, and in the second their word in such a matter wouldn\'t count.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said the Colonel with all his oddity, \"they\'d tell US.\"\n\nIt made her face him an instant as with her old impatience of his short\ncuts, always across her finest flower-beds; but she felt, none the less,\nthat she kept her irony down. \"Then when they\'ve told you, you\'ll be\nperhaps so good as to let me know.\"\n\nHe jerked up his chin, testing the growth of his beard with the back\nof his hand while he fixed her with a single eye. \"Ah, I don\'t say that\nthey\'d necessarily tell me that they ARE over the traces.\"\n\n\"They\'ll necessarily, whatever happens, hold their tongues, I hope, and\nI\'m talking of them now as I take them for myself only. THAT\'S enough\nfor me--it\'s all I have to regard.\" With which, after an instant,\n\"They\'re wonderful,\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\n\"Indeed,\" her husband concurred, \"I really think they are.\"\n\n\"You\'d think it still more if you knew. But you don\'t know--because\nyou don\'t see. Their situation\"--this was what he didn\'t see--\"is too\nextraordinary.\"\n\n\"\'Too\'?\" He was willing to try.\n\n\"Too extraordinary to be believed, I mean, if one didn\'t see. But just\nthat, in a way, is what saves them. They take it seriously.\"\n\nHe followed at his own pace. \"Their situation?\"\n\n\"The incredible side of it. They make it credible.\"\n\n\"Credible then--you do say--to YOU?\"\n\nShe looked at him again for an interval. \"They believe in it themselves.\nThey take it for what it is. And that,\" she said, \"saves them.\"\n\n\"But if what it \'is\' is just their chance--?\"\n\n\"It\'s their chance for what I told you when Charlotte first turned up.\nIt\'s their chance for the idea that I was then sure she had.\"\n\nThe Colonel showed his effort to recall. \"Oh, your idea, at different\nmoments, of any one of THEIR ideas!\" This dim procession, visibly,\nmustered before him, and, with the best will in the world, he could but\nwatch its immensity. \"Are you speaking now of something to which you can\ncomfortably settle down?\"\n\nAgain, for a little, she only glowered at him. \"I\'ve come back to my\nbelief, and that I have done so--\"\n\n\"Well?\" he asked as she paused.\n\n\"Well, shows that I\'m right--for I assure you I had wandered far. Now\nI\'m at home again, and I mean,\" said Fanny Assingham, \"to stay here.\nThey\'re beautiful,\" she declared.\n\n\"The Prince and Charlotte?\"\n\n\"The Prince and Charlotte. THAT\'S how they\'re so remarkable. And the\nbeauty,\" she explained, \"is that they\'re afraid for them. Afraid, I\nmean, for the others.\"\n\n\"For Mr. Verver and Maggie?\" It did take some following. \"Afraid of\nwhat?\"\n\n\"Afraid of themselves.\"\n\nThe Colonel wondered. \"Of THEMSELVES? Of Mr. Verver\'s and Maggie\'s\nselves?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham remained patient as well as lucid. \"Yes--of SUCH\nblindness too. But most of all of their own danger.\"\n\nHe turned it over. \"That danger BEING the blindness--?\"\n\n\"That danger being their position. What their position contains--of\nall the elements--I needn\'t at this time of day attempt to tell you. It\ncontains, luckily--for that\'s the mercy--everything BUT blindness:\nI mean on their part. The blindness,\" said Fanny, \"is primarily her\nhusband\'s.\"\n\nHe stood for a moment; he WOULD have it straight. \"Whose husband\'s?\"\n\n\"Mr. Verver\'s,\" she went on. \"The blindness is most of all his. That\nthey feel--that they see. But it\'s also his wife\'s.\"\n\n\"Whose wife\'s?\" he asked as she continued to gloom at him in a manner at\nvariance with the comparative cheer of her contention. And then as she\nonly gloomed: \"The Prince\'s?\"\n\n\"Maggie\'s own--Maggie\'s very own,\" she pursued as for herself.\n\nHe had a pause. \"Do you think Maggie so blind?\"\n\n\"The question isn\'t of what I think. The question\'s of the conviction\nthat guides the Prince and Charlotte--who have better opportunities than\nI for judging.\"\n\nThe Colonel again wondered. \"Are you so very sure their opportunities\nare better?\"\n\n\"Well,\" his wife asked, \"what is their whole so extraordinary situation,\ntheir extraordinary relation, but an opportunity?\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, you have that opportunity--of their extraordinary\nsituation and relation--as much as they.\"\n\n\"With the difference, darling,\" she returned with some spirit, \"that\nneither of those matters are, if you please, mine. I see the boat\nthey\'re in, but I\'m not, thank God, in it myself. To-day, however,\" Mrs.\nAssingham added, \"to-day in Eaton Square I did see.\"\n\n\"Well then, what?\"\n\nBut she mused over it still. \"Oh, many things. More, somehow, than ever\nbefore. It was as if, God help me, I was seeing FOR them--I mean for the\nothers. It was as if something had happened--I don\'t know what, except\nsome effect of these days with them at that place--that had either made\nthings come out or had cleared my own eyes.\" These eyes indeed of the\npoor lady\'s rested on her companion\'s, meanwhile, with the lustre not\nso much of intenser insight as of a particular portent that he had at\nvarious other times had occasion to recognise. She desired, obviously,\nto reassure him, but it apparently took a couple of large, candid,\ngathering, glittering tears to emphasise the fact. They had immediately,\nfor him, their usual direct action: she must reassure him, he was made\nto feel, absolutely in her own way. He would adopt it and conform to it\nas soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it\ntook such incalculable twists and turns. The twist seemed remarkable\nfor instance as she developed her indication of what had come out in the\nafternoon. \"It was as if I knew better than ever what makes them--\"\n\n\"What makes them?\"--he pressed her as she fitfully dropped.\n\n\"Well, makes the Prince and Charlotte take it all as they do. It might\nwell have been difficult to know HOW to take it; and they may even\nsay for themselves that they were a long time trying to see. As I say,\nto-day,\" she went on, \"it was as if I were suddenly, with a kind of\nhorrible push, seeing through their eyes.\" On which, as to shake off her\nperversity, Fanny Assingham sprang up. But she remained there, under the\ndim illumination, and while the Colonel, with his high, dry, spare\nlook of \"type,\" to which a certain conformity to the whiteness of\ninaccessible snows in his necktie, shirt-front and waistcoat gave a\nrigour of accent, waited, watching her, they might, at the late hour and\nin the still house, have been a pair of specious worldly adventurers,\ndriven for relief, under sudden stress, to some grim midnight reckoning\nin an odd corner. Her attention moved mechanically over the objects of\nornament disposed too freely on the walls of staircase and landing,\nas to which recognition, for the time, had lost both fondness and\ncompunction. \"I can imagine the way it works,\" she said; \"it\'s so easy\nto understand. Yet I don\'t want to be wrong,\" she the next moment broke\nout \"I don\'t, I don\'t want to be wrong!\"\n\n\"To make a mistake, you mean?\"\n\nOh no, she meant nothing of the sort; she knew but too well what she\nmeant. \"I don\'t make mistakes. But I perpetrate--in thought--crimes.\"\nAnd she spoke with all intensity. \"I\'m a most dreadful person. There are\ntimes when I seem not to mind a bit what I\'ve done, or what I think or\nimagine or fear or accept; when I feel that I\'d do it again--feel that\nI\'d do things myself.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear!\" the Colonel remarked in the coolness of debate.\n\n\"Yes, if you had driven me back on my \'nature.\' Luckily for you you\nnever have. You\'ve done every thing else, but you\'ve never done that.\nBut what I really don\'t a bit want,\" she declared, \"is to abet them or\nto protect them.\"\n\nHer companion turned this over. \"What is there to protect them\nfrom?--if, by your now so settled faith, they\'ve done nothing that\njustly exposes them.\"\n\nAnd it in fact half pulled her up. \"Well, from a sudden scare. From the\nalarm, I mean, of what Maggie MAY think.\"\n\n\"Yet if your whole idea is that Maggie thinks nothing--?\"\n\nShe waited again. \"It isn\'t my \'whole\' idea. Nothing is my \'whole\'\nidea--for I felt to-day, as I tell you, that there\'s so much in the\nair.\"\n\n\"Oh, in the air--!\" the Colonel dryly breathed.\n\n\"Well, what\'s in the air always HAS--hasn\'t it?--to come down to the\nearth. And Maggie,\" Mrs. Assingham continued, \"is a very curious little\nperson. Since I was \'in,\' this afternoon, for seeing more than I had\never done--well, I felt THAT too, for some reason, as I hadn\'t yet felt\nit.\"\n\n\"For \'some\' reason? For what reason?\" And then, as his wife at first\nsaid nothing: \"Did she give any sign? Was she in any way different?\"\n\n\"She\'s always so different from anyone else in the world that it\'s hard\nto say when she\'s different from herself. But she has made me,\" said\nFanny after an instant, \"think of her differently. She drove me home.\"\n\n\"Home here?\"\n\n\"First to Portland Place--on her leaving her father: since she does,\nonce in a while, leave him. That was to keep me with her a little\nlonger. But she kept the carriage and, after tea there, came with me\nherself back here. This was also for the same purpose. Then she went\nhome, though I had brought her a message from the Prince that arranged\ntheir movements otherwise. He and Charlotte must have arrived--if they\nhave arrived--expecting to drive together to Eaton Square and keep\nMaggie on to dinner there. She has everything there, you know--she has\nclothes.\"\n\nThe Colonel didn\'t in fact know, but he gave it his apprehension. \"Oh,\nyou mean a change?\"\n\n\"Twenty changes, if you like--all sorts of things. She dresses, really,\nMaggie does, as much for her father--and she always did--as for her\nhusband or for herself. She has her room in his house very much as she\nhad it before she was married--and just as the boy has quite a second\nnursery there, in which Mrs. Noble, when she comes with him, makes\nherself, I assure you, at home. Si bien that if Charlotte, in her own\nhouse, so to speak, should wish a friend or two to stay with her, she\nreally would be scarce able to put them up.\"\n\nIt was a picture into which, as a thrifty entertainer himself, Bob\nAssingham could more or less enter. \"Maggie and the child spread so?\"\n\n\"Maggie and the child spread so.\"\n\nWell, he considered. \"It IS rather rum,\"\n\n\"That\'s all I claim\"--she seemed thankful for the word. \"I don\'t say\nit\'s anything more--but it IS, distinctly, rum.\"\n\nWhich, after an instant, the Colonel took up. \"\'More\'? What more COULD\nit be?\"\n\n\"It could be that she\'s unhappy, and that she takes her funny little\nway of consoling herself. For if she were unhappy\"--Mrs. Assingham had\nfigured it out--\"that\'s just the way, I\'m convinced, she would take. But\nhow can she be unhappy, since--as I\'m also convinced--she, in the midst\nof everything, adores her husband as much as ever?\"\n\nThe Colonel at this brooded for a little at large. \"Then if she\'s so\nhappy, please what\'s the matter?\"\n\nIt made his wife almost spring at him. \"You think then she\'s secretly\nwretched?\"\n\nBut he threw up his arms in deprecation. \"Ah, my dear, I give them up to\nYOU. I\'ve nothing more to suggest.\"\n\n\"Then it\'s not sweet of you.\" She spoke at present as if he were\nfrequently sweet. \"You admit that it is \'rum.\'\"\n\nAnd this indeed fixed again, for a moment, his intention. \"Has Charlotte\ncomplained of the want of rooms for her friends?\"\n\n\"Never, that I know of, a word. It isn\'t the sort of thing she does. And\nwhom has she, after all,\" Mrs. Assingham added, \"to complain to?\"\n\n\"Hasn\'t she always you?\"\n\n\"Oh, \'me\'! Charlotte and I, nowadays--!\" She spoke as of a chapter\nclosed. \"Yet see the justice I still do her. She strikes me, more and\nmore, as extraordinary.\"\n\nA deeper shade, at the renewal of the word, had come into the Colonel\'s\nface. \"If they\'re each and all so extraordinary then, isn\'t that why one\nmust just resign one\'s self to wash one\'s hands of them--to be lost?\"\nHer face, however, so met the question as if it were but a flicker of\nthe old tone that their trouble had now become too real for--her charged\neyes so betrayed the condition of her nerves that he stepped back,\nalertly enough, to firmer ground. He had spoken before in this light\nof a plain man\'s vision, but he must be something more than a plain man\nnow. \"Hasn\'t she then, Charlotte, always her husband--?\"\n\n\"To complain to? She\'d rather die.\"\n\n\"Oh!\"--and Bob Assingham\'s face, at the vision of such extremities,\nlengthened for very docility. \"Hasn\'t she the Prince then?\"\n\n\"For such matters? Oh, he doesn\'t count.\"\n\n\"I thought that was just what--as the basis of our agitation--he does\ndo!\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, however, had her distinction ready. \"Not a bit as a\nperson to bore with complaints. The ground of MY agitation is, exactly,\nthat she never on any pretext bores him. Not Charlotte!\" And in the\nimagination of Mrs. Verver\'s superiority to any such mistake she gave,\ncharacteristically, something like a toss of her head--as marked a\ntribute to that lady\'s general grace, in all the conditions, as the\npersonage referred to doubtless had ever received.\n\n\"Ah, only Maggie!\" With which the Colonel gave a short low gurgle. But\nit found his wife again prepared.\n\n\"No--not only Maggie. A great many people in London--and small\nwonder!--bore him.\"\n\n\"Maggie only worst then?\" But it was a question that he had promptly\ndropped at the returning brush of another, of which she had shortly\nbefore sown the seed. \"You said just now that he would by this time be\nback with Charlotte \'if they HAVE arrived.\' You think it then possible\nthat they really won\'t have returned?\"\n\nHis companion exhibited to view, for the idea, a sense of her\nresponsibility; but this was insufficient, clearly, to keep her from\nentertaining it. \"I think there\'s nothing they\'re not now capable of--in\ntheir so intense good faith.\"\n\n\"Good faith?\"--he echoed the words, which had in fact something of an\nodd ring, critically.\n\n\"Their false position. It comes to the same thing.\" And she bore down,\nwith her decision, the superficial lack of sequence. \"They may very\npossibly, for a demonstration--as I see them--not have come back.\"\n\nHe wondered, visibly, at this, how she did see them. \"May have bolted\nsomewhere together?\"\n\n\"May have stayed over at Matcham itself till tomorrow. May have\nwired home, each of them, since Maggie left me. May have done,\" Fanny\nAssingham continued, \"God knows what!\" She went on, suddenly, with more\nemotion--which, at the pressure of some spring of her inner vision,\nbroke out in a wail of distress, imperfectly smothered. \"Whatever\nthey\'ve done I shall never know. Never, never--because I don\'t want to,\nand because nothing will induce me. So they may do as they like.\nBut I\'ve worked for them ALL\" She uttered this last with another\nirrepressible quaver, and the next moment her tears had come, though she\nhad, with the explosion, quitted her husband as if to hide it from him.\nShe passed into the dusky drawing-room, where, during his own prowl,\nshortly previous, he had drawn up a blind, so that the light of the\nstreet-lamps came in a little at the window. She made for this\nwindow, against which she leaned her head, while the Colonel, with his\nlengthened face, looked after her for a minute and hesitated. He might\nhave been wondering what she had really done, to what extent, beyond his\nknowledge or his conception, in the affairs of these people, she COULD\nhave committed herself. But to hear her cry, and yet try not to, was,\nquickly enough, too much for him; he had known her at other times quite\nnot try not to, and that had not been so bad. He went to her and put his\narm round her; he drew her head to his breast, where, while she gasped,\nshe let it stay a little--all with a patience that presently stilled\nher. Yet the effect of this small crisis, oddly enough, was not to close\ntheir colloquy, with the natural result of sending them to bed: what was\nbetween them had opened out further, had somehow, through the sharp\nshow of her feeling, taken a positive stride, had entered, as it were,\nwithout more words, the region of the understood, shutting the door\nafter it and bringing them so still more nearly face to face. They\nremained for some minutes looking at it through the dim window which\nopened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the\nvague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the\nflorid features, looming dimly, of Fanny\'s drawing-room. And the beauty\nof what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her\nburst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort,\nwith the moments of their silence, above all, which might have\nrepresented their sinking together, hand in hand, for a time, into the\nmystic lake where he had begun, as we have hinted, by seeing her paddle\nalone--the beauty of it was that they now could really talk better than\nbefore, because the basis had at last, once for all, defined itself.\nWhat was the basis, which Fanny absolutely exacted, but that Charlotte\nand the Prince must be saved--so far as consistently speaking of them\nas still safe might save them? It did save them, somehow, for Fanny\'s\ntroubled mind--for that was the nature of the mind of women. He conveyed\nto her now, at all events, by refusing her no gentleness, that he had\nsufficiently got the tip, and that the tip was all he had wanted. This\nremained quite clear even when he presently reverted to what she had\ntold him of her recent passage with Maggie. \"I don\'t altogether see,\nyou know, what you infer from it, or why you infer anything.\" When he\nso expressed himself it was quite as if in possession of what they had\nbrought up from the depths.\n\n\n\n XXIV\n\n\"I can\'t say more,\" this made his companion reply, \"than that something\nin her face, her voice and her whole manner acted upon me as nothing in\nher had ever acted before; and just for the reason, above all, that I\nfelt her trying her very best--and her very best, poor duck, is very\ngood--to be quiet and natural. It\'s when one sees people who always ARE\nnatural making little pale, pathetic, blinking efforts for it--then\nit is that one knows something\'s the matter. I can\'t describe my\nimpression--you would have had it for yourself. And the only thing\nthat ever CAN be the matter with Maggie is that. By \'that\' I mean her\nbeginning to doubt. To doubt, for the first time,\" Mrs. Assingham wound\nup, \"of her wonderful little judgment of her wonderful little world.\"\n\nIt was impressive, Fanny\'s vision, and the Colonel, as if himself\nagitated by it, took another turn of prowling. \"To doubt of fidelity--to\ndoubt of friendship! Poor duck indeed! It will go hard with her. But\nshe\'ll put it all,\" he concluded, \"on Charlotte.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, still darkly contemplative, denied this with a\nheadshake. \"She won\'t \'put\' it anywhere. She won\'t do with it anything\nanyone else would. She\'ll take it all herself.\"\n\n\"You mean she\'ll make it out her own fault?\"\n\n\"Yes--she\'ll find means, somehow, to arrive at that.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" the Colonel dutifully declared, \"she\'s indeed a little\nbrick!\"\n\n\"Oh,\" his wife returned, \"you\'ll see, in one way or another, to what\ntune!\" And she spoke, of a sudden, with an approach to elation--so that,\nas if immediately feeling his surprise, she turned round to him. \"She\'ll\nsee me somehow through!\"\n\n\"See YOU--?\"\n\n\"Yes, me. I\'m the worst. For,\" said Fanny Assingham, now with a harder\nexaltation, \"I did it all. I recognise that--I accept it. She won\'t\ncast it up at me--she won\'t cast up anything. So I throw myself upon\nher--she\'ll bear me up.\" She spoke almost volubly--she held him with her\nsudden sharpness. \"She\'ll carry the whole weight of us.\"\n\nThere was still, nevertheless, wonder in it. \"You mean she won\'t mind? I\nSAY, love--!\" And he not unkindly stared. \"Then where\'s the difficulty?\"\n\n\"There isn\'t any!\" Fanny declared with the same rich emphasis. It kept\nhim indeed, as by the loss of the thread, looking at her longer. \"Ah,\nyou mean there isn\'t any for US!\"\n\nShe met his look for a minute as if it perhaps a little too much imputed\na selfishness, a concern, at any cost, for their own surface. Then she\nmight have been deciding that their own surface was, after all, what\nthey had most to consider. \"Not,\" she said with dignity, \"if we properly\nkeep our heads.\" She appeared even to signify that they would begin by\nkeeping them now. This was what it was to have at last a constituted\nbasis. \"Do you remember what you said to me that night of my first REAL\nanxiety--after the Foreign Office party?\"\n\n\"In the carriage--as we came home?\" Yes--he could recall it. \"Leave them\nto pull through?\"\n\n\"Precisely. \'Trust their own wit,\' you practically said, \'to save all\nappearances.\' Well, I\'ve trusted it. I HAVE left them to pull through.\"\n\nHe hesitated. \"And your point is that they\'re not doing so?\"\n\n\"I\'ve left them,\" she went on, \"but now I see how and where. I\'ve been\nleaving them all the while, without knowing it, to HER.\"\n\n\"To the Princess?\"\n\n\"And that\'s what I mean,\" Mrs. Assingham pensively pursued. \"That\'s what\nhappened to me with her to-day,\" she continued to explain. \"It came home\nto me that that\'s what I\'ve really been doing.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see.\"\n\n\"I needn\'t torment myself. She has taken them over.\"\n\nThe Colonel declared that he \"saw\"; yet it was as if, at this, he a\nlittle sightlessly stared. \"But what then has happened, from one day to\nthe other, to HER? What has opened her eyes?\"\n\n\"They were never really shut. She misses him.\"\n\n\"Then why hasn\'t she missed him before?\"\n\nWell, facing him there, among their domestic glooms and glints, Fanny\nworked it out. \"She did--but she wouldn\'t let herself know it. She had\nher reason--she wore her blind. Now, at last, her situation has come to\na head. To-day she does know it. And that\'s illuminating. It has been,\"\nMrs. Assingham wound up, \"illuminating to ME.\"\n\nHer husband attended, but the momentary effect of his attention was\nvagueness again, and the refuge of his vagueness was a gasp. \"Poor dear\nlittle girl!\"\n\n\"Ah no--don\'t pity her!\"\n\nThis did, however, pull him up. \"We mayn\'t even be sorry for her?\"\n\n\"Not now--or at least not yet. It\'s too soon--that is if it isn\'t very\nmuch too late. This will depend,\" Mrs. Assingham went on; \"at any rate\nwe shall see. We might have pitied her before--for all the good it would\nthen have done her; we might have begun some time ago. Now, however, she\nhas begun to live. And the way it comes to me, the way it comes to me--\"\nBut again she projected her vision.\n\n\"The way it comes to you can scarcely be that she\'ll like it!\"\n\n\"The way it comes to me is that she will live. The way it comes to me is\nthat she\'ll triumph.\"\n\nShe said this with so sudden a prophetic flare that it fairly cheered\nher husband. \"Ah then, we must back her!\"\n\n\"No--we mustn\'t touch her. We mayn\'t touch any of them. We must keep\nour hands off; we must go on tiptoe. We must simply watch and wait.\nAnd meanwhile,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"we must bear it as we can. That\'s\nwhere we are--and serves us right. We\'re in presence.\"\n\nAnd so, moving about the room as in communion with shadowy portents, she\nleft it till he questioned again. \"In presence of what?\"\n\n\"Well, of something possibly beautiful. Beautiful as it MAY come off.\"\n\nShe had paused there before him while he wondered. \"You mean she\'ll get\nthe Prince back?\"\n\nShe raised her hand in quick impatience: the suggestion might have been\nalmost abject. \"It isn\'t a question of recovery. It won\'t be a question\nof any vulgar struggle. To \'get him back\' she must have lost him, and to\nhave lost him she must have had him.\" With which Fanny shook her head.\n\"What I take her to be waking up to is the truth that, all the while,\nshe really HASN\'T had him. Never.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear--!\" the poor Colonel panted.\n\n\"Never!\" his wife repeated. And she went on without pity. \"Do you\nremember what I said to you long ago--that evening, just before their\nmarriage, when Charlotte had so suddenly turned up?\"\n\nThe smile with which he met this appeal was not, it was to be feared,\nrobust. \"What haven\'t you, love, said in your time?\"\n\n\"So many things, no doubt, that they make a chance for my having once or\ntwice spoken the truth. I never spoke it more, at all events, than when\nI put it to you, that evening, that Maggie was the person in the world\nto whom a wrong thing could least be communicated. It was as if her\nimagination had been closed to it, her sense altogether sealed, That\ntherefore,\" Fanny continued, \"is what will now HAVE to happen. Her sense\nwill have to open.\"\n\n\"I see.\" He nodded. \"To the wrong.\" He nodded again, almost\ncheerfully--as if he had been keeping the peace with a baby or a\nlunatic. \"To the very, very wrong.\"\n\nBut his wife\'s spirit, after its effort of wing, was able to remain\nhigher. \"To what\'s called Evil--with a very big E: for the first time in\nher life. To the discovery of it, to the knowledge of it, to the crude\nexperience of it.\" And she gave, for the possibility, the largest\nmeasure. \"To the harsh, bewildering brush, the daily chilling breath\nof it. Unless indeed\"--and here Mrs. Assingham noted a limit \"unless\nindeed, as yet (so far as she has come, and if she comes no further),\nsimply to the suspicion and the dread. What we shall see is whether that\nmere dose of alarm will prove enough.\"\n\nHe considered. \"But enough for what then, dear--if not enough to break\nher heart?\"\n\n\"Enough to give her a shaking!\" Mrs. Assingham rather oddly replied. \"To\ngive her, I mean, the right one. The right one won\'t break her heart.\nIt will make her,\" she explained--\"well, it will make her, by way of a\nchange, understand one or two things in the world.\"\n\n\"But isn\'t it a pity,\" the Colonel asked, \"that they should happen to be\nthe one or two that will be the most disagreeable to her?\"\n\n\"Oh, \'disagreeable\'--? They\'ll have had to be disagreeable--to show her\na little where she is. They\'ll have HAD to be disagreeable to make her\nsit up. They\'ll have had to be disagreeable to make her decide to live.\"\n\nBob Assingham was now at the window, while his companion slowly\nrevolved; he had lighted a cigarette, for final patience, and he seemed\nvaguely to \"time\" her as she moved to and fro. He had at the same time\nto do justice to the lucidity she had at last attained, and it was\ndoubtless by way of expression of this teachability that he let his\neyes, for a minute, roll, as from the force of feeling, over the upper\ndusk of the room. He had thought of the response his wife\'s words\nideally implied.\n\n\"Decide to live--ah yes!--for her child.\"\n\n\"Oh, bother her child!\"--and he had never felt so snubbed, for an\nexemplary view, as when Fanny now stopped short. \"To live, you poor\ndear, for her father--which is another pair of sleeves!\"\n\nAnd Mrs. Assingham\'s whole ample, ornamented person irradiated, with\nthis, the truth that had begun, under so much handling, to glow. \"Any\nidiot can do things for her child. She\'ll have a motive more original,\nand we shall see how it will work her. She\'ll have to save HIM.\"\n\n\"To \'save\' him--?\"\n\n\"To keep her father from her own knowledge. THAT\"--and she seemed to see\nit, before her, in her husband\'s very eyes--\"will be work cut out!\"\nWith which, as at the highest conceivable climax, she wound up their\ncolloquy. \"Good night!\"\n\nThere was something in her manner, however--or in the effect, at least,\nof this supreme demonstration that had fairly, and by a single touch,\nlifted him to her side; so that, after she had turned her back to regain\nthe landing and the staircase, he overtook her, before she had begun to\nmount, with the ring of excited perception. \"Ah, but, you know, that\'s\nrather jolly!\"\n\n\"Jolly\'--?\" she turned upon it, again, at the foot of the staircase.\n\n\"I mean it\'s rather charming.\"\n\n\"\'Charming\'--?\" It had still to be their law, a little, that she was\ntragic when he was comic.\n\n\"I mean it\'s rather beautiful. You just said, yourself, it would be.\nOnly,\" he pursued promptly, with the impetus of this idea, and as if it\nhad suddenly touched with light for him connections hitherto dim--\"only\nI don\'t quite see why that very care for him which has carried her to\nsuch other lengths, precisely, as affect one as so \'rum,\' hasn\'t also,\nby the same stroke, made her notice a little more what has been going\non.\"\n\n\"Ah, there you are! It\'s the question that I\'ve all along been asking\nmyself.\" She had rested her eyes on the carpet, but she raised them as\nshe pursued--she let him have it straight. \"And it\'s the question of an\nidiot.\"\n\n\"An idiot--?\"\n\n\"Well, the idiot that I\'VE been, in all sorts of ways--so often, of\nlate, have I asked it. You\'re excusable, since you ask it but now. The\nanswer, I saw to-day, has all the while been staring me in the face.\"\n\n\"Then what in the world is it?\"\n\n\"Why, the very intensity of her conscience about him--the very passion\nof her brave little piety. That\'s the way it has worked,\" Mrs. Assingham\nexplained \"and I admit it to have been as \'rum\' a way as possible.\nBut it has been working from a rum start. From the moment the dear\nman married to ease his daughter off, and it then happened, by an\nextraordinary perversity, that the very opposite effect was produced--!\"\nWith the renewed vision of this fatality, however, she could give but a\ndesperate shrug.\n\n\"I see,\" the Colonel sympathetically mused. \"That WAS a rum start.\"\n\nBut his very response, as she again flung up her arms, seemed to make\nher sense, for a moment, intolerable. \"Yes--there I am! I was really at\nthe bottom of it,\" she declared; \"I don\'t know what possessed me--but I\nplanned for him, I goaded him on.\" With which, however, the next moment,\nshe took herself up. \"Or, rather, I DO know what possessed me--for\nwasn\'t he beset with ravening women, right and left, and didn\'t he,\nquite pathetically, appeal for protection, didn\'t he, quite charmingly,\nshow one how he needed and desired it? Maggie,\" she thus lucidly\ncontinued, \"couldn\'t, with a new life of her own, give herself up to\ndoing for him in the future all she had done in the past--to fencing him\nin, to keeping him safe and keeping THEM off. One perceived this,\" she\nwent on--\"out of the abundance of one\'s affection and one\'s sympathy.\"\nIt all blessedly came back to her--when it wasn\'t all, for the\nfiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and\ncompunction. \"One was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always IS, to\nthink one sees people\'s lives for them better than they see them for\nthemselves. But one\'s excuse here,\" she insisted, \"was that these people\nclearly DIDN\'T see them for themselves--didn\'t see them at all. It\nstruck one for very pity--that they were making a mess of such charming\nmaterial; that they were but wasting it and letting it go. They didn\'t\nknow HOW to live--and somehow one couldn\'t, if one took an interest in\nthem at all, simply stand and see it. That\'s what I pay for\"--and the\npoor woman, in straighter communion with her companion\'s intelligence\nat this moment, she appeared to feel, than she had ever been before, let\nhim have the whole of the burden of her consciousness. \"I always pay for\nit, sooner or later, my sociable, my damnable, my unnecessary interest.\nNothing of course would suit me but that it should fix itself also on\nCharlotte--Charlotte who was hovering there on the edge of our lives,\nwhen not beautifully, and a trifle mysteriously, flitting across them,\nand who was a piece of waste and a piece of threatened failure, just as,\nfor any possible good to the WORLD, Mr. Verver and Maggie were. It\nbegan to come over me, in the watches of the night, that Charlotte was\na person who COULD keep off ravening women--without being one herself,\neither, in the vulgar way of the others; and that this service to Mr.\nVerver would be a sweet employment for her future. There was something,\nof course, that might have stopped me: you know, you know what I\nmean--it looks at me,\" she veritably moaned, \"out of your face! But all\nI can say is that it didn\'t; the reason largely being--once I had fallen\nin love with the beautiful symmetry of my plan--that I seemed to feel\nsure Maggie would accept Charlotte, whereas I didn\'t quite make out\neither what other woman, or what other KIND of woman, one could think of\nher accepting.\"\n\n\"I see--I see.\" She had paused, meeting all the while his listening\nlook, and the fever of her retrospect had so risen with her talk that\nthe desire was visibly strong in him to meet her, on his side, but with\ncooling breath. \"One quite understands, my dear.\"\n\nIt only, however, kept her there sombre. \"I naturally see, love, what\nyou understand; which sits again, perfectly, in your eyes. You see\nthat I saw that Maggie would accept her in helpless ignorance. Yes,\ndearest\"--and the grimness of her dreariness suddenly once more\npossessed her: \"you\'ve only to tell me that that knowledge was my reason\nfor what I did. How, when you do, can I stand up to you? You see,\" she\nsaid with an ineffable headshake, \"that I don\'t stand up! I\'m down,\ndown, down,\" she declared; \"yet\" she as quickly added--\"there\'s just one\nlittle thing that helps to save my life.\" And she kept him waiting but\nan instant. \"They might easily--they would perhaps even certainly--have\ndone something worse.\"\n\nHe thought. \"Worse than that Charlotte--?\"\n\n\"Ah, don\'t tell me,\" she cried, \"that there COULD have been nothing\nworse. There might, as they were, have been many things. Charlotte, in\nher way, is extraordinary.\"\n\nHe was almost simultaneous. \"Extraordinary!\"\n\n\"She observes the forms,\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\nHe hesitated. \"With the Prince--?\"\n\n\"FOR the Prince. And with the others,\" she went on. \"With Mr.\nVerver--wonderfully. But above all with Maggie. And the forms\"--she had\nto do even THEM justice--\"are two-thirds of conduct. Say he had married\na woman who would have made a hash of them.\"\n\nBut he jerked back. \"Ah, my dear, I wouldn\'t say it for the world!\"\n\n\"Say,\" she none the less pursued, \"he had married a woman the Prince\nwould really have cared for.\"\n\n\"You mean then he doesn\'t care for Charlotte--?\" This was still a new\nview to jump to, and the Colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of\nthe necessity of the effort. For that, while he stared, his wife allowed\nhim time; at the end of which she simply said: \"No!\"\n\n\"Then what on earth are they up to?\" Still, however, she only looked at\nhim; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets,\nhe had time, further, to risk, soothingly, another question. \"Are the\n\'forms\' you speak of--that are two-thirds of conduct--what will be\nkeeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till\nmorning?\"\n\n\"Yes--absolutely. THEIR forms.\"\n\n\"\'Theirs\'--?\"\n\n\"Maggie\'s and Mr. Verver\'s--those they IMPOSE on Charlotte and the\nPrince. Those,\" she developed, \"that, so perversely, as I say, have\nsucceeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.\"\n\nHe considered--but only now, at last, really to relapse into woe. \"Your\n\'perversity,\' my dear, is exactly what I don\'t understand. The state\nof things existing hasn\'t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night.\nWhatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence\nof what they\'ve DONE. Are they mere helpless victims of fate?\"\n\nWell, Fanny at last had the courage of it, \"Yes--they are. To be so\nabjectly innocent--that IS to be victims of fate.\"\n\n\"And Charlotte and the Prince are abjectly innocent--?\"\n\nIt took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. \"Yes.\nThat is they WERE--as much so in their way as the others. There were\nbeautiful intentions all round. The Prince\'s and Charlotte\'s were\nbeautiful--of THAT I had my faith. They WERE--I\'d go to the stake.\nOtherwise,\" she added, \"I should have been a wretch. And I\'ve not been a\nwretch. I\'ve only been a double-dyed donkey.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" he asked, \"what does our muddle make THEM to have been?\"\n\n\"Well, too much taken up with considering each other. You may call such\na mistake as that by what ever name you please; it at any rate means,\nall round, their case. It illustrates the misfortune,\" said Mrs.\nAssingham gravely, \"of being too, too charming.\"\n\nThis was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel again\ndid his best. \"Yes, but to whom?--doesn\'t it rather depend on that? To\nwhom have the Prince and Charlotte then been too charming?\"\n\n\"To each other, in the first place--obviously. And then both of them\ntogether to Maggie.\"\n\n\"To Maggie?\" he wonderingly echoed.\n\n\"To Maggie.\" She was now crystalline. \"By having accepted, from the\nfirst, so guilelessly--yes, so guilelessly, themselves--her guileless\nidea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life.\"\n\n\"Then isn\'t one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn\'t\nquarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn\'t\ndrink or kick up rows--isn\'t one supposed to keep one\'s aged parent in\none\'s life?\"\n\n\"Certainly--when there aren\'t particular reasons against it. That there\nmay be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what is\nbefore us. In the first place Mr. Verver isn\'t aged.\"\n\nThe Colonel just hung fire--but it came. \"Then why the deuce does\nhe--oh, poor dear man!--behave as if he were?\"\n\nShe took a moment to meet it. \"How do you know how he behaves?\"\n\n\"Well, my own love, we see how Charlotte does!\" Again, at this, she\nfaltered; but again she rose. \"Ah, isn\'t my whole point that he\'s\ncharming to her?\"\n\n\"Doesn\'t it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?\"\n\nShe faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of\ndignity she brushed it away. \"It\'s Mr. Verver who\'s really young--it\'s\nCharlotte who\'s really old. And what I was saying,\" she added, \"isn\'t\naffected!\"\n\n\"You were saying\"--he did her the justice--\"that they\'re all guileless.\"\n\n\"That they were. Guileless, all, at first--quite extraordinarily. It\'s\nwhat I mean by their failure to see that the more they took for granted\nthey could work together the more they were really working apart. For I\nrepeat,\" Fanny went on, \"that I really believe Charlotte and the Prince\nhonestly to have made up their minds, originally, that their very esteem\nfor Mr. Verver--which was serious, as well it might be!--would save\nthem.\"\n\n\"I see.\" The Colonel inclined himself. \"And save HIM.\"\n\n\"It comes to the same thing!\"\n\n\"Then save Maggie.\"\n\n\"That comes,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"to something a little different. For\nMaggie has done the most.\"\n\nHe wondered. \"What do you call the most?\"\n\n\"Well, she did it originally--she began the vicious circle. For\nthat--though you make round eyes at my associating her with \'vice\'--is\nsimply what it has been. It\'s their mutual consideration, all round,\nthat has made it the bottomless gulf; and they\'re really so embroiled\nbut because, in their way, they\'ve been so improbably GOOD.\"\n\n\"In their way--yes!\" the Colonel grinned.\n\n\"Which was, above all, Maggie\'s way.\" No flicker of his ribaldry was\nanything to her now. \"Maggie had in the first place to make up to her\nfather for her having suffered herself to become--poor little dear,\nas she believed--so intensely married. Then she had to make up to her\nhusband for taking so much of the time they might otherwise have spent\ntogether to make this reparation to Mr. Verver perfect. And her way to\ndo this, precisely, was by allowing the Prince the use, the enjoyment,\nwhatever you may call it, of Charlotte to cheer his path--by\ninstalments, as it were--in proportion as she herself, making sure her\nfather was all right, might be missed from his side. By so much, at the\nsame time, however,\" Mrs. Assingham further explained, \"by so much as\nshe took her young stepmother, for this purpose, away from Mr. Verver,\nby just so much did this too strike her as something again to be made\nup for. It has saddled her, you will easily see, with a positively new\nobligation to her father, an obligation created and aggravated by her\nunfortunate, even if quite heroic, little sense of justice. She began\nwith wanting to show him that his marriage could never, under whatever\ntemptation of her own bliss with the Prince, become for her a pretext\nfor deserting or neglecting HIM. Then that, in its order, entailed\nher wanting to show the Prince that she recognised how the other\ndesire--this wish to remain, intensely, the same passionate little\ndaughter she had always been--involved in some degree, and just for the\npresent, so to speak, her neglecting and deserting him. I quite hold,\"\nFanny with characteristic amplitude parenthesised, \"that a person can\nmostly feel but one passion--one TENDER passion, that is--at a\ntime. Only, that doesn\'t hold good for our primary and instinctive\nattachments, the \'voice of blood,\' such as one\'s feeling for a parent\nor a brother. Those may be intense and yet not prevent other\nintensities--as you will recognise, my dear, when you remember how I\ncontinued, tout betement, to adore my mother, whom you didn\'t adore, for\nyears after I had begun to adore you. Well, Maggie\"--she kept it up--\"is\nin the same situation as I was, PLUS complications from which I was,\nthank heaven, exempt: PLUS the complication, above all, of not having in\nthe least begun with the sense for complications that I should have\nhad. Before she knew it, at any rate, her little scruples and her little\nlucidities, which were really so divinely blind--her feverish little\nsense of justice, as I say--had brought the two others together as her\ngrossest misconduct couldn\'t have done. And now she knows something or\nother has happened--yet hasn\'t heretofore known what. She has only\npiled up her remedy, poor child--something that she has earnestly but\nconfusedly seen as her necessary policy; piled it on top of the policy,\non top of the remedy, that she at first thought out for herself, and\nthat would really have needed, since then, so much modification. Her\nonly modification has been the growth of her necessity to prevent her\nfather\'s wondering if all, in their life in common, MAY be so certainly\nfor the best. She has now as never before to keep him unconscious that,\npeculiar, if he makes a point of it, as their situation is, there\'s\nanything in it all uncomfortable or disagreeable, anything morally the\nleast out of the way. She has to keep touching it up to make it, each\nday, each month, look natural and normal to him; so that--God forgive me\nthe comparison!--she\'s like an old woman who has taken to \'painting\' and\nwho has to lay it on thicker, to carry it off with a greater audacity,\nwith a greater impudence even, the older she grows.\" And Fanny stood a\nmoment captivated with the image she had thrown off. \"I like the idea of\nMaggie audacious and impudent--learning to be so to gloss things over.\nShe could--she even will, yet, I believe--learn it, for that sacred\npurpose, consummately, diabolically. For from the moment the dear man\nshould see it\'s all rouge--!\" She paused, staring at the vision.\n\nIt imparted itself even to Bob. \"Then the fun would begin?\" As it but\nmade her look at him hard, however, he amended the form of his inquiry.\n\"You mean that in that case she WILL, charming creature, be lost?\"\n\nShe was silent a moment more. \"As I\'ve told you before, she won\'t be\nlost if her father\'s saved. She\'ll see that as salvation enough.\"\n\nThe Colonel took it in. \"Then she\'s a little heroine.\"\n\n\"Rather--she\'s a little heroine. But it\'s his innocence, above all,\"\nMrs. Assingham added, \"that will pull them through.\"\n\nHer companion, at this, focussed again Mr. Verver\'s innocence. \"It\'s\nawfully quaint.\"\n\n\"Of course it\'s awfully quaint! That it\'s awfully quaint, that the pair\nare awfully quaint, quaint with all our dear old quaintness--by which I\ndon\'t mean yours and mine, but that of my own sweet countrypeople, from\nwhom I\'ve so deplorably degenerated--that,\" Mrs. Assingham declared,\n\"was originally the head and front of their appeal to me and of my\ninterest in them. And of course I shall feel them quainter still,\" she\nrather ruefully subjoined, \"before they\'ve done with me!\"\n\nThis might be, but it wasn\'t what most stood in the Colonel\'s way. \"You\nbelieve so in Mr. Verver\'s innocence after two years of Charlotte?\"\n\nShe stared. \"But the whole point is just that two years of Charlotte are\nwhat he hasn\'t really--or what you may call undividedly--had.\"\n\n\"Any more than Maggie, by your theory, eh, has \'really or undividedly,\'\nhad four of the Prince? It takes all she hasn\'t had,\" the Colonel\nconceded, \"to account for the innocence that in her, too, so leaves us\nin admiration.\"\n\nSo far as it might be ribald again she let this pass. \"It takes a great\nmany things to account for Maggie. What is definite, at all events, is\nthat--strange though this be--her effort for her father has, up to now,\nsufficiently succeeded. She has made him, she makes him, accept the\ntolerably obvious oddity of their relation, all round, for part of\nthe game. Behind her there, protected and amused and, as it were,\nexquisitely humbugged--the Principino, in whom he delights, always\naiding--he has safely and serenely enough suffered the conditions of his\nlife to pass for those he had sublimely projected. He hadn\'t worked them\nout in detail--any more than I had, heaven pity me!--and the queerness\nhas been, exactly, in the detail. This, for him, is what it was to have\nmarried Charlotte. And they both,\" she neatly wound up, \"\'help.\'\"\n\n\"\'Both\'--?\"\n\n\"I mean that if Maggie, always in the breach, makes it seem to him all\nso flourishingly to fit, Charlotte does her part not less. And her part\nis very large. Charlotte,\" Fanny declared, \"works like a horse.\"\n\nSo there it all was, and her husband looked at her a minute across it.\n\"And what does the Prince work like?\"\n\nShe fixed him in return. \"Like a Prince!\" Whereupon, breaking short off,\nto ascend to her room, she presented her highly--decorated back--in\nwhich, in odd places, controlling the complications of its aspect, the\nruby or the garnet, the turquoise and the topaz, gleamed like faint\nsymbols of the wit that pinned together the satin patches of her\nargument.\n\nHe watched her as if she left him positively under the impression of her\nmastery of her subject; yes, as if the real upshot of the drama before\nthem was but that he had, when it came to the tight places of life--as\nlife had shrunk for him now--the most luminous of wives. He turned off,\nin this view of her majestic retreat, the comparatively faint little\nelectric lamp which had presided over their talk; then he went up as\nimmediately behind her as the billows of her amber train allowed, making\nout how all the clearness they had conquered was even for herself\na relief--how at last the sense of the amplitude of her exposition\nsustained and floated her. Joining her, however, on the landing above,\nwhere she had already touched a metallic point into light, he found she\nhad done perhaps even more to create than to extinguish in him the germ\nof a curiosity. He held her a minute longer--there was another plum\nin the pie. \"What did you mean some minutes ago by his not caring for\nCharlotte?\"\n\n\"The Prince\'s? By his not \'really\' caring?\" She recalled, after a\nlittle, benevolently enough. \"I mean that men don\'t, when it has all\nbeen too easy. That\'s how, in nine cases out of ten, a woman is treated\nwho has risked her life. You asked me just now how he works,\" she added;\n\"but you might better perhaps have asked me how he plays.\"\n\nWell, he made it up. \"Like a Prince?\"\n\n\"Like a Prince. He is, profoundly, a Prince. For that,\" she said with\nexpression, \"he\'s--beautifully--a case. They\'re far rarer, even in the\n\'highest circles,\' than they pretend to be--and that\'s what makes so\nmuch of his value. He\'s perhaps one of the very last--the last of the\nreal ones. So it is we must take him. We must take him all round.\"\n\nThe Colonel considered. \"And how must Charlotte--if anything\nhappens--take him?\"\n\nThe question held her a minute, and while she waited, with her eyes on\nhim, she put out a grasping hand to his arm, in the flesh of which\nhe felt her answer distinctly enough registered. Thus she gave him,\nstanding off a little, the firmest, longest, deepest injunction he had\never received from her. \"Nothing--in spite of everything--WILL happen.\nNothing HAS happened. Nothing IS happening.\"\n\nHe looked a trifle disappointed. \"I see. For US.\"\n\n\"For us. For whom else?\" And he was to feel indeed how she wished him\nto understand it. \"We know nothing on earth--!\" It was an undertaking he\nmust sign.\n\nSo he wrote, as it were, his name. \"We know nothing on earth.\" It was\nlike the soldiers\' watchword at night.\n\n\"We\'re as innocent,\" she went on in the same way, \"as babes.\"\n\n\"Why not rather say,\" he asked, \"as innocent as they themselves are?\"\n\n\"Oh, for the best of reasons! Because we\'re much more so.\"\n\nHe wondered. \"But how can we be more--?\"\n\n\"For them? Oh, easily! We can be anything.\"\n\n\"Absolute idiots then?\"\n\n\"Absolute idiots. And oh,\" Fanny breathed, \"the way it will rest us!\"\n\nWell, he looked as if there were something in that. \"But won\'t they know\nwe\'re not?\"\n\nShe barely hesitated. \"Charlotte and the Prince think we are--which is\nso much gained. Mr. Verver believes in our intelligence--but he doesn\'t\nmatter.\"\n\n\"And Maggie? Doesn\'t SHE know--?\"\n\n\"That we see before our noses?\" Yes, this indeed took longer. \"Oh, so\nfar as she may guess it she\'ll give no sign. So it comes to the same\nthing.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows. \"Comes to our not being able to help her?\"\n\n\"That\'s the way we SHALL help her.\"\n\n\"By looking like fools?\"\n\nShe threw up her hands. \"She only wants, herself, to look like a bigger!\nSo there we are!\" With which she brushed it away--his conformity was\npromised. Something, however, still held her; it broke, to her own\nvision, as a last wave of clearness. \"Moreover NOW,\" she said, \"I see! I\nmean,\" she added,--\"what you were asking me: how I knew to-day, in Eaton\nSquare, that Maggie\'s awake.\" And she had indeed visibly got it. \"It was\nby seeing them together.\"\n\n\"Seeing her with her father?\" He fell behind again. \"But you\'ve seen her\noften enough before.\"\n\n\"Never with my present eyes. For nothing like such a test--that of this\nlength of the others\' absence together--has hitherto occurred.\"\n\n\"Possibly! But if she and Mr. Verver insisted upon it--?\"\n\n\"Why is it such a test? Because it has become one without their\nintending it. It has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands.\"\n\n\"It has soured, eh?\" the Colonel said.\n\n\"The word\'s horrible--say rather it has \'changed.\' Perhaps,\" Fanny went\non, \"she did wish to see how much she can bear. In that case she HAS\nseen. Only it was she alone who--about the visit--insisted. Her father\ninsists on nothing. And she watches him do it.\"\n\nHer husband looked impressed. \"Watches him?\"\n\n\"For the first faint sign. I mean of his noticing. It doesn\'t, as I tell\nyou, come. But she\'s there for it to see. And I felt,\" she continued,\n\"HOW she\'s there; I caught her, as it were, in the fact. She couldn\'t\nkeep it from me--though she left her post on purpose--came home with\nme to throw dust in my eyes. I took it all--her dust; but it was what\nshowed me.\" With which supreme lucidity she reached the door of her\nroom. \"Luckily it showed me also how she has succeeded. Nothing--from\nhim--HAS come.\"\n\n\"You\'re so awfully sure?\"\n\n\"Sure. Nothing WILL. Good-night,\" she said. \"She\'ll die first.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK SECOND: THE PRINCESS\n\n\n\n\nPART FOURTH\n\n\n XXV\n\nIt was not till many days had passed that the Princess began to accept\nthe idea of having done, a little, something she was not always doing,\nor indeed that of having listened to any inward voice that spoke in a\nnew tone. Yet these instinctive postponements of reflection were the\nfruit, positively, of recognitions and perceptions already active; of\nthe sense, above all, that she had made, at a particular hour, made\nby the mere touch of her hand, a difference in the situation so long\npresent to her as practically unattackable. This situation had been\noccupying, for months and months, the very centre of the garden of her\nlife, but it had reared itself there like some strange, tall tower\nof ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful, beautiful, but outlandish\npagoda, a structure plated with hard, bright porcelain, coloured and\nfigured and adorned, at the overhanging eaves, with silver bells that\ntinkled, ever so charmingly, when stirred by chance airs. She had walked\nround and round it--that was what she felt; she had carried on her\nexistence in the space left her for circulation, a space that sometimes\nseemed ample and sometimes narrow: looking up, all the while, at the\nfair structure that spread itself so amply and rose so high, but never\nquite making out, as yet, where she might have entered had she wished.\nShe had not wished till now--such was the odd case; and what was\ndoubtless equally odd, besides, was that, though her raised eyes seemed\nto distinguish places that must serve, from within, and especially far\naloft, as apertures and outlooks, no door appeared to give access from\nher convenient garden level. The great decorated surface had remained\nconsistently impenetrable and inscrutable. At present, however, to her\nconsidering mind, it was as if she had ceased merely to circle and to\nscan the elevation, ceased so vaguely, so quite helplessly to stare and\nwonder: she had caught herself distinctly in the act of pausing, then in\nthat of lingering, and finally in that of stepping unprecedentedly\nnear. The thing might have been, by the distance at which it kept her, a\nMahometan mosque, with which no base heretic could take a liberty; there\nso hung about it the vision of one\'s putting off one\'s shoes to enter,\nand even, verily, of one\'s paying with one\'s life if found there as an\ninterloper. She had not, certainly, arrived at the conception of paying\nwith her life for anything she might do; but it was nevertheless quite\nas if she had sounded with a tap or two one of the rare porcelain\nplates. She had knocked, in short--though she could scarce have said\nwhether for admission or for what; she had applied her hand to a cool\nsmooth spot and had waited to see what would happen. Something had\nhappened; it was as if a sound, at her touch, after a little, had\ncome back to her from within; a sound sufficiently suggesting that her\napproach had been noted.\n\nIf this image, however, may represent our young woman\'s consciousness of\na recent change in her life--a change now but a few days old--it must\nat the same time be observed that she both sought and found in renewed\ncirculation, as I have called it, a measure of relief from the idea\nof having perhaps to answer for what she had done. The pagoda in her\nblooming garden figured the arrangement--how otherwise was it to be\nnamed?--by which, so strikingly, she had been able to marry without\nbreaking, as she liked to put it, with the past. She had surrendered\nherself to her husband without the shadow of a reserve or a condition,\nand yet she had not, all the while, given up her father--the least\nlittle inch. She had compassed the high city of seeing the two men\nbeautifully take to each other, and nothing in her marriage had marked\nit as more happy than this fact of its having practically given the\nelder, the lonelier, a new friend. What had moreover all the while\nenriched the whole aspect of success was that the latter\'s marriage had\nbeen no more meassurably paid for than her own. His having taken the\nsame great step in the same free way had not in the least involved the\nrelegation of his daughter. That it was remarkable they should have\nbeen able at once so to separate and so to keep together had never for\na moment, from however far back, been equivocal to her; that it was\nremarkable had in fact quite counted, at first and always, and for each\nof them equally, as part of their inspiration and their support. There\nwere plenty of singular things they were NOT enamoured of--flights of\nbrilliancy, of audacity, of originality, that, speaking at least for the\ndear man and herself, were not at all in their line; but they liked to\nthink they had given their life this unusual extension and this liberal\nform, which many families, many couples, and still more many pairs\nof couples, would not have found workable. That last truth had been\ndistinctly brought home to them by the bright testimony, the quite\nexplicit envy, of most of their friends, who had remarked to them again\nand again that they must, on all the showing, to keep on such terms, be\npeople of the highest amiability--equally including in the praise, of\ncourse, Amerigo and Charlotte. It had given them pleasure--as how should\nit not?--to find themselves shed such a glamour; it had certainly,\nthat is, given pleasure to her father and herself, both of them\ndistinguishably of a nature so slow to presume that they would scarce\nhave been sure of their triumph without this pretty reflection of it.\nSo it was that their felicity had fructified; so it was that the ivory\ntower, visible and admirable doubtless, from any point of the social\nfield, had risen stage by stage. Maggie\'s actual reluctance to ask\nherself with proportionate sharpness why she had ceased to take comfort\nin the sight of it represented accordingly a lapse from that ideal\nconsistency on which her moral comfort almost at any time depended. To\nremain consistent she had always been capable of cutting down more or\nless her prior term.\n\nMoving for the first time in her life as in the darkening shadow of a\nfalse position, she reflected that she should either not have ceased\nto be right--that is, to be confident--or have recognised that she was\nwrong; though she tried to deal with herself, for a space, only as a\nsilken-coated spaniel who has scrambled out of a pond and who rattles\nthe water from his ears. Her shake of her head, again and again, as she\nwent, was much of that order, and she had the resource, to which, save\nfor the rude equivalent of his generalising bark, the spaniel would have\nbeen a stranger, of humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing had\nhappened to her. She had not, so to speak, fallen in; she had had no\naccident and had not got wet; this at any rate was her pretension until\nafter she began a little to wonder if she mightn\'t, with or without\nexposure, have taken cold. She could at all events remember no time at\nwhich she had felt so excited, and certainly none--which was another\nspecial point--that so brought with it as well the necessity for\nconcealing excitement. This birth of a new eagerness became a high\npastime, in her view, precisely by reason of the ingenuity required for\nkeeping the thing born out of sight. The ingenuity was thus a private\nand absorbing exercise, in the light of which, might I so far multiply\nmy metaphors, I should compare her to the frightened but clinging young\nmother of an unlawful child. The idea that had possession of her would\nbe, by our new analogy, the proof of her misadventure, but likewise,\nall the while, only another sign of a relation that was more to her than\nanything on earth. She had lived long enough to make out for herself\nthat any deep-seated passion has its pangs as well as its joys, and that\nwe are made by its aches and its anxieties most richly conscious of it.\nShe had never doubted of the force of the feeling that bound her to\nher husband; but to become aware, almost suddenly, that it had begun to\nvibrate with a violence that had some of the effect of a strain would,\nrightly looked at, after all but show that she was, like thousands of\nwomen, every day, acting up to the full privilege of passion. Why in the\nworld shouldn\'t she, with every right--if, on consideration, she saw no\ngood reason against it? The best reason against it would have been the\npossibility of some consequence disagreeable or inconvenient to others--\nespecially to such others as had never incommoded her by the egotism of\nTHEIR passions; but if once that danger were duly guarded against the\nfulness of one\'s measure amounted to no more than the equal use of\none\'s faculties or the proper playing of one\'s part. It had come to the\nPrincess, obscurely at first, but little by little more conceivably,\nthat her faculties had not for a good while been concomitantly used; the\ncase resembled in a manner that of her once-loved dancing, a matter of\nremembered steps that had grown vague from her ceasing to go to balls.\nShe would go to balls again--that seemed, freely, even crudely, stated,\nthe remedy; she would take out of the deep receptacles in which she\nhad laid them away the various ornaments congruous with the greater\noccasions, and of which her store, she liked to think, was none of\nthe smallest. She would have been easily to be figured for us at this\noccupation; dipping, at off moments and quiet hours, in snatched visits\nand by draughty candle-light, into her rich collections and seeing her\njewels again a little shyly, but all unmistakably, glow. That in fact\nmay pass as the very picture of her semi-smothered agitation, of the\ndiversion she to some extent successfully found in referring her crisis,\nso far as was possible, to the mere working of her own needs.\n\nIt must be added, however, that she would have been at a loss to\ndetermine--and certainly at first--to which order, that of self-control\nor that of large expression, the step she had taken the afternoon of her\nhusband\'s return from Matcham with his companion properly belonged. For\nit had been a step, distinctly, on Maggie\'s part, her deciding to do\nsomething, just then and there, which would strike Amerigo as unusual,\nand this even though her departure from custom had merely consisted\nin her so arranging that he wouldn\'t find her, as he would definitely\nexpect to do, in Eaton Square. He would have, strangely enough, as might\nseem to him, to come back home for it, and there get the impression of\nher rather pointedly, or at least all impatiently and independently,\nawaiting him. These were small variations and mild manoeuvres, but\nthey went accompanied on Maggie\'s part, as we have mentioned, with\nan infinite sense of intention. Her watching by his fireside for her\nhusband\'s return from an absence might superficially have presented\nitself as the most natural act in the world, and the only one, into the\nbargain, on which he would positively have reckoned. It fell by this\ncircumstance into the order of plain matters, and yet the very aspect\nby which it was, in the event, handed over to her brooding fancy was\nthe fact that she had done with it all she had designed. She had put her\nthought to the proof, and the proof had shown its edge; this was what\nwas before her, that she was no longer playing with blunt and idle\ntools, with weapons that didn\'t cut. There passed across her vision ten\ntimes a day the gleam of a bare blade, and at this it was that she most\nshut her eyes, most knew the impulse to cheat herself with motion and\nsound. She had merely driven, on a certain Wednesday, to Portland Place,\ninstead of remaining in Eaton Square, and she privately repeated it\nagain and again--there had appeared beforehand no reason why she should\nhave seen the mantle of history flung, by a single sharp sweep, over so\ncommonplace a deed. That, all the same, was what had happened; it had\nbeen bitten into her mind, all in an hour, that nothing she had ever\ndone would hereafter, in some way yet to be determined, so count for\nher--perhaps not even what she had done in accepting, in their old\ngolden Rome, Amerigo\'s proposal of marriage. And yet, by her little\ncrouching posture there, that of a timid tigress, she had meant nothing\nrecklessly ultimate, nothing clumsily fundamental; so that she called it\nnames, the invidious, the grotesque attitude, holding it up to her own\nridicule, reducing so far as she could the portee of what had followed\nit. She had but wanted to get nearer--nearer to something indeed that\nshe couldn\'t, that she wouldn\'t, even to herself, describe; and\nthe degree of this achieved nearness was what had been in advance\nincalculable. Her actual multiplication of distractions and\nsuppressions, whatever it did for her, failed to prevent her living\nover again any chosen minute--for she could choose them, she could fix\nthem--of the freshness of relation produced by her having administered\nto her husband the first surprise to which she had ever treated him.\nIt had been a poor thing, but it had been all her own, and the whole\npassage was backwardly there, a great picture hung on the wall of her\ndaily life, for her to make what she would of.\n\nIt fell, for retrospect, into a succession of moments that were\nWATCHABLE still; almost in the manner of the different things done\nduring a scene on the stage, some scene so acted as to have left a great\nimpression on the tenant of one of the stalls. Several of these moments\nstood out beyond the others, and those she could feel again most, count\nagain like the firm pearls on a string, had belonged more particularly\nto the lapse of time before dinner--dinner which had been so late, quite\nat nine o\'clock, that evening, thanks to the final lateness of Amerigo\'s\nown advent. These were parts of the experience--though in fact there had\nbeen a good many of them--between which her impression could continue\nsharply to discriminate. Before the subsequent passages, much later on,\nit was to be said, the flame of memory turned to an equalising glow,\nthat of a lamp in some side-chapel in which incense was thick. The\ngreat moment, at any rate, for conscious repossession, was doubtless the\nfirst: the strange little timed silence which she had fully gauged, on\nthe spot, as altogether beyond her own intention, but which--for just\nhow long? should she ever really know for just how long?--she could\ndo nothing to break. She was in the smaller drawing-room, in which she\nalways \"sat,\" and she had, by calculation, dressed for dinner on finally\ncoming in. It was a wonder how many things she had calculated in respect\nto this small incident--a matter for the importance of which she had\nso quite indefinite a measure. He would be late--he would be very late;\nthat was the one certainty that seemed to look her in the face. There\nwas still also the possibility that if he drove with Charlotte straight\nto Eaton Square he might think it best to remain there even on learning\nshe had come away. She had left no message for him on any such chance;\nthis was another of her small shades of decision, though the effect of\nit might be to keep him still longer absent. He might suppose she would\nalready have dined; he might stay, with all he would have to tell, just\non purpose to be nice to her father. She had known him to stretch the\npoint, to these beautiful ends, far beyond that; he had more than once\nstretched it to the sacrifice of the opportunity of dressing.\n\nIf she herself had now avoided any such sacrifice, and had made herself,\nduring the time at her disposal, quite inordinately fresh and quite\npositively smart, this had probably added, while she waited and waited,\nto that very tension of spirit in which she was afterwards to find the\nimage of her having crouched. She did her best, quite intensely, by\nherself, to banish any such appearance; she couldn\'t help it if she\ncouldn\'t read her pale novel--ah, that, par exemple, was beyond her!\nbut she could at least sit by the lamp with the book, sit there with\nher newest frock, worn for the first time, sticking out, all round her,\nquite stiff and grand; even perhaps a little too stiff and too grand for\na familiar and domestic frock, yet marked none the less, this time,\nshe ventured to hope, by incontestable intrinsic merit. She had glanced\nrepeatedly at the clock, but she had refused herself the weak indulgence\nof walking up and down, though the act of doing so, she knew, would make\nher feel, on the polished floor, with the rustle and the \"hang,\" still\nmore beautifully bedecked. The difficulty was that it would also make\nher feel herself still more sharply in a state; which was exactly what\nshe proposed not to do. The only drops of her anxiety had been when her\nthought strayed complacently, with her eyes, to the front of her gown,\nwhich was in a manner a refuge, a beguilement, especially when she was\nable to fix it long enough to wonder if it would at last really satisfy\nCharlotte. She had ever been, in respect to her clothes, rather timorous\nand uncertain; for the last year, above all, she had lived in the\nlight of Charlotte\'s possible and rather inscrutable judgment of them.\nCharlotte\'s own were simply the most charming and interesting that any\nwoman had ever put on; there was a kind of poetic justice in her being\nat last able, in this particular, thanks to means, thanks quite to\nomnipotence, freely to exercise her genius. But Maggie would have\ndescribed herself as, in these connections, constantly and intimately\n\"torn\"; conscious on one side of the impossibility of copying her\ncompanion and conscious on the other of the impossibility of sounding\nher, independently, to the bottom. Yes, it was one of the things she\nshould go down to her grave without having known--how Charlotte, after\nall had been said, really thought her stepdaughter looked under any\nsupposedly ingenious personal experiment. She had always been lovely\nabout the stepdaughter\'s material braveries--had done, for her, the\nvery best with them; but there had ever fitfully danced at the back of\nMaggie\'s head the suspicion that these expressions were mercies, not\njudgments, embodying no absolute, but only a relative, frankness. Hadn\'t\nCharlotte, with so perfect a critical vision, if the truth were known,\ngiven her up as hopeless--hopeless by a serious standard, and thereby\ninvented for her a different and inferior one, in which, as the only\nthing to be done, she patiently and soothingly abetted her? Hadn\'t\nshe, in other words, assented in secret despair, perhaps even in secret\nirritation, to her being ridiculous?--so that the best now possible\nwas to wonder, once in a great while, whether one mightn\'t give her the\nsurprise of something a little less out of the true note than usual.\nSomething of this kind was the question that Maggie, while the absentees\nstill delayed, asked of the appearance she was endeavouring to present;\nbut with the result, repeatedly again, that it only went and lost itself\nin the thick air that had begun more and more to hang, for our young\nwoman, over her accumulations of the unanswered. They were THERE, these\naccumulations; they were like a roomful of confused objects, never\nas yet \"sorted,\" which for some time now she had been passing and\nre-passing, along the corridor of her life. She passed it when she could\nwithout opening the door; then, on occasion, she turned the key to throw\nin a fresh contribution. So it was that she had been getting things out\nof the way. They rejoined the rest of the confusion; it was as if they\nfound their place, by some instinct of affinity, in the heap. They knew,\nin short, where to go; and when she, at present, by a mental act, once\nmore pushed the door open, she had practically a sense of method and\nexperience. What she should never know about Charlotte\'s thought--she\ntossed THAT in. It would find itself in company, and she might at last\nhave been standing there long enough to see it fall into its corner. The\nsight moreover would doubtless have made her stare, had her attention\nbeen more free--the sight of the mass of vain things, congruous,\nincongruous, that awaited every addition. It made her in fact, with\na vague gasp, turn away, and what had further determined this was the\nfinal sharp extinction of the inward scene by the outward. The quite\ndifferent door had opened and her husband was there.\n\nIt had been as strange as she could consent, afterwards, to think it; it\nhad been, essentially, what had made the abrupt bend in her life: he\nhad come back, had followed her from the other house, VISIBLY\nuncertain--this was written in the face he for the first minute showed\nher. It had been written only for those seconds, and it had appeared to\ngo, quickly, after they began to talk; but while it lasted it had been\nwritten large, and, though she didn\'t quite know what she had expected\nof him, she felt she hadn\'t expected the least shade of embarrassment.\nWhat had made the embarrassment--she called it embarrassment so as to be\nable to assure herself she put it at the very worst--what had made\nthe particular look was his thus distinguishably wishing to see how he\nshould find her. Why FIRST--that had, later on, kept coming to her; the\nquestion dangled there as if it were the key to everything. With the\nsense of it on the spot, she had felt, overwhelmingly, that she was\nsignificant, that so she must instantly strike him, and that this had\na kind of violence beyond what she had intended. It was in fact even at\nthe moment not absent from her view that he might easily have made an\nabject fool of her--at least for the time. She had indeed, for just ten\nseconds, been afraid of some such turn: the uncertainty in his face had\nbecome so, the next thing, an uncertainty in the very air. Three words\nof impatience the least bit loud, some outbreak of \"What in the world\nare you \'up to\', and what do you mean?\" any note of that sort would\ninstantly have brought her low--and this all the more that heaven knew\nshe hadn\'t in any manner designed to be high. It was such a trifle, her\nsmall breach with custom, or at any rate with his natural presumption,\nthat all magnitude of wonder had already had, before one could deprecate\nthe shadow of it, the effect of a complication. It had made for him some\ndifference that she couldn\'t measure, this meeting him at home and alone\ninstead of elsewhere and with others, and back and back it kept coming\nto her that the blankness he showed her before he was able to SEE might,\nshould she choose to insist on it, have a meaning--have, as who should\nsay, an historic value--beyond the importance of momentary expressions\nin general. She had naturally had on the spot no ready notion of what he\nmight want to see; it was enough for a ready notion, not to speak of\na beating heart, that he DID see, that he saw his wife in her own\ndrawing-room at the hour when she would most properly be there. He\nhadn\'t in any way challenged her, it was true, and, after those instants\nduring which she now believed him to have been harbouring the impression\nof something unusually prepared and pointed in her attitude and\narray, he had advanced upon her smiling and smiling, and thus, without\nhesitation at the last, had taken her into his arms. The hesitation\nhad been at the first, and she at present saw that he had surmounted it\nwithout her help. She had given him no help; for if, on the one hand,\nshe couldn\'t speak for hesitation, so on the other--and especially as he\ndidn\'t ask her--she couldn\'t explain why she was agitated. She had known\nit all the while down to her toes, known it in his presence with fresh\nintensity, and if he had uttered but a question it would have pressed\nin her the spring of recklessness. It had been strange that the most\nnatural thing of all to say to him should have had that appearance; but\nshe was more than ever conscious that any appearance she had would\ncome round, more or less straight, to her father, whose life was now\nso quiet, on the basis accepted for it, that any alteration of his\nconsciousness even in the possible sense of enlivenment, would make\ntheir precious equilibrium waver. THAT was at the bottom of her mind,\nthat their equilibrium was everything, and that it was practically\nprecarious, a matter of a hair\'s breadth for the loss of the balance. It\nwas the equilibrium, or at all events her conscious fear about it, that\nhad brought her heart into her mouth; and the same fear was, on either\nside, in the silent look she and Amerigo had exchanged. The happy\nbalance that demanded this amount of consideration was truly thus, as by\nits own confession, a delicate matter; but that her husband had also HIS\nhabit of anxiety and his general caution only brought them, after all,\nmore closely together. It would have been most beautifully, therefore,\nin the name of the equilibrium, and in that of her joy at their feeling\nso exactly the same about it, that she might have spoken if she had\npermitted the truth on the subject of her behaviour to ring out--on the\nsubject of that poor little behaviour which was for the moment so very\nlimited a case of eccentricity.\n\n\"\'Why, why\' have I made this evening such a point of our not all dining\ntogether? Well, because I\'ve all day been so wanting you alone that I\nfinally couldn\'t bear it, and that there didn\'t seem any great reason\nwhy I should try to. THAT came to me--funny as it may at first sound,\nwith all the things we\'ve so wonderfully got into the way of bearing\nfor each other. You\'ve seemed these last days--I don\'t know what: more\nabsent than ever before, too absent for us merely to go on so. It\'s all\nvery well, and I perfectly see how beautiful it is, all round; but there\ncomes a day when something snaps, when the full cup, filled to the\nvery brim, begins to flow over. That\'s what has happened to my need of\nyou--the cup, all day, has been too full to carry. So here I am with it,\nspilling it over you--and just for the reason that is the reason of my\nlife. After all, I\'ve scarcely to explain that I\'m as much in love with\nyou now as the first hour; except that there are some hours--which I\nknow when they come, because they almost frighten me--that show me I\'m\neven more so. They come of themselves--and, ah, they\'ve been coming!\nAfter all, after all--!\" Some such words as those were what DIDN\'T ring\nout, yet it was as if even the unuttered sound had been quenched here\nin its own quaver. It was where utterance would have broken down by its\nvery weight if he had let it get so far. Without that extremity, at the\nend of a moment, he had taken in what he needed to take--that his wife\nwas TESTIFYING, that she adored and missed and desired him. \"After all,\nafter all,\" since she put it so, she was right. That was what he had to\nrespond to; that was what, from the moment that, as has been said, he\n\"saw,\" he had to treat as the most pertinent thing possible. He held\nher close and long, in expression of their personal reunion--this,\nobviously, was one way of doing so. He rubbed his cheek, tenderly, and\nwith a deep vague murmur, against her face, that side of her face she\nwas not pressing to his breast. That was, not less obviously, another\nway, and there were ways enough, in short, for his extemporised ease,\nfor the good humour she was afterwards to find herself thinking of as\nhis infinite tact. This last was partly, no doubt, because the question\nof tact might be felt as having come up at the end of a quarter of\nan hour during which he had liberally talked and she had genially\nquestioned. He had told her of his day, the happy thought of his\nroundabout journey with Charlotte, all their cathedral-hunting\nadventure, and how it had turned out rather more of an affair than they\nexpected. The moral of it was, at any rate, that he was tired, verily,\nand must have a bath and dress--to which end she would kindly excuse him\nfor the shortest time possible. She was to remember afterwards something\nthat had passed between them on this--how he had looked, for her, during\nan instant, at the door, before going out, how he had met her asking\nhim, in hesitation first, then quickly in decision, whether she\ncouldn\'t help him by going up with him. He had perhaps also for a moment\nhesitated, but he had declined her offer, and she was to preserve, as I\nsay, the memory of the smile with which he had opined that at that rate\nthey wouldn\'t dine till ten o\'clock and that he should go straighter\nand faster alone. Such things, as I say, were to come back to her--they\nplayed, through her full after-sense, like lights on the whole\nimpression; the subsequent parts of the experience were not to have\nblurred their distinctness. One of these subsequent parts, the first,\nhad been the not inconsiderable length, to her later and more analytic\nconsciousness, of this second wait for her husband\'s reappearance. She\nmight certainly, with the best will in the world, had she gone up with\nhim, have been more in his way than not, since people could really,\nalmost always, hurry better without help than with it. Still, she could\nactually hardly have made him take more time than he struck her taking,\nthough it must indeed be added that there was now in this much-thinking\nlittle person\'s state of mind no mere crudity of impatience. Something\nhad happened, rapidly, with the beautiful sight of him and with the\ndrop of her fear of having annoyed him by making him go to and fro.\nSubsidence of the fearsome, for Maggie\'s spirit, was always, at first,\npositive emergence of the sweet, and it was long since anything had been\nso sweet to her as the particular quality suddenly given by her present\nemotion to the sense of possession.\n\n\n\n XXVI\n\nAmerigo was away from her again, as she sat there, as she walked there\nwithout him--for she had, with the difference of his presence in the\nhouse, ceased to keep herself from moving about; but the hour was filled\nnevertheless with the effect of his nearness, and above all with the\neffect, strange in an intimacy so established, of an almost renewed\nvision of the facts of his aspect. She had seen him last but five days\nsince, yet he had stood there before her as if restored from some far\ncountry, some long voyage, some combination of dangers or fatigues. This\nunquenchable variety in his appeal to her interest, what did it mean\nbut that--reduced to the flatness of mere statement--she was married,\nby good fortune, to an altogether dazzling person? That was an old,\nold story, but the truth of it shone out to her like the beauty of some\nfamily picture, some mellow portrait of an ancestor, that she might\nhave been looking at, almost in surprise, after a long intermission. The\ndazzling person was upstairs and she was down, and there were moreover\nthe other facts of the selection and decision that this demonstration\nof her own had required, and of the constant care that the equilibrium\ninvolved; but she had, all the same, never felt so absorbingly married,\nso abjectly conscious of a master of her fate. He could do what he would\nwith her; in fact what was actually happening was that he was actually\ndoing it. \"What he would,\" what he REALLY would--only that quantity\nitself escaped perhaps, in the brightness of the high harmony, familiar\nnaming and discussing. It was enough of a recognition for her that,\nwhatever the thing he might desire, he would always absolutely bring\nit off. She knew at this moment, without a question, with the fullest\nsurrender, how he had brought off, in her, by scarce more than a single\nallusion, a perfect flutter of tenderness. If he had come back tired,\ntired from his long day, the exertion had been, literally, in her\nservice and her father\'s. They two had sat at home at peace, the\nPrincipino between them, the complications of life kept down, the bores\nsifted out, the large ease of the home preserved, because of the way\nthe others held the field and braved the weather. Amerigo never\ncomplained--any more than, for that matter, Charlotte did; but she\nseemed to see to-night as she had never yet quite done that their\nbusiness of social representation, conceived as they conceived it,\nbeyond any conception of her own, and conscientiously carried out, was\nan affair of living always in harness. She remembered Fanny Assingham\'s\nold judgment, that friend\'s description of her father and herself as not\nliving at all, as not knowing what to do or what might be done for them;\nand there came back to her with it an echo of the long talk they had\nhad together, one September day at Fawns, under the trees, when she put\nbefore him this dictum of Fanny\'s.\n\nThat occasion might have counted for them--she had already often made\nthe reflection--as the first step in an existence more intelligently\narranged. It had been an hour from which the chain of causes and\nconsequences was definitely traceable--so many things, and at the head\nof the list her father\'s marriage, having appeared to her to flow from\nCharlotte\'s visit to Fawns, and that event itself having flowed from\nthe memorable talk. But what perhaps most came out in the light of these\nconcatenations was that it had been, for all the world, as if Charlotte\nhad been \"had in,\" as the servants always said of extra help, because\nthey had thus suffered it to be pointed out to them that if their family\ncoach lumbered and stuck the fault was in its lacking its complement of\nwheels. Having but three, as they might say, it had wanted another, and\nwhat had Charlotte done from the first but begin to act, on the spot,\nand ever so smoothly and beautifully, as a fourth? Nothing had been,\nimmediately, more manifest than the greater grace of the movement of the\nvehicle--as to which, for the completeness of her image, Maggie was now\nsupremely to feel how every strain had been lightened for herself. So\nfar as SHE was one of the wheels she had but to keep in her place; since\nthe work was done for her she felt no weight, and it wasn\'t too much\nto acknowledge that she had scarce to turn round. She had a long pause\nbefore the fire during which she might have been fixing with intensity\nher projected vision, have been conscious even of its taking an absurd,\nfantastic shape. She might have been watching the family coach pass and\nnoting that, somehow, Amerigo and Charlotte were pulling it while she\nand her father were not so much as pushing. They were seated inside\ntogether, dandling the Principino and holding him up to the windows, to\nsee and be seen, like an infant positively royal; so that the exertion\nwas ALL with the others. Maggie found in this image a repeated\nchallenge; again and yet again she paused before the fire: after which,\neach time, in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly\nbroken, she gave herself to livelier movement. She had seen herself at\nlast, in the picture she was studying, suddenly jump from the coach;\nwhereupon, frankly, with the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened wider\nand her heart stood still for a moment. She looked at the person so\nacting as if this person were somebody else, waiting with intensity\nto see what would follow. The person had taken a decision--which was\nevidently because an impulse long gathering had at last felt a\nsharpest pressure. Only how was the decision to be applied?--what, in\nparticular, would the figure in the picture do? She looked about her,\nfrom the middle of the room, under the force of this question, as if\nTHERE, exactly, were the field of action involved. Then, as the door\nopened again, she recognised, whatever the action, the form, at any\nrate, of a first opportunity. Her husband had reappeared--he stood\nbefore her refreshed, almost radiant, quite reassuring. Dressed,\nanointed, fragrant, ready, above all, for his dinner, he smiled at her\nover the end of their delay. It was as if her opportunity had depended\non his look--and now she saw that it was good. There was still, for the\ninstant, something in suspense, but it passed more quickly than on his\nprevious entrance. He was already holding out his arms. It was, for\nhours and hours, later on, as if she had somehow been lifted aloft,\nwere floated and carried on some warm high tide beneath which stumbling\nblocks had sunk out of sight. This came from her being again, for the\ntime, in the enjoyment of confidence, from her knowing, as she believed,\nwhat to do. All the next day, and all the next, she appeared to herself\nto know it. She had a plan, and she rejoiced in her plan: this consisted\nof the light that, suddenly breaking into her restless reverie, had\nmarked the climax of that vigil. It had come to her as a question--\"What\nif I\'ve abandoned THEM, you know? What if I\'ve accepted too passively\nthe funny form of our life?\" There would be a process of her own by\nwhich she might do differently in respect to Amerigo and Charlotte--a\nprocess quite independent of any process of theirs. Such a solution had\nbut to rise before her to affect her, to charm her, with its simplicity,\nan advantageous simplicity she had been stupid, for so long, not to\nhave been struck by; and the simplicity meanwhile seemed proved by the\nsuccess that had already begun to attend her. She had only had herself\nto do something to see how immediately it answered. This consciousness\nof its having answered with her husband was the uplifting, sustaining\nwave. He had \"met\" her--she so put it to herself; met her with an effect\nof generosity and of gaiety, in especial, on his coming back to her\nready for dinner, which she wore in her breast as the token of an escape\nfor them both from something not quite definite, but clearly, much less\ngood. Even at that moment, in fact, her plan had begun to work; she had\nbeen, when he brightly reappeared, in the act of plucking it out of the\nheart of her earnestness--plucking it, in the garden of thought, as if\nit had been some full-blown flower that she could present to him on the\nspot. Well, it was the flower of participation, and as that, then and\nthere, she held it out to him, putting straightway into execution the\nidea, so needlessly, so absurdly obscured, of her SHARING with him,\nwhatever the enjoyment, the interest, the experience might be--and\nsharing also, for that matter, with Charlotte.\n\nShe had thrown herself, at dinner, into every feature of the recent\nadventure of the companions, letting him see, without reserve, that she\nwished to hear everything about it, and making Charlotte in particular,\nCharlotte\'s judgment of Matcham, Charlotte\'s aspect, her success\nthere, her effect traceably produced, her clothes inimitably worn,\nher cleverness gracefully displayed, her social utility, in fine,\nbrilliantly exemplified, the subject of endless inquiry. Maggie\'s\ninquiry was most empathetic, moreover, for the whole happy thought of\nthe cathedral-hunt, which she was so glad they had entertained, and\nas to the pleasant results of which, down to the cold beef and\nbread-and-cheese, the queer old smell and the dirty table-cloth at the\ninn, Amerigo was good-humouredly responsive. He had looked at her across\nthe table, more than once, as if touched by the humility of this\nwelcome offered to impressions at second-hand, the amusements, the\nlarge freedoms only of others--as if recognising in it something fairly\nexquisite; and at the end, while they were alone, before she had rung\nfor a servant, he had renewed again his condonation of the little\nirregularity, such as it was, on which she had ventured. They had risen\ntogether to come upstairs; he had been talking at the last about some of\nthe people, at the very last of all about Lady Castledean and Mr. Blint;\nafter which she had once more broken ground on the matter of the \"type\"\nof Gloucester. It brought her, as he came round the table to join her,\nyet another of his kind conscious stares, one of the looks, visibly\nbeguiled, but at the same time not invisibly puzzled, with which he had\nalready shown his sense of this charming grace of her curiosity. It\nwas as if he might for a moment be going to say:--\"You needn\'t PRETEND,\ndearest, quite so hard, needn\'t think it necessary to care quite so\nmuch!\"--it was as if he stood there before her with some such easy\nintelligence, some such intimate reassurance, on his lips. Her answer\nwould have been all ready--that she wasn\'t in the least pretending; and\nshe looked up at him, while he took her hand, with the maintenance, the\nreal persistence, of her lucid little plan in her eyes. She wanted him\nto understand from that very moment that she was going to be WITH him\nagain, quite with them, together, as she doubtless hadn\'t been since\nthe \"funny\" changes--that was really all one could call them--into\nwhich they had each, as for the sake of the others, too easily and too\nobligingly slipped. They had taken too much for granted that their life\ntogether required, as people in London said, a special \"form\"--which was\nvery well so long as the form was kept only for the outside world and\nwas made no more of among themselves than the pretty mould of an iced\npudding, or something of that sort, into which, to help yourself, you\ndidn\'t hesitate to break with the spoon. So much as that she would, with\nan opening, have allowed herself furthermore to observe; she wanted him\nto understand how her scheme embraced Charlotte too; so that if he\nhad but uttered the acknowledgment she judged him on the point of\nmaking--the acknowledgment of his catching at her brave little idea for\ntheir case--she would have found herself, as distinctly, voluble almost\nto eloquence.\n\nWhat befell, however, was that even while she thus waited she felt\nherself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him than\nthe occasion, on the whole, appeared to require--a process of weighing\nsomething in the balance, of considering, deciding, dismissing. He had\nguessed that she was there with an idea, there in fact by reason of her\nidea; only this, oddly enough, was what at the last stayed his words.\nShe was helped to these perceptions by his now looking at her still\nharder than he had yet done--which really brought it to the turn of a\nhair, for her, that she didn\'t make sure his notion of her idea was the\nright one. It was the turn of a hair, because he had possession of\nher hands and was bending toward her, ever so kindly, as if to see, to\nunderstand, more, or possibly give more--she didn\'t know which; and that\nhad the effect of simply putting her, as she would have said, in\nhis power. She gave up, let her idea go, let everything go; her one\nconsciousness was that he was taking her again into his arms. It was\nnot till afterwards that she discriminated as to this; felt how the act\noperated with him instead of the words he hadn\'t uttered--operated, in\nhis view, as probably better than any words, as always better, in fact,\nat any time, than anything. Her acceptance of it, her response to it,\ninevitable, foredoomed, came back to her, later on, as a virtual assent\nto the assumption he had thus made that there was really nothing such\na demonstration didn\'t anticipate and didn\'t dispose of, and that the\nspring acting within herself moreover might well have been, beyond any\nother, the impulse legitimately to provoke it. It made, for any issue,\nthe third time since his return that he had drawn her to his breast; and\nat present, holding her to his side as they left the room, he kept her\nclose for their moving into the hall and across it, kept her for\ntheir slow return together to the apartments above. He had been right,\noverwhelmingly right, as to the felicity of his tenderness and the\ndegree of her sensibility, but even while she felt these things sweep\nall others away she tasted of a sort of terror of the weakness they\nproduced in her. It was still, for her, that she had positively\nsomething to do, and that she mustn\'t be weak for this, must much rather\nbe strong. For many hours after, none the less, she remained weak--if\nweak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success,\nsince her agitated overture had been, after all, so unmistakably met.\n\nShe recovered soon enough on the whole, the sense that this left her\nCharlotte always to deal with--Charlotte who, at any rate, however\nSHE might meet overtures, must meet them, at the worst, more or less\ndifferently. Of that inevitability, of such other ranges of response as\nwere open to Charlotte, Maggie took the measure in approaching her, on\nthe morrow of her return from Matcham, with the same show of desire to\nhear all her story. She wanted the whole picture from her, as she had\nwanted it from her companion, and, promptly, in Eaton Square, whither,\nwithout the Prince, she repaired, almost ostentatiously, for the\npurpose, this purpose only, she brought her repeatedly back to the\nsubject, both in her husband\'s presence and during several scraps of\nindependent colloquy. Before her father, instinctively, Maggie took the\nground that his wish for interesting echoes would be not less than her\nown--allowing, that is, for everything his wife would already have had\nto tell him, for such passages, between them, as might have occurred\nsince the evening before. Joining them after luncheon, reaching them, in\nher desire to proceed with the application of her idea, before they\nhad quitted the breakfast-room, the scene of their mid-day meal, she\nreferred, in her parent\'s presence, to what she might have lost by\ndelay, and expressed the hope that there would be an anecdote or two\nleft for her to pick up. Charlotte was dressed to go out, and her\nhusband, it appeared, rather positively prepared not to; he had left\nthe table, but was seated near the fire with two or three of the morning\npapers and the residuum of the second and third posts on a stand beside\nhim--more even than the usual extravagance, as Maggie\'s glance made\nout, of circulars, catalogues, advertisements, announcements of sales,\nforeign envelopes and foreign handwritings that were as unmistakable as\nforeign clothes. Charlotte, at the window, looking into the side-street\nthat abutted on the Square, might have been watching for their visitor\'s\nadvent before withdrawing; and in the light, strange and coloured, like\nthat of a painted picture, which fixed the impression for her, objects\ntook on values not hitherto so fully shown. It was the effect of her\nquickened sensibility; she knew herself again in presence of a\nproblem, in need of a solution for which she must intensely work: that\nconsciousness, lately born in her, had been taught the evening before to\naccept a temporary lapse, but had quickly enough again, with her getting\nout of her own house and her walking across half the town--for she had\ncome from Portland Place on foot--found breath still in its lungs.\n\nIt exhaled this breath in a sigh, faint and unheard; her tribute, while\nshe stood there before speaking, to realities looming through the golden\nmist that had already begun to be scattered. The conditions facing her\nhad yielded, for the time, to the golden mist--had considerably melted\naway; but there they were again, definite, and it was for the next\nquarter of an hour as if she could have counted them one by one on\nher fingers. Sharp to her above all was the renewed attestation of her\nfather\'s comprehensive acceptances, which she had so long regarded as of\nthe same quality with her own, but which, so distinctly now, she should\nhave the complication of being obliged to deal with separately. They had\nnot yet struck her as absolutely extraordinary--which had made for her\nlumping them with her own, since her view of her own had but so lately\nbegun to change; though it instantly stood out for her that there\nwas really no new judgment of them she should be able to show without\nattracting in some degree his attention, without perhaps exciting his\nsurprise and making thereby, for the situation she shared with him, some\ndifference. She was reminded and warned by the concrete image; and for\na minute Charlotte\'s face, immediately presented to her, affected her\nas searching her own to see the reminder tell. She had not less promptly\nkissed her stepmother, and then had bent over her father, from behind,\nand laid her cheek upon him; little amenities tantamount heretofore\nto an easy change of guard--Charlotte\'s own frequent, though always\ncheerful, term of comparison for this process of transfer. Maggie\nfigured thus as the relieving sentry, and so smoothly did use and\ncustom work for them that her mate might even, on this occasion, after\nacceptance of the pass-word, have departed without irrelevant and,\nin strictness, unsoldierly gossip. This was not, none the less, what\nhappened; inasmuch as if our young woman had been floated over her first\nimpulse to break the existing charm at a stroke, it yet took her but\nan instant to sound, at any risk, the note she had been privately\npractising. If she had practised it the day before, at dinner, on\nAmerigo, she knew but the better how to begin for it with Mrs. Verver,\nand it immensely helped her, for that matter, to be able at once to\nspeak of the Prince as having done more to quicken than to soothe her\ncuriosity. Frankly and gaily she had come to ask--to ask what, in their\nunusually prolonged campaign, the two had achieved. She had got out of\nher husband, she admitted, what she could, but husbands were never the\npersons who answered such questions ideally. He had only made her more\ncurious, and she had arrived early, this way, in order to miss as little\nas possible of Charlotte\'s story.\n\n\"Wives, papa,\" she said; \"are always much better reporters--though I\ngrant,\" she added for Charlotte, \"that fathers are not much better than\nhusbands. He never,\" she smiled, \"tells me more than a tenth of what you\ntell him; so I hope you haven\'t told him everything yet, since in that\ncase I shall probably have lost the best part of it.\" Maggie went, she\nwent--she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had\nbeen studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage,\nbefore the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the\ntext. It was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept\nher up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that\nlogically involved some platform--action quite positively for the\nfirst time in her life, or, counting in the previous afternoon, for the\nsecond. The platform remained for three or four days thus sensibly under\nher feet, and she had all the while, with it, the inspiration of quite\nremarkably, of quite heroically improvising. Preparation and practice\nhad come but a short way; her part opened out, and she invented from\nmoment to moment what to say and to do. She had but one rule of art--to\nkeep within bounds and not lose her head; certainly she might see for\na week how far that would take her. She said to herself, in her\nexcitement, that it was perfectly simple: to bring about a difference,\ntouch by touch, without letting either of the three, and least of all\nher father, so much as suspect her hand. If they should suspect they\nwould want a reason, and the humiliating truth was that she wasn\'t\nready with a reason--not, that is, with what she would have called a\nreasonable one. She thought of herself, instinctively, beautifully, as\nhaving dealt, all her life, at her father\'s side and by his example,\nonly in reasonable reasons; and what she would really have been most\nashamed of would be to produce for HIM, in this line, some inferior\nsubstitute. Unless she were in a position to plead, definitely, that she\nwas jealous she should be in no position to plead, decently, that she\nwas dissatisfied. This latter condition would be a necessary implication\nof the former; without the former behind it it would HAVE to fall to the\nground. So had the case, wonderfully, been arranged for her; there was a\ncard she could play, but there was only one, and to play it would be\nto end the game. She felt herself--as at the small square green table,\nbetween the tall old silver candlesticks and the neatly arranged\ncounters--her father\'s playmate and partner; and what it constantly came\nback to, in her mind, was that for her to ask a question, to raise a\ndoubt, to reflect in any degree on the play of the others, would be\nto break the charm. The charm she had to call it, since it kept\nher companion so constantly engaged, so perpetually seated and so\ncontentedly occupied. To say anything at all would be, in fine, to have\nto say WHY she was jealous; and she could, in her private hours, but\nstare long, with suffused eyes, at that impossibility.\n\nBy the end of a week, the week that had begun, especially, with her\nmorning hour, in Eaton Square, between her father and his wife, her\nconsciousness of being beautifully treated had become again verily\ngreater than her consciousness of anything else; and I must add,\nmoreover, that she at last found herself rather oddly wondering what\nelse, as a consciousness, could have been quite so overwhelming.\nCharlotte\'s response to the experiment of being more with her OUGHT, as\nshe very well knew, to have stamped the experiment with the feeling of\nsuccess; so that if the success itself seemed a boon less substantial\nthan the original image of it, it enjoyed thereby a certain analogy with\nour young woman\'s aftertaste of Amerigo\'s own determined demonstrations.\nMaggie was to have retained, for that matter, more than one aftertaste,\nand if I have spoken of the impressions fixed in her as soon as she had,\nso insidiously, taken the field, a definite note must be made of her\nperception, during those moments, of Charlotte\'s prompt uncertainty. She\nhad shown, no doubt--she couldn\'t not have shown--that she had arrived\nwith an idea; quite exactly as she had shown her husband, the night\nbefore, that she was awaiting him with a sentiment. This analogy in the\ntwo situations was to keep up for her the remembrance of a kinship of\nexpression in the two faces in respect to which all she as yet\nprofessed to herself was that she had affected them, or at any rate the\nsensibility each of them so admirably covered, in the same way. To make\nthe comparison at all was, for Maggie, to return to it often, to brood\nupon it, to extract from it the last dregs of its interest--to play with\nit, in short, nervously, vaguely, incessantly, as she might have played\nwith a medallion containing on either side a cherished little portrait\nand suspended round her neck by a gold chain of a firm fineness that no\neffort would ever snap. The miniatures were back to back, but she saw\nthem forever face to face, and when she looked from one to the other\nshe found in Charlotte\'s eyes the gleam of the momentary \"What does she\nreally want?\" that had come and gone for her in the Prince\'s. So again,\nshe saw the other light, the light touched into a glow both in Portland\nPlace and in Eaton Square, as soon as she had betrayed that she wanted\nno harm--wanted no greater harm of Charlotte, that is, than to take in\nthat she meant to go out with her. She had been present at that process\nas personally as she might have been present at some other domestic\nincident--the hanging of a new picture, say, or the fitting of the\nPrincipino with his first little trousers.\n\nShe remained present, accordingly, all the week, so charmingly and\nsystematically did Mrs. Verver now welcome her company. Charlotte had\nbut wanted the hint, and what was it but the hint, after all, that,\nduring the so subdued but so ineffaceable passage in the breakfast-room,\nshe had seen her take? It had been taken moreover not with resignation,\nnot with qualifications or reserves, however bland; it had been taken\nwith avidity, with gratitude, with a grace of gentleness that supplanted\nexplanations. The very liberality of this accommodation might indeed\nhave appeared in the event to give its own account of the matter--as if\nit had fairly written the Princess down as a person of variations and\nhad accordingly conformed but to a rule of tact in accepting these\ncaprices for law. The caprice actually prevailing happened to be that\nthe advent of one of the ladies anywhere should, till the fit had\nchanged, become the sign, unfailingly, of the advent of the other; and\nit was emblazoned, in rich colour, on the bright face of this period,\nthat Mrs. Verver only wished to know, on any occasion, what was expected\nof her, only held herself there for instructions, in order even to\nbetter them if possible. The two young women, while the passage lasted,\nbecame again very much the companions of other days, the days of\nCharlotte\'s prolonged visits to the admiring and bountiful Maggie, the\ndays when equality of condition for them had been all the result of the\nlatter\'s native vagueness about her own advantages. The earlier elements\nflushed into life again, the frequency, the intimacy, the high pitch of\naccompanying expression--appreciation, endearment, confidence; the rarer\ncharm produced in each by this active contribution to the felicity of\nthe other: all enhanced, furthermore--enhanced or qualified, who should\nsay which?--by a new note of diplomacy, almost of anxiety, just sensible\non Charlotte\'s part in particular; of intensity of observance, in the\nmatter of appeal and response, in the matter of making sure the Princess\nmight be disposed or gratified, that resembled an attempt to play again,\nwith more refinement, at disparity of relation. Charlotte\'s attitude\nhad, in short, its moments of flowering into pretty excesses of\ncivility, self-effacements in the presence of others, sudden little\nformalisms of suggestion and recognition, that might have represented\nher sense of the duty of not \"losing sight\" of a social distinction.\nThis impression came out most for Maggie when, in their easier\nintervals, they had only themselves to regard, and when her companion\'s\ninveteracy of never passing first, of not sitting till she was seated,\nof not interrupting till she appeared to give leave, of not forgetting,\ntoo, familiarly, that in addition to being important she was also\nsensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind\nof silver tissue of decorum. It hung there above them like a canopy of\nstate, a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established\nfavourite, safe in her position, a little queen, however, good-natured,\nwas always a little queen and might, with small warning, remember it.\n\nAnd yet another of these concomitants of feverish success, all the\nwhile, was the perception that in another quarter too things were\nbeing made easy. Charlotte\'s alacrity in meeting her had, in one sense,\noperated slightly overmuch as an intervention: it had begun to reabsorb\nher at the very hour of her husband\'s showing her that, to be all\nthere, as the phrase was, he likewise only required--as one of the other\nphrases was too--the straight tip. She had heard him talk about the\nstraight tip, in his moods of amusement at English slang, in his\nremarkable displays of assimilative power, power worthy of better causes\nand higher inspirations; and he had taken it from her, at need, in a way\nthat, certainly in the first glow of relief, had made her brief interval\nseem large. Then, however, immediately, and even though superficially,\nthere had declared itself a readjustment of relations to which she was,\nonce more, practically a little sacrificed. \"I must do everything,\" she\nhad said, \"without letting papa see what I do--at least till it\'s done!\"\nbut she scarce knew how she proposed, even for the next few days, to\nblind or beguile this participant in her life. What had in fact promptly\nenough happened, she presently recognised, was that if her stepmother\nhad beautifully taken possession of her, and if she had virtually been\nrather snatched again thereby from her husband\'s side, so, on the\nother hand, this had, with as little delay, entailed some very charming\nassistance for her in Eaton Square. When she went home with Charlotte,\nfrom whatever happy demonstration, for the benefit of the world in which\nthey supposed themselves to live, that there was no smallest reason why\ntheir closer association shouldn\'t be public and acclaimed--at these\ntimes she regularly found that Amerigo had come either to sit with his\nfather-in-law in the absence of the ladies, or to make, on his side,\nprecisely some such display of the easy working of the family life as\nwould represent the equivalent of her excursions with Charlotte. Under\nthis particular impression it was that everything in Maggie most\nmelted and went to pieces--every thing, that is, that belonged to\nher disposition to challenge the perfection of their common state. It\ndivided them again, that was true, this particular turn of the tide--cut\nthem up afresh into pairs and parties; quite as if a sense for the\nequilibrium was what, between them all, had most power of insistence;\nquite as if Amerigo himself were all the while, at bottom, equally\nthinking of it and watching it. But, as against that, he was making her\nfather not miss her, and he could have rendered neither of them a more\nexcellent service. He was acting in short on a cue, the cue given him\nby observation; it had been enough for him to see the shade of change\nin her behaviour; his instinct for relations, the most exquisite\nconceivable, prompted him immediately to meet and match the difference,\nto play somehow into its hands. That was what it was, she renewedly\nfelt, to have married a man who was, sublimely, a gentleman; so that,\nin spite of her not wanting to translate ALL their delicacies into the\ngrossness of discussion, she yet found again and again, in Portland\nPlace, moments for saying: \"If I didn\'t love you, you know, for\nyourself, I should still love you for HIM.\" He looked at her, after\nsuch speeches, as Charlotte looked, in Eaton Square, when she called HER\nattention to his benevolence: through the dimness of the almost musing\nsmile that took account of her extravagance, harmless though it might\nbe, as a tendency to reckon with. \"But my poor child,\" Charlotte might\nunder this pressure have been on the point of replying, \"that\'s the way\nnice people ARE, all round--so that why should one be surprised about\nit? We\'re all nice together--as why shouldn\'t we be? If we hadn\'t been\nwe wouldn\'t have gone far--and I consider that we\'ve gone very far\nindeed. Why should you \'take on\' as if you weren\'t a perfect dear\nyourself, capable of all the sweetest things?--as if you hadn\'t in fact\ngrown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of all the good things that\nI recognised, even of old, as soon as I came near you, and that you\'ve\nallowed me now, between you, to make so blessedly my own.\" Mrs. Verver\nmight in fact have but just failed to make another point, a point\ncharmingly natural to her as a grateful and irreproachable wife. \"It\nisn\'t a bit wonderful, I may also remind you, that your husband should\nfind, when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about with\nmine. I happen, love, to appreciate my husband--I happen perfectly to\nunderstand that his acquaintance should be cultivated and his company\nenjoyed.\"\n\nSome such happily-provoked remarks as these, from Charlotte, at the\nother house, had been in the air, but we have seen how there was also\nin the air, for our young woman, as an emanation from the same source,\na distilled difference of which the very principle was to keep down\nobjections and retorts. That impression came back--it had its hours of\ndoing so; and it may interest us on the ground of its having prompted\nin Maggie a final reflection, a reflection out of the heart of which a\nlight flashed for her like a great flower grown in a night. As soon as\nthis light had spread a little it produced in some quarters a surprising\ndistinctness, made her of a sudden ask herself why there should have\nbeen even for three days the least obscurity. The perfection of her\nsuccess, decidedly, was like some strange shore to which she had been\nnoiselessly ferried and where, with a start, she found herself quaking\nat the thought that the boat might have put off again and left her.\nThe word for it, the word that flashed the light, was that they were\nTREATING her, that they were proceeding with her--and, for that matter,\nwith her father--by a plan that was the exact counterpart of her own.\nIt was not from her that they took their cue, but--and this was what\nin particular made her sit up--from each other; and with a depth of\nunanimity, an exact coincidence of inspiration that, when once her\nattention had begun to fix it, struck her as staring out at her in\nrecovered identities of behaviour, expression and tone. They had a view\nof her situation, and of the possible forms her own consciousness of it\nmight take--a view determined by the change of attitude they had had,\never so subtly, to recognise in her on their return from Matcham. They\nhad had to read into this small and all-but-suppressed variation a mute\ncomment--on they didn\'t quite know what; and it now arched over the\nPrincess\'s head like a vault of bold span that important communication\nbetween them on the subject couldn\'t have failed of being immediate.\nThis new perception bristled for her, as we have said, with odd\nintimations, but questions unanswered played in and out of it as\nwell--the question, for instance, of why such promptitude of harmony\nSHOULD have been important. Ah, when she began to recover, piece by\npiece, the process became lively; she might have been picking small\nshining diamonds out of the sweepings of her ordered house. She bent,\nin this pursuit, over her dust-bin; she challenged to the last grain the\nrefuse of her innocent economy. Then it was that the dismissed vision of\nAmerigo, that evening, in arrest at the door of her salottino while her\neyes, from her placed chair, took him in--then it was that this immense\nlittle memory gave out its full power. Since the question was of doors,\nshe had afterwards, she now saw, shut it out; she had responsibly shut\nin, as we have understood, shut in there with her sentient self, only\nthe fact of his reappearance and the plenitude of his presence. These\nthings had been testimony, after all, to supersede any other, for on the\nspot, even while she looked, the warmly-washing wave had travelled far\nup the strand. She had subsequently lived, for hours she couldn\'t count,\nunder the dizzying, smothering welter positively in submarine\ndepths where everything came to her through walls of emerald and\nmother-of-pearl; though indeed she had got her head above them, for\nbreath, when face to face with Charlotte again, on the morrow, in Eaton\nSquare. Meanwhile, none the less, as was so apparent, the prior, the\nprime impression had remained, in the manner of a spying servant, on the\nother side of the barred threshold; a witness availing himself, in time,\nof the lightest pretext to re-enter. It was as if he had found this\npretext in her observed necessity of comparing--comparing the obvious\ncommon elements in her husband\'s and her stepmother\'s ways of now\n\"taking\" her. With or without her witness, at any rate, she was led by\ncomparison to a sense of the quantity of earnest intention operating,\nand operating so harmoniously, between her companions; and it was in\nthe mitigated midnight of these approximations that she had made out the\npromise of her dawn.\n\nIt was a worked-out scheme for their not wounding her, for their\nbehaving to her quite nobly; to which each had, in some winning way,\ninduced the other to contribute, and which therefore, so far as that\nwent, proved that she had become with them a subject of intimate study.\nQuickly, quickly, on a certain alarm taken, eagerly and anxiously,\nbefore they SHOULD, without knowing it, wound her, they had signalled\nfrom house to house their clever idea, the idea by which, for all these\ndays, her own idea had been profiting. They had built her in with their\npurpose--which was why, above her, a vault seemed more heavily to arch;\nso that she sat there, in the solid chamber of her helplessness, as in\na bath of benevolence artfully prepared for her, over the brim of\nwhich she could but just manage to see by stretching her neck. Baths of\nbenevolence were very well, but, at least, unless one were a patient of\nsome sort, a nervous eccentric or a lost child, one was usually not\nso immersed save by one\'s request. It wasn\'t in the least what she\nhad requested. She had flapped her little wings as a symbol of desired\nflight, not merely as a plea for a more gilded cage and an extra\nallowance of lumps of sugar. Above all she hadn\'t complained, not by the\nquaver of a syllable--so what wound in particular had she shown her fear\nof receiving? What wound HAD she received--as to which she had exchanged\nthe least word with them? If she had ever whined or moped they might\nhave had some reason; but she would be hanged--she conversed with\nherself in strong language--if she had been, from beginning to end,\nanything but pliable and mild. It all came back, in consequence, to some\nrequired process of their own, a process operating, quite positively,\nas a precaution and a policy. They had got her into the bath and, for\nconsistency with themselves--which was with each other--must keep her\nthere. In that condition she wouldn\'t interfere with the policy, which\nwas established, which was arranged. Her thought, over this, arrived at\na great intensity--had indeed its pauses and timidities, but always to\ntake afterwards a further and lighter spring. The ground was well-nigh\ncovered by the time she had made out her husband and his colleague as\ndirectly interested in preventing her freedom of movement. Policy or no\npolicy, it was they themselves who were arranged. She must be kept in\nposition so as not to DISarrange them. It fitted immensely together, the\nwhole thing, as soon as she could give them a motive; for, strangely\nas it had by this time begun to appear to herself, she had hitherto not\nimagined them sustained by an ideal distinguishably different from her\nown. Of course they were arranged--all four arranged; but what had\nthe basis of their life been, precisely, but that they were arranged\ntogether? Amerigo and Charlotte were arranged together, but she--to\nconfine the matter only to herself--was arranged apart. It rushed over\nher, the full sense of all this, with quite another rush from that of\nthe breaking wave of ten days before; and as her father himself seemed\nnot to meet the vaguely-clutching hand with which, during the first\nshock of complete perception, she tried to steady herself, she felt very\nmuch alone.\n\n\n XXVII\n\nThere had been, from far back--that is from the Christmas time on--a\nplan that the parent and the child should \"do something lovely\"\ntogether, and they had recurred to it on occasion, nursed it and brought\nit up theoretically, though without as yet quite allowing it to put its\nfeet to the ground. The most it had done was to try a few steps on the\ndrawing-room carpet, with much attendance, on either side, much holding\nup and guarding, much anticipation, in fine, of awkwardness or accident.\nTheir companions, by the same token, had constantly assisted at the\nperformance, following the experiment with sympathy and gaiety, and\nnever so full of applause, Maggie now made out for herself, as when the\ninfant project had kicked its little legs most wildly--kicked them, for\nall the world, across the Channel and half the Continent, kicked them\nover the Pyrenees and innocently crowed out some rich Spanish name. She\nasked herself at present if it had been a \"real\" belief that they were\nbut wanting, for some such adventure, to snatch their moment; whether\neither had at any instant seen it as workable, save in the form of a toy\nto dangle before the other, that they should take flight, without\nwife or husband, for one more look, \"before they died,\" at the Madrid\npictures as well as for a drop of further weak delay in respect to three\nor four possible prizes, privately offered, rarities of the first water,\nresponsibly reported on and profusely photographed, still patiently\nawaiting their noiseless arrival in retreats to which the clue had not\notherwise been given away. The vision dallied with during the duskier\ndays in Eaton Square had stretched to the span of three or four weeks\nof springtime for the total adventure, three or four weeks in the very\nspirit, after all, of their regular life, as their regular life had\nbeen persisting; full of shared mornings, afternoons, evenings, walks,\ndrives, \"looks-in,\" at old places, on vague chances; full also, in\nespecial, of that purchased social ease, the sense of the comfort and\ncredit of their house, which had essentially the perfection of something\npaid for, but which \"came,\" on the whole, so cheap that it might have\nbeen felt as costing--as costing the parent and child--nothing. It was\nfor Maggie to wonder, at present, if she had been sincere about their\ngoing, to ask herself whether she would have stuck to their plan even if\nnothing had happened.\n\nHer view of the impossibility of sticking to it now may give us the\nmeasure of her sense that everything had happened. A difference had been\nmade in her relation to each of her companions, and what it compelled\nher to say to herself was that to behave as she might have behaved\nbefore would be to act, for Amerigo and Charlotte, with the highest\nhypocrisy. She saw in these days that a journey abroad with her father\nwould, more than anything else, have amounted, on his part and her own,\nto a last expression of an ecstasy of confidence, and that the charm of\nthe idea, in fact, had been in some such sublimity. Day after day\nshe put off the moment of \"speaking,\" as she inwardly and very\ncomprehensively, called it--speaking, that is, to her father; and all\nthe more that she was ridden by a strange suspense as to his himself\nbreaking silence. She gave him time, gave him, during several days, that\nmorning, that noon, that night, and the next and the next and the next;\neven made up her mind that if he stood off longer it would be proof\nconclusive that he too wasn\'t at peace. They would then have been, all\nsuccessfully, throwing dust in each other\'s eyes; and it would be at\nlast as if they must turn away their faces, since the silver mist that\nprotected them had begun to grow sensibly thin. Finally, at the end of\nApril, she decided that if he should say nothing for another period of\ntwenty-four hours she must take it as showing that they were, in her\nprivate phraseology, lost; so little possible sincerity could there be\nin pretending to care for a journey to Spain at the approach of a summer\nthat already promised to be hot. Such a proposal, on his lips, such an\nextravagance of optimism, would be HIS way of being consistent--for that\nhe didn\'t really want to move, or to move further, at the worst, than\nback to Fawns again, could only signify that he wasn\'t, at heart,\ncontented. What he wanted, at any rate, and what he didn\'t want were, in\nthe event, put to the proof for Maggie just in time to give her a fresh\nwind. She had been dining, with her husband, in Eaton Square, on the\noccasion of hospitality offered by Mr. and Mrs. Verver to Lord and Lady\nCastledean. The propriety of some demonstration of this sort had been\nfor many days before our group, the question reduced to the mere issue\nof which of the two houses should first take the field. The issue had\nbeen easily settled--in the manner of every issue referred in any degree\nto Amerigo and Charlotte: the initiative obviously belonged to Mrs.\nVerver, who had gone to Matcham while Maggie had stayed away, and the\nevening in Eaton Square might have passed for a demonstration all the\nmore personal that the dinner had been planned on \"intimate\" lines. Six\nother guests only, in addition to the host and the hostess of Matcham,\nmade up the company, and each of these persons had for Maggie the\ninterest of an attested connection with the Easter revels at that\nvisionary house. Their common memory of an occasion that had clearly\nleft behind it an ineffaceable charm--this air of beatific reference,\nless subdued in the others than in Amerigo and Charlotte, lent them,\ntogether, an inscrutable comradeship against which the young woman\'s\nimagination broke in a small vain wave.\n\nIt wasn\'t that she wished she had been of the remembered party and\npossessed herself of its secrets; for she didn\'t care about its\nsecrets--she could concern herself at present, absolutely, with no\nsecret but her own. What occurred was simply that she became aware, at a\nstroke, of the quantity of further nourishment required by her own, and\nof the amount of it she might somehow extract from these people; whereby\nshe rose, of a sudden, to the desire to possess and use them, even to\nthe extent of braving, of fairly defying, of directly exploiting, of\npossibly quite enjoying, under cover of an evil duplicity, the felt\nelement of curiosity with which they regarded her. Once she was\nconscious of the flitting wing of this last impression--the perception,\nirresistible, that she was something for their queer experience, just as\nthey were something for hers--there was no limit to her conceived design\nof not letting them escape. She went and went, again, to-night, after\nher start was taken; went, positively, as she had felt herself going,\nthree weeks before, on the morning when the vision of her father and\nhis wife awaiting her together in the breakfast-room had been so\ndeterminant. In this other scene it was Lady Castledean who was\ndeterminant, who kindled the light, or at all events the heat, and who\nacted on the nerves; Lady Castledean whom she knew she, so oddly, didn\'t\nlike, in spite of reasons upon reasons, the biggest diamonds on the\nyellowest hair, the longest lashes on the prettiest, falsest eyes,\nthe oldest lace on the most violet velvet, the rightest manner on the\nwrongest assumption. Her ladyship\'s assumption was that she kept, at\nevery moment of her life, every advantage--it made her beautifully soft,\nvery nearly generous; so she didn\'t distinguish the little protuberant\neyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from\nthe other decorative spots on their bodies and wings. Maggie had liked,\nin London, and in the world at large, so many more people than she\nhad thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it\npositively quickened her fever to have to recognise, in this case, such\na lapse of all the sequences. It was only that a charming clever woman\nwondered about her--that is wondered about her as Amerigo\'s wife, and\nwondered, moreover, with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity,\nalmost, of surprise.\n\nThe point of view--that one--was what she read in their free\ncontemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in\nAmerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly\nand expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its\nfirmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give. She might have\nbeen made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been\nexpected to articulate, with a rare imitation of nature, \"Oh yes, I\'m\nHERE all the while; I\'m also in my way a solid little fact and I cost\noriginally a great deal of money: cost, that is, my father, for\nmy outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains--toward my\ntraining--that money would scarce represent.\" Well, she WOULD meet them\nin some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner,\nbefore they dispersed, by engaging them all, unconventionally, almost\nviolently, to dine with her in Portland Place, just as they were, if\nthey didn\'t mind the same party, which was the party she wanted. Oh she\nwas going, she was going--she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal\nas if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song.\nThere were breaks in the connection, as there would be hitches in the\nprocess; she didn\'t wholly see, yet, what they would do for her, nor\nquite how, herself, she should handle them; but she was dancing up and\ndown, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least\nbegun something--she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for\nconvergence of wonder. It wasn\'t after all, either, that THEIR wonder so\nmuch signified--that of the cornered six, whom it glimmered before her\nthat she might still live to drive about like a flock of sheep: the\nintensity of her consciousness, its sharpest savour, was in the theory\nof her having diverted, having, as they said, captured the attention\nof Amerigo and Charlotte, at neither of whom, all the while, did she\nso much as once look. She had pitched them in with the six, for that\nmatter, so far as they themselves were concerned; they had dropped, for\nthe succession of minutes, out of contact with their function--had, in\nshort, startled and impressed, abandoned their post. \"They\'re paralysed,\nthey\'re paralysed!\" she commented, deep within; so much it helped her\nown apprehension to hang together that they should suddenly lose their\nbearings.\n\nHer grasp of appearances was thus out of proportion to her view of\ncauses; but it came to her then and there that if she could only get the\nfacts of appearance straight, only jam them down into their place, the\nreasons lurking behind them, kept uncertain, for the eyes, by their\nwavering and shifting, wouldn\'t perhaps be able to help showing. It\nwasn\'t of course that the Prince and Mrs. Verver marvelled to see her\ncivil to their friends; it was rather, precisely, that civil was just\nwhat she wasn\'t: she had so departed from any such custom of delicate\napproach--approach by the permitted note, the suggested \"if,\" the\naccepted vagueness--as would enable the people in question to put\nher off if they wished. And the profit of her plan, the effect of the\nviolence she was willing to let it go for, was exactly in their BEING\nthe people in question, people she had seemed to be rather shy of before\nand for whom she suddenly opened her mouth so wide. Later on, we may\nadd, with the ground soon covered by her agitated but resolute step, it\nwas to cease to matter what people they were or weren\'t; but meanwhile\nthe particular sense of them that she had taken home to-night had done\nher the service of seeming to break the ice where that formation was\nthickest. Still more unexpectedly, the service might have been the same\nfor her father; inasmuch as, immediately, when everyone had gone, he did\nexactly what she had been waiting for and despairing of--and did it, as\nhe did everything, with a simplicity that left any purpose of sounding\nhim deeper, of drawing him out further, of going, in his own frequent\nphrase, \"behind\" what he said, nothing whatever to do. He brought it out\nstraight, made it bravely and beautifully irrelevant, save for the plea\nof what they should lose by breaking the charm: \"I guess we won\'t go\ndown there after all, will we, Mag?--just when it\'s getting so pleasant\nhere.\" That was all, with nothing to lead up to it; but it was done\nfor her at a stroke, and done, not less, more rather, for Amerigo and\nCharlotte, on whom the immediate effect, as she secretly, as she almost\nbreathlessly measured it, was prodigious. Everything now so fitted for\nher to everything else that she could feel the effect as prodigious even\nwhile sticking to her policy of giving the pair no look. There were thus\nsome five wonderful minutes during which they loomed, to her sightless\neyes, on either side of her, larger than they had ever loomed before,\nlarger than life, larger than thought, larger than any danger or any\nsafety. There was thus a space of time, in fine, fairly vertiginous for\nher, during which she took no more account of them than if they were not\nin the room.\n\nShe had never, never treated them in any such way--not even just now,\nwhen she had plied her art upon the Matcham band; her present manner was\nan intenser exclusion, and the air was charged with their silence while\nshe talked with her other companion as if she had nothing but him to\nconsider. He had given her the note amazingly, by his allusion to the\npleasantness--that of such an occasion as his successful dinner--which\nmight figure as their bribe for renouncing; so that it was all as if\nthey were speaking selfishly, counting on a repetition of just such\nextensions of experience. Maggie achieved accordingly an act of\nunprecedented energy, threw herself into her father\'s presence as by the\nabsolute consistency with which she held his eyes; saying to herself,\nat the same time that she smiled and talked and inaugurated her system,\n\"What does he mean by it? That\'s the question--what does he mean?\"\nbut studying again all the signs in him that recent anxiety had made\nfamiliar and counting the stricken minutes on the part of the others. It\nwas in their silence that the others loomed, as she felt; she had had\nno measure, she afterwards knew, of this duration, but it drew out\nand out--really to what would have been called in simpler conditions\nawkwardness--as if she herself were stretching the cord. Ten minutes\nlater, however, in the homeward carriage, to which her husband, cutting\ndelay short, had proceeded at the first announcement, ten minutes later\nshe was to stretch it almost to breaking. The Prince had permitted her\nto linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually\nlingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all\nresponsive, took for a sign of his impatience to modify for her the\nodd effect of his not having, and of Charlotte\'s not having, instantly\nacclaimed the issue of the question debated, or more exactly, settled,\nbefore them. He had had time to become aware of this possible impression\nin her, and his virtually urging her into the carriage was connected\nwith his feeling that he must take action on the new ground. A certain\nambiguity in her would absolutely have tormented him; but he had already\nfound something to soothe and correct--as to which she had, on her side,\na shrewd notion of what it would be. She was herself, for that matter,\nprepared, and she was, of a truth, as she took her seat in the brougham,\namazed at her preparation. It allowed her scarce an interval; she\nbrought it straight out.\n\n\"I was certain that was what father would say if I should leave him\nalone. I HAVE been leaving him alone, and you see the effect. He\nhates now to move--he likes too much to be with us. But if you see the\neffect\"--she felt herself magnificently keeping it up--\"perhaps you\ndon\'t see the cause. The cause, my dear, is too lovely.\"\n\nHer husband, on taking his place beside her, had, during a minute or\ntwo, for her watching sense, neither said nor done anything; he had\nbeen, for that sense, as if thinking, waiting, deciding: yet it was\nstill before he spoke that he, as she felt it to be, definitely\nacted. He put his arm round her and drew her close--indulged in the\ndemonstration, the long, firm embrace by his single arm, the infinite\npressure of her whole person to his own, that such opportunities had so\noften suggested and prescribed. Held, accordingly, and, as she could but\ntoo intimately feel, exquisitely solicited, she had said the thing she\nwas intending and desiring to say, and as to which she felt, even more\nthan she felt anything else, that whatever he might do she mustn\'t be\nirresponsible. Yes, she was in his exerted grasp, and she knew what\nthat was; but she was at the same time in the grasp of her conceived\nresponsibility, and the extraordinary thing was that, of the two\nintensities, the second was presently to become the sharper. He took his\ntime for it meanwhile, but he met her speech after a fashion.\n\n\"The cause of your father\'s deciding not to go?\"\n\n\"Yes, and of my having wanted to let it act for him quietly--I mean\nwithout my insistence.\" She had, in her compressed state, another pause,\nand it made her feel as if she were immensely resisting. Strange enough\nwas this sense for her, and altogether new, the sense of possessing, by\nmiraculous help, some advantage that, absolutely then and there, in the\ncarriage, as they rolled, she might either give up or keep. Strange,\ninexpressibly strange--so distinctly she saw that if she did give it up\nshe should somehow give up everything for ever. And what her husband\'s\ngrasp really meant, as her very bones registered, was that she SHOULD\ngive it up: it was exactly for this that he had resorted to unfailing\nmagic. He KNEW HOW to resort to it--he could be, on occasion, as she had\nlately more than ever learned, so munificent a lover: all of which was,\nprecisely, a part of the character she had never ceased to regard in\nhim as princely, a part of his large and beautiful ease, his genius for\ncharm, for intercourse, for expression, for life. She should have but\nto lay her head back on his shoulder with a certain movement to make it\ndefinite for him that she didn\'t resist. To this, as they went, every\nthrob of her consciousness prompted her--every throb, that is, but one,\nthe throb of her deeper need to know where she \"really\" was. By the time\nshe had uttered the rest of her idea, therefore, she was still keeping\nher head and intending to keep it; though she was also staring out of\nthe carriage-window with eyes into which the tears of suffered pain had\nrisen, indistinguishable, perhaps, happily, in the dusk. She was making\nan effort that horribly hurt her, and, as she couldn\'t cry out, her eyes\nswam in her silence. With them, all the same, through the square opening\nbeside her, through the grey panorama of the London night, she achieved\nthe feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped\nand protected her by being able to be gay. \"It\'s not to leave YOU, my\ndear--for that he\'ll give up anything; just as he would go off anywhere,\nI think, you know, if you would go with him. I mean you and he alone,\"\nMaggie pursued with her gaze out of her window.\n\nFor which Amerigo\'s answer again took him a moment. \"Ah, the dear old\nboy! You would like me to propose him something--?\"\n\n\"Well, if you think you could bear it.\"\n\n\"And leave,\" the Prince asked, \"you and Charlotte alone?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Maggie had also to wait a minute, but when she spoke it came\nclear. \"Why shouldn\'t Charlotte be just one of MY reasons--my not liking\nto leave her? She has always been so good, so perfect, to me--but\nnever so wonderfully as just now. We have somehow been more\ntogether--thinking, for the time, almost only of each other; it has been\nquite as in old days.\" And she proceeded consummately, for she felt it\nas consummate: \"It\'s as if we had been missing each other, had got a\nlittle apart--though going on so side by side. But the good moments,\nif one only waits for them,\" she hastened to add, \"come round of\nthemselves. Moreover you\'ve seen for yourself, since you\'ve made it\nup so to father; feeling, for yourself, in your beautiful way, every\ndifference, every air that blows; not having to be told or pushed, only\nbeing perfect to live with, through your habit of kindness and your\nexquisite instincts. But of course you\'ve seen, all the while, that both\nhe and I have deeply felt how you\'ve managed; managed that he hasn\'t\nbeen too much alone and that I, on my side, haven\'t appeared, to--what\nyou might call--neglect him. This is always,\" she continued, \"what I\ncan never bless you enough for; of all the good things you\'ve done for\nme you\'ve never done anything better.\" She went on explaining as for the\npleasure of explaining--even though knowing he must recognise, as a\npart of his easy way too, her description of his large liberality. \"Your\ntaking the child down yourself, those days, and your coming, each\ntime, to bring him away--nothing in the world, nothing you could have\ninvented, would have kept father more under the charm. Besides, you know\nhow you\'ve always suited him, and how you\'ve always so beautifully let\nit seem to him that he suits you. Only it has been, these last weeks, as\nif you wished--just in order to please him--to remind him of it afresh.\nSo there it is,\" she wound up; \"it\'s your doing. You\'ve produced your\neffect--that of his wanting not to be, even for a month or two, where\nyou\'re not. He doesn\'t want to bother or bore you--THAT, I think, you\nknow, he never has done; and if you\'ll only give me time I\'ll come round\nagain to making it my care, as always, that he shan\'t. But he can\'t bear\nyou out of his sight.\"\n\nShe had kept it up and up, filling it out, crowding it in; and all,\nreally, without difficulty, for it was, every word of it, thanks to a\nlong evolution of feeling, what she had been primed to the brim\nwith. She made the picture, forced it upon him, hung it before him;\nremembering, happily, how he had gone so far, one day, supported by the\nPrincipino, as to propose the Zoo in Eaton Square, to carry with him\nthere, on the spot, under this pleasant inspiration, both his elder and\nhis younger companion, with the latter of whom he had taken the tone\nthat they were introducing Granddaddy, Granddaddy nervous and rather\nfunking it, to lions and tigers more or less at large. Touch by touch\nshe thus dropped into her husband\'s silence the truth about his good\nnature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his\nvirtue, precisely, that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of\nher failing as yet to yield to him. It would be a question but of\nthe most trivial act of surrender, the vibration of a nerve, the mere\nmovement of a muscle; but the act grew important between them just\nthrough her doing perceptibly nothing, nothing but talk in the very tone\nthat would naturally have swept her into tenderness. She knew more\nand more--every lapsing minute taught her--how he might by a single\nrightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles\nremoved from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist\nof his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy\ninconsequence. \"Come away with me, somewhere, YOU--and then we needn\'t\nthink, we needn\'t even talk, of anything, of anyone else:\" five words\nlike that would answer her, would break her utterly down. But they were\nthe only ones that would so serve. She waited for them, and there was\na supreme instant when, by the testimony of all the rest of him, she\nseemed to feel them in his heart and on his lips; only they didn\'t\nsound, and as that made her wait again so it made her more intensely\nwatch. This in turn showed her that he too watched and waited, and how\nmuch he had expected something that he now felt wouldn\'t come. Yes, it\nwouldn\'t come if he didn\'t answer her, if he but said the wrong things\ninstead of the right. If he could say the right everything would\ncome--it hung by a hair that everything might crystallise for their\nrecovered happiness at his touch. This possibility glowed at her,\nhowever, for fifty seconds, only then to turn cold, and as it fell away\nfrom her she felt the chill of reality and knew again, all but pressed\nto his heart and with his breath upon her cheek, the slim rigour of her\nattitude, a rigour beyond that of her natural being. They had silences,\nat last, that were almost crudities of mutual resistance--silences that\npersisted through his felt effort to treat her recurrence to the part he\nhad lately played, to interpret all the sweetness of her so talking\nto him, as a manner of making love to him. Ah, it was no such manner,\nheaven knew, for Maggie; she could make love, if this had been in\nquestion, better than that! On top of which it came to her presently\nto say, keeping in with what she had already spoken: \"Except of course\nthat, for the question of going off somewhere, he\'d go readily, quite\ndelightedly, with you. I verily believe he\'d like to have you for a\nwhile to himself.\"\n\n\"Do you mean he thinks of proposing it?\" the Prince after a moment\nsounded.\n\n\"Oh no--he doesn\'t ask, as you must so often have seen. But I believe\nhe\'d go \'like a shot,\' as you say, if you were to suggest it.\"\n\nIt had the air, she knew, of a kind of condition made, and she had asked\nherself while she spoke if it wouldn\'t cause his arm to let her go. The\nfact that it didn\'t suggested to her that she had made him, of a sudden,\nstill more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could\ndo but one thing at once. And it was precisely as if the concentration\nhad the next moment been proved in him. He took a turn inconsistent with\nthe superficial impression--a jump that made light of their approach to\ngravity and represented for her the need in him to gain time. That she\nmade out, was his drawback--that the warning from her had come to him,\nand had come to Charlotte, after all, too suddenly. That they were in\nface of it rearranging, that they had to rearrange, was all before her\nagain; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or\nshorter, of recovered independence. Amerigo, for the instant, was but\ndoing as he didn\'t like, and it was as if she were watching his effort\nwithout disguise. \"What\'s your father\'s idea, this year, then, about\nFawns? Will he go at Whitsuntide, and will he then stay on?\"\n\nMaggie went through the form of thought. \"He will really do, I imagine,\nas he has, in so many ways, so often done before; do whatever may seem\nmost agreeable to yourself. And there\'s of course always Charlotte to be\nconsidered. Only their going early to Fawns, if they do go,\" she said,\n\"needn\'t in the least entail your and my going.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Amerigo echoed, \"it needn\'t in the least entail your and my\ngoing?\"\n\n\"We can do as we like. What they may do needn\'t trouble us, since\nthey\'re by good fortune perfectly happy together.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" the Prince returned, \"your father\'s never so happy as with you\nnear him to enjoy his being so.\"\n\n\"Well, I may enjoy it,\" said Maggie, \"but I\'m not the cause of it.\"\n\n\"You\'re the cause,\" her husband declared, \"of the greater part of\neverything that\'s good among us.\" But she received this tribute in\nsilence, and the next moment he pursued: \"If Mrs. Verver has arrears\nof time with you to make up, as you say, she\'ll scarcely do it--or you\nscarcely will--by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose.\"\n\n\"I see what you mean,\" Maggie mused.\n\nHe let her for a little to give her attention to it; after which, \"Shall\nI just quite, of a sudden,\" he asked, \"propose him a journey?\"\n\nMaggie hesitated, but she brought forth the fruit of reflection. \"It\nwould have the merit that Charlotte then would be with me--with me, I\nmean, so much more. Also that I shouldn\'t, by choosing such a time for\ngoing away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond,\nseem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. I should respond, on the\ncontrary, very markedly--by being here alone with her for a month.\"\n\n\"And would you like to be here alone with her for a month?\"\n\n\"I could do with it beautifully. Or we might even,\" she said quite\ngaily, \"go together down to Fawns.\"\n\n\"You could be so very content without me?\" the Prince presently\ninquired.\n\n\"Yes, my own dear--if you could be content for a while with father. That\nwould keep me up. I might, for the time,\" she went on, \"go to stay there\nwith Charlotte; or, better still, she might come to Portland Place.\"\n\n\"Oho!\" said the Prince with cheerful vagueness.\n\n\"I should feel, you see,\" she continued, \"that the two of us were\nshowing the same sort of kindness.\"\n\nAmerigo thought. \"The two of us? Charlotte and I?\"\n\nMaggie again hesitated. \"You and I, darling.\"\n\n\"I see, I see\"--he promptly took it in. \"And what reason shall I\ngive--give, I mean, your father?\"\n\n\"For asking him to go off? Why, the very simplest--if you\nconscientiously can. The desire,\" said Maggie, \"to be agreeable to him.\nJust that only.\"\n\nSomething in this reply made her husband again reflect.\n\"\'Conscientiously?\' Why shouldn\'t I conscientiously? It wouldn\'t, by\nyour own contention,\" he developed, \"represent any surprise for him. I\nmust strike him sufficiently as, at the worst, the last person in the\nworld to wish to do anything to hurt him.\"\n\nAh, there it was again, for Maggie--the note already sounded, the note\nof the felt need of not working harm! Why this precautionary view, she\nasked herself afresh, when her father had complained, at the very least,\nas little as herself? With their stillness together so perfect, what\nhad suggested so, around them, the attitude of sparing them? Her inner\nvision fixed it once more, this attitude, saw it, in the others,\nas vivid and concrete, extended it straight from her companion to\nCharlotte. Before she was well aware, accordingly, she had echoed in\nthis intensity of thought Amerigo\'s last words. \"You\'re the last person\nin the world to wish to do anything to hurt him.\"\n\nShe heard herself, heard her tone, after she had spoken, and heard it\nthe more that, for a minute after, she felt her husband\'s eyes on her\nface, very close, too close for her to see him. He was looking at her\nbecause he was struck, and looking hard--though his answer, when it\ncame, was straight enough. \"Why, isn\'t that just what we have been\ntalking about--that I\'ve affected you as fairly studying his comfort and\nhis pleasure? He might show his sense of it,\" the Prince went on, \"by\nproposing to ME an excursion.\"\n\n\"And you would go with him?\" Maggie immediately asked.\n\nHe hung fire but an instant. \"Per Dio!\"\n\nShe also had her pause, but she broke it--since gaiety was in the\nair--with an intense smile. \"You can say that safely, because the\nproposal\'s one that, of his own motion, he won\'t make.\"\n\nShe couldn\'t have narrated afterwards--and in fact was at a loss to tell\nherself--by what transition, what rather marked abruptness of change\nin their personal relation, their drive came to its end with a kind of\ninterval established, almost confessed to, between them. She felt it in\nthe tone with which he repeated, after her, \"\'Safely\'--?\"\n\n\"Safely as regards being thrown with him perhaps after all, in such a\ncase, too long. He\'s a person to think you might easily feel yourself to\nbe. So it won\'t,\" Maggie said, \"come from father. He\'s too modest.\"\n\nTheir eyes continued to meet on it, from corner to corner of the\nbrougham. \"Oh your modesty, between you--!\" But he still smiled for it.\n\"So that unless I insist--?\"\n\n\"We shall simply go on as we are.\"\n\n\"Well, we\'re going on beautifully,\" he answered--though by no means\nwith the effect it would have had if their mute transaction, that of\nattempted capture and achieved escape, had not taken place. As Maggie\nsaid nothing, none the less, to gainsay his remark, it was open to him\nto find himself the next moment conscious of still another idea. \"I\nwonder if it would do. I mean for me to break in.\"\n\n\"\'To break in\'--?\"\n\n\"Between your father and his wife. But there would be a way,\" he\nsaid--\"we can make Charlotte ask him.\" And then as Maggie herself now\nwondered, echoing it again: \"We can suggest to her to suggest to him\nthat he shall let me take him off.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Maggie.\n\n\"Then if he asks her why I so suddenly break out she\'ll be able to tell\nhim the reason.\"\n\nThey were stopping, and the footman, who had alighted, had rung at the\nhouse-door. \"That you think it would be so charming?\"\n\n\"That I think it would be so charming. That we\'ve persuaded HER will be\nconvincing.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Maggie went on while the footman came back to let them out. \"I\nsee,\" she said again; though she felt a little disconcerted. What she\nreally saw, of a sudden, was that her stepmother might report her as\nabove all concerned for the proposal, and this brought her back her\nneed that her father shouldn\'t think her concerned in any degree for\nanything. She alighted the next instant with a slight sense of defeat;\nher husband, to let her out, had passed before her, and, a little in\nadvance, he awaited her on the edge of the low terrace, a step high,\nthat preceded their open entrance, on either side of which one of their\nservants stood. The sense of a life tremendously ordered and fixed rose\nbefore her, and there was something in Amerigo\'s very face, while his\neyes again met her own through the dusky lamplight, that was like a\nconscious reminder of it. He had answered her, just before, distinctly,\nand it appeared to leave her nothing to say. It was almost as if, having\nplanned for the last word, she saw him himself enjoying it. It was\nalmost as if--in the strangest way in the world--he were paying her\nback, by the production of a small pang, that of a new uneasiness, for\nthe way she had slipped from him during their drive.\n\n\n\n XXVIII\n\nMaggie\'s new uneasiness might have had time to drop, inasmuch as she\nnot only was conscious, during several days that followed, of no fresh\nindication for it to feed on, but was even struck, in quite another way,\nwith an augmentation of the symptoms of that difference she had taken it\ninto her head to work for. She recognised by the end of a week that if\nshe had been in a manner caught up her father had been not less so--with\nthe effect of her husband\'s and his wife\'s closing in, together, round\nthem, and of their all having suddenly begun, as a party of four, to\nlead a life gregarious, and from that reason almost hilarious, so far\nas the easy sound of it went, as never before. It might have been an\naccident and a mere coincidence--so at least she said to herself at\nfirst; but a dozen chances that furthered the whole appearance had risen\nto the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant\nas Amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings,\nquite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that\nthey wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the\nsame way. Funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact\nthat the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed so few positive\ndesires; yet it would be sufficiently natural that if Amerigo and\nCharlotte HAD at last got a little tired of each other\'s company they\nshould find their relief not so much in sinking to the rather low level\nof their companions as in wishing to pull the latter into the train\nin which they so constantly moved. \"We\'re in the train,\" Maggie mutely\nreflected after the dinner in Eaton Square with Lady Castledean; \"we\'ve\nsuddenly waked up in it and found ourselves rushing along, very much\nas if we had been put in during sleep--shoved, like a pair of labelled\nboxes, into the van. And since I wanted to \'go\' I\'m certainly going,\"\nshe might have added; \"I\'m moving without trouble--they\'re doing it\nall for us: it\'s wonderful how they understand and how perfectly\nit succeeds.\" For that was the thing she had most immediately to\nacknowledge: it seemed as easy for them to make a quartette as it had\nformerly so long appeared for them to make a pair of couples--this\nlatter being thus a discovery too absurdly belated. The only point\nat which, day after day, the success appeared at all qualified was\nrepresented, as might have been said, by her irresistible impulse\nto give her father a clutch when the train indulged in one of its\noccasional lurches. Then--there was no denying it--his eyes and her own\nmet; so that they were themselves doing active violence, as against\nthe others, to that very spirit of union, or at least to that very\nachievement of change, which she had taken the field to invoke.\n\nThe maximum of change was reached, no doubt, the day the Matcham party\ndined in Portland Place; the day, really perhaps, of Maggie\'s maximum of\nsocial glory, in the sense of its showing for her own occasion, her\nvery own, with every one else extravagantly rallying and falling in,\nabsolutely conspiring to make her its heroine. It was as if her father\nhimself, always with more initiative as a guest than as a host, had\ndabbled too in the conspiracy; and the impression was not diminished by\nthe presence of the Assinghams, likewise very much caught-up, now, after\nsomething of a lull, by the side-wind of all the rest of the motion,\nand giving our young woman, so far at least as Fanny was concerned, the\nsense of some special intention of encouragement and applause. Fanny,\nwho had not been present at the other dinner, thanks to a preference\nentertained and expressed by Charlotte, made a splendid show at this\none, in new orange-coloured velvet with multiplied turquoises, and\nwith a confidence, furthermore, as different as possible, her hostess\ninferred, from her too-marked betrayal of a belittled state at Matcham.\nMaggie was not indifferent to her own opportunity to redress this\nbalance--which seemed, for the hour, part of a general rectification;\nshe liked making out for herself that on the high level of Portland\nPlace, a spot exempt, on all sorts of grounds, from jealous\njurisdictions, her friend could feel as \"good\" as any one, and could\nin fact at moments almost appear to take the lead in recognition and\ncelebration, so far as the evening might conduce to intensify the lustre\nof the little Princess. Mrs. Assingham produced on her the impression\nof giving her constantly her cue for this; and it was in truth partly\nby her help, intelligently, quite gratefully accepted, that the\nlittle Princess, in Maggie, was drawn out and emphasised. She couldn\'t\ndefinitely have said how it happened, but she felt herself, for the\nfirst time in her career, living up to the public and popular notion\nof such a personage, as it pressed upon her from all round; rather\nwondering, inwardly too, while she did so, at that strange mixture in\nthings through which the popular notion could be evidenced for her by\nsuch supposedly great ones of the earth as the Castledeans and their\nkind. Fanny Assingham might really have been there, at all events, like\none of the assistants in the ring at the circus, to keep up the pace\nof the sleek revolving animal on whose back the lady in short spangled\nskirts should brilliantly caper and posture. That was all, doubtless\nMaggie had forgotten, had neglected, had declined, to be the little\nPrincess on anything like the scale open to her; but now that the\ncollective hand had been held out to her with such alacrity, so that she\nmight skip up into the light, even, as seemed to her modest mind,\nwith such a show of pink stocking and such an abbreviation of white\npetticoat, she could strike herself as perceiving, under arched\neyebrows, where her mistake had been. She had invited for the later\nhours, after her dinner, a fresh contingent, the whole list of her\napparent London acquaintance--which was again a thing in the manner of\nlittle princesses for whom the princely art was a matter of course. That\nwas what she was learning to do, to fill out as a matter of course her\nappointed, her expected, her imposed character; and, though there were\nlatent considerations that somewhat interfered with the lesson, she\nwas having to-night an inordinate quantity of practice, none of it so\nsuccessful as when, quite wittingly, she directed it at Lady Castledean,\nwho was reduced by it at last to an unprecedented state of passivity.\nThe perception of this high result caused Mrs. Assingham fairly to flush\nwith responsive joy; she glittered at her young friend, from moment to\nmoment, quite feverishly; it was positively as if her young friend had,\nin some marvellous, sudden, supersubtle way, become a source of succour\nto herself, become beautifully, divinely retributive. The intensity of\nthe taste of these registered phenomena was in fact that somehow, by\na process and through a connexion not again to be traced, she so\npractised, at the same time, on Amerigo and Charlotte--with only the\ndrawback, her constant check and second-thought, that she concomitantly\npractised perhaps still more on her father.\n\nThis last was a danger indeed that, for much of the ensuing time,\nhad its hours of strange beguilement--those at which her sense for\nprecautions so suffered itself to lapse that she felt her communion with\nhim more intimate than any other. It COULDN\'T but pass between them that\nsomething singular was happening--so much as this she again and again\nsaid to herself; whereby the comfort of it was there, after all, to be\nnoted, just as much as the possible peril, and she could think of the\ncouple they formed together as groping, with sealed lips, but with\nmutual looks that had never been so tender, for some freedom, some\nfiction, some figured bravery, under which they might safely talk of\nit. The moment was to come--and it finally came with an effect as\npenetrating as the sound that follows the pressure of an electric\nbutton--when she read the least helpful of meanings into the agitation\nshe had created. The merely specious description of their case would\nhave been that, after being for a long time, as a family, delightfully,\nuninterruptedly happy, they had still had a new felicity to discover;\na felicity for which, blessedly, her father\'s appetite and her own, in\nparticular, had been kept fresh and grateful. This livelier march of\ntheir intercourse as a whole was the thing that occasionally determined\nin him the clutching instinct we have glanced at; very much as if he had\nsaid to her, in default of her breaking silence first: \"Everything is\nremarkably pleasant, isn\'t it?--but WHERE, for it, after all, are we?\nup in a balloon and whirling through space, or down in the depths of the\nearth, in the glimmering passages of a gold-mine?\" The equilibrium, the\nprecious condition, lasted in spite of rearrangement; there had been a\nfresh distribution of the different weights, but the balance persisted\nand triumphed: all of which was just the reason why she was forbidden,\nface to face with the companion of her adventure, the experiment of a\ntest. If they balanced they balanced--she had to take that; it deprived\nher of every pretext for arriving, by however covert a process, at what\nhe thought.\n\nBut she had her hours, thus, of feeling supremely linked to him by the\nrigour of their law, and when it came over her that, all the while, the\nwish, on his side, to spare her might be what most worked with him, this\nvery fact of their seeming to have nothing \"inward\" really to talk about\nwrapped him up for her in a kind of sweetness that was wanting, as a\nconsecration, even in her yearning for her husband. She was powerless,\nhowever, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came,\nwhen she would have been all ready to say to him, \"Yes, this is by every\nappearance the best time we\'ve had yet; but don\'t you see, all the same,\nhow they must be working together for it, and how my very success, my\nsuccess in shifting our beautiful harmony to a new basis, comes round\nto being their success, above all; their cleverness, their amiability,\ntheir power to hold out, their complete possession, in short, of our\nlife?\" For how could she say as much as that without saying a great deal\nmore? without saying \"They\'ll do everything in the world that suits\nus, save only one thing--prescribe a line for us that will make them\nseparate.\" How could she so much as imagine herself even faintly\nmurmuring that without putting into his mouth the very words that would\nhave made her quail? \"Separate, my dear? Do you want them to separate?\nThen you want US to--you and me? For how can the one separation take\nplace without the other?\" That was the question that, in spirit, she had\nheard him ask--with its dread train, moreover, of involved and connected\ninquiries. Their own separation, his and hers, was of course perfectly\nthinkable, but only on the basis of the sharpest of reasons. Well, the\nsharpest, the very sharpest, would be that they could no longer afford,\nas it were, he to let his wife, she to let her husband, \"run\" them in\nsuch compact formation. And say they accepted this account of their\nsituation as a practical finality, acting upon it and proceeding to a\ndivision, would no sombre ghosts of the smothered past, on either side,\nshow, across the widening strait, pale unappeased faces, or raise, in\nthe very passage, deprecating, denouncing hands?\n\nMeanwhile, however such things might be, she was to have occasion to say\nto herself that there might be but a deeper treachery in recoveries and\nreassurances. She was to feel alone again, as she had felt at the issue\nof her high tension with her husband during their return from meeting\nthe Castledeans in Eaton Square. The evening in question had left her\nwith a larger alarm, but then a lull had come--the alarm, after all, was\nyet to be confirmed. There came an hour, inevitably, when she knew, with\na chill, what she had feared and why; it had taken, this hour, a month\nto arrive, but to find it before her was thoroughly to recognise it, for\nit showed her sharply what Amerigo had meant in alluding to a particular\nuse that they might make, for their reaffirmed harmony and prosperity,\nof Charlotte. The more she thought, at present, of the tone he had\nemployed to express their enjoyment of this resource, the more it came\nback to her as the product of a conscious art of dealing with her. He\nhad been conscious, at the moment, of many things--conscious even, not a\nlittle, of desiring; and thereby of needing, to see what she would do\nin a given case. The given case would be that of her being to a certain\nextent, as she might fairly make it out, MENACED--horrible as it was to\nimpute to him any intention represented by such a word. Why it was that\nto speak of making her stepmother intervene, as they might call it, in\na question that seemed, just then and there, quite peculiarly their own\nbusiness--why it was that a turn so familiar and so easy should, at the\nworst, strike her as charged with the spirit of a threat, was an oddity\ndisconnected, for her, temporarily, from its grounds, the adventure\nof an imagination within her that possibly had lost its way. That,\nprecisely, was doubtless why she had learned to wait, as the weeks\npassed by, with a fair, or rather indeed with an excessive, imitation\nof resumed serenity. There had been no prompt sequel to the Prince\'s\nequivocal light, and that made for patience; yet she was none the less\nto have to admit, after delay, that the bread he had cast on the\nwaters had come home, and that she should thus be justified of her old\napprehension. The consequence of this, in turn, was a renewed pang in\npresence of his remembered ingenuity. To be ingenious with HER--what\nDIDN\'T, what mightn\'t that mean, when she had so absolutely never, at\nany point of contact with him, put him, by as much as the value of a\npenny, to the expense of sparing, doubting, fearing her, of having\nin any way whatever to reckon with her? The ingenuity had been in his\nsimply speaking of their use of Charlotte as if it were common to them\nin an equal degree, and his triumph, on the occasion, had been just in\nthe simplicity. She couldn\'t--and he knew it--say what was true: \"Oh,\nyou \'use\' her, and I use her, if you will, yes; but we use her ever\nso differently and separately--not at all in the same way or degree.\nThere\'s nobody we really use together but ourselves, don\'t you see?--by\nwhich I mean that where our interests are the same I can so beautifully,\nso exquisitely serve you for everything, and you can so beautifully, so\nexquisitely serve me. The only person either of us needs is the other\nof us; so why, as a matter of course, in such a case as this, drag in\nCharlotte?\"\n\nShe couldn\'t so challenge him, because it would have been--and there she\nwas paralysed--the NOTE. It would have translated itself on the spot,\nfor his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion,\nwould have reached her father\'s exactly in the form of a cry piercing\nthe stillness of peaceful sleep. It had been for many days almost as\ndifficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as\nit had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old--the time,\nso strangely, seemed already far away--an inevitability in her longer\npassages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability,\nround about them, of everything. But at present Charlotte was almost\nalways there when Amerigo brought her to Eaton Square, where Amerigo\nwas constantly bringing her; and Amerigo was almost always there when\nCharlotte brought her husband to Portland Place, where Charlotte was\nconstantly bringing HIM. The fractions of occasions, the chance minutes\nthat put them face to face had, as yet, of late, contrived to count but\nlittle, between them, either for the sense of opportunity or for that\nof exposure; inasmuch as the lifelong rhythm of their intercourse made\nagainst all cursory handling of deep things. They had never availed\nthemselves of any given quarter-of-an-hour to gossip about fundamentals;\nthey moved slowly through large still spaces; they could be silent\ntogether, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than\nhurriedly expressive. It appeared indeed to have become true that their\ncommon appeal measured itself, for vividness, just by this economy of\nsound; they might have been talking \"at\" each other when they talked\nwith their companions, but these latter, assuredly, were not in any\ndirecter way to gain light on the current phase of their relation. Such\nwere some of the reasons for which Maggie suspected fundamentals, as\nI have called them, to be rising, by a new movement, to the\nsurface--suspected it one morning late in May, when her father presented\nhimself in Portland Place alone. He had his pretext--of that she was\nfully aware: the Principino, two days before, had shown signs, happily\nnot persistent, of a feverish cold and had notoriously been obliged to\nspend the interval at home. This was ground, ample ground, for punctual\ninquiry; but what it wasn\'t ground for, she quickly found herself\nreflecting, was his having managed, in the interest of his visit,\nto dispense so unwontedly--as their life had recently come to be\narranged--with his wife\'s attendance. It had so happened that she\nherself was, for the hour, exempt from her husband\'s, and it will at\nonce be seen that the hour had a quality all its own when I note that,\nremembering how the Prince had looked in to say he was going out, the\nPrincess whimsically wondered if their respective sposi mightn\'t frankly\nbe meeting, whimsically hoped indeed they were temporarily so disposed\nof. Strange was her need, at moments, to think of them as not attaching\nan excessive importance to their repudiation of the general practice\nthat had rested only a few weeks before on such a consecrated rightness.\nRepudiations, surely, were not in the air--they had none of them come to\nthat; for wasn\'t she at this minute testifying directly against them by\nher own behaviour? When she should confess to fear of being alone with\nher father, to fear of what he might then--ah, with such a slow, painful\nmotion as she had a horror of!--say to her, THEN would be time enough\nfor Amerigo and Charlotte to confess to not liking to appear to\nforegather.\n\nShe had this morning a wonderful consciousness both of dreading a\nparticular question from him and of being able to check, yes even to\ndisconcert, magnificently, by her apparent manner of receiving it, any\nrestless imagination he might have about its importance. The day, bright\nand soft, had the breath of summer; it made them talk, to begin with, of\nFawns, of the way Fawns invited--Maggie aware, the while, that in thus\nregarding, with him, the sweetness of its invitation to one couple just\nas much as to another, her humbugging smile grew very nearly convulsive.\nThat was it, and there was relief truly, of a sort, in taking it in:\nshe was humbugging him already, by absolute necessity, as she had never,\nnever done in her life--doing it up to the full height of what she\nhad allowed for. The necessity, in the great dimly-shining room where,\ndeclining, for his reasons, to sit down, he moved about in Amerigo\'s\nvery footsteps, the necessity affected her as pressing upon her with the\nvery force of the charm itself; of the old pleasantness, between them,\nso candidly playing up there again; of the positive flatness of their\ntenderness, a surface all for familiar use, quite as if generalised from\nthe long succession of tapestried sofas, sweetly faded, on which his\ntheory of contentment had sat, through unmeasured pauses, beside\nher own. She KNEW, from this instant, knew in advance and as well\nas anything would ever teach her, that she must never intermit for\na solitary second her so highly undertaking to prove that there was\nnothing the matter with her. She saw, of a sudden, everything she might\nsay or do in the light of that undertaking, established connections from\nit with any number of remote matters, struck herself, for instance, as\nacting all in its interest when she proposed their going out, in the\nexercise of their freedom and in homage to the season, for a turn in\nthe Regent\'s Park. This resort was close at hand, at the top of Portland\nPlace, and the Principino, beautifully better, had already proceeded\nthere under high attendance: all of which considerations were defensive\nfor Maggie, all of which became, to her mind, part of the business of\ncultivating continuity.\n\nUpstairs, while she left him to put on something to go out in, the\nthought of his waiting below for her, in possession of the empty house,\nbrought with it, sharply if briefly, one of her abrupt arrests of\nconsistency, the brush of a vain imagination almost paralysing her,\noften, for the minute, before her glass--the vivid look, in other\nwords, of the particular difference his marriage had made. The\nparticular difference seemed at such instants the loss, more than\nanything else, of their old freedom, their never having had to think,\nwhere they were together concerned, of any one, of anything but each\nother. It hadn\'t been HER marriage that did it; that had never,\nfor three seconds, suggested to either of them that they must act\ndiplomatically, must reckon with another presence--no, not even with her\nhusband\'s. She groaned to herself, while the vain imagination lasted,\n\"WHY did he marry? ah, why DID he?\" and then it came up to her more than\never that nothing could have been more beautiful than the way in which,\ntill Charlotte came so much more closely into their life, Amerigo hadn\'t\ninterfered. What she had gone on owing him for this mounted up again,\nto her eyes, like a column of figures---or call it even, if one would,\na house of cards; it was her father\'s wonderful act that had tipped the\nhouse down and made the sum wrong. With all of which, immediately after\nher question, her \"Why did he, why did he?\" rushed back, inevitably, the\nconfounding, the overwhelming wave of the knowledge of his reason. \"He\ndid it for ME, he did it for me,\" she moaned, \"he did it, exactly, that\nour freedom--meaning, beloved man, simply and solely mine--should be\ngreater instead of less; he did it, divinely, to liberate me so far as\npossible from caring what became of him.\" She found time upstairs,\neven in her haste, as she had repeatedly found time before, to let\nthe wonderments involved in these recognitions flash at her with their\ncustomary effect of making her blink: the question in especial of\nwhether she might find her solution in acting, herself, in the spirit of\nwhat he had done, in forcing her \"care\" really to grow as much less as\nhe had tried to make it. Thus she felt the whole weight of their case\ndrop afresh upon her shoulders, was confronted, unmistakably, with the\nprime source of her haunted state. It all came from her not having been\nable not to mind--not to mind what became of him; not having been able,\nwithout anxiety, to let him go his way and take his risk and lead his\nlife. She had made anxiety her stupid little idol; and absolutely now,\nwhile she stuck a long pin, a trifle fallaciously, into her hat--she\nhad, with an approach to irritation, told her maid, a new woman, whom\nshe had lately found herself thinking of as abysmal, that she didn\'t\nwant her--she tried to focus the possibility of some understanding\nbetween them in consequence of which he should cut loose.\n\nVery near indeed it looked, any such possibility! that consciousness,\ntoo, had taken its turn by the time she was ready; all the vibration,\nall the emotion of this present passage being, precisely, in the very\nsweetness of their lapse back into the conditions of the simpler time,\ninto a queer resemblance between the aspect and the feeling of the\nmoment and those of numberless other moments that were sufficiently far\naway. She had been quick in her preparation, in spite of the flow of the\ntide that sometimes took away her breath; but a pause, once more, was\nstill left for her to make, a pause, at the top of the stairs, before\nshe came down to him, in the span of which she asked herself if it\nweren\'t thinkable, from the perfectly practical point of view, that\nshe should simply sacrifice him. She didn\'t go into the detail of what\nsacrificing him would mean--she didn\'t need to; so distinct was it, in\none of her restless lights, that there he was awaiting her, that she\nshould find him walking up and down the drawing-room in the warm,\nfragrant air to which the open windows and the abundant flowers\ncontributed; slowly and vaguely moving there and looking very slight\nand young and, superficially, manageable, almost as much like her child,\nputting it a little freely, as like her parent; with the appearance\nabout him, above all, of having perhaps arrived just on purpose to SAY\nit to her, himself, in so many words: \"Sacrifice me, my own love; do\nsacrifice me, do sacrifice me!\" Should she want to, should she insist on\nit, she might verily hear him bleating it at her, all conscious and all\naccommodating, like some precious, spotless, exceptionally intelligent\nlamb. The positive effect of the intensity of this figure, however,\nwas to make her shake it away in her resumed descent; and after she had\nrejoined him, after she had picked him up, she was to know the full\npang of the thought that her impossibility was MADE, absolutely, by his\nconsciousness, by the lucidity of his intention: this she felt while she\nsmiled there for him, again, all hypocritically; while she drew on\nfair, fresh gloves; while she interrupted the process first to give\nhis necktie a slightly smarter twist and then to make up to him for\nher hidden madness by rubbing her nose into his cheek according to the\ntradition of their frankest levity.\n\nFrom the instant she should be able to convict him of intending, every\nissue would be closed and her hypocrisy would have to redouble. The\nonly way to sacrifice him would be to do so without his dreaming what\nit might be for. She kissed him, she arranged his cravat, she dropped\nremarks, she guided him out, she held his arm, not to be led, but to\nlead him, and taking it to her by much the same intimate pressure she\nhad always used, when a little girl, to mark the inseparability of her\ndoll--she did all these things so that he should sufficiently fail to\ndream of what they might be for.\n\n\n\n XXIX\n\nThere was nothing to show that her effort in any degree fell short till\nthey got well into the Park and he struck her as giving, unexpectedly,\nthe go-by to any serious search for the Principino. The way they sat\ndown awhile in the sun was a sign of that; his dropping with her into\nthe first pair of sequestered chairs they came across and waiting a\nlittle, after they were placed, as if now at last she might bring out,\nas between them, something more specific. It made her but feel the more\nsharply how the specific, in almost any direction, was utterly forbidden\nher--how the use of it would be, for all the world, like undoing the\nleash of a dog eager to follow up a scent. It would come out, the\nspecific, where the dog would come out; would run to earth, somehow, the\ntruth--for she was believing herself in relation to the truth!--at which\nshe mustn\'t so much as indirectly point. Such, at any rate, was the\nfashion in which her passionate prudence played over possibilities of\ndanger, reading symptoms and betrayals into everything she looked at,\nand yet having to make it evident, while she recognised them, that she\ndidn\'t wince. There were moments between them, in their chairs, when\nhe might have been watching her guard herself and trying to think of\nsomething new that would trip her up. There were pauses during which,\nwith her affection as sweet and still as the sunshine, she might yet,\nas at some hard game, over a table, for money, have been defying him to\nfasten upon her the least little complication of consciousness. She was\npositively proud, afterwards, of the great style in which she had kept\nthis up; later on, at the hour\'s end, when they had retraced their steps\nto find Amerigo and Charlotte awaiting them at the house, she was able\nto say to herself that, truly, she had put her plan through; even though\nonce more setting herself the difficult task of making their relation,\nevery minute of the time, not fall below the standard of that other\nhour, in the treasured past, which hung there behind them like a framed\npicture in a museum, a high watermark for the history of their old\nfortune; the summer evening, in the park at Fawns, when, side by side\nunder the trees just as now, they had let their happy confidence lull\nthem with its most golden tone. There had been the possibility of a trap\nfor her, at present, in the very question of their taking up anew that\nresidence; wherefore she had not been the first to sound it, in spite of\nthe impression from him of his holding off to see what she would do. She\nwas saying to herself in secret: \"CAN we again, in this form, migrate\nthere? Can I, for myself, undertake it? face all the intenser keeping-up\nand stretching-out, indefinitely, impossibly, that our conditions in the\ncountry, as we\'ve established and accepted them, would stand for?\"\nShe had positively lost herself in this inward doubt--so much she was\nsubsequently to remember; but remembering then too that her companion,\nthough perceptibly perhaps as if not to be eager, had broken the ice\nvery much as he had broken it in Eaton Square after the banquet to the\nCastledeans.\n\nHer mind had taken a long excursion, wandered far into the vision of\nwhat a summer at Fawns, with Amerigo and Charlotte still more eminently\nin presence against that higher sky, would bring forth. Wasn\'t her\nfather meanwhile only pretending to talk of it? just as she was, in a\nmanner, pretending to listen? He got off it, finally, at all events,\nfor the transition it couldn\'t well help thrusting out at him; it had\namounted exactly to an arrest of her private excursion by the sense that\nhe had begun to IMITATE--oh, as never yet!--the ancient tone of gold. It\nhad verily come from him at last, the question of whether she thought it\nwould be very good--but very good indeed--that he should leave England\nfor a series of weeks, on some pretext, with the Prince. Then it had\nbeen that she was to know her husband\'s \"menace\" hadn\'t really dropped,\nsince she was face to face with the effect of it. Ah, the effect of it\nhad occupied all the rest of their walk, had stayed out with them and\ncome home with them, besides making it impossible that they shouldn\'t\npresently feign to recollect how rejoining the child had been their\noriginal purpose. Maggie\'s uneffaced note was that it had, at the end\nof five minutes more, driven them to that endeavour as to a refuge, and\ncaused them afterwards to rejoice, as well, that the boy\'s irrepressibly\nimportunate company, in due course secured and enjoyed, with\nthe extension imparted by his governess, a person expectant of\nconsideration, constituted a cover for any awkwardness. For that was\nwhat it had all come to, that the dear man had spoken to her to TRY\nher--quite as he had been spoken to himself by Charlotte, with the same\nfine idea. The Princess took it in, on the spot, firmly grasping it;\nshe heard them together, her father and his wife, dealing with the queer\ncase. \"The Prince tells me that Maggie has a plan for your taking some\nforeign journey with him, and, as he likes to do everything she wants,\nhe has suggested my speaking to you for it as the thing most likely to\nmake you consent. So I do speak--see?--being always so eager myself,\nas you know, to meet Maggie\'s wishes. I speak, but without quite\nunderstanding, this time, what she has in her head. Why SHOULD she, of\na sudden, at this particular moment, desire to ship you off together and\nto remain here alone with me? The compliment\'s all to me, I admit, and\nyou must decide quite as you like. The Prince is quite ready, evidently,\nto do his part--but you\'ll have it out with him. That is you\'ll have\nit out with HER.\" Something of that kind was what, in her mind\'s ear,\nMaggie heard--and this, after his waiting for her to appeal to him\ndirectly, was her father\'s invitation to her to have it out. Well, as\nshe could say to herself all the rest of the day, that was what they did\nwhile they continued to sit there in their penny chairs, that was what\nthey HAD done as much as they would now ever, ever, have out anything.\nThe measure of this, at least, had been given, that each would fight to\nthe last for the protection, for the perversion, of any real anxiety.\nShe had confessed, instantly, with her humbugging grin, not flinching by\na hair, meeting his eyes as mildly as he met hers, she had confessed\nto her fancy that they might both, he and his son-in-law, have welcomed\nsuch an escapade, since they had both been so long so furiously\ndomestic. She had almost cocked her hat under the inspiration of this\nopportunity to hint how a couple of spirited young men, reacting from\nconfinement and sallying forth arm-in-arm, might encounter the agreeable\nin forms that would strike them for the time at least as novel. She had\nfelt for fifty seconds, with her eyes, all so sweetly and falsely, in\nher companion\'s, horribly vulgar; yet without minding it either--such\nluck should she have if to be nothing worse than vulgar would see her\nthrough. \"And I thought Amerigo might like it better,\" she had said,\n\"than wandering off alone.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that he won\'t go unless I take him?\"\n\nShe had considered here, and never in her life had she considered so\npromptly and so intently. If she really put it that way, her husband,\nchallenged, might belie the statement; so that what would that do but\nmake her father wonder, make him perhaps ask straight out, why she was\nexerting pressure? She couldn\'t of course afford to be suspected for an\ninstant of exerting pressure; which was why she was obliged only to make\nanswer: \"Wouldn\'t that be just what you must have out with HIM?\"\n\n\"Decidedly--if he makes me the proposal. But he hasn\'t made it yet.\"\n\nOh, once more, how she was to feel she had smirked! \"Perhaps he\'s too\nshy!\"\n\n\"Because you\'re so sure he so really wants my company?\"\n\n\"I think he has thought you might like it.\"\n\n\"Well, I should--!\" But with this he looked away from her, and she\nheld her breath to hear him either ask if she wished him to address\nthe question to Amerigo straight, or inquire if she should be greatly\ndisappointed by his letting it drop. What had \"settled\" her, as she was\nprivately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and\nhad thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw\nout her reason. To attenuate, on the other hand, this appearance, and\nquite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made, so musingly,\nby his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason--had\npositively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged Charlotte\nnot to have approved. He had taken everything on himself--THAT was what\nhad settled her. She had had to wait very little more to feel, with\nthis, how much he was taking. The point he made was his lack of any\neagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and\nhis wife. He wasn\'t so unhappy with her--far from it, and Maggie was to\nhold that he had grinned back, paternally, through his rather shielding\nglasses, in easy emphasis of this--as to be able to hint that he\nrequired the relief of absence. Therefore, unless it was for the Prince\nhimself--!\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t think it would have been for Amerigo himself. Amerigo and\nI,\" Maggie had said, \"perfectly rub on together.\"\n\n\"Well then, there we are.\"\n\n\"I see\"--and she had again, with sublime blandness, assented. \"There we\nare.\"\n\n\"Charlotte and I too,\" her father had gaily proceeded, \"perfectly rub on\ntogether.\" And then he had appeared for a little to be making time. \"To\nput it only so,\" he had mildly and happily added--\"to put it only so!\"\nHe had spoken as if he might easily put it much better, yet as if the\nhumour of contented understatement fairly sufficed for the occasion.\nHe had played then, either all consciously or all unconsciously,\ninto Charlotte\'s hands; and the effect of this was to render trebly\noppressive Maggie\'s conviction of Charlotte\'s plan. She had done what\nshe wanted, his wife had--which was also what Amerigo had made her do.\nShe had kept her test, Maggie\'s test, from becoming possible, and had\napplied instead a test of her own. It was exactly as if she had known\nthat her stepdaughter would be afraid to be summoned to say, under the\nleast approach to cross-examination, why any change was desirable; and\nit was, for our young woman herself, still more prodigiously, as if\nher father had been capable of calculations to match, of judging it\nimportant he shouldn\'t be brought to demand of her what was the matter\nwith her. Why otherwise, with such an opportunity, hadn\'t he demanded\nit? Always from calculation--that was why, that was why. He was\nterrified of the retort he might have invoked: \"What, my dear, if you\ncome to that, is the matter with YOU?\" When, a minute later on, he had\nfollowed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to\nconjure away the ghost of the anomalous, at that climax verily she\nwould have had to be dumb to the question. \"There seems a kind of charm,\ndoesn\'t there? on our life--and quite as if, just lately, it had got\nitself somehow renewed, had waked up refreshed. A kind of wicked selfish\nprosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed everything, fixed everything,\ndown to the last lovely object for the last glass case of the last\ncorner, left over, of my old show. That\'s the only take-off, that it has\nmade us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid--lying like gods together, all\ncareless of mankind.\"\n\n\"Do you consider that we\'re languid?\"--that form of rejoinder she had\njumped at for the sake of its pretty lightness. \"Do you consider that\nwe are careless of mankind?--living as we do in the biggest crowd in the\nworld, and running about always pursued and pursuing.\"\n\nIt had made him think indeed a little longer than she had meant; but he\ncame up again, as she might have said, smiling. \"Well, I don\'t know. We\nget nothing but the fun, do we?\"\n\n\"No,\" she had hastened to declare; \"we certainly get nothing but the\nfun.\"\n\n\"We do it all,\" he had remarked, \"so beautifully.\"\n\n\"We do it all so beautifully.\" She hadn\'t denied this for a moment. \"I\nsee what you mean.\"\n\n\"Well, I mean too,\" he had gone on, \"that we haven\'t, no doubt, enough,\nthe sense of difficulty.\"\n\n\"Enough? Enough for what?\"\n\n\"Enough not to be selfish.\"\n\n\"I don\'t think YOU are selfish,\" she had returned--and had managed not\nto wail it.\n\n\"I don\'t say that it\'s me particularly--or that it\'s you or Charlotte or\nAmerigo. But we\'re selfish together--we move as a selfish mass. You see\nwe want always the same thing,\" he had gone on--\"and that holds us, that\nbinds us, together. We want each other,\" he had further explained; \"only\nwanting it, each time, FOR each other. That\'s what I call the happy\nspell; but it\'s also, a little, possibly, the immorality.\"\n\n\"\'The immorality\'?\" she had pleasantly echoed.\n\n\"Well, we\'re tremendously moral for ourselves--that is for each other;\nand I won\'t pretend that I know exactly at whose particular personal\nexpense you and I, for instance, are happy. What it comes to, I daresay,\nis that there\'s something haunting--as if it were a bit uncanny--in\nsuch a consciousness of our general comfort and privilege. Unless\nindeed,\" he had rambled on, \"it\'s only I to whom, fantastically, it says\nso much. That\'s all I mean, at any rate--that it\'s sort of soothing;\nas if we were sitting about on divans, with pigtails, smoking opium and\nseeing visions. \'Let us then be up and doing\'--what is it Longfellow\nsays? That seems sometimes to ring out; like the police breaking\nin--into our opium den--to give us a shake. But the beauty of it is, at\nthe same time, that we ARE doing; we\'re doing, that is, after all, what\nwe went in for. We\'re working it, our life, our chance, whatever you may\ncall it, as we saw it, as we felt it, from the first. We HAVE worked\nit, and what more can you do than that? It\'s a good deal for me,\" he\nhad wound up, \"to have made Charlotte so happy--to have so perfectly\ncontented her. YOU, from a good way back, were a matter of course--I\nmean your being all right; so that I needn\'t mind your knowing that my\ngreat interest, since then, has rather inevitably been in making sure of\nthe same success, very much to your advantage as well, for Charlotte. If\nwe\'ve worked our life, our idea really, as I say--if at any rate I can\nsit here and say that I\'ve worked my share of it--it has not been what\nyou may call least by our having put Charlotte so at her ease. THAT has\nbeen soothing, all round; that has curled up as the biggest of the blue\nfumes, or whatever they are, of the opium. Don\'t you see what a cropper\nwe would have come if she hadn\'t settled down as she has?\" And he had\nconcluded by turning to Maggie as for something she mightn\'t really have\nthought of. \"You, darling, in that case, I verily believe, would have\nbeen the one to hate it most.\"\n\n\"To hate it--?\" Maggie had wondered.\n\n\"To hate our having, with our tremendous intentions, not brought it off.\nAnd I daresay I should have hated it for you even more than for myself.\"\n\n\"That\'s not unlikely perhaps when it was for me, after all, that you did\nit.\"\n\nHe had hesitated, but only a moment. \"I never told you so.\"\n\n\"Well, Charlotte herself soon enough told me.\"\n\n\"But I never told HER,\" her father had answered.\n\n\"Are you very sure?\" she had presently asked.\n\n\"Well, I like to think how thoroughly I was taken with her, and how\nright I was, and how fortunate, to have that for my basis. I told her\nall the good I thought of her.\"\n\n\"Then that,\" Maggie had returned, \"was precisely part of the good.\nI mean it was precisely part of it that she could so beautifully\nunderstand.\"\n\n\"Yes--understand everything.\"\n\n\"Everything--and in particular your reasons. Her telling me--that showed\nme how she had understood.\"\n\nThey were face to face again now, and she saw she had made his colour\nrise; it was as if he were still finding in her eyes the concrete image,\nthe enacted scene, of her passage with Charlotte, which he was now\nhearing of for the first time and as to which it would have been natural\nhe should question her further. His forbearance to do so would but\nmark, precisely, the complication of his fears. \"What she does like,\" he\nfinally said, \"is the way it has succeeded.\"\n\n\"Your marriage?\"\n\n\"Yes--my whole idea. The way I\'ve been justified. That\'s the joy I give\nher. If for HER, either, it had failed--!\" That, however, was not worth\ntalking about; he had broken off. \"You think then you could now risk\nFawns?\"\n\n\"\'Risk\' it?\"\n\n\"Well, morally--from the point of view I was talking of; that of our\nsinking deeper into sloth. Our selfishness, somehow, seems at its\nbiggest down there.\"\n\nMaggie had allowed him the amusement of her not taking this up. \"Is\nCharlotte,\" she had simply asked, \"really ready?\"\n\n\"Oh, if you and I and Amerigo are. Whenever one corners Charlotte,\" he\nhad developed more at his ease, \"one finds that she only wants to know\nwhat we want. Which is what we got her for!\"\n\n\"What we got her for--exactly!\" And so, for a little, even though with\na certain effect of oddity in their more or less successful ease, they\nleft it; left it till Maggie made the remark that it was all the same\nwonderful her stepmother should be willing, before the season was out,\nto exchange so much company for so much comparative solitude.\n\n\"Ah,\" he had then made answer, \"that\'s because her idea, I think, this\ntime, is that we shall have more people, more than we\'ve hitherto had,\nin the country. Don\'t you remember that THAT, originally, was what we\nwere to get her for?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--to give us a life.\" Maggie had gone through the form of\nrecalling this, and the light of their ancient candour, shining from so\nfar back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with\nthe sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet. \"Well, with a\n\'life\' Fawns will certainly do.\" He had remained in his place while she\nlooked over his head; the picture, in her vision, had suddenly swarmed.\nThe vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in\nwhich, with her companion, she was travelling; but she was having to\nsteady herself, this time, before meeting his eyes. She had measured\nindeed the full difference between the move to Fawns because each of\nthem now knew the others wanted it and the pairing-off, for a journey,\nof her husband and her father, which nobody knew that either wanted.\n\"More company\" at Fawns would be effectually enough the key in which her\nhusband and her stepmother were at work; there was truly no question but\nthat she and her father must accept any array of visitors. No one could\ntry to marry him now. What he had just said was a direct plea for that,\nand what was the plea itself but an act of submission to Charlotte? He\nhad, from his chair, been noting her look, but he had, the next minute,\nalso risen, and then it was they had reminded each other of their having\ncome out for the boy. Their junction with him and with his companion\nsuccessfully effected, the four had moved home more slowly, and still\nmore vaguely; yet with a vagueness that permitted of Maggie\'s reverting\nan instant to the larger issue.\n\n\"If we have people in the country then, as you were saying, do you know\nfor whom my first fancy would be? You may be amused, but it would be for\nthe Castledeans.\"\n\n\"I see. But why should I be amused?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean I am myself. I don\'t think I like her--and yet I like to\nsee her: which, as Amerigo says, is \'rum.\'\"\n\n\"But don\'t you feel she\'s very handsome?\" her father inquired.\n\n\"Yes, but it isn\'t for that.\"\n\n\"Then what is it for?\"\n\n\"Simply that she may be THERE--just there before us. It\'s as if she may\nhave a value--as if something may come of her. I don\'t in the least know\nwhat, and she rather irritates me meanwhile. I don\'t even know, I admit,\nwhy--but if we see her often enough I may find out.\"\n\n\"Does it matter so very much?\" her companion had asked while they moved\ntogether.\n\nShe had hesitated. \"You mean because you do rather like her?\"\n\nHe on his side too had waited a little, but then he had taken it from\nher. \"Yes, I guess I do rather like her.\"\n\nWhich she accepted for the first case she could recall of their not\nbeing affected by a person in the same way. It came back therefore\nto his pretending; but she had gone far enough, and to add to her\nappearance of levity she further observed that, though they were so\nfar from a novelty, she should also immediately desire, at Fawns, the\npresence of the Assinghams. That put everything on a basis independent\nof explanations; yet it was extraordinary, at the same time, how much,\nonce in the country again with the others, she was going, as they used\nto say at home, to need the presence of the good Fanny. It was the\nstrangest thing in the world, but it was as if Mrs. Assingham might in a\nmanner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of Charlotte. It was\nas if the two would balance, one against the other; as if it came round\nagain in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium. It would be like\nputting this friend into her scale to make weight--into the scale with\nher father and herself. Amerigo and Charlotte would be in the other;\ntherefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight.\nAnd as this played, all duskily, in her mind it had received from\nher father, with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. \"Ah,\nrather! DO let\'s have the Assinghams.\"\n\n\"It would be to have them,\" she had said, \"as we used so much to have\nthem. For a good long stay, in the old way and on the old terms: \'as\nregular boarders\' Fanny used to call it. That is if they\'ll come.\"\n\n\"As regular boarders, on the old terms--that\'s what I should like too.\nBut I guess they\'ll come,\" her companion had added in a tone into which\nshe had read meanings. The main meaning was that he felt he was going to\nrequire them quite as much as she was. His recognition of the new terms\nas different from the old, what was that, practically, but a confession\nthat something had happened, and a perception that, interested in the\nsituation she had helped to create, Mrs. Assingham would be, by so much\nas this, concerned in its inevitable development? It amounted to an\nintimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some one to\nturn to. If she had wished covertly to sound him he had now, in short,\nquite given himself away, and if she had, even at the start, needed\nanything MORE to settle her, here assuredly was enough. He had hold of\nhis small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy\'s\nhand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat\nlittle porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly,\nwhile they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn\'t have\nbeen more real, mightn\'t above all have demanded less strange a\nstudy, had it only been on the books that Charlotte should give him a\nPrincipino of his own. She had repossessed herself now of his other arm,\nonly this time she was drawing him back, gently, helplessly back, to\nwhat they had tried, for the hour, to get away from--just as he was\nconsciously drawing the child, and as high Miss Bogle on her left,\nrepresenting the duties of home, was complacently drawing HER. The\nduties of home, when the house in Portland Place reappeared, showed,\neven from a distance, as vividly there before them. Amerigo and\nCharlotte had come in--that is Amerigo had, Charlotte, rather,\nhaving come out--and the pair were perched together in the balcony, he\nbare-headed, she divested of her jacket, her mantle, or whatever, but\ncrowned with a brilliant brave hat, responsive to the balmy day, which\nMaggie immediately \"spotted\" as new, as insuperably original, as worn,\nin characteristic generous harmony, for the first time; all, evidently,\nto watch for the return of the absent, to be there to take them over\nagain as punctually as possible. They were gay, they were amused, in\nthe pleasant morning; they leaned across the rail and called down\ntheir greeting, lighting up the front of the great black house with an\nexpression that quite broke the monotony, that might almost have shocked\nthe decency, of Portland Place. The group on the pavement stared up as\nat the peopled battlements of a castle; even Miss Bogle, who carried\nher head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as\ntoward truly superior beings. There could scarce have been so much\nof the open mouth since the dingy waits, on Christmas Eve, had so\nlamentably chanted for pennies--the time when Amerigo, insatiable for\nEnglish customs, had come out, with a gasped \"Santissima Vergine!\" to\nmarvel at the depositaries of this tradition and purchase a reprieve.\nMaggie\'s individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the\npair would be at work.\n\n\n\n XXX\n\nShe had not again, for weeks, had Mrs. Assingham so effectually in\npresence as on the afternoon of that lady\'s return from the Easter party\nat Matcham; but the intermission was made up as soon as the date of the\nmigration to Fawns--that of the more or less simultaneous adjournment of\nthe two houses--began to be discussed. It had struck her, promptly, that\nthis renewal, with an old friend, of the old terms she had talked of\nwith her father, was the one opening, for her spirit, that wouldn\'t too\nmuch advertise or betray her. Even her father, who had always, as he\nwould have said, \"believed in\" their ancient ally, wouldn\'t necessarily\nsuspect her of invoking Fanny\'s aid toward any special inquiry--and\nleast of all if Fanny would only act as Fanny so easily might. Maggie\'s\nmeasure of Fanny\'s ease would have been agitating to Mrs. Assingham had\nit been all at once revealed to her--as, for that matter, it was soon\ndestined to become even on a comparatively graduated showing. Our young\nwoman\'s idea, in particular, was that her safety, her escape from being\nherself suspected of suspicion, would proceed from this friend\'s\npower to cover, to protect and, as might be, even showily to represent\nher--represent, that is, her relation to the form of the life they were\nall actually leading. This would doubtless be, as people said, a large\norder; but that Mrs. Assingham existed, substantially, or could somehow\nbe made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest\nflower Maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant\nseed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in Portland Place\nto the Matcham company. Mrs. Assingham, that night, rebounding from\ndejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then\nabsolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper\nand darker consciousness--an impression it would now be late for her\ninconsistently to attempt to undo. It was with a wonderful air of giving\nout all these truths that the Princess at present approached her again;\nmaking doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what\nin especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact\nquite expressly declared, of Fanny\'s discerned foreboding of the strange\nuses she might perhaps have for her. Quite from the first, really,\nMaggie said extraordinary things to her, such as \"You can help me, you\nknow, my dear, when nobody else can;\" such as \"I almost wish, upon my\nword, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your\nhealth, or your money, or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that\nI might be with you as much as I want, or keep you with ME, without\nexciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such\nkindnesses are \'like\' me.\" We have each our own way of making up for our\nunselfishness, and Maggie, who had no small self at all as against her\nhusband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her\nstepmother, would verily, at this crisis, have seen Mrs. Assingham\'s\npersonal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang.\n\nThe attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw\npeculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of\nher victim. This personage struck her, in truth, as ready for almost\nanything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with\na restlessness of her own to know what she wanted. And in the long\nrun--which was none so long either--there was to be no difficulty, as\nhappened, about that. It was as if, for all the world, Maggie had let\nher see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for\nsomething; not, to begin with, dotting all the i\'s nor hooking together\nall the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with\ncaressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to\nassist. The theory, visibly, had patched itself together for her that\nthe dear woman had somehow, from the early time, had a hand in ALL\ntheir fortunes, so that there was no turn of their common relations\nand affairs that couldn\'t be traced back in some degree to her original\naffectionate interest. On this affectionate interest the good lady\'s\nyoung friend now built, before her eyes--very much as a wise, or even\nas a mischievous, child, playing on the floor, might pile up blocks,\nskilfully and dizzily, with an eye on the face of a covertly-watching\nelder.\n\nWhen the blocks tumbled down they but acted after the nature of blocks;\nyet the hour would come for their rising so high that the structure\nwould have to be noticed and admired. Mrs. Assingham\'s appearance of\nunreservedly giving herself involved meanwhile, on her own side, no\nseparate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed\naltogether to her young friend\'s so vivid felicity; it suggested that\nshe took for granted, at the most, certain vague recent enhancements of\nthat state. If the Princess now, more than before, was going and going,\nshe was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always\nknown she WOULD, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation\nmust more or less contain and invite the note of triumph. There was a\nblankness in her blandness, assuredly, and very nearly an extravagance\nin her generalising gaiety; a precipitation of cheer particularly marked\nwhenever they met again after short separations: meetings during the\nfirst flush of which Maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in\nother faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the\nphysiognomic light that had played out in her husband at the shock--she\nhad come at last to talk to herself of the \"shock\"--of his first vision\nof her on his return from Matcham and Gloucester, and the wonder of\nCharlotte\'s beautiful bold wavering gaze when, the next morning in Eaton\nSquare, this old friend had turned from the window to begin to deal with\nher.\n\nIf she had dared to think of it so crudely she would have said that\nFanny was afraid of her, afraid of something she might say or do, even\nas, for their few brief seconds, Amerigo and Charlotte had been--which\nmade, exactly, an expressive element common to the three. The difference\nhowever was that this look had in the dear woman its oddity of a\nconstant renewal, whereas it had never for the least little instant\nagain peeped out of the others. Other looks, other lights, radiant and\nsteady, with the others, had taken its place, reaching a climax so short\na time ago, that morning of the appearance of the pair on the balcony\nof her house to overlook what she had been doing with her father; when\ntheir general interested brightness and beauty, attuned to the outbreak\nof summer, had seemed to shed down warmth and welcome and the promise of\nprotection. They were conjoined not to do anything to startle her--and\nnow at last so completely that, with experience and practice, they had\nalmost ceased to fear their liability. Mrs. Assingham, on the other\nhand, deprecating such an accident not less, had yet less assurance,\nas having less control. The high pitch of her cheer, accordingly, the\ntentative, adventurous expressions, of the would-be smiling order, that\npreceded her approach even like a squad of skirmishers, or whatever they\nwere called, moving ahead of the baggage train--these things had at\nthe end of a fortnight brought a dozen times to our young woman\'s lips\na challenge that had the cunning to await its right occasion, but of the\nrelief of which, as a demonstration, she meanwhile felt no little need.\n\"You\'ve such a dread of my possibly complaining to you that you keep\npealing all the bells to drown my voice; but don\'t cry out, my dear,\ntill you\'re hurt--and above all ask yourself how I can be so wicked as\nto complain. What in the name of all that\'s fantastic can you dream\nthat I have to complain OF?\" Such inquiries the Princess temporarily\nsucceeded in repressing, and she did so, in a measure, by the aid of her\nwondering if this ambiguity with which her friend affected her wouldn\'t\nbe at present a good deal like the ambiguity with which she herself must\nfrequently affect her father. She wondered how she should enjoy, on\nHIS part, such a take-up as she but just succeeded, from day to day, in\nsparing Mrs. Assingham, and that made for her trying to be as easy\nwith this associate as Mr. Verver, blessed man, all indulgent but all\ninscrutable, was with his daughter. She had extracted from her, none\nthe less, a vow in respect to the time that, if the Colonel might be\ndepended on, they would spend at Fawns; and nothing came home to her\nmore, in this connection, or inspired her with a more intimate interest,\nthan her sense of absolutely seeing her interlocutress forbear to\nobserve that Charlotte\'s view of a long visit, even from such allies,\nwas there to be reckoned with.\n\nFanny stood off from that proposition as visibly to the Princess, and as\nconsciously to herself, as she might have backed away from the edge of\na chasm into which she feared to slip; a truth that contributed again to\nkeep before our young woman her own constant danger of advertising her\nsubtle processes. That Charlotte should have begun to be restrictive\nabout the Assinghams--which she had never, and for a hundred obviously\ngood reasons, been before--this in itself was a fact of the highest\nvalue for Maggie, and of a value enhanced by the silence in which\nFanny herself so much too unmistakably dressed it. What gave it quite\nthrillingly its price was exactly the circumstance that it thus opposed\nher to her stepmother more actively--if she was to back up her friends\nfor holding out--than she had ever yet been opposed; though of course\nwith the involved result of the fine chance given Mrs. Verver to ask her\nhusband for explanations. Ah, from the moment she should be definitely\nCAUGHT in opposition there would be naturally no saying how much\nCharlotte\'s opportunities might multiply! What would become of her\nfather, she hauntedly asked, if his wife, on the one side, should\nbegin to press him to call his daughter to order, and the force of old\nhabit--to put it only at that--should dispose him, not less effectively,\nto believe in this young person at any price? There she was, all round,\nimprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should\ngive--certainly give HIM. The house in the country was his house, and\nthereby was Charlotte\'s; it was her own and Amerigo\'s only so far as its\nproper master and mistress should profusely place it at their disposal.\nMaggie felt of course that she saw no limit to her father\'s profusion,\nbut this couldn\'t be even at the best the case with Charlotte\'s, whom it\nwould never be decent, when all was said, to reduce to fighting for her\npreferences. There were hours, truly, when the Princess saw herself\nas not unarmed for battle if battle might only take place without\nspectators.\n\nThis last advantage for her, was, however, too sadly out of the\nquestion; her sole strength lay in her being able to see that if\nCharlotte wouldn\'t \"want\" the Assinghams it would be because that\nsentiment too would have motives and grounds. She had all the while\ncommand of one way of meeting any objection, any complaint, on his\nwife\'s part, reported to her by her father; it would be open to her\nto retort to his possible \"What are your reasons, my dear?\" by a\nlucidly-produced \"What are hers, love, please?--isn\'t that what we had\nbetter know? Mayn\'t her reasons be a dislike, beautifully founded, of\nthe presence, and thereby of the observation, of persons who perhaps\nknow about her things it\'s inconvenient to her they should know?\" That\nhideous card she might in mere logic play--being by this time, at her\nstill swifter private pace, intimately familiar with all the fingered\npasteboard in her pack. But she could play it only on the forbidden\nissue of sacrificing him; the issue so forbidden that it involved even\na horror of finding out if he would really have consented to be\nsacrificed. What she must do she must do by keeping her hands off him;\nand nothing meanwhile, as we see, had less in common with that scruple\nthan such a merciless manipulation of their yielding beneficiaries as\nher spirit so boldly revelled in. She saw herself, in this connexion,\nwithout detachment--saw others alone with intensity; otherwise she might\nhave been struck, fairly have been amused, by her free assignment of\nthe pachydermatous quality. If SHE could face the awkwardness of the\npersistence of her friends at Fawns in spite of Charlotte, she somehow\nlooked to them for an inspiration of courage that would improve upon her\nown. They were in short not only themselves to find a plausibility and\nan audacity, but were somehow by the way to pick up these forms for her,\nMaggie, as well. And she felt indeed that she was giving them scant\ntime longer when, one afternoon in Portland Place, she broke out with an\nirrelevance that was merely superficial.\n\n\"What awfulness, in heaven\'s name, is there between them? What do you\nbelieve, what do you KNOW?\"\n\nOh, if she went by faces her visitor\'s sudden whiteness, at this, might\nhave carried her far! Fanny Assingham turned pale for it, but there was\nsomething in such an appearance, in the look it put into the eyes, that\nrenewed Maggie\'s conviction of what this companion had been expecting.\nShe had been watching it come, come from afar, and now that it was\nthere, after all, and the first convulsion over, they would doubtless\nsoon find themselves in a more real relation. It was there because of\nthe Sunday luncheon they had partaken of alone together; it was there,\nas strangely as one would, because of the bad weather, the cold perverse\nJune rain, that was making the day wrong; it was there because it stood\nfor the whole sum of the perplexities and duplicities among which our\nyoung woman felt herself lately to have picked her steps; it was there\nbecause Amerigo and Charlotte were again paying together alone a \"week\nend\" visit which it had been Maggie\'s plan infernally to promote--just\nto see if, this time, they really would; it was there because she had\nkept Fanny, on her side, from paying one she would manifestly have\nbeen glad to pay, and had made her come instead, stupidly, vacantly,\nboringly, to luncheon: all in the spirit of celebrating the fact\nthat the Prince and Mrs. Verver had thus put it into her own power to\ndescribe them exactly as they were. It had abruptly occurred, in truth,\nthat Maggie required the preliminary help of determining HOW they were;\nthough, on the other hand, before her guest had answered her question\neverything in the hour and the place, everything in all the conditions,\naffected her as crying it out. Her guest\'s stare of ignorance, above\nall--that of itself at first cried it out. \"\'Between them?\' What do you\nmean?\"\n\n\"Anything there shouldn\'t be, there shouldn\'t have BEEN--all this time.\nDo you believe there is--or what\'s your idea?\"\n\nFanny\'s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken\nher breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. \"Do\nyou speak from a suspicion of your own?\"\n\n\"I speak, at last, from a torment. Forgive me if it comes out. I\'ve been\nthinking for months and months, and I\'ve no one to turn to, no one to\nhelp me to make things out; no impression but my own, don\'t you see? to\ngo by.\"\n\n\"You\'ve been thinking for months and months?\" Mrs. Assingham took it in.\n\"But WHAT then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?\"\n\n\"Well, horrible things--like a little beast that I perhaps am. That\nthere may be something--something wrong and dreadful, something they\ncover up.\"\n\nThe elder woman\'s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though\nwith a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. \"You imagine,\npoor child, that the wretches are in love? Is that it?\"\n\nBut Maggie for a minute only stared back at her. \"Help me to find out\nWHAT I imagine. I don\'t know--I\'ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety.\nHave you any?--do you see what I mean? If you\'ll tell me truly, that at\nleast, one way or the other, will do something for me.\"\n\nFanny\'s look had taken a peculiar gravity--a fulness with which it\nseemed to shine. \"Is what it comes to that you\'re jealous of Charlotte?\"\n\n\"Do you mean whether I hate her?\"--and Maggie thought. \"No; not on\naccount of father.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Mrs. Assingham returned, \"that isn\'t what one would suppose. What\nI ask is if you\'re jealous on account of your husband.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie presently, \"perhaps that may be all. If I\'m unhappy\nI\'m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you, at least, I\'m\nnot afraid of the word. If I\'m jealous, don\'t you see? I\'m tormented,\"\nshe went on--\"and all the more if I\'m helpless. And if I\'m both helpless\nAND tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep\nit there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too\nindecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can\'t keep it longer;\nI\'ve pulled it out, and here I am fairly screaming at you. They\'re\naway,\" she wound up, \"so they can\'t hear; and I\'m, by a miracle of\narrangement, not at luncheon with father at home. I live in the midst of\nmiracles of arrangement, half of which I admit, are my own; I go about\non tiptoe, I watch for every sound, I feel every breath, and yet I try\nall the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. Have you\never thought of me,\" she asked, \"as really feeling as I do?\"\n\nHer companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. \"Jealous, unhappy,\ntormented--? No,\" said Mrs. Assingham; \"but at the same time--and though\nyou may laugh at me for it!--I\'m bound to confess that I\'ve never been\nso awfully sure of what I may call knowing you. Here you are indeed, as\nyou say--such a deep little person! I\'ve never imagined your existence\npoisoned, and, since you wish to know if I consider that it need\nbe, I\'ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. Nothing,\ndecidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.\"\n\nFor a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung\nup while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in\nher intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had\naccumulated, considerably, by this time, round Mrs. Assingham\'s ample\npresence, and it made, even to our young woman\'s own sense, a medium in\nwhich she could at last take a deeper breath. \"I\'ve affected you, these\nmonths--and these last weeks in especial--as quiet and natural and\neasy?\"\n\nBut it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering.\n\"You\'ve never affected me, from the first hour I beheld you, as anything\nbut--in a way all your own--absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. In\na way, as I say,\" Mrs. Assingham almost caressingly repeated, \"just all\nyour very own--nobody else\'s at all. I\'ve never thought of you but\nas OUTSIDE of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or\nvulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. I\'ve\nnever mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that\nif they had seemed to be near you. But they haven\'t--if that\'s what you\nwant to know.\"\n\n\"You\'ve only believed me contented then because you\'ve believed me\nstupid?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride,\ndissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. \"If I had\nbelieved you stupid I shouldn\'t have thought you interesting, and if I\nhadn\'t thought you interesting I shouldn\'t have noted whether I \'knew\'\nyou, as I\'ve called it, or not. What I\'ve always been conscious of is\nyour having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character;\nquite as much in fact,\" Fanny smiled, \"as one could suppose a person\nof your size able to carry. The only thing was,\" she explained, \"that\nthanks to your never calling one\'s attention to it, I hadn\'t made out\nmuch more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to\nWHERE you carried it or kept it. Somewhere UNDER, I should simply have\nsaid--like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the\nHoly Father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. That\nrelic I\'ve had a glimpse of\"--with which she continued to invoke the\nprivilege of humour. \"But the precious little innermost, say this time\nlittle golden, personal nature of you--blest by a greater power, I\nthink, even than the Pope--that you\'ve never consentingly shown me. I\'m\nnot sure you\'ve ever consentingly shown it to anyone. You\'ve been in\ngeneral too modest.\"\n\nMaggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead.\n\"I strike you as modest to-day--modest when I stand here and scream at\nyou?\"\n\n\"Oh, your screaming, I\'ve granted you, is something new. I must fit\nit on somewhere. The question is, however,\" Mrs. Assingham further\nproceeded, \"of what the deuce I can fit it on TO. Do you mean,\" she\nasked, \"to the fact of our friends\' being, from yesterday to to-morrow,\nat a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?\" She spoke\nwith the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. \"Are you\nthinking of their being there alone--of their having consented to be?\"\nAnd then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: \"But\nisn\'t it true that--after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour,\nsaid YOU wouldn\'t--they would really much rather not have gone?\"\n\n\"Yes--they would certainly much rather not have gone. But I wanted them\nto go.\"\n\n\"Then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?\"\n\n\"I wanted to see if they WOULD. And they\'ve had to,\" Maggie added. \"It\nwas the only thing.\"\n\nHer friend appeared to wonder. \"From the moment you and your father\nbacked out?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t mean go for those people; I mean go for us. For father and\nme,\" Maggie went on. \"Because now they know.\"\n\n\"They \'know\'?\" Fanny Assingham quavered.\n\n\"That I\'ve been for some time past taking more notice. Notice of the\nqueer things in our life.\"\n\nMaggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what\nthese queer things might be; but Mrs. Assingham had the next minute\nbrushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a\nbetter one. \"And is it for that you did it? I mean gave up the visit.\"\n\n\"It\'s for that I did it. To leave them to themselves--as they less and\nless want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to\nbe left. As they had for so long arranged things,\" the Princess went\non, \"you see they sometimes have to be.\" And then, as if baffled by the\nlucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: \"Now do you\nthink I\'m modest?\"\n\nWith time, however; Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would\nserve. \"I think you\'re wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your\nquestion. It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no\n\'awfulness\'--I suspect none. I\'m deeply distressed,\" she added, \"that\nyou should do anything else.\" It drew again from Maggie a long look.\n\"You\'ve never even imagined anything?\"\n\n\"Ah, God forbid!--for it\'s exactly as a woman of imagination that\nI speak. There\'s no moment of my life at which I\'m not imagining\nsomething; and it\'s thanks to that, darling,\" Mrs. Assingham pursued,\n\"that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as\nviciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly\ninterested, in his admirable, adorable wife.\" She paused a minute as\nto give her friend the full benefit of this--as to Maggie\'s measure\nof which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she\ncrowned her effort.--\"He wouldn\'t hurt a hair of your head.\"\n\nIt had produced in Maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form\nof a smile, the most extraordinary expression. \"Ah, there it is!\"\n\nBut her guest had already gone on. \"And I\'m absolutely certain that\nCharlotte wouldn\'t either.\"\n\nIt kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there.\n\"No--Charlotte wouldn\'t either. That\'s how they\'ve had again to go\noff together. They\'ve been afraid not to--lest it should disturb me,\naggravate me, somehow work upon me. As I insisted that they must,\nthat we couldn\'t all fail--though father and Charlotte hadn\'t really\naccepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing\nas afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger:\nwhich would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. Their\nleast danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I\'ve\nseemed to accept and that I\'ve given no indication, at any moment, of\nnot accepting. Everything that has come up for them has come up, in\nan extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given\nmyself away--so that it\'s all as wonderful as you may conceive. They\nmove at any rate among the dangers I speak of--between that of their\ndoing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence,\nor the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.\" Her tone, by\nthis time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was\nstill more marked as she wound up. \"And that\'s how I make them do what I\nlike!\"\n\nIt had an effect on Mrs. Assingham, who rose with the deliberation that,\nfrom point to point, marked the widening of her grasp. \"My dear child,\nyou\'re amazing.\"\n\n\"Amazing--?\"\n\n\"You\'re terrible.\"\n\nMaggie thoughtfully shook her head. \"No; I\'m not terrible, and you don\'t\nthink me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt--but surprisingly\nmild. Because--don\'t you see?--I AM mild. I can bear anything.\"\n\n\"Oh, \'bear\'!\" Mrs. Assingham fluted.\n\n\"For love,\" said the Princess.\n\nFanny hesitated. \"Of your father?\"\n\n\"For love,\" Maggie repeated.\n\nIt kept her friend watching. \"Of your husband?\"\n\n\"For love,\" Maggie said again.\n\nIt was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have\ndetermined in her companion a choice between two or three highly\ndifferent alternatives. Mrs. Assingham\'s rejoinder, at all\nevents--however much or however little it was a choice--was presently a\ntriumph. \"Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken\nto convey to me that you believe your husband and your father\'s wife to\nbe in act and in fact lovers of each other?\" And then as the Princess\ndidn\'t at first answer: \"Do you call such an allegation as that \'mild\'?\"\n\n\"Oh, I\'m not pretending to be mild to you. But I\'ve told you, and\nmoreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I\'ve been to\nthem.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. \"Is that what you call it\nwhen you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?\"\n\n\"Ah, there wouldn\'t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham faced her--quite steady now. \"Are you really conscious,\nlove, of what you\'re saying?\"\n\n\"I\'m saying that I\'m bewildered and tormented, and that I\'ve no one but\nyou to speak to. I\'ve thought, I\'ve in fact been sure, that you\'ve seen\nfor yourself how much this is the case. It\'s why I\'ve believed you would\nmeet me half way.\"\n\n\"Half way to what? To denouncing,\" Fanny asked, \"two persons, friends of\nyears, whom I\'ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I\nhaven\'t the shadow of a charge to make?\"\n\nMaggie looked at her with wide eyes. \"I had much rather you should\ndenounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me,\" she said, \"if\nyou can see your way.\" It was exactly what she appeared to have argued\nout with herself. \"If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if,\nconscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me\nin my place for a low-minded little pig--!\"\n\n\"Well?\" said Mrs. Assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.\n\n\"I think I shall be saved.\"\n\nHer friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes,\neyes verily portentous, over her head. \"You say you\'ve no one to speak\nto, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings--not\nhaving, as you call it, given yourself away. Have you then never seen\nit not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a\npitch, to speak to your husband?\"\n\n\"I\'ve spoken to him,\" said Maggie.\n\nMrs. Assingham stared. \"Ah, then it isn\'t true that you\'ve made no\nsign.\"\n\nMaggie had a silence. \"I\'ve made no trouble. I\'ve made no scene. I\'ve\ntaken no stand. I\'ve neither reproached nor accused him. You\'ll say\nthere\'s a way in all that of being nasty enough.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" dropped from Fanny as if she couldn\'t help it.\n\n\"But I don\'t think--strangely enough--that he regards me as nasty.\nI think that at bottom--for that IS,\" said the Princess, \"the\nstrangeness--he\'s sorry for me. Yes, I think that, deep within, he\npities me.\"\n\nHer companion wondered. \"For the state you\'ve let yourself get into?\"\n\n\"For not being happy when I\'ve so much to make me so.\"\n\n\"You\'ve everything,\" said Mrs. Assingham with alacrity. Yet she remained\nfor an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. \"I don\'t understand,\nhowever, how, if you\'ve done nothing--\"\n\nAn impatience from Maggie had checked her. \"I\'ve not done absolutely\n\'nothing.\'\"\n\n\"But what then--?\"\n\n\"Well,\" she went on after a minute, \"he knows what I\'ve done.\"\n\nIt produced on Mrs. Assingham\'s part, her whole tone and manner\nexquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged, and the very duration\nof which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal\nrecognition. \"And what then has HE done?\"\n\nMaggie took again a minute. \"He has been splendid.\"\n\n\"\'Splendid\'? Then what more do you want?\"\n\n\"Ah, what you see!\" said Maggie. \"Not to be afraid.\"\n\nIt made her guest again hang fire. \"Not to be afraid really to speak?\"\n\n\"Not to be afraid NOT to speak.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham considered further. \"You can\'t even to Charlotte?\" But\nas, at this, after a look at her, Maggie turned off with a movement of\nsuppressed despair, she checked herself and might have been watching\nher, for all the difficulty and the pity of it, vaguely moving to the\nwindow and the view of the hill street. It was almost as if she had\nhad to give up, from failure of responsive wit in her friend--the last\nfailure she had feared--the hope of the particular relief she had been\nworking for. Mrs. Assingham resumed the next instant, however, in the\nvery tone that seemed most to promise her she should have to give up\nnothing. \"I see, I see; you would have in that case too many things to\nconsider.\" It brought the Princess round again, proving itself thus the\nnote of comprehension she wished most to clutch at. \"Don\'t be afraid.\"\n\nMaggie took it where she stood--which she was soon able to signify.\n\"Thank-you.\"\n\nIt very properly encouraged her counsellor. \"What your idea imputes is\na criminal intrigue carried on, from day to day, amid perfect trust and\nsympathy, not only under your eyes, but under your father\'s. That\'s an\nidea it\'s impossible for me for a. moment to entertain.\"\n\n\"Ah, there you are then! It\'s exactly what I wanted from you.\"\n\n\"You\'re welcome to it!\" Mrs. Assingham breathed.\n\n\"You never HAVE entertained it?\" Maggie pursued.\n\n\"Never for an instant,\" said Fanny with her head very high.\n\nMaggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. \"Pardon my being so\nhorrid. But by all you hold sacred?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham faced her. \"Ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an\nhonest woman.\"\n\n\"Thank-you then,\" said the Princess.\n\nSo they remained a little; after which, \"But do you believe it, love?\"\nFanny inquired.\n\n\"I believe YOU.\"\n\n\"Well, as I\'ve faith in THEM, it comes to the same thing.\"\n\nMaggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she\nembraced the proposition. \"The same thing.\"\n\n\"Then you\'re no longer unhappy?\" her guest urged, coming more gaily\ntoward her.\n\n\"I doubtless shan\'t be a great while.\"\n\nBut it was now Mrs. Assingham\'s turn to want more. \"I\'ve convinced you\nit\'s impossible?\"\n\nShe had held out her arms, and Maggie, after a moment, meeting her,\nthrew herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign\nof relief. \"Impossible, impossible,\" she emphatically, more than\nemphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over\nthe impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing,\nhad even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely,\nfrom her friend.\n\n\n\n XXXI\n\nThe understanding appeared to have come to be that the Colonel and his\nwife were to present themselves toward the middle of July for the \"good\nlong visit\" at Fawns on which Maggie had obtained from her father that\nhe should genially insist; as well as that the couple from Eaton Square\nshould welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after\ntheir own arrival, the advent of the couple from Portland Place. \"Oh,\nwe shall give you time to breathe!\" Fanny remarked, in reference to the\ngeneral prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of\ncriticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing\nherself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the\nconfident view of these punctualities of the Assinghams. The ground she\ncould best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this\nconnexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her\navidity, the way the hospitality of the Ververs met her convenience and\nministered to her ease, destitute as the Colonel had kept her, from the\nfirst, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base\nfor the stale season now at hand. She had explained at home, she had\nrepeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of\nher, or--as she now put it--of their position. When the pair could\ndo nothing else, in Cadogan Place, they could still talk of marvellous\nlittle Maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having\nto hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight\ndiscussion at which we have been present was so far from having\nexhausted. It came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had\nplanted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner\nto make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense\nof fascination. Mrs. Assingham declared at such moments that in the\ninterest of this admirable young thing--to whom, she also declared, she\nhad quite \"come over\"--she was ready to pass with all the world else,\neven with the Prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of\nher continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar,\nindelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an\nabandoned old age. The Colonel\'s confessed attention had been enlisted,\nwe have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any\nguaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew,\nwas not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had\nlet herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened,\nhe couldn\'t keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost\nintelligently, on the Princess. If he was in love with HER now, however,\nso much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they\nwould have to do for her. Mrs. Assingham had come back to that, whenever\nhe groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment--since Maggie\'s\nlittle march WAS positively beguiling--let him lose sight of the grim\nnecessity awaiting them. \"We shall have, as I\'ve again and again told\nyou, to lie for her--to lie till we\'re black in the face.\"\n\n\"To lie \'for\' her?\" The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague\nvision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from\nlucidity.\n\n\"To lie TO her, up and down, and in and out--it comes to the same thing.\nIt will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince\nabout one\'s belief in HIM; to Charlotte about one\'s belief in HER; to\nMr. Verver, dear sweet man, about one\'s belief in everyone. So we\'ve\nwork cut out--with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we LIKE to\nbe there for such a purpose. We hate it unspeakably--I\'m more ready\nto be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let everyone,\nselfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any\nfelt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. I speak at least\nfor myself. For you,\" she had added, \"as I\'ve given you so perfect an\nopportunity to fall in love with Maggie, you\'ll doubtless find your\naccount in being so much nearer to her.\"\n\n\"And what do you make,\" the Colonel could, at this, always imperturbably\nenough ask, \"of the account you yourself will find in being so much\nnearer to the Prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation\nwith whom--to say nothing of my weak good-nature about it--you give such\na pretty picture?\"\n\nTo the picture in question she had been always, in fact, able\ncontemplatively to return. \"The difficulty of my enjoyment of that is,\ndon\'t you see? that I\'m making, in my loyalty to Maggie, a sad hash of\nhis affection for me.\"\n\n\"You find means to call it then, this whitewashing of his crime, being\n\'loyal\' to Maggie?\"\n\n\"Oh, about that particular crime there is always much to say. It is\nalways more interesting to us than any other crime; it has at least\nthat for it. But of course I call everything I have in mind at all being\nloyal to Maggie. Being loyal to her is, more than anything else, helping\nher with her father--which is what she most wants and needs.\"\n\nThe Colonel had had it before, but he could apparently never have too\nmuch of it. \"Helping her \'with\' him--?\"\n\n\"Helping her against him then. Against what we\'ve already so fully\ntalked of--its having to be recognised between them that he doubts.\nThat\'s where my part is so plain--to see her through, to see her through\nto the end.\" Exaltation, for the moment, always lighted Mrs. Assingham\'s\nreference to this plainness; yet she at the same time seldom failed, the\nnext instant, to qualify her view of it. \"When I talk of my obligation\nas clear I mean that it\'s absolute; for just HOW, from day to day and\nthrough thick and thin, to keep the thing up is, I grant you, another\nmatter. There\'s one way, luckily, nevertheless, in which I\'m strong. I\ncan perfectly count on her.\"\n\nThe Colonel seldom failed here, as from the insidious growth of an\nexcitement, to wonder, to encourage. \"Not to see you\'re lying?\"\n\n\"To stick to me fast, whatever she sees. If I stick to her--that is\nto my own poor struggling way, under providence, of watching over them\nALL--she\'ll stand by me to the death. She won\'t give me away. For, you\nknow, she easily can.\"\n\nThis, regularly, was the most lurid turn of their road; but Bob\nAssingham, with each journey, met it as for the first time. \"Easily?\"\n\n\"She can utterly dishonour me with her father. She can let him know that\nI was aware, at the time of his marriage--as I had been aware at the\ntime of her own--of the relations that had pre-existed between his wife\nand her husband.\"\n\n\"And how can she do so if, up to this minute, by your own statement, she\nis herself in ignorance of your knowledge?\"\n\nIt was a question that Mrs. Assingham had ever, for dealing with, a\nmanner to which repeated practice had given almost a grand effect; very\nmuch as if she was invited by it to say that about this, exactly, she\nproposed to do her best lying. But she said, and with full lucidity,\nsomething quite other: it could give itself a little the air, still, of\na triumph over his coarseness. \"By acting, immediately with the blind\nresentment with which, in her place, ninety-nine women out of a hundred\nwould act; and by so making Mr. Verver, in turn, act with the same\nnatural passion, the passion of ninety-nine men out of a hundred.\nThey\'ve only to agree about me,\" the poor lady said; \"they\'ve only to\nfeel at one over it, feel bitterly practised upon, cheated and injured;\nthey\'ve only to denounce me to each other as false and infamous, for me\nto be quite irretrievably dished. Of course it\'s I who have been, and\nwho continue to be, cheated--cheated by the Prince and Charlotte; but\nthey\'re not obliged to give me the benefit of that, or to give either\nof us the benefit of anything. They\'ll be within their rights to lump us\nall together as a false, cruel, conspiring crew, and, if they can find\nthe right facts to support them, get rid of us root and branch.\"\n\nThis, on each occasion, put the matter so at the worst that repetition\neven scarce controlled the hot flush with which she was compelled to\nsee the parts of the whole history, all its ugly consistency and its\ntemporary gloss, hang together. She enjoyed, invariably, the sense of\nmaking her danger present, of making it real, to her husband, and of his\nalmost turning pale, when their eyes met, at this possibility of their\ncompromised state and their shared discredit. The beauty was that, as\nunder a touch of one of the ivory notes at the left of the keyboard, he\nsounded out with the short sharpness of the dear fond stupid uneasy man.\n\"Conspiring--so far as YOU were concerned--to what end?\"\n\n\"Why, to the obvious end of getting the Prince a wife--at Maggie\'s\nexpense. And then to that of getting Charlotte a husband at Mr.\nVerver\'s.\"\n\n\"Of rendering friendly services, yes--which have produced, as it\nturns out, complications. But from the moment you didn\'t do it FOR the\ncomplications, why shouldn\'t you have rendered them?\"\n\nIt was extraordinary for her, always, in this connexion, how, with time\ngiven him, he fell to speaking better for her than she could, in the\npresence of her clear-cut image of the \"worst,\" speak for herself.\nTroubled as she was she thus never wholly failed of her amusement by\nthe way. \"Oh, isn\'t what I may have meddled \'for\'--so far as it can\nbe proved I did meddle--open to interpretation; by which I mean to Mr.\nVerver\'s and Maggie\'s? Mayn\'t they see my motive, in the light of that\nappreciation, as the wish to be decidedly more friendly to the others\nthan to the victimised father and daughter?\" She positively liked to\nkeep it up. \"Mayn\'t they see my motive as the determination to serve\nthe Prince, in any case, and at any price, first; to \'place\' him\ncomfortably; in other words to find him his fill of money? Mayn\'t\nit have all the air for them of a really equivocal, sinister bargain\nbetween us--something quite unholy and louche?\"\n\nIt produced in the poor Colonel, infallibly, the echo. \"\'Louche,\'\nlove--?\"\n\n\"Why, haven\'t you said as much yourself?--haven\'t you put your finger on\nthat awful possibility?\"\n\nShe had a way now, with his felicities, that made him enjoy being\nreminded of them. \"In speaking of your having always had such a\n\'mash\'--?\"\n\n\"Such a mash, precisely, for the man I was to help to put so splendidly\nat his ease. A motherly mash an impartial look at it would show it\nonly as likely to have been--but we\'re not talking, of course, about\nimpartial looks. We\'re talking of good innocent people deeply worked\nupon by a horrid discovery, and going much further, in their view of the\nlurid, as such people almost always do, than those who have been wider\nawake, all round, from the first. What I was to have got from my\nfriend, in such a view, in exchange for what I had been able to do for\nhim--well, that would have been an equivalent, of a kind best known to\nmyself, for me shrewdly to consider.\" And she easily lost herself, each\ntime, in the anxious satisfaction of filling out the picture. \"It would\nhave been seen, it would have been heard of, before, the case of the\nwoman a man doesn\'t want, or of whom he\'s tired, or for whom he has\nno use but SUCH uses, and who is capable, in her infatuation, in her\npassion, of promoting his interests with other women rather than lose\nsight of him, lose touch of him, cease to have to do with him at all.\nCela s\'est vu, my dear; and stranger things still--as I needn\'t tell\nYOU! Very good then,\" she wound up; \"there is a perfectly possible\nconception of the behaviour of your sweet wife; since, as I say, there\'s\nno imagination so lively, once it\'s started, as that of really agitated\nlambs. Lions are nothing to them, for lions are sophisticated, are\nblases, are brought up, from the first, to prowling and mauling. It does\ngive us, you\'ll admit, something to think about. My relief is luckily,\nhowever, in what I finally do think.\"\n\nHe was well enough aware, by this time, of what she finally did think;\nbut he was not without a sense, again, also for his amusement by the\nway. It would have made him, for a spectator of these passages between\nthe pair, resemble not a little the artless child who hears his\nfavourite story told for the twentieth time and enjoys it exactly\nbecause he knows what is next to happen. \"What of course will pull them\nup, if they turn out to have less imagination than you assume, is the\nprofit you can have found in furthering Mrs. Verver\'s marriage. You\nweren\'t at least in love with Charlotte.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Mrs. Assingham, at this, always brought out, \"my hand in that is\neasily accounted for by my desire to be agreeable to HIM.\"\n\n\"To Mr. Verver?\"\n\n\"To the Prince--by preventing her in that way from taking, as he was in\ndanger of seeing her do, some husband with whom he wouldn\'t be able to\nopen, to keep open, so large an account as with his father-in-law. I\'ve\nbrought her near him, kept her within his reach, as she could never have\nremained either as a single woman or as the wife of a different man.\"\n\n\"Kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress?\"\n\n\"Kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress.\" She brought\nit out grandly--it had always so, for her own ear as well as, visibly,\nfor her husband\'s, its effect. \"The facilities in the case, thanks to\nthe particular conditions, being so quite ideal.\"\n\n\"Down even to the facility of your minding everything so little--from\nyour own point of view--as to have supplied him with the enjoyment of\nTWO beautiful women.\"\n\n\"Down even to THAT--to the monstrosity of my folly. But not,\" Mrs.\nAssingham added, \"\'two\' of anything. One beautiful woman--and one\nbeautiful fortune. That\'s what a creature of pure virtue exposes\nherself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her\ndisinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry\nher too far. Voila.\"\n\n\"I see. It\'s the way the Ververs have you.\"\n\n\"It\'s the way the Ververs \'have\' me. It\'s in other words the way they\nwould be able to make such a show to each other of having me--if Maggie\nweren\'t so divine.\"\n\n\"She lets you off?\" He never failed to insist on all this to the very\nend; which was how he had become so versed in what she finally thought.\n\n\"She lets me off. So that now, horrified and contrite at what I\'ve done,\nI may work to help her out. And Mr. Verver,\" she was fond of adding,\n\"lets me off too.\"\n\n\"Then you do believe he knows?\"\n\nIt determined in her always, there, with a significant pause, a deep\nimmersion in her thought. \"I believe he would let me off if he did\nknow--so that I might work to help HIM out. Or rather, really,\" she went\non, \"that I might work to help Maggie. That would be his motive, that\nwould be his condition, in forgiving me; just as hers, for me, in fact,\nher motive and her condition, are my acting to spare her father. But\nit\'s with Maggie only that I\'m directly concerned; nothing, ever--not a\nbreath, not a look, I\'ll guarantee--shall I have, whatever happens, from\nMr. Verver himself. So it is, therefore, that I shall probably, by the\nclosest possible shave, escape the penalty of my crimes.\"\n\n\"You mean being held responsible.\"\n\n\"I mean being held responsible. My advantage will be that Maggie\'s such\na trump.\"\n\n\"Such a trump that, as you say, she\'ll stick to you.\"\n\n\"Stick to me, on our understanding--stick to me. For our understanding\'s\nsigned and sealed.\" And to brood over it again was ever, for Mrs.\nAssingham, to break out again with exaltation. \"It\'s a grand, high\ncompact. She has solemnly promised.\"\n\n\"But in words--?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, in words enough--since it\'s a matter of words. To keep up HER\nlie so long as I keep up mine.\"\n\n\"And what do you call \'her\' lie?\"\n\n\"Why, the pretence that she believes me. Believes they\'re innocent.\"\n\n\"She positively believes then they\'re guilty? She has arrived at that,\nshe\'s really content with it, in the absence of proof?\" It was here,\neach time, that Fanny Assingham most faltered; but always at last to\nget the matter, for her own sense, and with a long sigh, sufficiently\nstraight. \"It isn\'t a question of belief or of proof, absent or\npresent; it\'s inevitably, with her, a question of natural perception,\nof insurmountable feeling. She irresistibly knows that there\'s something\nbetween them. But she hasn\'t \'arrived\' at it, as you say, at all; that\'s\nexactly what she hasn\'t done, what she so steadily and intensely refuses\nto do. She stands off and off, so as not to arrive; she keeps out to sea\nand away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at\na safe distance with her--as I, for my own skin, only ask not to come\nnearer.\" After which, invariably, she let him have it all. \"So far\nfrom wanting proof--which she must get, in a manner, by my siding with\nher--she wants DISproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so\nextraordinarily, to side against her. It\'s really magnificent, when you\ncome to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. If I\'ll but cover them\nup brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round and about them, as\nhappy as a bird, she on her side will do what she can. If I\'ll keep them\nquiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time--time as against any\nidea of her father\'s--and so, somehow, come out. If I\'ll take care\nof Charlotte, in particular, she\'ll take care of the Prince; and it\'s\nbeautiful and wonderful, really pathetic and exquisite, to see what she\nfeels that time may do for her.\"\n\n\"Ah, but what does she call, poor little thing, \'time\'?\"\n\n\"Well, this summer at Fawns, to begin with. She can live as yet, of\ncourse, but from hand to mouth; but she has worked it out for herself,\nI think, that the very danger of Fawns, superficially looked at, may\npractically amount to a greater protection. THERE the lovers--if they\nARE lovers!--will have to mind. They\'ll feel it for themselves, unless\nthings are too utterly far gone with them.\"\n\n\"And things are NOT too utterly far gone with them?\"\n\nShe had inevitably, poor woman, her hesitation for this, but she put\ndown her answer as, for the purchase of some absolutely indispensable\narticle, she would have put down her last shilling. \"No.\"\n\nIt made him always grin at her. \"Is THAT a lie?\"\n\n\"Do you think you\'re worth lying to? If it weren\'t the truth, for me,\"\nshe added, \"I wouldn\'t have accepted for Fawns. I CAN, I believe, keep\nthe wretches quiet.\"\n\n\"But how--at the worst?\"\n\n\"Oh, \'the worst\'--don\'t talk about the worst! I can keep them quiet at\nthe best, I seem to feel, simply by our being there. It will work, from\nweek to week, of itself. You\'ll see.\"\n\nHe was willing enough to see, but he desired to provide--! \"Yet if it\ndoesn\'t work?\"\n\n\"Ah, that\'s talking about the worst!\"\n\nWell, it might be; but what were they doing, from morning to night, at\nthis crisis, but talk? \"Who\'ll keep the others?\"\n\n\"The others--?\"\n\n\"Who\'ll keep THEM quiet? If your couple have had a life together, they\ncan\'t have had it completely without witnesses, without the help of\npersons, however few, who must have some knowledge, some idea about\nthem. They\'ve had to meet, secretly, protectedly, they\'ve had to\narrange; for if they haven\'t met, and haven\'t arranged, and haven\'t\nthereby, in some quarter or other, had to give themselves away, why are\nwe piling it up so? Therefore if there\'s evidence, up and down London--\"\n\n\"There must be people in possession of it? Ah, it isn\'t all,\" she always\nremembered, \"up and down London. Some of it must connect them--I mean,\"\nshe musingly added, \"it naturally WOULD--with other places; with who\nknows what strange adventures, opportunities, dissimulations? But\nwhatever there may have been, it will also all have been buried on the\nspot. Oh, they\'ve known HOW--too beautifully! But nothing, all the same,\nis likely to find its way to Maggie of itself.\"\n\n\"Because every one who may have anything to tell, you hold, will have\nbeen so squared?\" And then inveterately, before she could say--he\nenjoyed so much coming to this: \"What will have squared Lady\nCastledean?\"\n\n\"The consciousness\"--she had never lost her promptness--\"of having no\nstones to throw at any one else\'s windows. She has enough to do to guard\nher own glass. That was what she was doing,\" Fanny said, \"that last\nmorning at Matcham when all of us went off and she kept the Prince\nand Charlotte over. She helped them simply that she might herself be\nhelped--if it wasn\'t perhaps, rather, with her ridiculous Mr. Blint,\nthat HE might be. They put in together, therefore, of course, that day;\nthey got it clear--and quite under her eyes; inasmuch as they didn\'t\nbecome traceable again, as we know, till late in the evening.\" On this\nhistoric circumstance Mrs. Assingham was always ready afresh to brood;\nbut she was no less ready, after her brooding, devoutly to add \"Only we\nknow nothing whatever else--for which all our stars be thanked!\"\n\nThe Colonel\'s gratitude was apt to be less marked. \"What did they do for\nthemselves, all the same, from the moment they got that free hand to the\nmoment (long after dinner-time, haven\'t you told me?) of their turning\nup at their respective homes?\"\n\n\"Well, it\'s none of your business!\"\n\n\"I don\'t speak of it as mine, but it\'s only too much theirs. People are\nalways traceable, in England, when tracings are required. Something,\nsooner or later, happens; somebody, sooner or later, breaks the holy\ncalm. Murder will out.\"\n\n\"Murder will--but this isn\'t murder. Quite the contrary perhaps! I\nverily believe,\" she had her moments of adding, \"that, for the amusement\nof the row, you would prefer an explosion.\"\n\nThis, however, was a remark he seldom noticed; he wound up, for the most\npart, after a long, contemplative smoke, with a transition from which no\nexposed futility in it had succeeded in weaning him. \"What I can\'t for\nmy life make out is your idea of the old boy.\"\n\n\"Charlotte\'s too inconceivably funny husband? I HAVE no idea.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon--you\'ve just shown it. You never speak of him but as\ntoo inconceivably funny.\"\n\n\"Well, he is,\" she always confessed. \"That is he may be, for all I know,\ntoo inconceivably great. But that\'s not an idea. It represents only\nmy weak necessity of feeling that he\'s beyond me--which isn\'t an idea\neither. You see he MAY be stupid too.\"\n\n\"Precisely--there you are.\"\n\n\"Yet on the other hand,\" she always went on, \"he MAY be sublime:\nsublimer even than Maggie herself. He may in fact have already been. But\nwe shall never know.\" With which her tone betrayed perhaps a shade of\nsoreness for the single exemption she didn\'t yearningly welcome. \"THAT I\ncan see.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say--!\" It came to affect the Colonel himself with a sense of\nprivation.\n\n\"I\'m not sure, even, that Charlotte will.\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear, what Charlotte doesn\'t know--!\"\n\nBut she brooded and brooded. \"I\'m not sure even that the Prince will.\"\nIt seemed privation, in short, for them all. \"They\'ll be mystified,\nconfounded, tormented. But they won\'t know--and all their possible\nputting their heads together won\'t make them. That,\" said Fanny\nAssingham, \"will be their punishment.\" And she ended, ever, when she\nhad come so far, at the same pitch. \"It will probably also--if I get off\nwith so little--be mine.\"\n\n\"And what,\" her husband liked to ask, \"will be mine?\"\n\n\"Nothing--you\'re not worthy of any. One\'s punishment is in what one\nfeels, and what will make ours effective is that we SHALL feel.\" She was\nsplendid with her \"ours\"; she flared up with this prophecy. \"It will be\nMaggie herself who will mete it out.\"\n\n\"Maggie--?\"\n\n\"SHE\'LL know--about her father; everything. Everything,\" she repeated.\nOn the vision of which, each time, Mrs. Assingham, as with the\npresentiment of an odd despair, turned away from it. \"But she\'ll never\ntell us.\"\n\n\n\n XXXII\n\nIf Maggie had not so firmly made up her mind never to say, either to her\ngood friend or to any one else, more than she meant about her father,\nshe might have found herself betrayed into some such overflow during the\nweek spent in London with her husband after the others had adjourned\nto Fawns for the summer. This was because of the odd element of the\nunnatural imparted to the so simple fact of their brief separation by\nthe assumptions resident in their course of life hitherto. She was used,\nherself, certainly, by this time, to dealing with odd elements; but she\ndropped, instantly, even from such peace as she had patched up, when it\nwas a question of feeling that her unpenetrated parent might be alone\nwith them. She thought of him as alone with them when she thought of him\nas alone with Charlotte--and this, strangely enough, even while fixing\nher sense to the full on his wife\'s power of preserving, quite of\nenhancing, every felicitous appearance. Charlotte had done that--under\nimmeasurably fewer difficulties indeed--during the numerous months of\ntheir hymeneal absence from England, the period prior to that wonderful\nreunion of the couples, in the interest of the larger play of all the\nvirtues of each, which was now bearing, for Mrs. Verver\'s stepdaughter\nat least, such remarkable fruit. It was the present so much briefer\ninterval, in a situation, possibly in a relation, so changed--it was the\nnew terms of her problem that would tax Charlotte\'s art. The Princess\ncould pull herself up, repeatedly, by remembering that the real\n\"relation\" between her father and his wife was a thing that she knew\nnothing about and that, in strictness, was none of her business; but she\nnone the less failed to keep quiet, as she would have called it, before\nthe projected image of their ostensibly happy isolation. Nothing could\nhave had less of the quality of quietude than a certain queer wish that\nfitfully flickered up in her, a wish that usurped, perversely, the place\nof a much more natural one. If Charlotte, while she was about it, could\nonly have been WORSE!--that idea Maggie fell to invoking instead of the\nidea that she might desirably have been better. For, exceedingly odd as\nit was to feel in such ways, she believed she mightn\'t have worried so\nmuch if she didn\'t somehow make her stepmother out, under the beautiful\ntrees and among the dear old gardens, as lavish of fifty kinds of\nconfidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness. Gentleness and\nconfidence were certainly the right thing, as from a charming woman to\nher husband, but the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady\'s\nhands and flung over her companion as a light, muffling veil, formed\nprecisely a wrought transparency through which she felt her father\'s\neyes continually rest on herself. The reach of his gaze came to her\nstraighter from a distance; it showed him as still more conscious, down\nthere alone, of the suspected, the felt elaboration of the process of\ntheir not alarming or hurting him. She had herself now, for weeks and\nweeks, and all unwinkingly, traced the extension of this pious effort;\nbut her perfect success in giving no sign--she did herself THAT\ncredit--would have been an achievement quite wasted if Mrs. Verver\nshould make with him those mistakes of proportion, one set of them too\nabruptly, too incoherently designed to correct another set, that she had\nmade with his daughter. However, if she HAD been worse, poor woman, who\nshould say that her husband would, to a certainty, have been better?\n\nOne groped noiselessly among such questions, and it was actually not\neven definite for the Princess that her own Amerigo, left alone with her\nin town, had arrived at the golden mean of non-precautionary gallantry\nwhich would tend, by his calculation, to brush private criticism from\nits last perching-place. The truth was, in this connection, that she\nhad different sorts of terrors, and there were hours when it came to\nher that these days were a prolonged repetition of that night-drive, of\nweeks before, from the other house to their own, when he had tried to\ncharm her, by his sovereign personal power, into some collapse that\nwould commit her to a repudiation of consistency. She was never alone\nwith him, it was to be said, without her having sooner or later to ask\nherself what had already become of her consistency; yet, at the same\ntime, so long as she breathed no charge, she kept hold of a remnant of\nappearance that could save her from attack. Attack, real attack, from\nhim, as he would conduct it was what she above all dreaded; she was so\nfar from sure that under that experience she mightn\'t drop into some\ndepth of weakness, mightn\'t show him some shortest way with her that he\nwould know how to use again. Therefore, since she had given him, as yet,\nno moment\'s pretext for pretending to her that she had either lost faith\nor suffered by a feather\'s weight in happiness, she left him, it was\neasy to reason, with an immense advantage for all waiting and all\ntension. She wished him, for the present, to \"make up\" to her for\nnothing. Who could say to what making-up might lead, into what\nconsenting or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her?\nShe loved him too helplessly, still, to dare to open the door, by an\ninch, to his treating her as if either of them had wronged the other.\nSomething or somebody--and who, at this, which of them all?--would\ninevitably, would in the gust of momentary selfishness, be sacrificed\nto that; whereas what she intelligently needed was to know where she was\ngoing. Knowledge, knowledge, was a fascination as well as a fear; and\na part, precisely, of the strangeness of this juncture was the way her\napprehension that he would break out to her with some merely general\nprofession was mixed with her dire need to forgive him, to reassure him,\nto respond to him, on no ground that she didn\'t fully measure. To do\nthese things it must be clear to her what they were FOR; but to act in\nthat light was, by the same effect, to learn, horribly, what the other\nthings had been. He might tell her only what he wanted, only what would\nwork upon her by the beauty of his appeal; and the result of the direct\nappeal of ANY beauty in him would be her helpless submission to\nhis terms. All her temporary safety, her hand-to-mouth success,\naccordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor divining this, thanks to\nsuch means as she could take to prevent him; take, literally from hour\nto hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. From hour to hour\nshe fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. \"Ah yes,\nit HAS been as you think; I\'ve strayed away, I\'ve fancied myself free,\ngiven myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because I\nthought you were different--different from what I now see. But it was\nonly, only, because I didn\'t know--and you must admit that you gave\nme scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my\nmistake; to which I confess, for which I\'ll do exquisite penance, which\nyou can help me now, I too beautifully feel, to get completely over.\"\n\nThat was what, while she watched herself, she potentially heard him\nbring out; and while she carried to an end another day, another sequence\nand yet another of their hours together, without his producing it, she\nfelt herself occupied with him beyond even the intensity of surrender.\nShe was keeping her head, for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of\nthis detachment, with the labour of her keeping the pitch of it down,\nheld them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which\nartless passion would have been but a beating of the air. Her greatest\ndanger, or at least her greatest motive for care, was the obsession of\nthe thought that, if he actually did suspect, the fruit of his attention\nto her couldn\'t help being a sense of the growth of her importance.\nTaking the measure, with him, as she had taken it with her father, of\nthe prescribed reach of her hypocrisy, she saw how it would have to\nstretch even to her seeking to prove that she was NOT, all the same,\nimportant. A single touch from him--oh, she should know it in case of\nits coming!--any brush of his hand, of his lips, of his voice, inspired\nby recognition of her probable interest as distinct from pity for her\nvirtual gloom, would hand her over to him bound hand and foot. Therefore\nto be free, to be free to act, other than abjectly, for her father,\nshe must conceal from him the validity that, like a microscopic insect\npushing a grain of sand, she was taking on even for herself. She could\nkeep it up with a change in sight, but she couldn\'t keep it up forever;\nso that, really, one extraordinary effect of their week of untempered\nconfrontation, which bristled with new marks, was to make her reach\nout, in thought, to their customary companions and calculate the kind\nof relief that rejoining them would bring. She was learning, almost from\nminute to minute, to be a mistress of shades since, always, when there\nwere possibilities enough of intimacy, there were also, by that fact, in\nintercourse, possibilities of iridescence; but she was working against\nan adversary who was a master of shades too, and on whom, if she didn\'t\nlook out, she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the\nnature of their struggle. To feel him in fact, to think of his feeling\nhimself, her adversary in things of this fineness--to see him at all,\nin short, brave a name that would represent him as in opposition--\nwas already to be nearly reduced to a visible smothering of her cry of\nalarm. Should he guess they were having, in their so occult manner,\na HIGH fight, and that it was she, all the while, in her supposed\nstupidity, who had made it high and was keeping it high--in the event of\nhis doing this before they could leave town she should verily be lost.\n\nThe possible respite for her at Fawns would come from the fact that\nobservation, in him, there, would inevitably find some of its directness\ndiverted. This would be the case if only because the remarkable strain\nof her father\'s placidity might be thought of as likely to claim some\nlarger part of his attention. Besides which there would be always\nCharlotte herself to draw him off. Charlotte would help him again,\ndoubtless, to study anything, right or left, that might be symptomatic;\nbut Maggie could see that this very fact might perhaps contribute, in\nits degree, to protect the secret of her own fermentation. It is not\neven incredible that she may have discovered the gleam of a comfort that\nwas to broaden in the conceivable effect on the Prince\'s spirit, on his\nnerves, on his finer irritability, of some of the very airs and aspects,\nthe light graces themselves, of Mrs. Verver\'s too perfect competence.\nWhat it would most come to, after all, she said to herself, was a\nrenewal for him of the privilege of watching that lady watch her. Very\nwell, then: with the elements after all so mixed in him, how long would\nhe go on enjoying mere spectatorship of that act? For she had by\nthis time made up her mind that in Charlotte\'s company he deferred to\nCharlotte\'s easier art of mounting guard. Wouldn\'t he get tired--to put\nit only at that--of seeing her always on the rampart, erect and elegant,\nwith her lace-flounced parasol now folded and now shouldered, march to\nand fro against a gold-coloured east or west? Maggie had gone far, truly\nfor a view of the question of this particular reaction, and she was not\nincapable of pulling herself up with the rebuke that she counted her\nchickens before they were hatched. How sure she should have to be of\nso many things before she might thus find a weariness in Amerigo\'s\nexpression and a logic in his weariness!\n\nOne of her dissimulated arts for meeting their tension, meanwhile,\nwas to interweave Mrs. Assingham as plausibly as possible with the\nundulations of their surface, to bring it about that she should join\nthem, of an afternoon, when they drove together or if they went to look\nat things--looking at things being almost as much a feature of their\nlife as if they were bazaar-opening royalties. Then there were such\ncombinations, later in the day, as her attendance on them, and the\nColonel\'s as well, for such whimsical matters as visits to the opera\nno matter who was singing, and sudden outbreaks of curiosity about\nthe British drama. The good couple from Cadogan Place could always\nunprotestingly dine with them and \"go on\" afterwards to such publicities\nas the Princess cultivated the boldness of now perversely preferring.\nIt may be said of her that, during these passages, she plucked her\nsensations by the way, detached, nervously, the small wild blossoms\nof her dim forest, so that she could smile over them at least with the\nspacious appearance, for her companions, for her husband above all, of\nbravely, of altogether frivolously, going a-maying. She had her intense,\nher smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations; she\nhad in particular the extravagant, positively at moments the amused,\nsense of using her friend to the topmost notch, accompanied with the\nhigh luxury of not having to explain. Never, no never, should she have\nto explain to Fanny Assingham again--who, poor woman, on her own side,\nwould be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher\ningenuity. She put it all off on Fanny, and the dear thing herself might\nhenceforth appraise the quantity. More and more magnificent now in\nher blameless egoism, Maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only\nsignified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her. She didn\'t care\nfor what devotions, what dinners of their own the Assinghams might have\nbeen \"booked\"; that was a detail, and she could think without wincing of\nthe ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them. It\nall fell in beautifully, moreover; so that, as hard, at this time, in\nspite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the Princess showed\nsomething of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the\ncreative hand. She had but to have the fancy of presenting herself, of\npresenting her husband, in a certain high and convenient manner, to make\nit natural they should go about with their gentleman and their lady. To\nwhat else but this, exactly, had Charlotte, during so many weeks of the\nearlier season, worked her up?--herself assuming and discharging, so\nfar as might be, the character and office of one of those revolving\nsubordinate presences that float in the wake of greatness.\n\nThe precedent was therefore established and the group normally\nconstituted. Mrs. Assingham, meanwhile, at table, on the stairs, in\nthe carriage or the opera-box, might--with her constant overflow of\nexpression, for that matter, and its singularly resident character where\nmen in especial were concerned--look across at Amerigo in whatever sense\nshe liked: it was not of that Maggie proposed to be afraid. She might\nwarn him, she might rebuke him, she might reassure him, she might--if it\nwere impossible not to--absolutely make love to him; even this was open\nto her, as a matter simply between them, if it would help her to answer\nfor the impeccability he had guaranteed. And Maggie desired in fact\nonly to strike her as acknowledging the efficacy of her aid when she\nmentioned to her one evening a small project for the morrow, privately\nentertained--the idea, irresistible, intense, of going to pay, at the\nMuseum, a visit to Mr. Crichton. Mr. Crichton, as Mrs. Assingham could\neasily remember, was the most accomplished and obliging of public\nfunctionaries, whom every one knew and who knew every one--who had from\nthe first, in particular, lent himself freely, and for the love of art\nand history, to becoming one of the steadier lights of Mr. Verver\'s\nadventurous path. The custodian of one of the richest departments of\nthe great national collection of precious things, he could feel for the\nsincere private collector and urge him on his way even when condemned\nto be present at his capture of trophies sacrificed by the country to\nparliamentary thrift. He carried his amiability to the point of saying\nthat, since London, under pettifogging views, had to miss, from time to\ntime, its rarest opportunities, he was almost consoled to see such lost\ncauses invariably wander at last, one by one, with the tormenting tinkle\nof their silver bells, into the wondrous, the already famous fold beyond\nthe Mississippi. There was a charm in his \"almosts\" that was not to\nbe resisted, especially after Mr. Verver and Maggie had grown sure--or\nalmost, again--of enjoying the monopoly of them; and on this basis of\nenvy changed to sympathy by the more familiar view of the father and the\ndaughter, Mr. Crichton had at both houses, though especially in Eaton\nSquare, learned to fill out the responsive and suggestive character. It\nwas at his invitation, Fanny well recalled, that Maggie, one day, long\nbefore, and under her own attendance precisely, had, for the glory of\nthe name she bore, paid a visit to one of the ampler shrines of the\nsupreme exhibitory temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the\ngold-and-brown, gold-and-ivory, of old Italian bindings and consecrated\nto the records of the Prince\'s race. It had been an impression that\npenetrated, that remained; yet Maggie had sighed, ever so prettily, at\nits having to be so superficial. She was to go back some day, to dive\ndeeper, to linger and taste; in spite of which, however, Mrs. Assingham\ncould not recollect perceiving that the visit had been repeated. This\nsecond occasion had given way, for a long time, in her happy life, to\nother occasions--all testifying, in their degree, to the quality of her\nhusband\'s blood, its rich mixture and its many remarkable references;\nafter which, no doubt, the charming piety involved had grown, on still\nfurther grounds, bewildered and faint.\n\nIt now appeared, none the less, that some renewed conversation with Mr.\nCrichton had breathed on the faintness revivingly, and Maggie mentioned\nher purpose as a conception of her very own, to the success of which\nshe designed to devote her morning. Visits of gracious ladies, under his\nprotection, lighted up rosily, for this perhaps most flower-loving and\nhoney-sipping member of the great Bloomsbury hive, its packed passages\nand cells; and though not sworn of the province toward which his friend\nhad found herself, according to her appeal to him, yearning again,\nnothing was easier for him than to put her in relation with the\npresiding urbanities. So it had been settled, Maggie said to Mrs.\nAssingham, and she was to dispense with Amerigo\'s company. Fanny was to\nremember later on that she had at first taken this last fact for one of\nthe finer notes of her young woman\'s detachment, imagined she must be\ngoing alone because of the shade of irony that, in these ambiguous days,\nher husband\'s personal presence might be felt to confer, practically, on\nany tribute to his transmitted significance. Then as, the next\nmoment, she felt it clear that so much plotted freedom was virtually\na refinement of reflection, an impulse to commemorate afresh whatever\nmight still survive of pride and hope, her sense of ambiguity happily\nfell and she congratulated her companion on having anything so exquisite\nto do and on being so exquisitely in the humour to do it. After the\noccasion had come and gone she was confirmed in her optimism; she made\nout, in the evening, that the hour spent among the projected lights, the\nannals and illustrations, the parchments and portraits, the emblazoned\nvolumes and the murmured commentary, had been for the Princess enlarging\nand inspiring. Maggie had said to her some days before, very sweetly but\nvery firmly, \"Invite us to dine, please, for Friday, and have any one\nyou like or you can--it doesn\'t in the least matter whom;\" and the pair\nin Cadogan Place had bent to this mandate with a docility not in the\nleast ruffled by all that it took for granted.\n\nIt provided for an evening--this had been Maggie\'s view; and she lived\nup to her view, in her friend\'s eyes, by treating the occasion, more or\nless explicitly, as new and strange. The good Assinghams had feasted in\nfact at the two other boards on a scale so disproportionate to the scant\nsolicitations of their own that it was easy to make a joke of seeing how\nthey fed at home, how they met, themselves, the question of giving to\neat. Maggie dined with them, in short, and arrived at making her husband\nappear to dine, much in the manner of a pair of young sovereigns who\nhave, in the frolic humour of the golden years of reigns, proposed\nthemselves to a pair of faithfully-serving subjects. She showed an\ninterest in their arrangements, an inquiring tenderness almost for their\neconomies; so that her hostess not unnaturally, as they might have\nsaid, put it all down--the tone and the freedom of which she set the\nexample--to the effect wrought in her afresh by one of the lessons\nlearned, in the morning, at the altar of the past. Hadn\'t she picked it\nup, from an anecdote or two offered again to her attention, that there\nwere, for princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a\nheroine? Maggie\'s way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by\nthe extravagance of her affability. She was doubtless not positively\nboisterous; yet, though Mrs. Assingham, as a bland critic, had never\ndoubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it\ninto being what might have been called assertive. It was all a tune\nto which Fanny\'s heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy,\nhappy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was\nmaking the Prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps\nalways enabling him to find it absolutely not foolish. Foolish, in\npublic, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his\nwife\'s being thought to be; so that there hovered before their friend\nthe possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in the carriage\nor at home, of slightly sarcastic inquiry, of promptly invited\nexplanation; a scene that, according as Maggie should play her part\nin it, might or might not precipitate developments. What made these\nappearances practically thrilling, meanwhile, was this mystery--a\nmystery, it was clear, to Amerigo himself--of the incident or the\ninfluence that had so peculiarly determined them.\n\nThe lady of Cadogan Place was to read deeper, however, within\nthree days, and the page was turned for her on the eve of her young\nconfidant\'s leaving London. The awaited migration to Fawns was to take\nplace on the morrow, and it was known meanwhile to Mrs. Assingham that\ntheir party of four were to dine that night, at the American Embassy,\nwith another and a larger party; so that the elder woman had a sense\nof surprise on receiving from the younger, under date of six o\'clock,\na telegram requesting her immediate attendance. \"Please come to me\nat once; dress early, if necessary, so that we shall have time: the\ncarriage, ordered for us, will take you back first.\" Mrs. Assingham, on\nquick deliberation, dressed, though not perhaps with full lucidity, and\nby seven o\'clock was in Portland Place, where her friend, \"upstairs\"\nand described to her on her arrival as herself engaged in dressing,\ninstantly received her. She knew on the spot, poor Fanny, as she was\nafterwards to declare to the Colonel, that her feared crisis had popped\nup as at the touch of a spring, that her impossible hour was before her.\nHer impossible hour was the hour of its coming out that she had known\nof old so much more than she had ever said; and she had often put it to\nherself, in apprehension, she tried to think even in preparation, that\nshe should recognise the approach of her doom by a consciousness akin to\nthat of the blowing open of a window on some night of the highest wind\nand the lowest thermometer. It would be all in vain to have crouched so\nlong by the fire; the glass would have been smashed, the icy air would\nfill the place. If the air in Maggie\'s room then, on her going up, was\nnot, as yet, quite the polar blast she had expected, it was distinctly,\nnone the less, such an atmosphere as they had not hitherto breathed\ntogether. The Princess, she perceived, was completely dressed--that\nbusiness was over; it added indeed to the effect of her importantly\nawaiting the assistance she had summoned, of her showing a deck\ncleared, so to speak, for action. Her maid had already left her, and\nshe presented herself, in the large, clear room, where everything was\nadmirable, but where nothing was out of place, as, for the first time in\nher life rather \"bedizened.\" Was it that she had put on too many things,\novercharged herself with jewels, wore in particular more of them than\nusual, and bigger ones, in her hair?--a question her visitor presently\nanswered by attributing this appearance largely to the bright red spot,\nred as some monstrous ruby, that burned in either of her cheeks. These\ntwo items of her aspect had, promptly enough, their own light for\nMrs. Assingham, who made out by it that nothing more pathetic could be\nimagined than the refuge and disguise her agitation had instinctively\nasked of the arts of dress, multiplied to extravagance, almost to\nincoherence. She had had, visibly, her idea--that of not betraying\nherself by inattentions into which she had never yet fallen, and she\nstood there circled about and furnished forth, as always, in a manner\nthat testified to her perfect little personal processes. It had ever\nbeen her sign that she was, for all occasions, FOUND ready, without\nloose ends or exposed accessories or unremoved superfluities; a\nsuggestion of the swept and garnished, in her whole splendid, yet\nthereby more or less encumbered and embroidered setting, that reflected\nher small still passion for order and symmetry, for objects with their\nbacks to the walls, and spoke even of some probable reference, in her\nAmerican blood, to dusting and polishing New England grandmothers. If\nher apartment was \"princely,\" in the clearness of the lingering day,\nshe looked as if she had been carried there prepared, all attired and\ndecorated, like some holy image in a procession, and left, precisely,\nto show what wonder she could work under pressure. Her friend felt--how\ncould she not?--as the truly pious priest might feel when confronted,\nbehind the altar, before the festa, with his miraculous Madonna. Such\nan occasion would be grave, in general, with all the gravity of what he\nmight look for. But the gravity to-night would be of the rarest; what he\nmight look for would depend so on what he could give.\n\n\n\n XXXIII\n\n\"Something very strange has happened, and I think you ought to know it.\"\n\nMaggie spoke this indeed without extravagance, yet with the effect of\nmaking her guest measure anew the force of her appeal. It was their\ndefinite understanding: whatever Fanny knew Fanny\'s faith would provide\nfor. And she knew, accordingly, at the end of five minutes, what the\nextraordinary, in the late occurrence, had consisted of, and how it had\nall come of Maggie\'s achieved hour, under Mr. Crichton\'s protection, at\nthe Museum. He had desired, Mr. Crichton, with characteristic kindness,\nafter the wonderful show, after offered luncheon at his incorporated\nlodge hard by, to see her safely home; especially on his noting, in\nattending her to the great steps, that she had dismissed her carriage;\nwhich she had done, really, just for the harmless amusement of taking\nher way alone. She had known she should find herself, as the consequence\nof such an hour, in a sort of exalted state, under the influence of\nwhich a walk through the London streets would be exactly what would suit\nher best; an independent ramble, impressed, excited, contented, with\nnothing to mind and nobody to talk to, and shop-windows in plenty\nto look at if she liked: a low taste, of the essence, it was to be\nsupposed, of her nature, that she had of late, for so many reasons, been\nunable to gratify. She had taken her leave, with her thanks--she knew\nher way quite enough; it being also sufficiently the case that she had\neven a shy hope of not going too straight. To wander a little wild was\nwhat would truly amuse her; so that, keeping clear of Oxford Street and\ncultivating an impression as of parts she didn\'t know, she had ended\nwith what she had more or less had been fancying, an encounter with\nthree or four shops--an old bookseller\'s, an old printmonger\'s, a couple\nof places with dim antiquities in the window--that were not as so many\nof the other shops, those in Sloane Street, say; a hollow parade which\nhad long since ceased to beguile. There had remained with her moreover\nan allusion of Charlotte\'s, of some months before--seed dropped into\nher imagination in the form of a casual speech about there being in\nBloomsbury such \"funny little fascinating\" places and even sometimes\nsuch unexpected finds. There could perhaps have been no stronger mark\nthan this sense of well-nigh romantic opportunity--no livelier sign of\nthe impression made on her, and always so long retained, so watchfully\nnursed, by any observation of Charlotte\'s, however lightly thrown off.\nAnd then she had felt, somehow, more at her ease than for months and\nmonths before; she didn\'t know why, but her time at the Museum, oddly,\nhad done it; it was as if she hadn\'t come into so many noble and\nbeautiful associations, nor secured them also for her boy, secured them\neven for her father, only to see them turn to vanity and doubt, turn\npossibly to something still worse. \"I believed in him again as much as\never, and I felt how I believed in him,\" she said with bright, fixed\neyes; \"I felt it in the streets as I walked along, and it was as if that\nhelped me and lifted me up, my being off by myself there, not having,\nfor the moment, to wonder and watch; having, on the contrary, almost\nnothing on my mind.\"\n\nIt was so much as if everything would come out right that she had fallen\nto thinking of her father\'s birthday, had given herself this as a reason\nfor trying what she could pick up for it. They would keep it at Fawns,\nwhere they had kept it before--since it would be the twenty-first of the\nmonth; and she mightn\'t have another chance of making sure of something\nto offer him. There was always the impossibility, of course, of finding\nhim anything, the least bit \"good,\" that he wouldn\'t already, long ago,\nin his rummagings, have seen himself--and only not to think a quarter\ngood enough; this, however, was an old story, and one could not have had\nany fun with him but for his sweet theory that the individual gift, the\nfriendship\'s offering, was, by a rigorous law of nature, a foredoomed\naberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed, and the more\none cherished it for showing, how friendly it had been. The infirmity\nof art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the\nrefinement of sympathy; the ugliest objects, in fact, as a general\nthing, were the bravest, the tenderest mementos, and, as such, figured\nin glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home, but not worthy of\nthe temple--dedicated to the grimacing, not to the clear-faced, gods.\nShe herself, naturally, through the past years, had come to be much\nrepresented in those receptacles; against the thick, locked panes of\nwhich she still liked to flatten her nose, finding in its place, each\ntime, everything she had on successive anniversaries tried to believe he\nmight pretend, at her suggestion, to be put off with, or at least think\ncurious. She was now ready to try it again: they had always, with\nhis pleasure in her pretence and her pleasure in his, with the funny\nbetrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played\nthe game so happily. To this end, on her way home, she had loitered\neverywhere; quite too deludedly among the old books and the old\nprints, which had yielded nothing to her purpose, but with a strange\ninconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian,\na queer little foreign man, who had shown her a number of things,\nshown her finally something that, struck with it as rather a rarity and\nthinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively\ndo, she had bought--bought really, when it came to that, for a price.\n\"It appears now it won\'t do at all,\" said Maggie, \"something has\nhappened since that puts it quite out of the question. I had only my day\nof satisfaction in it, but I feel, at the same time, as I keep it here\nbefore me, that I wouldn\'t have missed it for the world.\"\n\nShe had talked, from the first of her friend\'s entrances coherently\nenough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm; but she held\nher breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and to prove she\ndidn\'t pant--all of which marked for Fanny the depth of her commotion:\nher reference to her thought about her father, about her chance to\npick up something that might divert him, her mention, in fine, of his\nfortitude under presents, having meanwhile, naturally, it should be\nsaid, much less an amplitude of insistence on the speaker\'s lips than a\npower to produce on the part of the listener herself the prompt\nresponse and full comprehension of memory and sympathy, of old amused\nobservation. The picture was filled out by the latter\'s fond fancy. But\nMaggie was at any rate under arms; she knew what she was doing and\nhad already her plan--a plan for making, for allowing, as yet, \"no\ndifference\"; in accordance with which she would still dine out, and\nnot with red eyes, nor convulsed features, nor neglected items of\nappearance, nor anything that would raise a question. Yet there was some\nknowledge that, exactly to this support of her not breaking down, she\ndesired, she required, possession of; and, with the sinister rise\nand fall of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, it played before Mrs.\nAssingham\'s eyes that she herself should have, at whatever risk or\nwhatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need. All our\nfriend\'s instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the\nground would bear; she would take no step nearer unless INTELLIGIBLY to\nmeet her, and, awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and\ndistorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of\nbald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start\ncould lead to. She caught, however, after a second\'s thought, at the\nPrincess\'s allusion to her lost reassurance.\n\n\"You mean you were so at your ease on Monday--the night you dined with\nus?\"\n\n\"I was very happy then,\" said Maggie.\n\n\"Yes--we thought you so gay and so brilliant.\" Fanny felt it feeble, but\nshe went on. \"We were so glad you were happy.\"\n\nMaggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. \"You thought me all\nright, eh?\"\n\n\"Surely, dearest; we thought you all right.\"\n\n\"Well, I daresay it was natural; but in point of fact I never was more\nwrong in my life. For, all the while, if you please, this was brewing.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness.\n\"\'This\'--?\"\n\n\"THAT!\" replied the Princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had\nturned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among\nso many precious objects--the Ververs, wherever they might be, always\nrevelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments--her visitor had\nnot taken heed.\n\n\"Do you mean the gilt cup?\"\n\n\"I mean the gilt cup.\"\n\nThe piece now recognised by Fanny as new to her own vision was a\ncapacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted,\nby a short stem, on an ample foot, which held a central position above\nthe fire-place, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance\nhad been made of other objects, notably of the Louis-Seize clock that\naccompanied the candelabra. This latter trophy ticked at present on the\nmarble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style.\nMrs. Assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was\nobviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring\nit at a distance. \"But what has that to do--?\"\n\n\"It has everything. You\'ll see.\" With which again, however, for\nthe moment, Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. \"He knew her\nbefore--before I had ever seen him.\"\n\n\"\'He\' knew--?\" But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she\nmissed, could only echo it.\n\n\"Amerigo knew Charlotte--more than I ever dreamed.\"\n\nFanny felt then it was stare for stare. \"But surely you always knew they\nhad met.\"\n\n\"I didn\'t understand. I knew too little. Don\'t you see what I mean?\" the\nPrincess asked.\n\nMrs. Assingham wondered, during these instants, how much she even now\nknew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking.\nWith that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of\nthe deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past\nignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt,\nfirst, a strange, barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been\nthe warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting,\nany way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. She shouldn\'t be\njudged--save by herself; which was her own wretched business. The next\nmoment, however, at all events, she blushed, within, for her immediate\ncowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of \"getting off,\" before\nso much as thinking--that is of pitifully seeing--that she was in\npresence of an appeal that was ALL an appeal, that utterly accepted its\nnecessity. \"In a general way, dear child, yes. But not--a--in connexion\nwith what you\'ve been telling me.\"\n\n\"They were intimate, you see. Intimate,\" said the Princess.\n\nFanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history,\nso dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis, of the far-away other\ntime. \"There\'s always the question of what one considers--!\"\n\n\"What one considers intimate? Well, I know what I consider intimate now.\nToo intimate,\" said Maggie, \"to let me know anything about it.\"\n\nIt was quiet--yes; but not too quiet for Fanny Assingham\'s capacity to\nwince. \"Only compatible with letting ME, you mean?\" She had asked it\nafter a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney\nand wondering, even while she took relief from it, at this gap in her\nexperience. \"But here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is\nperfect.\"\n\n\"They went about together--they\'re known to have done it. And I don\'t\nmean only before--I mean after.\"\n\n\"After?\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\n\"Before we were married--yes; but after we were engaged.\"\n\n\"Ah, I\'ve known nothing about that!\" And she said it with a braver\nassurance--clutching, with comfort, at something that was apparently new\nto her.\n\n\"That bowl,\" Maggie went on, \"is, so strangely--too strangely, almost,\nto believe at this time of day--the proof. They were together all the\nwhile--up to the very eve of our marriage. Don\'t you remember how just\nbefore that she came back, so unexpectedly, from America?\"\n\nThe question had for Mrs. Assingham--and whether all consciously\nor not--the oddest pathos of simplicity. \"Oh yes, dear, of course I\nremember how she came back from America--and how she stayed with US, and\nwhat view one had of it.\"\n\nMaggie\'s eyes still, all the time, pressed and penetrated; so that,\nduring a moment, just here, she might have given the little flare, have\nmade the little pounce, of asking what then \"one\'s\" view had been. To\nthe small flash of this eruption Fanny stood, for her minute, wittingly\nexposed; but she saw it as quickly cease to threaten--quite saw the\nPrincess, even though in all her pain, refuse, in the interest of their\nstrange and exalted bargain, to take advantage of the opportunity\nfor planting the stab of reproach, the opportunity thus coming all of\nitself. She saw her--or she believed she saw her--look at her chance\nfor straight denunciation, look at it and then pass it by; and she felt\nherself, with this fact, hushed well-nigh to awe at the lucid higher\nintention that no distress could confound and that no discovery--since\nit was, however obscurely, a case of \"discovery\"--could make less\nneedful. These seconds were brief--they rapidly passed; but they\nlasted long enough to renew our friend\'s sense of her own extraordinary\nundertaking, the function again imposed on her, the answerability again\ndrilled into her, by this intensity of intimation. She was reminded of\nthe terms on which she was let off--her quantity of release having made\nits sufficient show in that recall of her relation to Charlotte\'s\nold reappearance; and deep within the whole impression glowed--ah, so\ninspiringly when it came to that! her steady view, clear from the first,\nof the beauty of her companion\'s motive. It was like a fresh sacrifice\nfor a larger conquest \"Only see me through now, do it in the face of\nthis and in spite of it, and I leave you a hand of which the freedom\nisn\'t to be said!\" The aggravation of fear--or call it, apparently, of\nknowledge--had jumped straight into its place as an aggravation above\nall for her father; the effect of this being but to quicken to passion\nher reasons for making his protectedness, or in other words the forms\nof his ignorance, still the law of her attitude and the key to her\nsolution. She kept as tight hold of these reasons and these forms, in\nher confirmed horror, as the rider of a plunging horse grasps his seat\nwith his knees; and she might absolutely have been putting it to her\nguest that she believed she could stay on if they should only \"meet\"\nnothing more. Though ignorant still of what she had definitely met Fanny\nyearned, within, over her spirit; and so, no word about it said, passed,\nthrough mere pitying eyes, a vow to walk ahead and, at crossroads, with\na lantern for the darkness and wavings away for unadvised traffic, look\nout for alarms. There was accordingly no wait in Maggie\'s reply. \"They\nspent together hours--spent at least a morning--the certainty of which\nhas come back to me now, but that I didn\'t dream of it at the time. That\ncup there has turned witness--by the most wonderful of chances. That\'s\nwhy, since it has been here, I\'ve stood it out for my husband to see;\nput it where it would meet him, almost immediately, if he should come\ninto the room. I\'ve wanted it to meet him,\" she went on, \"and I\'ve\nwanted him to meet it, and to be myself present at the meeting. But that\nhasn\'t taken place as yet; often as he has lately been in the way of\ncoming to see me here--yes, in particular lately--he hasn\'t showed\nto-day.\" It was with her managed quietness, more and more, that she\ntalked--an achieved coherence that helped her, evidently, to hear and\nto watch herself; there was support, and thereby an awful harmony, but\nwhich meant a further guidance, in the facts she could add together.\n\"It\'s quite as if he had an instinct--something that has warned him off\nor made him uneasy. He doesn\'t quite know, naturally, what has happened,\nbut guesses, with his beautiful cleverness, that something has, and\nisn\'t in a hurry to be confronted with it. So, in his vague fear, he\nkeeps off.\"\n\n\"But being meanwhile in the house--?\"\n\n\"I\'ve no idea--not having seen him to-day, by exception, since before\nluncheon. He spoke to me then,\" the Princess freely explained, \"of a\nballot, of great importance, at a club--for somebody, some personal\nfriend, I think, who\'s coming up and is supposed to be in danger. To\nmake an effort for him he thought he had better lunch there. You see the\nefforts he can make\"--for which Maggie found a smile that went to her\nfriend\'s heart. \"He\'s in so many ways the kindest of men. But it was\nhours ago.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham thought. \"The more danger then of his coming in and\nfinding me here. I don\'t know, you see, what you now consider that\nyou\'ve ascertained; nor anything of the connexion with it of that object\nthat you declare so damning.\" Her eyes rested on this odd acquisition\nand then quitted it, went back to it and again turned from it: it was\ninscrutable in its rather stupid elegance, and yet, from the moment\none had thus appraised it, vivid and definite in its domination of\nthe scene. Fanny could no more overlook it now than she could have\noverlooked a lighted Christmas-tree; but nervously and all in vain she\ndipped into her mind for some floating reminiscence of it. At the same\ntime that this attempt left her blank she understood a good deal, she\neven not a little shared the Prince\'s mystic apprehension. The golden\nbowl put on, under consideration, a sturdy, a conscious perversity; as\na \"document,\" somehow, it was ugly, though it might have a decorative\ngrace. \"His finding me here in presence of it might be more flagrantly\ndisagreeable--for all of us--than you intend or than would necessarily\nhelp us. And I must take time, truly, to understand what it means.\"\n\n\"You\'re safe, as far as that goes,\" Maggie returned; \"you may take it\nfrom me that he won\'t come in; and that I shall only find him below,\nwaiting for me, when I go down to the carriage.\"\n\nFanny Assingham took it from her, took it and more. \"We\'re to sit\ntogether at the Ambassador\'s then--or at least you two are--with this\nnew complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look\nat each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to be\nseeing it?\"\n\nMaggie looked at HER with a face that might have been the one she was\npreparing. \"\'Unexplained,\' my dear? Quite the contrary--explained:\nfully, intensely, admirably explained, with nothing really to add. My\nown love\"--she kept it up--\"I don\'t want anything more. I\'ve plenty to\ngo upon and to do with, as it is.\"\n\nFanny Assingham stood there in her comparative darkness, with her links,\nverily, still missing; but the most acceptable effect of this was,\nsingularly, as yet, a cold fear of getting nearer the fact. \"But when\nyou come home--? I mean he\'ll come up with you again. Won\'t he see it\nthen?\"\n\nOn which Maggie gave her, after an instant\'s visible thought, the\nstrangest of slow headshakes. \"I don\'t know. Perhaps he\'ll never see\nit--if it only stands there waiting for him. He may never again,\" said\nthe Princess, \"come into this room.\"\n\nFanny more deeply wondered, \"Never again? Oh--!\"\n\n\"Yes, it may be. How do I know? With THIS!\" she quietly went on. She had\nnot looked again at the incriminating piece, but there was a marvel to\nher friend in the way the little word representing it seemed to express\nand include for her the whole of her situation. \"Then you intend not to\nspeak to him--?\"\n\nMaggie waited. \"To \'speak\'--?\"\n\n\"Well, about your having it and about what you consider that it\nrepresents.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t know that I shall speak--if he doesn\'t. But his keeping\naway from me because of that--what will that be but to speak? He\ncan\'t say or do more. It won\'t be for me to speak,\" Maggie added in\na different tone, one of the tones that had already so penetrated her\nguest. \"It will be for me to listen.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham turned it over. \"Then it all depends on that object that\nyou regard, for your reasons, as evidence?\"\n\n\"I think I may say that _I_ depend on it. I can\'t,\" said Maggie, \"treat\nit as nothing now.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, at this, went closer to the cup on the chimney--quite\nliking to feel that she did so, moreover, without going closer to her\ncompanion\'s vision. She looked at the precious thing--if precious it\nwas--found herself in fact eyeing it as if, by her dim solicitation, to\ndraw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of Maggie\'s\nknowledge. It was brave and rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow;\nand, without this queer torment about it, would, thanks to her love of\nplenty of yellow, figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession\nreally desirable. She didn\'t touch it, but if after a minute she turned\naway from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her fear of\ndoing so. \"Then it all depends on the bowl? I mean your future does? For\nthat\'s what it comes to, I judge.\"\n\n\"What it comes to,\" Maggie presently returned, \"is what that thing has\nput me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning: how far they\nhad originally gone together. If there was so much between them before,\nthere can\'t--with all the other appearances--not be a great deal more\nnow.\" And she went on and on; she steadily made her points. \"If such\nthings were already then between them they make all the difference for\npossible doubt of what may have been between them since. If there had\nbeen nothing before there might be explanations. But it makes to-day too\nmuch to explain. I mean to explain away,\" she said.\n\nFanny Assingham was there to explain away--of this she was duly\nconscious; for that at least had been true up to now. In the light,\nhowever, of Maggie\'s demonstration the quantity, even without her taking\nas yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever. Besides\nwhich, with or without exactness, the effect of each successive minute\nin the place was to put her more in presence of what Maggie herself saw.\nMaggie herself saw the truth, and that was really, while they remained\nthere together, enough for Mrs. Assingham\'s relation to it. There was\na force in the Princess\'s mere manner about it that made the detail of\nwhat she knew a matter of minor importance. Fanny had in fact something\nlike a momentary shame over her own need of asking for this detail.\n\"I don\'t pretend to repudiate,\" she said after a little, \"my own\nimpressions of the different times I suppose you speak of; any more,\"\nshe added, \"than I can forget what difficulties and, as it constantly\nseemed to me, what dangers, every course of action--whatever I should\ndecide upon--made for me. I tried, I tried hard, to act for the best.\nAnd, you know,\" she next pursued, while, at the sound of her own\nstatement, a slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came\nback to her--\"and, you know, I believe it\'s what I shall turn out to\nhave done.\"\n\nThis produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened\nand deepened, was that of silence only, and the long, charged look; all\nof which found virtual consecration when Maggie at last spoke. \"I\'m sure\nyou tried to act for the best.\"\n\nIt kept Fanny Assingham again a minute in silence. \"I never thought,\ndearest, you weren\'t an angel.\"\n\nNot, however, that this alone was much help! \"It was up to the very eve,\nyou see,\" the Princess went on--\"up to within two or three days of our\nmarriage. That, THAT, you know--!\" And she broke down for strangely\nsmiling.\n\n\"Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me. But I didn\'t know it. That\nis,\" said Fanny Assingham, \"I didn\'t know of anything in particular.\" It\nsounded weak--that she felt; but she had really her point to make. \"What\nI mean is that I don\'t know, for knowledge, now, anything I didn\'t then.\nThat\'s how I am.\" She still, however, floundered. \"I mean it\'s how I\nWAS.\"\n\n\"But don\'t they, how you were and how you are,\" Maggie asked, \"come\npractically to the same thing?\" The elder woman\'s words had struck\nher own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too\nfactitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing\nsusceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. The\nsituation had changed by--well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak\nof the definite; and this could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm\nenough as she pursued. \"It was ON the whole thing that Amerigo married\nme.\" With which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory piece.\n\"And it was on that--it was on that!\" But they came back to her visitor.\n\"And it was on it all that father married HER.\"\n\nHer visitor took it as might be. \"They both married--ah, that you must\nbelieve!--with the highest intentions.\"\n\n\"Father did certainly!\" And then, at the renewal of this consciousness,\nit all rolled over her. \"Ah, to thrust such things on us, to do them\nhere between us and with us, day after day, and in return, in return--!\nTo do it to HIM--to him, to him!\"\n\nFanny hesitated. \"You mean it\'s for him you most suffer?\" And then\nas the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the\nroom--which made the question somehow seem a blunder--\"I ask,\" she\ncontinued, \"because I think everything, everything we now speak of, may\nbe for him, really may be MADE for him, quite as if it hadn\'t been.\"\n\nBut Maggie had, the next moment faced about as if without hearing her.\n\"Father did it for ME--did it all and only for me.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head; but she\nfaltered again before she spoke. \"Well--!\"\n\nIt was only an intended word, but Maggie showed after an instant that\nit had reached her. \"Do you mean that that\'s the reason, that that\'s A\nreason--?\"\n\nFanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn\'t say all\nshe meant; she said for the moment something else instead. \"He did it\nfor you--largely at least for you. And it was for you that I did, in\nmy smaller, interested way--well, what I could do. For I could do\nsomething,\" she continued; \"I thought I saw your interest as he himself\nsaw it. And I thought I saw Charlotte\'s. I believed in her.\"\n\n\"And _I_ believed in her,\" said Maggie.\n\nMrs. Assingham waited again; but she presently pushed on. \"She believed\nthen in herself.\"\n\n\"Ah?\" Maggie murmured.\n\nSomething exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of it,\nsupported her friend further. \"And the Prince believed. His belief was\nreal. Just as he believed in himself.\"\n\nMaggie spent a minute in taking it from her. \"He believed in himself?\"\n\n\"Just as I too believed in him. For I absolutely did, Maggie.\" To\nwhich Fanny then added: \"And I believe in him yet. I mean,\" she\nsubjoined--\"well, I mean I DO.\"\n\nMaggie again took it from her; after which she was again, restlessly,\nset afloat. Then when this had come to an end: \"And do you believe in\nCharlotte yet?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham had a demur that she felt she could now afford. \"We\'ll\ntalk of Charlotte some other day. They both, at any rate, thought\nthemselves safe at the time.\"\n\n\"Then why did they keep from me everything I might have known?\"\n\nHer friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. \"Why did I myself keep it\nfrom you?\"\n\n\"Oh, you weren\'t, for honour, obliged.\"\n\n\"Dearest Maggie,\" the poor woman broke out on this, \"you ARE divine!\"\n\n\"They pretended to love me,\" the Princess went on. \"And they pretended\nto love HIM.\"\n\n\"And pray what was there that I didn\'t pretend?\"\n\n\"Not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amerigo and for\nCharlotte. They were much more interesting--it was perfectly natural.\nHow couldn\'t you like Amerigo?\" Maggie continued.\n\nMrs. Assingham gave it up. \"How couldn\'t I, how couldn\'t I?\" Then, with\na fine freedom, she went all her way. \"How CAN\'T I, how can\'t I?\"\n\nIt fixed afresh Maggie\'s wide eyes on her. \"I see--I see. Well, it\'s\nbeautiful for you to be able to. And of course,\" she added, \"you wanted\nto help Charlotte.\"\n\n\"Yes\"--Fanny considered it--\"I wanted to help Charlotte. But I wanted\nalso, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that I believed,\nwith so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want,\"\nshe richly declared, \"to help every one.\"\n\nIt set Maggie once more in movement--movement which, however, spent\nitself again with a quick emphasis. \"Then it\'s a good deal my fault--if\neverything really began so well?\"\n\nFanny Assingham met it as she could. \"You\'ve been only too perfect.\nYou\'ve thought only too much.\"\n\nBut the Princess had already caught at the words. \"Yes--I\'ve thought\nonly too much!\" Yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of\nthat fault. She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before\nher. \"Of him, dear man, of HIM--!\"\n\nHer friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father,\nwatched her with a new suspense. THAT way might safety lie--it was like\na wider chink of light. \"He believed--with a beauty!--in Charlotte.\"\n\n\"Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn\'t mean to, at the\ntime, so much; for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it,\nI did it!\" the Princess declared.\n\n\"With a beauty--ah, with a beauty, you too!\" Mrs. Assingham insisted.\n\nMaggie, however, was seeing for herself--it was another matter, \"The\nthing was that he made her think it would be so possible.\"\n\nFanny again hesitated. \"The Prince made her think--?\"\n\nMaggie stared--she had meant her father. But her vision seemed to\nspread. \"They both made her think. She wouldn\'t have thought without\nthem.\"\n\n\"Yet Amerigo\'s good faith,\" Mrs. Assingham insisted, \"was perfect. And\nthere was nothing, all the more,\" she added, \"against your father\'s.\"\n\nThe remark, however, kept Maggie for a moment still. \"Nothing perhaps\nbut his knowing that she knew.\"\n\n\"\'Knew\'?\"\n\n\"That he was doing it, so much, for me. To what extent,\" she suddenly\nasked of her friend, \"do you think he was aware that she knew?\"\n\n\"Ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation? The only\nthing one can be sure of is that he was generous.\" And Mrs. Assingham\nconclusively smiled. \"He doubtless knew as much as was right for\nhimself.\"\n\n\"As much, that is, as was right for her.\"\n\n\"Yes then--as was right for her. The point is,\" Fanny declared, \"that,\nwhatever his knowledge, it made, all the way it went, for his good\nfaith.\"\n\nMaggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her\nsuccessive movements. \"Isn\'t the point, very considerably, that his good\nfaith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in\nme as he himself took?\"\n\nFanny Assingham thought. \"He recognised, he adopted, your long\nfriendship. But he founded on it no selfishness.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Maggie with still deeper consideration: \"he counted her\nselfishness out almost as he counted his own.\"\n\n\"So you may say.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" Maggie went on; \"if he had none of his own, he invited her,\nmay have expected her, on her side, to have as little. And she may only\nsince have found that out.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham looked blank. \"Since--?\"\n\n\"And he may have become aware,\" Maggie pursued, \"that she has found\nit out. That she has taken the measure, since their marriage,\" she\nexplained, \"of how much he had asked of her--more, say, than she had\nunderstood at the time. He may have made out at last how such a demand\nwas, in the long run, to affect her.\"\n\n\"He may have done many things,\" Mrs. Assingham responded; \"but there\'s\none thing he certainly won\'t have done. He\'ll never have shown that he\nexpected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to\ngive.\"\n\n\"I\'ve often wondered,\" Maggie mused, \"what Charlotte really understood.\nBut it\'s one of the things she has never told me.\"\n\n\"Then as it\'s one of the things she has never told me either, we shall\nprobably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business.\nThere are many things,\" said Mrs. Assingham, \"that we shall never know.\"\n\nMaggie took it in with a long reflection. \"Never.\"\n\n\"But there are others,\" her friend went on, \"that stare us in the face\nand that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be\nenough for us. Your father has been extraordinary.\"\n\nIt had been as if Maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this\nwith a rush. \"Extraordinary.\"\n\n\"Magnificent,\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\nHer companion held tight to it. \"Magnificent.\"\n\n\"Then he\'ll do for himself whatever there may be to do. What he\nundertook for you he\'ll do to the end. He didn\'t undertake it to break\ndown; in what--quiet, patient, exquisite as he is--did he ever break\ndown? He had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and\nhe won\'t have done it on this occasion.\"\n\n\"Ah, this occasion!\"--and Maggie\'s wail showed her, of a sudden, thrown\nback on it. \"Am I in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows\nwhat it is? And yet am I in the least sure he doesn\'t?\"\n\n\"If he doesn\'t then, so much the better. Leave him alone.\"\n\n\"Do you mean give him up?\"\n\n\"Leave HER,\" Fanny Assingham went on. \"Leave her TO him.\"\n\nMaggie looked at her darkly. \"Do you mean leave him to HER? After this?\"\n\n\"After everything. Aren\'t they, for that matter, intimately together\nnow?\"\n\n\"\'Intimately\'--? How do I know?\"\n\nBut Fanny kept it up. \"Aren\'t you and your husband--in spite of\neverything?\"\n\nMaggie\'s eyes still further, if possible, dilated. \"It remains to be\nseen!\"\n\n\"If you\'re not then, where\'s your faith?\"\n\n\"In my husband--?\"\n\nMrs. Assingham but for an instant hesitated. \"In your father. It all\ncomes back to that. Rest on it.\"\n\n\"On his ignorance?\"\n\nFanny met it again. \"On whatever he may offer you. TAKE that.\"\n\n\"Take it--?\" Maggie stared.\n\nMrs. Assingham held up her head. \"And be grateful.\" On which, for a\nminute, she let the Princess face her. \"Do you see?\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Maggie at last.\n\n\"Then there you are.\" But Maggie had turned away, moving to the window,\nas if still to keep something in her face from sight. She stood there\nwith her eyes on the street while Mrs. Assingham\'s reverted to that\ncomplicating object on the chimney as to which her condition, so\noddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent\nprotest. She went over it, looked at it afresh and yielded now to her\nimpulse to feel it in her hands. She laid them on it, lifting it up, and\nwas surprised, thus, with the weight of it--she had seldom handled so\nmuch massive gold. That effect itself somehow prompted her to further\nfreedom and presently to saying: \"I don\'t believe in this, you know.\"\n\nIt brought Maggie round to her. \"Don\'t believe in it? You will when I\ntell you.\"\n\n\"Ah, tell me nothing! I won\'t have it,\" said Mrs. Assingham. She kept\nthe cup in her hand, held it there in a manner that gave Maggie\'s\nattention to her, she saw the next moment, a quality of excited\nsuspense. This suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty\nshe was taking, an air of intention, and the impression betrayed by\nher companion\'s eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning. \"It\'s of\nvalue, but its value\'s impaired, I\'ve learned, by a crack.\"\n\n\"A crack?--in the gold--?\"\n\n\"It isn\'t gold.\" With which, somewhat strangely, Maggie smiled.\n\n\"That\'s the point.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\"\n\n\"It\'s glass--and cracked, under the gilt, as I say, at that.\"\n\n\"Glass?--of this weight?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie, \"it\'s crystal--and was once, I suppose, precious.\nBut what,\" she then asked, \"do you mean to do with it?\"\n\nShe had come away from her window, one of the three by which the wide\nroom, enjoying an advantageous \"back,\" commanded the western sky and\ncaught a glimpse of the evening flush; while Mrs. Assingham, possessed\nof the bowl, and possessed too of this indication of a flaw, approached\nanother for the benefit of the slowly-fading light. Here, thumbing the\nsingular piece, weighing it, turning it over, and growing suddenly more\nconscious, above all, of an irresistible impulse, she presently spoke\nagain. \"A crack? Then your whole idea has a crack.\"\n\nMaggie, by this time at some distance from her, waited a moment. \"If you\nmean by my idea the knowledge that has come to me THAT--\"\n\nBut Fanny, with decision, had already taken her up. \"There\'s only one\nknowledge that concerns us--one fact with which we can have anything to\ndo.\"\n\n\"Which one, then?\"\n\n\"The fact that your husband has never, never, never--!\" But the very\ngravity of this statement, while she raised her eyes to her friend\nacross the room, made her for an instant hang fire.\n\n\"Well, never what?\"\n\n\"Never been half so interested in you as now. But don\'t you, my dear,\nreally feel it?\"\n\nMaggie considered. \"Oh, I think what I\'ve told you helps me to feel it.\nHis having to-day given up even his forms; his keeping away from me; his\nnot having come.\" And she shook her head as against all easy glosses.\n\"It is because of that, you know.\"\n\n\"Well then, if it\'s because of this--!\" And Fanny Assingham, who had\nbeen casting about her and whose inspiration decidedly had come, raised\nthe cup in her two hands, raised it positively above her head, and from\nunder it, solemnly, smiled at the Princess as a signal of intention.\nSo for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the\nprecious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the\npolished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she\ndashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it,\nwith the violence of the crash, lie shattered. She had flushed with the\nforce of her effort, as Maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and\nthis high reflection in their faces was all that passed between them for\na minute more. After which, \"Whatever you meant by it--and I don\'t want\nto know NOW--has ceased to exist,\" Mrs. Assingham said.\n\n\"And what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?\"--that sound, as at\nthe touch of a spring, rang out as the first effect of Fanny\'s speech.\nIt broke upon the two women\'s absorption with a sharpness almost equal\nto the smash of the crystal, for the door of the room had been opened\nby the Prince without their taking heed. He had apparently had time,\nmoreover, to catch the conclusion of Fanny\'s act; his eyes attached\nthemselves, through the large space allowing just there, as happened,\na free view, to the shining fragments at this lady\'s feet. His question\nhad been addressed to his wife, but he moved his eyes immediately\nafterwards to those of her visitor, whose own then held them in a\nmanner of which neither party had been capable, doubtless, for mute\npenetration, since the hour spent by him in Cadogan Place on the eve of\nhis marriage and the afternoon of Charlotte\'s reappearance. Something\nnow again became possible for these communicants, under the intensity\nof their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might\nhave been a redemption of pledges then exchanged. This rapid play of\nsuppressed appeal and disguised response lasted indeed long enough for\nmore results than one--long enough for Mrs. Assingham to measure the\nfeat of quick self-recovery, possibly therefore of recognition still\nmore immediate, accompanying Amerigo\'s vision and estimate of the\nevidence with which she had been--so admirably, she felt as she looked\nat him--inspired to deal. She looked at him and looked at him--there\nwere so many things she wanted, on the spot, to say. But Maggie was\nlooking too--and was moreover looking at them both; so that these\nthings, for the elder woman, quickly enough reduced themselves to one.\nShe met his question--not too late, since, in their silence, it had\nremained in the air. Gathering herself to go, leaving the golden bowl\nsplit into three pieces on the ground, she simply referred him to his\nwife. She should see them later, they would all meet soon again; and\nmeanwhile, as to what Maggie had meant--she said, in her turn, from the\ndoor--why, Maggie herself was doubtless by this time ready to tell him.\n\n\n\n\n XXXIV\n\nLeft with her husband, Maggie, however, for the time, said nothing; she\nonly felt, on the spot, a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again\ntill he should have had a minute to arrange it. She had seen it enough\nfor her temporary clearness and her next movement--seen it as it showed\nduring the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. Then it was\nthat she knew how hugely expert she had been made, for judging it\nquickly, by that vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that\nhad flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return\nfrom Matcham. The expression worn by it at that juncture, for however\nfew instants, had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the\nmost relevant of which might have been playing up for her, before\nthe consummation of Fanny Assingham\'s retreat, just long enough to\nbe recognised. What she had recognised in it was HIS recognition,\nthe result of his having been forced, by the flush of their visitor\'s\nattitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account\nof the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident, on which he\nhad unexpectedly dropped. He had, not unnaturally, failed to see this\noccurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently\nvaluable which lay there on the floor and which, even across the width\nof the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakably though\nconfusedly, of something known, some other unforgotten image. That was a\nmere shock, that was a pain--as if Fanny\'s violence had been a violence\nredoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot\nblood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. Maggie knew as\nshe turned away from him that she didn\'t want his pain; what she wanted\nwas her own simple certainty--not the red mark of conviction flaming\nthere in his beauty. If she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she\nwould have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she\nnow, apparently, should have to, and of taking from him what he would\nsay, any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a\nboon.\n\nShe went in silence to where her friend--never, in intention, visibly,\nso much her friend as at that moment--had braced herself to so amazing\nan energy, and there, under Amerigo\'s eyes, she picked up the shining\npieces. Bedizened and jewelled, in her rustling finery, she paid,\nwith humility of attitude, this prompt tribute to order--only to find,\nhowever, that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. She\nbrought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place\noccupied by the cup before Fanny\'s appropriation of it, and, after\nlaying them carefully down, went back for what remained, the solid\ndetached foot. With this she returned to the mantel-shelf, placing\nit with deliberation in the centre and then, for a minute, occupying\nherself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels together. The\nsplit, determined by the latent crack, was so sharp and so neat that if\nthere had been anything to hold them the bowl might still, quite\nbeautifully, a few steps away, have passed for uninjured. But, as there\nwas, naturally, nothing to hold them but Maggie\'s hands, during the few\nmoments the latter were so employed, she could only lay the almost equal\nparts of the vessel carefully beside their pedestal and leave them thus\nbefore her husband\'s eyes. She had proceeded without words, but quite as\nif with a sought effect-in spite of which it had all seemed to her to\ntake a far longer time than anything she had ever so quickly\naccomplished. Amerigo said nothing either-though it was true that his\nsilence had the gloss of the warning she doubtless appeared to admonish\nhim to take: it was as if her manner hushed him to the proper\nobservation of what she was doing. He should have no doubt of it\nwhatever: she _knew_ and her broken bowl was proof that she knew-yet the\nleast part of her desire was to make him waste words. He would have to\nthink-this she knew even better still; and all she was for the present\nconcerned with was that he should be aware. She had taken him for aware\nall day, or at least for obscurely and instinctively anxious-as to that\nshe had just committed herself to Fanny Assingham; but what she had been\nwrong about was the effect of his anxiety. His fear of staying away, as\na marked symptom, had at least proved greater than his fear of coming in\n; he had come in even at the risk of bringing it with him-and, ah, what\nmore did she require now than her sense, established within the first\nminute or two, that he had brought it, however he might be steadying\nhimself against dangers of betrayal by some wrong word, and that it was\nshut in there between them, the successive moments throbbing under it\nthe while as the pulse of fever throbs under the doctor\'s thumb?\n\nMaggie\'s sense, in fine, in his presence, was that though the bowl had been\nbroken, her reason hadn\'t ; the reason for which she had made up her mind,\nthe reason for which she had summoned her friend, the reason for which she\nhad prepared the place for her husband\'s eyes ; it was all one reason, and,\nas her intense little clutch held the matter, what had happened by Fanny\'s\nact and by his apprehension of it had not in the least happened to\n_her_ but absolutely and directly to himself, as he must proceed to\ntake in. There it was that her wish for time interposed-time for Amerigo\'s\nuse, not for hers, since she, for ever so long now, for hours and hours as\nthey seemed, had been living with eternity; with which she would continue to\nlive. She wanted to say to him, \" Take it, take it, take all you need of it\n; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be, at any rate, least\ndistorted and disfigured Only _see_ see that _I_ see, and make\nup your mind, on this new basis, at your convenience. Wait-it won\'t be\nlong-till you can confer again with Charlotte, for you\'ll do it much better\nthen-more easily to both of us. Above all don\'t show me, till you\'ve got it\nwell under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment,\nproduced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your\nincomparable superiority.\"\n\nAfter she had squared again her little objects on the chimney, she was\nwithin an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its\nbeing lucid for her, all the while, that the occasion was passing, that\nthey were dining out, that he wasn\'t dressed, and that, though she\nherself was, she was yet, in all probability, so horribly red in the\nface and so awry, in many ways, with agitation, that in view of the\nAmbassador\'s company, of possible comments and constructions, she should\nneed, before her glass, some restoration of appearances.\n\nAmerigo, meanwhile, after all, could clearly make the most of her\nhaving enjoined on him to wait--suggested it by the positive pomp of\nher dealings with the smashed cup; to wait, that is, till she should\npronounce as Mrs. Assingham had promised for her. This delay, again,\ncertainly tested her presence of mind--though that strain was not\nwhat presently made her speak. Keep her eyes, for the time, from her\nhusband\'s as she might, she soon found herself much more drivingly\nconscious of the strain on his own wit. There was even a minute,\nwhen her back was turned to him, during which she knew once more the\nstrangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already,\nfifty times, brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the\nwild wing of some bird of the air who might blindly have swooped for\nan instant into the shaft of a well, darkening there by his momentary\nflutter the far-off round of sky. It was extraordinary, this quality in\nthe taste of her wrong which made her completed sense of it seem rather\nto soften than to harden and it was the more extraordinary the more she\nhad to recognise it; for what it came to was that seeing herself finally\nsure, knowing everything, having the fact, in all its abomination, so\nutterly before her that there was nothing else to add--what it came to\nwas that, merely by being WITH him there in silence, she felt, within\nher, the sudden split between conviction and action. They had begun to\ncease, on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is,\nbudged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil--but\naction began to hover like some lighter and larger, but easier form,\nexcited by its very power to keep above ground. It would be free, it\nwould be independent, it would go in--wouldn\'t it?--for some prodigious\nand superior adventure of its own. What would condemn it, so to speak,\nto the responsibility of freedom--this glimmered on Maggie even now--was\nthe possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband\nwould have, on the whole question, a new need of her, a need which was\nin fact being born between them in these very seconds. It struck her\ntruly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with\nit at all; would indeed, absolutely, by this circumstance, be REALLY\nneeding her for the first one in their whole connection. No, he had used\nher, had even exceedingly enjoyed her, before this; but there had been\nno precedent for that character of a proved necessity to him which she\nwas rapidly taking on. The immense advantage of this particular clue,\nmoreover, was that she should have now to arrange, alter, to falsify\nnothing; should have to be but consistently simple and straight. She\nasked herself, with concentration, while her back was still presented,\nwhat would be the very ideal of that method; after which, the next\ninstant, it had all come to her and she had turned round upon him for\nthe application. \"Fanny Assingham broke it--knowing it had a crack and\nthat it would go if she used sufficient force. She thought, when I had\ntold her, that that would be the best thing to do with it--thought so\nfrom her own point of view. That hadn\'t been at all my idea, but she\nacted before I understood. I had, on the contrary,\" she explained, \"put\nit here, in full view, exactly that you might see.\"\n\nHe stood with his hands in his pockets; he had carried his eyes to the\nfragments on the chimney-piece, and she could already distinguish the\nelement of relief, absolutely of succour, in his acceptance from her of\nthe opportunity to consider the fruits of their friend\'s violence--every\nadded inch of reflection and delay having the advantage, from this point\non, of counting for him double. It had operated within her now to the\nlast intensity, her glimpse of the precious truth that by her helping\nhim, helping him to help himself, as it were, she should help him to\nhelp HER. Hadn\'t she fairly got into his labyrinth with him?--wasn\'t she\nindeed in the very act of placing herself there, for him, at its centre\nand core, whence, on that definite orientation and by an instinct all\nher own, she might securely guide him out of it? She offered him thus,\nassuredly, a kind of support that was not to have been imagined in\nadvance, and that moreover required--ah most truly!--some close looking\nat before it could be believed in and pronounced void of treachery.\n\"Yes, look, look,\" she seemed to see him hear her say even while her\nsounded words were other--\"look, look, both at the truth that still\nsurvives in that smashed evidence and at the even more remarkable\nappearance that I\'m not such a fool as you supposed me. Look at the\npossibility that, since I AM different, there may still be something\nin it for you--if you\'re capable of working with me to get that out.\nConsider of course, as you must, the question of what you may have to\nsurrender, on your side, what price you may have to pay, whom you may\nhave to pay WITH, to set this advantage free; but take in, at any rate,\nthat there is something for you if you don\'t too blindly spoil your\nchance for it.\" He went no nearer the damnatory pieces, but he eyed\nthem, from where he stood, with a degree of recognition just visibly\nless to be dissimulated; all of which represented for her a certain\ntraceable process. And her uttered words, meanwhile, were different\nenough from those he might have inserted between the lines of her\nalready-spoken. \"It\'s the golden bowl, you know, that you saw at the\nlittle antiquario\'s in Bloomsbury, so long ago--when you went there with\nCharlotte, when you spent those hours with her, unknown to me, a day or\ntwo before our marriage. It was shown you both, but you didn\'t take\nit; you left it for me, and I came upon it, extraordinarily, through\nhappening to go into the same shop on Monday last; in walking home, in\nprowling about to pick up some small old thing for father\'s birthday,\nafter my visit to the Museum, my appointment there with Mr. Crichton,\nof which I told you. It was shown me, and I was struck with it and took\nit--knowing nothing about it at the time. What I now know I\'ve learned\nsince--I learned this afternoon, a couple of hours ago; receiving from\nit naturally a great impression. So there it is--in its three pieces.\nYou can handle them--don\'t be afraid--if you want to make sure the thing\nis the thing you and Charlotte saw together. Its having come apart makes\nan unfortunate difference for its beauty, its artistic value, but none\nfor anything else. Its other value is just the same--I mean that of its\nhaving given me so much of the truth about you. I don\'t therefore so\nmuch care what becomes of it now--unless perhaps you may yourself, when\nyou come to think, have some good use for it. In that case,\" Maggie\nwound up, \"we can easily take the pieces with us to Fawns.\"\n\nIt was wonderful how she felt, by the time she had seen herself through\nthis narrow pass, that she had really achieved something--that she was\nemerging a little, in fine, with the prospect less contracted. She had\ndone for him, that is, what her instinct enjoined; had laid a basis not\nmerely momentary on which he could meet her. When, by the turn of his\nhead, he did finally meet her, this was the last thing that glimmered\nout of his look; but it came into sight, none the less, as a perception\nof his distress and almost as a question of his eyes; so that, for still\nanother minute, before he committed himself, there occurred between them\na kind of unprecedented moral exchange over which her superior lucidity\npresided. It was not, however, that when he did commit himself the show\nwas promptly portentous. \"But what in the world has Fanny Assingham had\nto do with it?\"\n\nShe could verily, out of all her smothered soreness, almost have smiled:\nhis question so affected her as giving the whole thing up to her. But\nit left her only to go the straighter. \"She has had to do with it that\nI immediately sent for her and that she immediately came. She was the\nfirst person I wanted to see--because I knew she would know. Know more\nabout what I had learned, I mean, than I could make out for myself. I\nmade out as much as I could for myself--that I also wanted to have done;\nbut it didn\'t, in spite of everything, take me very far, and she has\nreally been a help. Not so much as she would like to be--not so much as,\npoor dear, she just now tried to be; yet she has done her very best for\nyou--never forget that!--and has kept me along immeasurably better than\nI should have been able to come without her. She has gained me time; and\nthat, these three months, don\'t you see? has been everything.\"\n\nShe had said \"Don\'t you see?\" on purpose, and was to feel the next\nmoment that it had acted. \"These three months\'?\" the Prince asked.\n\n\"Counting from the night you came home so late from Matcham. Counting\nfrom the hours you spent with Charlotte at Gloucester; your visit to the\ncathedral--which you won\'t have forgotten describing to me in so much\ndetail. For that was the beginning of my being sure. Before it I had\nbeen sufficiently in doubt. Sure,\" Maggie developed, \"of your having,\nand of your having for a long time had, TWO relations with Charlotte.\"\n\nHe stared, a little at sea, as he took it up. \"Two--?\"\n\nSomething in the tone of it gave it a sense, or an ambiguity, almost\nfoolish--leaving Maggie to feel, as in a flash, how such a consequence,\na foredoomed infelicity, partaking of the ridiculous even in one of the\ncleverest, might be of the very essence of the penalty of wrong-doing.\n\"Oh, you may have had fifty--had the same relation with her fifty times!\nIt\'s of the number of KINDS of relation with her that I speak--a number\nthat doesn\'t matter, really, so long as there wasn\'t only one kind, as\nfather and I supposed. One kind,\" she went on, \"was there before us;\nwe took that fully for granted, as you saw, and accepted it. We never\nthought of there being another, kept out of our sight. But after the\nevening I speak of I knew there was something else. As I say, I had,\nbefore that, my idea--which you never dreamed I had. From the moment I\nspeak of it had more to go upon, and you became yourselves, you and\nshe, vaguely, yet uneasily, conscious of the difference. But it\'s within\nthese last hours that I\'ve most seen where we are; and as I\'ve been in\ncommunication with Fanny Assingham about my doubts, so I wanted to let\nher know my certainty--with the determination of which, however, you\nmust understand, she has had nothing to do. She defends you,\" Maggie\nremarked.\n\nHe had given her all his attention, and with this impression for\nher, again, that he was, in essence, fairly reaching out to her for\ntime--time, only time--she could sufficiently imagine, and to whatever\nstrangeness, that he absolutely liked her to talk, even at the cost of\nhis losing almost everything else by it. It was still, for a minute, as\nif he waited for something worse; wanted everything that was in her to\ncome out, any definite fact, anything more precisely nameable, so that\nhe too--as was his right--should know where he was. What stirred in him\nabove all, while he followed in her face the clear train of her speech,\nmust have been the impulse to take up something she put before him that\nhe was yet afraid directly to touch. He wanted to make free with it, but\nhad to keep his hands off--for reasons he had already made out; and\nthe discomfort of his privation yearned at her out of his eyes with an\nannouncing gleam of the fever, the none too tolerable chill, of specific\nrecognition. She affected him as speaking more or less for her father as\nwell, and his eyes might have been trying to hypnotise her into giving\nhim the answer without his asking the question. \"Had HE his idea, and\nhas he now, with you, anything more?\"--those were the words he had to\nhold himself from not speaking and that she would as yet, certainly,\ndo nothing to make easy. She felt with her sharpest thrill how he was\nstraitened and tied, and with the miserable pity of it her present\nconscious purpose of keeping him so could none the less perfectly\naccord. To name her father, on any such basis of anxiety, of\ncompunction, would be to do the impossible thing, to do neither more nor\nless than give Charlotte away. Visibly, palpably, traceably, he stood\noff from this, moved back from it as from an open chasm now suddenly\nperceived, but which had been, between the two, with so much, so\nstrangely much else, quite uncalculated. Verily it towered before\nher, this history of their confidence. They had built strong and piled\nhigh--based as it was on such appearances--their conviction that, thanks\nto her native complacencies of so many sorts, she would always, quite to\nthe end and through and through, take them as nobly sparing her. Amerigo\nwas at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid,\na particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as\nunprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person.\nAnd she meanwhile, however abjectly simple, was further discerning, for\nherself, that, whatever he might have to take from her--she being, on\nher side, beautifully free--he would absolutely not be able, for any\nqualifying purpose, to name Charlotte either. As his father-in-law\'s\nwife Mrs. Verver rose between them there, for the time, in august and\nprohibitive form; to protect her, defend her, explain about her, was,\nat the least, to bring her into the question--which would be by the\nsame stroke to bring her husband. But this was exactly the door Maggie\nwouldn\'t open to him; on all of which she was the next moment asking\nherself if, thus warned and embarrassed, he were not fairly writhing in\nhis pain. He writhed, on that hypothesis, some seconds more, for it was\nnot till then that he had chosen between what he could do and what he\ncouldn\'t.\n\n\"You\'re apparently drawing immense conclusions from very small\nmatters. Won\'t you perhaps feel, in fairness, that you\'re striking out,\ntriumphing, or whatever I may call it, rather too easily--feel it when\nI perfectly admit that your smashed cup there does come back to me? I\nfrankly confess, now, to the occasion, and to having wished not to\nspeak of it to you at the time. We took two or three hours together, by\narrangement; it WAS on the eve of my marriage--at the moment you say.\nBut that put it on the eve of yours too, my dear--which was directly the\npoint. It was desired to find for you, at the eleventh hour, some\nsmall wedding-present--a hunt, for something worth giving you, and yet\npossible from other points of view as well, in which it seemed I could\nbe of use. You were naturally not to be told--precisely because it was\nall FOR you. We went forth together and we looked; we rummaged about\nand, as I remember we called it, we prowled; then it was that, as I\nfreely recognise, we came across that crystal cup--which I\'m bound to\nsay, upon my honour, I think it rather a pity Fanny Assingham, from\nwhatever good motive, should have treated so.\" He had kept his hands in\nhis pockets; he turned his eyes again, but more complacently now, to the\nruins of the precious vessel; and Maggie could feel him exhale into the\nachieved quietness of his explanation a long, deep breath of comparative\nrelief. Behind everything, beneath everything, it was somehow a comfort\nto him at last to be talking with her--and he seemed to be proving to\nhimself that he COULD talk. \"It was at a little shop in Bloomsbury--I\nthink I could go to the place now. The man understood Italian, I\nremember; he wanted awfully to work off his bowl. But I didn\'t believe\nin it, and we didn\'t take it.\"\n\nMaggie had listened with an interest that wore all the expression of\ncandour. \"Oh, you left it for me. But what did you take?\"\n\nHe looked at her; first as if he were trying to remember, then as if he\nmight have been trying to forget. \"Nothing, I think--at that place.\"\n\n\"What did you take then at any other? What did you get me--since that\nwas your aim and end--for a wedding-gift?\"\n\nThe Prince continued very nobly to bethink himself. \"Didn\'t we get you\nanything?\"\n\nMaggie waited a little; she had for some time, now, kept her eyes on him\nsteadily; but they wandered, at this, to the fragments on her chimney.\n\"Yes; it comes round, after all, to your having got me the bowl. I\nmyself was to come upon it, the other day, by so wonderful a chance; was\nto find it in the same place and to have it pressed upon me by the same\nlittle man, who does, as you say, understand Italian. I did \'believe in\nit,\' you see--must have believed in it somehow instinctively; for I took\nit as soon as I saw it. Though I didn\'t know at all then,\" she added,\n\"what I was taking WITH it.\"\n\nThe Prince paid her for an instant, visibly, the deference of trying\nto imagine what this might have been. \"I agree with you that the\ncoincidence is extraordinary--the sort of thing that happens mainly in\nnovels and plays. But I don\'t see, you must let me say, the importance\nor the connexion--\"\n\n\"Of my having made the purchase where you failed of it?\" She had quickly\ntaken him up; but she had, with her eyes on him once more, another drop\ninto the order of her thoughts, to which, through whatever he might say,\nshe was still adhering. \"It\'s not my having gone into the place, at the\nend of four years, that makes the strangeness of the coincidence; for\ndon\'t such chances as that, in London, easily occur? The strangeness,\"\nshe lucidly said, \"is in what my purchase was to represent to me after\nI had got it home; which value came,\" she explained, \"from the wonder of\nmy having found such a friend.\"\n\n\"\'Such a friend\'?\" As a wonder, assuredly, her husband could but take\nit.\n\n\"As the little man in the shop. He did for me more than he knew--I owe\nit to him. He took an interest in me,\" Maggie said; \"and, taking that\ninterest, he recalled your visit, he remembered you and spoke of you to\nme.\"\n\nOn which the Prince passed the comment of a sceptical smile. \"Ah but, my\ndear, if extraordinary things come from people\'s taking an interest in\nyou--\"\n\n\"My life in that case,\" she asked, \"must be very agitated? Well, he\nliked me, I mean--very particularly. It\'s only so I can account for my\nafterwards hearing from him--and in fact he gave me that to-day,\" she\npursued, \"he gave me it frankly as his reason.\"\n\n\"To-day?\" the Prince inquiringly echoed.\n\nBut she was singularly able--it had been marvellously \"given\" her, she\nafterwards said to herself--to abide, for her light, for her clue, by\nher own order.\n\n\"I inspired him with sympathy--there you are! But the miracle is that\nhe should have a sympathy to offer that could be of use to me. That was\nreally the oddity of my chance,\" the Princess proceeded--\"that I should\nhave been moved, in my ignorance, to go precisely to him.\"\n\nHe saw her so keep her course that it was as if he could, at the best,\nbut stand aside to watch her and let her pass; he only made a vague\ndemonstration that was like an ineffective gesture. \"I\'m sorry to say\nany ill of your friends, and the thing was a long time ago; besides\nwhich there was nothing to make me recur to it. But I remember the man\'s\nstriking me as a decided little beast.\"\n\nShe gave a slow headshake--as if, no, after consideration, not THAT way\nwere an issue. \"I can only think of him as kind, for he had nothing to\ngain. He had in fact only to lose. It was what he came to tell me--that\nhe had asked me too high a price, more than the object was really worth.\nThere was a particular reason, which he hadn\'t mentioned, and which had\nmade him consider and repent. He wrote for leave to see me again--wrote\nin such terms that I saw him here this afternoon.\"\n\n\"Here?\"--it made the Prince look about him.\n\n\"Downstairs--in the little red room. While he was waiting he looked at\nthe few photographs that stand about there and recognised two of them.\nThough it was so long ago, he remembered the visit made him by the lady\nand the gentleman, and that gave him his connexion. It gave me mine,\nfor he remembered everything and told me everything. You see you too had\nproduced your effect; only, unlike you, he had thought of it again--he\nHAD recurred to it. He told me of your having wished to make each other\npresents--but of that\'s not having come off. The lady was greatly taken\nwith the piece I had bought of him, but you had your reason against\nreceiving it from her, and you had been right. He would think that of\nyou more than ever now,\" Maggie went on; \"he would see how wisely you\nhad guessed the flaw and how easily the bowl could be broken. I had\nbought it myself, you see, for a present--he knew I was doing that. This\nwas what had worked in him--especially after the price I had paid.\"\n\nHer story had dropped an instant; she still brought it out in small\nwaves of energy, each of which spent its force; so that he had an\nopportunity to speak before this force was renewed. But the quaint thing\nwas what he now said. \"And what, pray, WAS the price?\"\n\nShe paused again a little. \"It was high, certainly--for those fragments.\nI think I feel, as I look at them there, rather ashamed to say.\"\n\nThe Prince then again looked at them; he might have been growing used to\nthe sight. \"But shall you at least get your money back?\"\n\n\"Oh, I\'m far from wanting it back--I feel so that I\'m getting its\nworth.\" With which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition.\n\"The great fact about the day we\'re talking of seems to me to have been,\nquite remarkably, that no present was then made me. If your undertaking\nhad been for that, that was not at least what came of it.\"\n\n\"You received then nothing at all?\" The Prince looked vague and grave,\nalmost retrospectively concerned.\n\n\"Nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets; which was\nmade me--as if it mattered a mite!--ever so frankly, ever so beautifully\nand touchingly.\"\n\nThis Amerigo heard with interest, yet not with confusion. \"Ah, of course\nyou couldn\'t have minded!\" Distinctly, as she went on, he was getting\nthe better of the mere awkwardness of his arrest; quite as if making out\nthat he need SUFFER arrest from her now--before they should go forth\nto show themselves in the world together--in no greater quantity than\nan occasion ill-chosen at the best for a scene might decently make room\nfor. He looked at his watch; their engagement, all the while, remained\nbefore him. \"But I don\'t make out, you see, what case against me you\nrest--\"\n\n\"On everything I\'m telling you? Why, the whole case--the case of your\nhaving for so long so successfully deceived me. The idea of your finding\nsomething for me--charming as that would have been--was what had least\nto do with your taking a morning together at that moment. What had\nreally to do with it,\" said Maggie, \"was that you had to: you couldn\'t\nnot, from the moment you were again face to face. And the reason of\nthat was that there had been so much between you before--before I came\nbetween you at all.\"\n\nHer husband had been for these last moments moving about under her eyes;\nbut at this, as to check any show of impatience, he again stood still.\n\"You\'ve never been more sacred to me than you were at that hour--unless\nperhaps you\'ve become so at this one.\"\n\nThe assurance of his speech, she could note, quite held up its head in\nhim; his eyes met her own so, for the declaration, that it was as if\nsomething cold and momentarily unimaginable breathed upon her, from\nafar off, out of his strange consistency. She kept her direction still,\nhowever, under that. \"Oh, the thing I\'ve known best of all is that\nyou\'ve never wanted, together, to offend us. You\'ve wanted quite\nintensely not to, and the precautions you\'ve had to take for it have\nbeen for a long time one of the strongest of my impressions. That, I\nthink,\" she added, \"is the way I\'ve best known.\"\n\n\"Known?\" he repeated after a moment.\n\n\"Known. Known that you were older friends, and so much more intimate\nones, than I had any reason to suppose when we married. Known there were\nthings that hadn\'t been told me--and that gave their meaning, little by\nlittle, to other things that were before me.\"\n\n\"Would they have made a difference, in the matter of our marriage,\" the\nPrince presently asked, \"if you HAD known them?\"\n\nShe took her time to think. \"I grant you not--in the matter of OURS.\"\nAnd then as he again fixed her with his hard yearning, which he couldn\'t\nkeep down: \"The question is so much bigger than that. You see how\nmuch what I know makes of it for me.\" That was what acted on him, this\niteration of her knowledge, into the question of the validity, of the\nvarious bearings of which, he couldn\'t on the spot trust himself\nto pretend, in any high way, to go. What her claim, as she made it,\nrepresented for him--that he couldn\'t help betraying, if only as a\nconsequence of the effect of the word itself, her repeated distinct\n\"know, know,\" on his nerves. She was capable of being sorry for his\nnerves at a time when he should need them for dining out, pompously,\nrather responsibly, without his heart in it; yet she was not to let that\nprevent her using, with all economy, so precious a chance for supreme\nclearness. \"I didn\'t force this upon you, you must recollect, and it\nprobably wouldn\'t have happened for you if you hadn\'t come in.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said the Prince, \"I was liable to come in, you know.\"\n\n\"I didn\'t think you were this evening.\"\n\n\"And why not?\"\n\n\"Well,\" she answered, \"you have many liabilities--of different sorts.\"\nWith which she recalled what she had said to Fanny Assingham. \"And then\nyou\'re so deep.\"\n\nIt produced in his features, in spite of his control of them, one of\nthose quick plays of expression, the shade of a grimace, that testified\nas nothing else did to his race. \"It\'s you, cara, who are deep.\"\n\nWhich, after an instant, she had accepted from him; she could so feel at\nlast that it was true. \"Then I shall have need of it all.\"\n\n\"But what would you have done,\" he was by this time asking, \"if I HADN\'T\ncome in?\"\n\n\"I don\'t know.\" She had hesitated. \"What would you?\"\n\n\"Oh; I oh--that isn\'t the question. I depend upon you. I go on. You would\nhave spoken to-morrow?\"\n\n\"I think I would have waited.\"\n\n\"And for what?\" he asked.\n\n\"To see what difference it would make for myself. My possession at last,\nI mean, of real knowledge.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said the Prince.\n\n\"My only point now, at any rate,\" she went on, \"is the difference, as I\nsay, that it may make for YOU. Your knowing was--from the moment you did\ncome in--all I had in view.\" And she sounded it again--he should have it\nonce more. \"Your knowing that I\'ve ceased--\"\n\n\"That you\'ve ceased--?\" With her pause, in fact, she had fairly made him\npress her for it.\n\n\"Why, to be as I was. NOT to know.\"\n\nIt was once more then, after a little, that he had had to stand\nreceptive; yet the singular effect of this was that there was still\nsomething of the same sort he was made to want. He had another\nhesitation, but at last this odd quantity showed. \"Then does any one\nelse know?\"\n\nIt was as near as he could come to naming her father, and she kept him\nat that distance. \"Any one--?\"\n\n\"Any one, I mean, but Fanny Assingham.\"\n\n\"I should have supposed you had had by this time particular means of\nlearning. I don\'t see,\" she said, \"why you ask me.\"\n\nThen, after an instant--and only after an instant, as she saw--he made\nout what she meant; and it gave her, all strangely enough, the still\nfurther light that Charlotte, for herself, knew as little as he had\nknown. The vision loomed, in this light, it fairly glared, for the\nfew seconds--the vision of the two others alone together at Fawns, and\nCharlotte, as one of them, having gropingly to go on, always not knowing\nand not knowing! The picture flushed at the same time with all its\nessential colour--that of the so possible identity of her father\'s\nmotive and principle with her own. HE was \"deep,\" as Amerigo called it,\nso that no vibration of the still air should reach his daughter; just\nas she had earned that description by making and by, for that matter,\nintending still to make, her care for his serenity, or at any rate\nfor the firm outer shell of his dignity, all marvellous enamel, her\nparamount law. More strangely even than anything else, her husband\nseemed to speak now but to help her in this. \"I know nothing but what\nyou tell me.\"\n\n\"Then I\'ve told you all I intended. Find out the rest--!\"\n\n\"Find it out--?\" He waited.\n\nShe stood before him a moment--it took that time to go on. Depth upon\ndepth of her situation, as she met his face, surged and sank within her;\nbut with the effect somehow, once more, that they rather lifted her than\nlet her drop. She had her feet somewhere, through it all--it was her\ncompanion, absolutely, who was at sea. And she kept her feet; she\npressed them to what was beneath her. She went over to the bell beside\nthe chimney and gave a ring that he could but take as a summons for her\nmaid. It stopped everything for the present; it was an intimation to him\nto go and dress. But she had to insist. \"Find out for yourself!\"\n\n\n\n\nPART FIFTH\n\n XXXV\n\nAfter the little party was again constituted at Fawns--which had taken,\nfor completeness, some ten days--Maggie naturally felt herself still\nmore possessed, in spirit, of everything that had last happened in\nLondon. There was a phrase that came back to her from old American\nyears: she was having, by that idiom, the time of her life--she knew it\nby the perpetual throb of this sense of possession, which was almost\ntoo violent either to recognise or to hide. It was as if she had come\nout--that was her most general consciousness; out of a dark tunnel, a\ndense wood, or even simply a smoky room, and had thereby, at least,\nfor going on, the advantage of air in her lungs. It was as if she were\nsomehow at last gathering in the fruits of patience; she had either been\nreally more patient than she had known at the time, or had been so for\nlonger: the change brought about by itself as great a difference of\nview as the shift of an inch in the position of a telescope. It was her\ntelescope in fact that had gained in range--just as her danger lay\nin her exposing herself to the observation by the more charmed, and\ntherefore the more reckless, use of this optical resource. Not under\nany provocation to produce it in public was her unremitted rule; but\nthe difficulties of duplicity had not shrunk, while the need of it had\ndoubled. Humbugging, which she had so practised with her father, had\nbeen a comparatively simple matter on the basis of mere doubt; but the\nground to be covered was now greatly larger, and she felt not unlike\nsome young woman of the theatre who, engaged for a minor part in the\nplay and having mastered her cues with anxious effort, should find\nherself suddenly promoted to leading lady and expected to appear in\nevery act of the five. She had made much to her husband, that last\nnight, of her \"knowing\"; but it was exactly this quantity she now\nknew that, from the moment she could only dissimulate it, added to her\nresponsibility and made of the latter all a mere question of having\nsomething precious and precarious in charge. There was no one to help\nher with it--not even Fanny Assingham now; this good friend\'s presence\nhaving become, inevitably, with that climax of their last interview in\nPortland Place, a severely simplified function. She had her use, oh\nyes, a thousand times; but it could only consist henceforth in her quite\nconspicuously touching at no point whatever--assuredly, at least with\nMaggie--the matter they had discussed. She was there, inordinately, as a\nvalue, but as a value only for the clear negation of everything. She was\ntheir general sign, precisely, of unimpaired beatitude--and she was to\nlive up to that somewhat arduous character, poor thing, as she might.\nShe might privately lapse from it, if she must, with Amerigo or with\nCharlotte--only not, of course, ever, so much as for the wink of an eye,\nwith the master of the house. Such lapses would be her own affair, which\nMaggie at present could take no thought of. She treated her young friend\nmeanwhile, it was to be said, to no betrayal of such wavering; so that\nfrom the moment of her alighting at the door with the Colonel everything\nwent on between them at concert pitch. What had she done, that last\nevening in Maggie\'s room, but bring the husband and wife more together\nthan, as would seem, they had ever been? Therefore what indiscretion\nshould she not show by attempting to go behind the grand appearance of\nher success?--which would be to court a doubt of her beneficent work.\nShe knew accordingly nothing but harmony and diffused, restlessly,\nnothing but peace--an extravagant, expressive, aggressive peace, not\nincongruous, after all, with the solid calm of the place; a kind of\nhelmetted, trident-shaking pax Britannica.\n\nThe peace, it must be added, had become, as the days elapsed, a peace\nquite generally animated and peopled--thanks to that fact of the\npresence of \"company\" in which Maggie\'s ability to preserve an\nappearance had learned, from so far back, to find its best resource. It\nwas not inconspicuous, it was in fact striking, that this resource, just\nnow, seemed to meet in the highest degree every one\'s need: quite as if\nevery one were, by the multiplication of human objects in the scene, by\nthe creation, by the confusion, of fictive issues, hopeful of escaping\nsomebody else\'s notice. It had reached the point, in truth, that the\ncollective bosom might have been taken to heave with the knowledge of\nthe descent upon adjacent shores, for a short period, of Mrs. Rance and\nthe Lutches, still united, and still so divided, for conquest: the sense\nof the party showed at least, oddly enough, as favourable to the fancy\nof the quaint turn that some near \"week-end\" might derive from their\nreappearance. This measured for Maggie the ground they had all travelled\ntogether since that unforgotten afternoon of the none so distant year,\nthat determinant September Sunday when, sitting with her father in the\npark, as in commemoration of the climax both of their old order and of\ntheir old danger, she had proposed to him that they should \"call\nin\" Charlotte,--call her in as a specialist might be summoned to an\ninvalid\'s chair. Wasn\'t it a sign of something rather portentous, their\nbeing ready to be beholden, as for a diversion, to the once despised\nKitty and Dotty? That had already had its application, in truth, to her\ninvocation of the Castledeans and several other members, again, of\nthe historic Matcham week, made before she left town, and made, always\nconsistently, with an idea--since she was never henceforth to approach\nthese people without an idea, and since that lurid element of their\nintercourse grew and grew for her with each occasion. The flame with\nwhich it burned afresh during these particular days, the way it held up\nthe torch to anything, to everything, that MIGHT have occurred as the\nclimax of revels springing from traditions so vivified--this by itself\njustified her private motive and reconsecrated her diplomacy. She had\nalready produced by the aid of these people something of the effect she\nsought--that of being \"good\" for whatever her companions were good for,\nand of not asking either of them to give up anyone or anything for her\nsake. There was moreover, frankly, a sharpness of point in it that she\nenjoyed; it gave an accent to the truth she wished to illustrate--the\ntruth that the surface of her recent life, thick-sown with the flower of\nearnest endeavour, with every form of the unruffled and the undoubting,\nsuffered no symptom anywhere to peep out. It was as if, under her\npressure, neither party could get rid of the complicity, as it might be\nfigured, of the other; as if, in a word, she saw Amerigo and Charlotte\ncommitted, for fear of betrayals on their own side, to a kind of wan\nconsistency on the subject of Lady Castledean\'s \"set,\" and this latter\ngroup, by the same stroke, compelled to assist at attestations the\nextent and bearing of which they rather failed to grasp and which left\nthem indeed, in spite of hereditary high spirits, a trifle bewildered\nand even a trifle scared.\n\nThey made, none the less, at Fawns, for number, for movement, for\nsound--they played their parts during a crisis that must have hovered\nfor them, in the long passages of the old house, after the fashion\nof the established ghost, felt, through the dark hours as a constant\npossibility, rather than have menaced them in the form of a daylight\nbore, one of the perceived outsiders who are liable to be met in the\ndrawing-room or to be sat next to at dinner. If the Princess, moreover,\nhad failed of her occult use for so much of the machinery of diversion,\nshe would still have had a sense not other than sympathetic for the\nadvantage now extracted from it by Fanny Assingham\'s bruised philosophy.\nThis good friend\'s relation to it was actually the revanche, she\nsufficiently indicated, of her obscured lustre at Matcham, where she had\nknown her way about so much less than most of the others. She knew it\nat Fawns, through the pathless wild of the right tone, positively\nbetter than any one, Maggie could note for her; and her revenge had the\nmagnanimity of a brave pointing out of it to every one else, a wonderful\nirresistible, conscious, almost compassionate patronage. Here was a\nhouse, she triumphantly caused it to be noted, in which she so bristled\nwith values that some of them might serve, by her amused willingness to\nshare, for such of the temporarily vague, among her fellow-guests, such\nof the dimly disconcerted, as had lost the key to their own. It may have\nbeen partly through the effect of this especial strain of community with\nher old friend that Maggie found herself, one evening, moved to take\nup again their dropped directness of reference. They had remained\ndownstairs together late; the other women of the party had filed, singly\nor in couples, up the \"grand\" staircase on which, from the equally grand\nhall, these retreats and advances could always be pleasantly observed;\nthe men had apparently taken their way to the smoking-room; while the\nPrincess, in possession thus of a rare reach of view, had lingered as\nif to enjoy it. Then she saw that Mrs. Assingham was remaining a\nlittle--and as for the appreciation of her enjoyment; upon which they\nstood looking at each other across the cleared prospect until the elder\nwoman, only vaguely expressive and tentative now, came nearer. It was\nlike the act of asking if there were anything she could yet do, and that\nquestion was answered by her immediately feeling, on this closer view,\nas she had felt when presenting herself in Portland Place after Maggie\'s\nlast sharp summons. Their understanding was taken up by these new\nsnatched moments where that occasion had left it.\n\n\"He has never told her that I know. Of that I\'m at last satisfied.\" And\nthen as Mrs. Assingham opened wide eyes: \"I\'ve been in the dark since\nwe came down, not understanding what he has been doing or intending--not\nmaking out what can have passed between them. But within a day or two\nI\'ve begun to suspect, and this evening, for reasons--oh, too many to\ntell you!--I\'ve been sure, since it explains. NOTHING has passed between\nthem--that\'s what has happened. It explains,\" the Princess repeated\nwith energy; \"it explains, it explains!\" She spoke in a manner that her\nauditor was afterwards to describe to the Colonel, oddly enough, as that\nof the quietest excitement; she had turned back to the chimney-place,\nwhere, in honour of a damp day and a chill night, the piled logs had\nturned to flame and sunk to embers; and the evident intensity of her\nvision for the fact she imparted made Fanny Assingham wait upon her\nwords. It explained, this striking fact, more indeed than her companion,\nthough conscious of fairly gaping with good-will, could swallow at once.\nThe Princess, however, as for indulgence and confidence, quickly filled\nup the measure. \"He hasn\'t let her know that I know--and, clearly,\ndoesn\'t mean to. He has made up his mind; he\'ll say nothing about it.\nTherefore, as she\'s quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself,\nshe has no idea how much I\'m really in possession. She believes,\" said\nMaggie, \"and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that I\'m not\nin possession of anything. And that, somehow, for my own help seems to\nme immense.\"\n\n\"Immense, my dear!\" Mrs. Assingham applausively murmured, though not\nquite, even as yet, seeing all the way. \"He\'s keeping quiet then on\npurpose?\"\n\n\"On purpose.\" Maggie\'s lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they\nhad ever looked. \"He\'ll NEVER tell her now.\"\n\nFanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little\nfriend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic\nlucidity. She stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect\ncommander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news,\nreplete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the\nplace. This importance breathed upon her comrade. \"So you\'re all right?\"\n\n\"Oh, ALL right\'s a good deal to say. But I seem at least to see, as I\nhaven\'t before, where I am with it.\"\n\nFanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. \"And you have\nit from him?--your husband himself has told you?\"\n\n\"\'Told\' me--?\"\n\n\"Why, what you speak of. It isn\'t of an assurance received from him then\nthat you do speak?\"\n\nAt which Maggie had continued to stare. \"Dear me, no. Do you suppose\nI\'ve asked him for an assurance?\"\n\n\"Ah, you haven\'t?\" Her companion smiled. \"That\'s what I supposed you\nMIGHT mean. Then, darling, what HAVE you--?\"\n\n\"Asked him for? I\'ve asked him for nothing.\"\n\nBut this, in turn, made Fanny stare. \"Then nothing, that evening of the\nEmbassy dinner, passed between you?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, everything passed.\"\n\n\"Everything--?\"\n\n\"Everything. I told him what I knew--and I told him how I knew it.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham waited. \"And that was all?\"\n\n\"Wasn\'t it quite enough?\"\n\n\"Oh, love,\" she bridled, \"that\'s for you to have judged!\"\n\n\"Then I HAVE judged,\" said Maggie--\"I did judge. I made sure he\nunderstood--then I let him alone.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham wondered. \"But he didn\'t explain--?\"\n\n\"Explain? Thank God, no!\" Maggie threw back her head as with horror at\nthe thought, then the next moment added: \"And I didn\'t, either.\"\n\nThe decency of pride in it shed a cold little light--yet as from heights\nat the base of which her companion rather panted. \"But if he neither\ndenies nor confesses--?\"\n\n\"He does what\'s a thousand times better--he lets it alone. He does,\"\nMaggie went on, \"as he would do; as I see now that I was sure he would.\nHe lets me alone.\"\n\nFanny Assingham turned it over. \"Then how do you know so where, as you\nsay, you \'are\'?\"\n\n\"Why, just BY that. I put him in possession of the difference; the\ndifference made, about me, by the fact that I hadn\'t been, after\nall--though with a wonderful chance, I admitted, helping me--too\nstupid to have arrived at knowledge. He had to see that I\'m changed for\nhim--quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on\nwith. It became a question then of his really taking in the change--and\nwhat I now see is that he is doing so.\"\n\nFanny followed as she could. \"Which he shows by letting you, as you say,\nalone?\"\n\nMaggie looked at her a minute. \"And by letting her.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham did what she might to embrace it--checked a little,\nhowever, by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in\nthis almost too large air, to an inspiration. \"Ah, but does Charlotte\nlet HIM?\"\n\n\"Oh, that\'s another affair--with which I\'ve practically nothing to do.\nI dare say, however, she doesn\'t.\" And the Princess had a more distant\ngaze for the image evoked by the question. \"I don\'t in fact well see how\nshe CAN. But the point for me is that he understands.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Fanny Assingham cooed, \"understands--?\"\n\n\"Well, what I want. I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough\nfor you to poke in your finger.\"\n\n\"A brilliant, perfect surface--to begin with at least. I see.\"\n\n\"The golden bowl--as it WAS to have been.\" And Maggie dwelt musingly on\nthis obscured figure. \"The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl\nwithout the crack.\"\n\nFor Mrs. Assingham too the image had its force, and the precious object\nshone before her again, reconstituted, plausible, presentable. But\nwasn\'t there still a piece missing? \"Yet if he lets you alone and you\nonly let him--?\"\n\n\"Mayn\'t our doing so, you mean, be noticed?--mayn\'t it give us away?\nWell, we hope not--we try not--we take such care. We alone know what\'s\nbetween us--we and you; and haven\'t you precisely been struck, since\nyou\'ve been here,\" Maggie asked, \"with our making so good a show?\"\n\nHer friend hesitated. \"To your father?\"\n\nBut it made her hesitate too; she wouldn\'t speak of her father directly.\n\"To everyone. To her--now that you understand.\"\n\nIt held poor Fanny again in wonder. \"To Charlotte--yes: if there\'s so\nmuch beneath it, for you, and if it\'s all such a plan. That makes\nit hang together it makes YOU hang together.\" She fairly exhaled her\nadmiration. \"You\'re like nobody else--you\'re extraordinary.\"\n\nMaggie met it with appreciation, but with a reserve. \"No, I\'m not\nextraordinary--but I AM, for every one, quiet.\"\n\n\"Well, that\'s just what is extraordinary. \'Quiet\' is more than _I_ am,\nand you leave me far behind.\" With which, again, for an instant, Mrs.\nAssingham frankly brooded. \"\'Now that I understand,\' you say--but\nthere\'s one thing I don\'t understand.\" And the next minute, while her\ncompanion waited, she had mentioned it. \"How can Charlotte, after all,\nnot have pressed him, not have attacked him about it? How can she not\nhave asked him--asked him on his honour, I mean--if you know?\"\n\n\"How can she \'not\'? Why, of course,\" said the Princess limpidly, \"she\nMUST!\"\n\n\"Well then--?\"\n\n\"Well then, you think, he must have told her? Why, exactly what I mean,\"\nsaid Maggie, \"is that he will have done nothing of the sort; will, as I\nsay, have maintained the contrary.\"\n\nFanny Assingham weighed it. \"Under her direct appeal for the truth?\"\n\n\"Under her direct appeal for the truth.\"\n\n\"Her appeal to his honour?\"\n\n\"Her appeal to his honour. That\'s my point.\"\n\nFanny Assingham braved it. \"For the truth as from him to her?\"\n\n\"From him to any one.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham\'s face lighted. \"He\'ll simply, he\'ll insistently have\nlied?\"\n\nMaggie brought it out roundly. \"He\'ll simply, he\'ll insistently have\nlied.\"\n\nIt held again her companion, who next, however, with a single movement,\nthrowing herself on her neck, overflowed. \"Oh, if you knew how you help\nme!\"\n\nMaggie had liked her to understand, so far as this was possible; but had\nnot been slow to see afterwards how the possibility was limited, when\none came to think, by mysteries she was not to sound. This inability in\nher was indeed not remarkable, inasmuch as the Princess herself, as\nwe have seen, was only now in a position to boast of touching bottom.\nMaggie lived, inwardly, in a consciousness that she could but partly\nopen even to so good a friend, and her own visitation of the fuller\nexpanse of which was, for that matter, still going on. They had been\nduskier still, however, these recesses of her imagination--that, no\ndoubt, was what might at present be said for them. She had looked into\nthem, on the eve of her leaving town, almost without penetration: she\nhad made out in those hours, and also, of a truth, during the days which\nimmediately followed, little more than the strangeness of a relation\nhaving for its chief mark--whether to be prolonged or not--the absence\nof any \"intimate\" result of the crisis she had invited her husband to\nrecognise. They had dealt with this crisis again, face to face, very\nbriefly, the morning after the scene in her room--but with the odd\nconsequence of her having appeared merely to leave it on his hands. He\nhad received it from her as he might have received a bunch of keys or a\nlist of commissions--attentive to her instructions about them, but only\nputting them, for the time, very carefully and safely, into his\npocket. The instructions had seemed, from day to day, to make so little\ndifference for his behaviour--that is for his speech or his silence;\nto produce, as yet, so little of the fruit of action. He had taken from\nher, on the spot, in a word, before going to dress for dinner, all she\nthen had to give--after which, on the morrow, he had asked her for more,\na good deal as if she might have renewed her supply during the night;\nbut he had had at his command for this latter purpose an air of\nextraordinary detachment and discretion, an air amounting really to an\nappeal which, if she could have brought herself to describe it vulgarly,\nshe would have described as cool, just as he himself would have\ndescribed it in any one else as \"cheeky\"; a suggestion that she should\ntrust him on the particular ground since she didn\'t on the general.\nNeither his speech nor his silence struck her as signifying more, or\nless, under this pressure, than they had seemed to signify for weeks\npast; yet if her sense hadn\'t been absolutely closed to the possibility\nin him of any thought of wounding her, she might have taken his\nundisturbed manner, the perfection of his appearance of having recovered\nhimself, for one of those intentions of high impertinence by the aid of\nwhich great people, les grands seigneurs, persons of her husband\'s class\nand type, always know how to re-establish a violated order.\n\nIt was her one purely good fortune that she could feel thus sure\nimpertinence--to HER at any rate--was not among the arts on which he\nproposed to throw himself; for though he had, in so almost mystifying\na manner, replied to nothing, denied nothing, explained nothing,\napologised for nothing, he had somehow conveyed to her that this was not\nbecause of any determination to treat her case as not \"worth\" it. There\nhad been consideration, on both occasions, in the way he had listened\nto her--even though at the same time there had been extreme reserve;\na reserve indeed, it was also to be remembered, qualified by the fact\nthat, on their second and shorter interview, in Portland Place, and\nquite at the end of this passage, she had imagined him positively\nproposing to her a temporary accommodation. It had been but the matter\nof something in the depths of the eyes he finally fixed upon her,\nand she had found in it, the more she kept it before her, the\ntacitly-offered sketch of a working arrangement. \"Leave me my reserve;\ndon\'t question it--it\'s all I have, just now, don\'t you see? so that, if\nyou\'ll make me the concession of letting me alone with it for as long a\ntime as I require, I promise you something or other, grown under cover\nof it, even though I don\'t yet quite make out what, as a return for your\npatience.\" She had turned away from him with some such unspoken words as\nthat in her ear, and indeed she had to represent to herself that she had\nspiritually heard them, had to listen to them still again, to explain\nher particular patience in face of his particular failure. He hadn\'t so\nmuch as pretended to meet for an instant the question raised by her of\nher accepted ignorance of the point in time, the period before their own\nmarriage, from which his intimacy with Charlotte dated. As an ignorance\nin which he and Charlotte had been personally interested--and to the\npitch of consummately protecting, for years, each other\'s interest--as\na condition so imposed upon her the fact of its having ceased might\nhave made it, on the spot, the first article of his defence. He had\nvouchsafed it, however, nothing better than his longest stare of\npostponed consideration. That tribute he had coldly paid it, and Maggie\nmight herself have been stupefied, truly, had she not had something to\nhold on by, at her own present ability, even provisional, to make terms\nwith a chapter of history into which she could but a week before not\nhave dipped without a mortal chill. At the rate at which she was living\nshe was getting used hour by hour to these extensions of view; and when\nshe asked herself, at Fawns, to what single observation of her own, in\nLondon, the Prince had had an affirmation to oppose, she but just failed\nto focus the small strained wife of the moments in question as\nsome panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the\nfootlights of an empty theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box.\n\nHer best comprehension of Amerigo\'s success in not committing himself\nwas in her recall, meanwhile, of the inquiries he had made of her on\ntheir only return to the subject, and which he had in fact explicitly\nprovoked their return in order to make. He had had it over with her\nagain, the so distinctly remarkable incident of her interview at home\nwith the little Bloomsbury shopman. This anecdote, for him, had, not\naltogether surprisingly, required some straighter telling, and the\nPrince\'s attitude in presence of it had represented once more his\nnearest approach to a cross-examination. The difficulty in respect to\nthe little man had been for the question of his motive--his motive in\nwriting, first, in the spirit of retraction, to a lady with whom he had\nmade a most advantageous bargain, and in then coming to see her so that\nhis apology should be personal. Maggie had felt her explanation weak;\nbut there were the facts, and she could give no other. Left alone, after\nthe transaction, with the knowledge that his visitor designed the object\nbought of him as a birthday-gift to her father--for Maggie confessed\nfreely to having chattered to him almost as to a friend--the vendor of\nthe golden bowl had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any\nclass, and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel. He\nhadn\'t liked what he had done, and what he had above all made such a\n\"good thing\" of having done; at the thought of his purchaser\'s good\nfaith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquestion\nwhich would make it, verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing\nof sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he\nhad known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more\nremarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having\ntroubled him in other connexions. She had recognised the oddity of\nher adventure and left it to show for what it was. She had not been\nunconscious, on the other hand, that if it hadn\'t touched Amerigo so\nnearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflection.\nHe had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and\na howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing: \"Oh, most\ncertainly, he TOLD me his reason was because he \'liked\' me\"--though she\nremained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked\nmost by the familiarities she had offered or by those that, so pictured,\nshe had had to endure. That the partner of her bargain had yearned to\nsee her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this\nalso she had frankly expressed herself to the Prince as having, in no\nsnubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative\nand indebted spirit, not delayed to make out. He had wished, ever\nso seriously, to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly\ndeclined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she had\nnot, at all events, already devoted the crystal cup to the beautiful\npurpose she had, so kindly and so fortunately, named to him. It wasn\'t\na thing for a present to a person she was fond of, for she wouldn\'t wish\nto give a present that would bring ill luck. That had come to him--so\nthat he couldn\'t rest, and he should feel better now that he had told\nher. His having led her to act in ignorance was what he should have been\nashamed of; and, if she would pardon, gracious lady as she was, all the\nliberties he had taken, she might make of the bowl any use in life but\nthat one.\n\nIt was after this that the most extraordinary incident of all, of\ncourse, had occurred--his pointing to the two photographs with the\nremark that those were persons he knew, and that, more wonderful still,\nhe had made acquaintance with them, years before, precisely over the\nsame article. The lady, on that occasion, had taken up the fancy of\npresenting it to the gentleman, and the gentleman, guessing and dodging\never so cleverly, had declared that he wouldn\'t for the world receive an\nobject under such suspicion. He himself, the little man had confessed,\nwouldn\'t have minded--about THEM; but he had never forgotten either\ntheir talk or their faces, the impression altogether made by them, and,\nif she really wished to know, now, what had perhaps most moved him, it\nwas the thought that she should ignorantly have gone in for a thing not\ngood enough for other buyers. He had been immensely struck--that was\nanother point--with this accident of their turning out, after so long,\nfriends of hers too: they had disappeared, and this was the only light\nhe had ever had upon them. He had flushed up, quite red, with his\nrecognition, with all his responsibility--had declared that the\nconnexion must have had, mysteriously, something to do with the impulse\nhe had obeyed. And Maggie had made, to her husband, while he again\nstood before her, no secret of the shock, for herself, so suddenly and\nviolently received. She had done her best, even while taking it full\nin the face, not to give herself away; but she wouldn\'t answer--no, she\nwouldn\'t--for what she might, in her agitation, have made her informant\nthink. He might think what he would--there had been three or four\nminutes during which, while she asked him question upon question, she\nhad doubtless too little cared. And he had spoken, for his remembrance,\nas fully as she could have wished; he had spoken, oh, delightedly, for\nthe \"terms\" on which his other visitors had appeared to be with each\nother, and in fact for that conviction of the nature and degree of their\nintimacy under which, in spite of precautions, they hadn\'t been able to\nhelp leaving him. He had observed and judged and not forgotten; he had\nbeen sure they were great people, but no, ah no, distinctly, hadn\'t\n\"liked\" them as he liked the Signora Principessa. Certainly--she had\ncreated no vagueness about that--he had been in possession of her name\nand address, for sending her both her cup and her account. But the\nothers he had only, always, wondered about--he had been sure they would\nnever come back. And as to the time of their visit, he could place it,\npositively, to a day--by reason of a transaction of importance, recorded\nin his books, that had occurred but a few hours later. He had left her,\nin short, definitely rejoicing that he had been able to make up to\nher for not having been quite \"square\" over their little business by\nrendering her, so unexpectedly, the service of this information. His\njoy, moreover, was--as much as Amerigo would!--a matter of the personal\ninterest with which her kindness, gentleness, grace, her charming\npresence and easy humanity and familiarity, had inspired him. All of\nwhich, while, in thought, Maggie went over it again and again--oh, over\nany imputable rashness of her own immediate passion and pain, as well\nas over the rest of the straight little story she had, after all, to\ntell--might very conceivably make a long sum for the Prince to puzzle\nout.\n\nThere were meanwhile, after the Castledeans and those invited to meet\nthem had gone, and before Mrs. Rance and the Lutches had come, three or\nfour days during which she was to learn the full extent of her need not\nto be penetrable; and then it was indeed that she felt all the force,\nand threw herself upon all the help, of the truth she had confided,\nseveral nights earlier, to Fanny Assingham. She had known it in advance,\nhad warned herself of it while the house was full: Charlotte had designs\nupon her of a nature best known to herself, and was only waiting for the\nbetter opportunity of their finding themselves less companioned.\nThis consciousness had been exactly at the bottom of Maggie\'s wish\nto multiply their spectators; there were moments for her, positively,\nmoments of planned postponement, of evasion scarcely less disguised\nthan studied, during which she turned over with anxiety the different\nways--there being two or three possible ones--in which her young\nstepmother might, at need, seek to work upon her. Amerigo\'s not having\n\"told\" her of his passage with his wife gave, for Maggie, altogether a\nnew aspect to Charlotte\'s consciousness and condition--an aspect\nwith which, for apprehension, for wonder, and even, at moments,\ninconsequently enough, for something like compassion, the Princess had\nnow to reckon. She asked herself--for she was capable of that--what he\nhad MEANT by keeping the sharer of his guilt in the dark about a matter\ntouching her otherwise so nearly; what he had meant, that is, for this\nunmistakably mystified personage herself. Maggie could imagine what he\nhad meant for her--all sorts of thinkable things, whether things of mere\n\"form\" or things of sincerity, things of pity or things of prudence: he\nhad meant, for instance, in all probability, primarily, to conjure away\nany such appearance of a changed relation between the two women as his\nfather-in-law might notice and follow up. It would have been open to him\nhowever, given the pitch of their intimacy, to avert this danger by some\nmore conceivable course with Charlotte; since an earnest warning, in\nfact, the full freedom of alarm, that of his insisting to her on the\nperil of suspicion incurred, and on the importance accordingly of\noutward peace at any price, would have been the course really most\nconceivable. Instead of warning and advising he had reassured and\ndeceived her; so that our young woman, who had been, from far back,\nby the habit, if her nature, as much on her guard against sacrificing\nothers as if she felt the great trap of life mainly to be set for one\'s\ndoing so, now found herself attaching her fancy to that side of the\nsituation of the exposed pair which involved, for themselves at least,\nthe sacrifice of the least fortunate.\n\nShe never, at present, thought of what Amerigo might be intending,\nwithout the reflection, by the same stroke, that, whatever this\nquantity, he was leaving still more to her own ingenuity. He was helping\nher, when the thing came to the test, only by the polished, possibly\nalmost too polished surface his manner to his wife wore for an admiring\nworld; and that, surely, was entitled to scarcely more than the praise\nof negative diplomacy. He was keeping his manner right, as she had\nrelated to Mrs. Assingham; the case would have been beyond calculation,\ntruly, if, on top of everything, he had allowed it to go wrong. She had\nhours of exaltation indeed when the meaning of all this pressed in upon\nher as a tacit vow from him to abide without question by whatever she\nshould be able to achieve or think fit to prescribe. Then it was that,\neven while holding her breath for the awe of it, she truly felt almost\nable enough for anything. It was as if she had passed, in a time\nincredibly short, from being nothing for him to being all; it was as if,\nrightly noted, every turn of his head, every tone of his voice, in these\ndays, might mean that there was but one way in which a proud man reduced\nto abjection could hold himself. During those of Maggie\'s vigils in\nwhich that view loomed largest, the image of her husband that it thus\npresented to her gave out a beauty for the revelation of which she\nstruck herself as paying, if anything, all too little. To make sure of\nit--to make sure of the beauty shining out of the humility, and of the\nhumility lurking in all the pride of his presence--she would have gone\nthe length of paying more yet, of paying with difficulties and\nanxieties compared to which those actually before her might have been as\nsuperficial as headaches or rainy days.\n\nThe point at which these exaltations dropped, however, was the point\nat which it was apt to come over her that if her complications had been\ngreater the question of paying would have been limited still less to\nthe liabilities of her own pocket. The complications were verily great\nenough, whether for ingenuities or sublimities, so long as she had to\ncome back to it so often that Charlotte, all the while, could only\nbe struggling with secrets sharper than her own. It was odd how that\ncertainty again and again determined and coloured her wonderments\nof detail; the question, for instance, of HOW Amerigo, in snatched\nopportunities of conference, put the haunted creature off with false\nexplanations, met her particular challenges and evaded--if that was what\nhe did do!--her particular demands. Even the conviction that Charlotte\nwas but awaiting some chance really to test her trouble upon her lover\'s\nwife left Maggie\'s sense meanwhile open as to the sight of gilt wires\nand bruised wings, the spacious but suspended cage, the home of eternal\nunrest, of pacings, beatings, shakings, all so vain, into which\nthe baffled consciousness helplessly resolved itself. The\ncage was the deluded condition, and Maggie, as having known\ndelusion--rather!--understood the nature of cages. She walked round\nCharlotte\'s--cautiously and in a very wide circle; and when, inevitably,\nthey had to communicate she felt herself, comparatively, outside, on\nthe breast of nature, and saw her companion\'s face as that of a prisoner\nlooking through bars. So it was that through bars, bars richly gilt,\nbut firmly, though discreetly, planted, Charlotte finally struck her as\nmaking a grim attempt; from which, at first, the Princess drew back as\ninstinctively as if the door of the cage had suddenly been opened from\nwithin.\n\n\n\n XXXVI\n\nThey had been alone that evening--alone as a party of six, and four of\nthem, after dinner, under suggestion not to be resisted, sat down\nto \"bridge\" in the smoking-room. They had passed together to that\napartment, on rising from table, Charlotte and Mrs. Assingham alike\nindulgent, always, to tobacco, and in fact practising an emulation\nwhich, as Fanny said, would, for herself, had the Colonel not issued\nan interdict based on the fear of her stealing his cigars, have stopped\nonly at the short pipe. Here cards had with inevitable promptness\nasserted their rule, the game forming itself, as had often happened\nbefore, of Mr. Verver with Mrs. Assingham for partner and of the Prince\nwith Mrs. Verver. The Colonel, who had then asked of Maggie license to\nrelieve his mind of a couple of letters for the earliest post out on\nthe morrow, was addressing himself to this task at the other end of the\nroom, and the Princess herself had welcomed the comparatively hushed\nhour--for the bridge-players were serious and silent--much in the mood\nof a tired actress who has the good fortune to be \"off,\" while her mates\nare on, almost long enough for a nap on the property sofa in the wing.\nMaggie\'s nap, had she been able to snatch forty winks, would have been\nof the spirit rather than of the sense; yet as she subsided, near a\nlamp, with the last salmon-coloured French periodical, she was to fail,\nfor refreshment, even of that sip of independence.\n\nThere was no question for her, as she found, of closing her eyes and\ngetting away; they strayed back to life, in the stillness, over the top\nof her Review; she could lend herself to none of those refinements of\nthe higher criticism with which its pages bristled; she was there, where\nher companions were, there again and more than ever there; it was as if,\nof a sudden, they had been made, in their personal intensity and their\nrare complexity of relation, freshly importunate to her. It was the\nfirst evening there had been no one else. Mrs. Rance and the Lutches\nwere due the next day; but meanwhile the facts of the situation were\nupright for her round the green cloth and the silver flambeaux; the fact\nof her father\'s wife\'s lover facing his mistress; the fact of her\nfather sitting, all unsounded and unblinking, between them; the fact of\nCharlotte keeping it up, keeping up everything, across the table, with\nher husband beside her; the fact of Fanny Assingham, wonderful creature,\nplaced opposite to the three and knowing more about each, probably, when\none came to think, than either of them knew of either. Erect above all\nfor her was the sharp-edged fact of the relation of the whole group,\nindividually and collectively, to herself--herself so speciously\neliminated for the hour, but presumably more present to the attention of\neach than the next card to be played.\n\nYes, under that imputation, to her sense, they sat--the imputation of\nwondering, beneath and behind all their apparently straight play, if she\nweren\'t really watching them from her corner and consciously, as might\nbe said, holding them in her hand. She was asking herself at last how\nthey could bear it--for, though cards were as nought to her and she\ncould follow no move, so that she was always, on such occasions, out of\nthe party, they struck her as conforming alike, in the matter of gravity\nand propriety, to the stiff standard of the house. Her father, she\nknew, was a high adept, one of the greatest--she had been ever, in her\nstupidity, his small, his sole despair; Amerigo excelled easily, as he\nunderstood and practised every art that could beguile large leisure;\nMrs. Assingham and Charlotte, moreover, were accounted as \"good\"\nas members of a sex incapable of the nobler consistency could be.\nTherefore, evidently, they were not, all so up to their usual form,\nmerely passing it off, whether for her or for themselves; and the amount\nof enjoyed, or at least achieved, security represented by so complete a\nconquest of appearances was what acted on her nerves, precisely, with\na kind of provocative force. She found herself, for five minutes,\nthrilling with the idea of the prodigious effect that, just as she sat\nthere near them, she had at her command; with the sense that if she were\nbut different--oh, ever so different!--all this high decorum would hang\nby a hair. There reigned for her, absolutely, during these vertiginous\nmoments, that fascination of the monstrous, that temptation of the\nhorribly possible, which we so often trace by its breaking out suddenly,\nlest it should go further, in unexplained retreats and reactions.\n\nAfter it had been thus vividly before her for a little that, springing\nup under her wrong and making them all start, stare and turn pale, she\nmight sound out their doom in a single sentence, a sentence easy to\nchoose among several of the lurid--after she had faced that blinding\nlight and felt it turn to blackness, she rose from her place, laying\naside her magazine, and moved slowly round the room, passing near the\ncard-players and pausing an instant behind the chairs in turn. Silent\nand discreet, she bent a vague mild face upon them, as if to signify\nthat, little as she followed their doings, she wished them well; and\nshe took from each, across the table, in the common solemnity, an upward\nrecognition which she was to carry away with her on her moving out\nto the terrace, a few minutes later. Her father and her husband, Mrs.\nAssingham and Charlotte, had done nothing but meet her eyes; yet the\ndifference in these demonstrations made each a separate passage--which\nwas all the more wonderful since, with the secret behind every face,\nthey had alike tried to look at her THROUGH it and in denial of it.\n\nIt all left her, as she wandered off, with the strangest of\nimpressions--the sense, forced upon her as never yet, of an appeal, a\npositive confidence, from the four pairs of eyes, that was deeper than\nany negation, and that seemed to speak, on the part of each, of some\nrelation to be contrived by her, a relation with herself, which would\nspare the individual the danger, the actual present strain, of the\nrelation with the others. They thus tacitly put it upon her to be\ndisposed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and she promptly saw\nwhy because she was there, and there just as she was, to lift it off\nthem and take it; to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old,\nof whom she had once seen a terrible picture, had been charged with the\nsins of the people and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his\nburden and die. That indeed wasn\'t THEIR design and their interest, that\nshe should sink under hers; it wouldn\'t be their feeling that she should\ndo anything but live, live on somehow for their benefit, and even as\nmuch as possible in their company, to keep proving to them that they had\ntruly escaped and that she was still there to simplify. This idea of\nher simplifying, and of their combined struggle, dim as yet but steadily\ngrowing, toward the perception of her adopting it from them, clung to\nher while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft\nthat she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. Several of the\nlong windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came\nout in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. The hour was\nmoonless and starless and the air heavy and still--which was why, in her\nevening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer\ndarkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her,\nwithin, on her sofa, as a beast might have leaped at her throat.\n\nNothing in fact was stranger than the way in which, when she had\nremained there a little, her companions, watched by her through one of\nthe windows, actually struck her as almost consciously and gratefully\nsafer. They might have been--really charming as they showed in the\nbeautiful room, and Charlotte certainly, as always, magnificently\nhandsome and supremely distinguished--they might have been figures\nrehearsing some play of which she herself was the author; they might\neven, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been\nsuch figures as would, by the strong note of character in each, fill\nany author with the certitude of success, especially of their own\nhistrionic. They might in short have represented any mystery they would;\nthe point being predominantly that the key to the mystery, the key that\ncould wind and unwind it without a snap of the spring, was there in\nher pocket--or rather, no doubt, clasped at this crisis in her hand and\npressed, as she walked back and forth, to her breast. She walked to\nthe end and far out of the light; she returned and saw the others still\nwhere she had left them; she passed round the house and looked into\nthe drawing-room, lighted also, but empty now, and seeming to speak\nthe more, in its own voice, of all the possibilities she controlled.\nSpacious and splendid, like a stage again awaiting a drama, it was\na scene she might people, by the press of her spring, either with\nserenities and dignities and decencies, or with terrors and shames and\nruins, things as ugly as those formless fragments of her golden bowl she\nwas trying so hard to pick up.\n\nShe continued to walk and continued to pause; she stopped afresh for\nthe look into the smoking-room, and by this time--it was as if the\nrecognition had of itself arrested her--she saw as in a picture, with\nthe temptation she had fled from quite extinct, why it was she had been\nable to give herself so little, from the first, to the vulgar heat of\nher wrong. She might fairly, as she watched them, have missed it as a\nlost thing; have yearned for it, for the straight vindictive view, the\nrights of resentment, the rages of jealousy, the protests of passion,\nas for something she had been cheated of not least: a range of feelings\nwhich for many women would have meant so much, but which for HER\nhusband\'s wife, for HER father\'s daughter, figured nothing nearer to\nexperience than a wild eastern caravan, looming into view with crude\ncolours in the sun, fierce pipes in the air, high spears against the\nsky, all a thrill, a natural joy to mingle with, but turning off short\nbefore it reached her and plunging into other defiles. She saw at\nall events why horror itself had almost failed her; the horror that,\nforeshadowed in advance, would, by her thought, have made everything\nthat was unaccustomed in her cry out with pain; the horror of finding\nevil seated, all at its ease, where she had only dreamed of good; the\nhorror of the thing HIDEOUSLY behind, behind so much trusted, so much\npretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness. It was the first sharp\nfalsity she had known in her life, to touch at all, or be touched by;\nit had met her like some bad-faced stranger surprised in one of the\nthick-carpeted corridors of a house of quiet on a Sunday afternoon; and\nyet, yes, amazingly, she had been able to look at terror and disgust\nonly to know that she must put away from her the bitter-sweet of their\nfreshness. The sight, from the window, of the group so constituted, TOLD\nher why, told her how, named to her, as with hard lips, named straight\nAT her, so that she must take it full in the face, that other possible\nrelation to the whole fact which alone would bear upon her irresistibly.\nIt was extraordinary: they positively brought home to her that to feel\nabout them in any of the immediate, inevitable, assuaging ways, the ways\nusually open to innocence outraged and generosity betrayed, would have\nbeen to give them up, and that giving them up was, marvellously, not\nto be thought of. She had never, from the first hour of her state of\nacquired conviction, given them up so little as now; though she was, no\ndoubt, as the consequence of a step taken a few minutes later, to invoke\nthe conception of doing that, if might be, even less. She had resumed\nher walk--stopping here and there, while she rested on the cool smooth\nstone balustrade, to draw it out; in the course of which, after a\nlittle, she passed again the lights of the empty drawing-room and paused\nagain for what she saw and felt there.\n\nIt was not at once, however, that this became quite concrete; that was\nthe effect of her presently making out that Charlotte was in the room,\nlaunched and erect there, in the middle, and looking about her; that she\nhad evidently just come round to it, from her card-table, by one of\nthe passages--with the expectation, to all appearance, of joining her\nstepdaughter. She had pulled up at seeing the great room empty--Maggie\nnot having passed out, on leaving the group, in a manner to be observed.\nSo definite a quest of her, with the bridge-party interrupted or altered\nfor it, was an impression that fairly assailed the Princess, and to\nwhich something of attitude and aspect, of the air of arrested pursuit\nand purpose, in Charlotte, together with the suggestion of her next\nvague movements, quickly added its meaning. This meaning was that she\nhad decided, that she had been infinitely conscious of Maggie\'s presence\nbefore, that she knew that she would at last find her alone, and that\nshe wanted her, for some reason, enough to have presumably called on\nBob Assingham for aid. He had taken her chair and let her go, and the\narrangement was for Maggie a signal proof of her earnestness; of the\nenergy, in fact, that, though superficially commonplace in a situation\nin which people weren\'t supposed to be watching each other, was what\naffected our young woman, on the spot, as a breaking of bars. The\nsplendid shining supple creature was out of the cage, was at large; and\nthe question now almost grotesquely rose of whether she mightn\'t by some\nart, just where she was and before she could go further, be hemmed in\nand secured. It would have been for a moment, in this case, a matter\nof quickly closing the windows and giving the alarm--with poor Maggie\'s\nsense that, though she couldn\'t know what she wanted of her, it was\nenough for trepidation that, at these firm hands, anything should be\nto say nothing of the sequel of a flight taken again along the terrace,\neven under the shame of the confessed feebleness of such evasions on the\npart of an outraged wife. It was to this feebleness, none the less, that\nthe outraged wife had presently resorted; the most that could be\nsaid for her being, as she felt while she finally stopped short, at a\ndistance, that she could at any rate resist her abjection sufficiently\nnot to sneak into the house by another way and safely reach her room.\nShe had literally caught herself in the act of dodging and ducking, and\nit told her there, vividly, in a single word, what she had all along\nbeen most afraid of.\n\nShe had been afraid of the particular passage with Charlotte that would\ndetermine her father\'s wife to take him into her confidence as she\ncouldn\'t possibly as yet have done, to prepare for him a statement\nof her wrong, to lay before him the infamy of what she was apparently\nsuspected of. This, should she have made up her mind to do it, would\nrest on a calculation the thought of which evoked, strangely, other\npossibilities and visions. It would show her as sufficiently believing\nin her grasp of her husband to be able to assure herself that, with his\ndaughter thrown on the defensive, with Maggie\'s cause and Maggie\'s word,\nin fine, against her own, it wasn\'t Maggie\'s that would most certainly\ncarry the day. Such a glimpse of her conceivable idea, which would be\nfounded on reasons all her own, reasons of experience and assurance,\nimpenetrable to others, but intimately familiar to herself--such a\nglimpse opened out wide as soon as it had come into view; for if so much\nas this was still firm ground between the elder pair, if the beauty of\nappearances had been so consistently preserved, it was only the golden\nbowl as Maggie herself knew it that had been broken. The breakage stood\nnot for any wrought discomposure among the triumphant three--it stood\nmerely for the dire deformity of her attitude toward them. She was\nunable at the minute, of course, fully to measure the difference thus\ninvolved for her, and it remained inevitably an agitating image, the\nway it might be held over her that if she didn\'t, of her own prudence,\nsatisfy Charlotte as to the reference, in her mocking spirit, of so much\nof the unuttered and unutterable, of the constantly and unmistakably\nimplied, her father would be invited without further ceremony to\nrecommend her to do so. But ANY confidence, ANY latent operating\ninsolence, that Mrs. Verver should, thanks to her large native\nresources, continue to be possessed of and to hold in reserve, glimmered\nsuddenly as a possible working light and seemed to offer, for meeting\nher, a new basis and something like a new system. Maggie felt, truly, a\nrare contraction of the heart on making out, the next instant, what the\nnew system would probably have to be--and she had practically done that\nbefore perceiving that the thing she feared had already taken place.\nCharlotte, extending her search, appeared now to define herself vaguely\nin the distance; of this, after an instant, the Princess was sure,\nthough the darkness was thick, for the projected clearness of the\nsmoking-room windows had presently contributed its help. Her friend came\nslowly into that circle--having also, for herself, by this time, not\nindistinguishably discovered that Maggie was on the terrace. Maggie,\nfrom the end, saw her stop before one of the windows to look at the\ngroup within, and then saw her come nearer and pause again, still with a\nconsiderable length of the place between them.\n\nYes, Charlotte had seen she was watching her from afar, and had stopped\nnow to put her further attention to the test. Her face was fixed on her,\nthrough the night; she was the creature who had escaped by force from\nher cage, yet there was in her whole motion assuredly, even as so dimly\ndiscerned, a kind of portentous intelligent stillness. She had escaped\nwith an intention, but with an intention the more definite that it\ncould so accord with quiet measures. The two women, at all events, only\nhovered there, for these first minutes, face to face over their interval\nand exchanging no sign; the intensity of their mutual look might have\npierced the night, and Maggie was at last to start with the scared sense\nof having thus yielded to doubt, to dread, to hesitation, for a time\nthat, with no other proof needed, would have completely given her away.\nHow long had she stood staring?--a single minute or five? Long enough,\nin any case, to have felt herself absolutely take from her visitor\nsomething that the latter threw upon her, irresistibly, by this effect\nof silence, by this effect of waiting and watching, by this effect,\nunmistakably, of timing her indecision and her fear. If then, scared and\nhanging back, she had, as was so evident, sacrificed all past pretences,\nit would have been with the instant knowledge of an immense advantage\ngained that Charlotte finally saw her come on. Maggie came on with her\nheart in her hands; she came on with the definite prevision, throbbing\nlike the tick of a watch, of a doom impossibly sharp and hard, but to\nwhich, after looking at it with her eyes wide open, she had none the\nless bowed her head. By the time she was at her companion\'s side, for\nthat matter, by the time Charlotte had, without a motion, without a\nword, simply let her approach and stand there, her head was already\non the block, so that the consciousness that everything had now gone\nblurred all perception of whether or no the axe had fallen. Oh, the\n\"advantage,\" it was perfectly enough, in truth, with Mrs. Verver; for\nwhat was Maggie\'s own sense but that of having been thrown over on her\nback, with her neck, from the first, half broken and her helpless face\nstaring up? That position only could account for the positive grimace of\nweakness and pain produced there by Charlotte\'s dignity.\n\n\"I\'ve come to join you--I thought you would be here.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I\'m here,\" Maggie heard herself return a little flatly. \"It\'s\ntoo close in-doors.\"\n\n\"Very--but close even here.\" Charlotte was still and grave--she had even\nuttered her remark about the temperature with an expressive weight that\nverged upon solemnity; so that Maggie, reduced to looking vaguely about\nat the sky, could only feel her not fail of her purpose. \"The air\'s\nheavy as if with thunder--I think there\'ll be a storm.\" She made the\nsuggestion to carry off an awkwardness--which was a part, always, of\nher companion\'s gain; but the awkwardness didn\'t diminish in the silence\nthat followed. Charlotte had said nothing in reply; her brow was dark\nas with a fixed expression, and her high elegance, her handsome head\nand long, straight neck testified, through the dusk, to their inveterate\ncompleteness and noble erectness. It was as if what she had come out\nto do had already begun, and when, as a consequence, Maggie had said\nhelplessly, \"Don\'t you want something? won\'t you have my shawl?\"\neverything might have crumbled away in the comparative poverty of the\ntribute. Mrs. Verver\'s rejection of it had the brevity of a sign that\nthey hadn\'t closed in for idle words, just as her dim, serious face,\nuninterruptedly presented until they moved again, might have represented\nthe success with which she watched all her message penetrate. They\npresently went back the way she had come, but she stopped Maggie again\nwithin range of the smoking-room window and made her stand where the\nparty at cards would be before her. Side by side, for three minutes,\nthey fixed this picture of quiet harmonies, the positive charm of it\nand, as might have been said, the full significance--which, as was now\nbrought home to Maggie, could be no more, after all, than a matter of\ninterpretation, differing always for a different interpreter. As she\nherself had hovered in sight of it a quarter-of-an-hour before, it would\nhave been a thing for her to show Charlotte--to show in righteous irony,\nin reproach too stern for anything but silence. But now it was she\nwho was being shown it, and shown it by Charlotte, and she saw quickly\nenough that, as Charlotte showed it, so she must at present submissively\nseem to take it.\n\nThe others were absorbed and unconscious, either silent over their game\nor dropping remarks unheard on the terrace; and it was to her father\'s\nquiet face, discernibly expressive of nothing that was in his daughter\'s\nmind, that our young woman\'s attention was most directly given. His wife\nand his daughter were both closely watching him, and to which of them,\ncould he have been notified of this, would his raised eyes first, all\nimpulsively, have responded; in which of them would he have felt it most\nimportant to destroy--for HIS clutch at the equilibrium--any germ of\nuneasiness? Not yet, since his marriage, had Maggie so sharply and\nso formidably known her old possession of him as a thing divided\nand contested. She was looking at him by Charlotte\'s leave and under\nCharlotte\'s direction; quite in fact as if the particular way she should\nlook at him were prescribed to her; quite, even, as if she had been\ndefied to look at him in any other. It came home to her too that\nthe challenge wasn\'t, as might be said, in his interest and for his\nprotection, but, pressingly, insistently, in Charlotte\'s, for that of\nHER security at any price. She might verily, by this dumb demonstration,\nhave been naming to Maggie the price, naming it as a question for Maggie\nherself, a sum of money that she, properly, was to find. She must remain\nsafe and Maggie must pay--what she was to pay with being her own affair.\n\nStraighter than ever, thus, the Princess again felt it all put upon\nher, and there was a minute, just a supreme instant, during which\nthere burned in her a wild wish that her father would only look up. It\nthrobbed for these seconds as a yearning appeal to him--she would chance\nit, that is, if he would but just raise his eyes and catch them, across\nthe larger space, standing in the outer dark together. Then he might\nbe affected by the sight, taking them as they were; he might make some\nsign--she scarce knew what--that would save her; save her from being\nthe one, this way, to pay all. He might somehow show a preference--\ndistinguishing between them; might, out of pity for her, signal to her\nthat this extremity of her effort for him was more than he asked. That\nrepresented Maggie\'s one little lapse from consistency--the sole small\ndeflection in the whole course of her scheme. It had come to nothing the\nnext minute, for the dear man\'s eyes had never moved, and Charlotte\'s\nhand, promptly passed into her arm, had already, had very firmly\ndrawn her on--quite, for that matter, as from some sudden, some equal\nperception on her part too of the more ways than one in which their\nimpression could appeal. They retraced their steps along the rest of the\nterrace, turning the corner of the house, and presently came abreast of\nthe other windows, those of the pompous drawing-room, still lighted and\nstill empty. Here Charlotte again paused, and it was again as if she\nwere pointing out what Maggie had observed for herself, the very look\nthe place had of being vivid in its stillness, of having, with all its\ngreat objects as ordered and balanced as for a formal reception, been\nappointed for some high transaction, some real affair of state. In\npresence of this opportunity she faced her companion once more; she\ntraced in her the effect of everything she had already communicated; she\nsignified, with the same success, that the terrace and the sullen night\nwould bear too meagre witness to the completion of her idea. Soon enough\nthen, within the room, under the old lustres of Venice and the eyes of\nthe several great portraits, more or less contemporary with these, that\nawaited on the walls of Fawns their final far migration--soon enough\nMaggie found herself staring, and at first all too gaspingly, at the\ngrand total to which each separate demand Mrs. Verver had hitherto made\nupon her, however she had made it, now amounted.\n\n\"I\'ve been wanting--and longer than you\'d perhaps believe--to put a\nquestion to you for which no opportunity has seemed to me yet quite so\ngood as this. It would have been easier perhaps if you had struck me as\nin the least disposed ever to give me one. I have to take it now, you\nsee, as I find it.\" They stood in the centre of the immense room, and\nMaggie could feel that the scene of life her imagination had made of it\ntwenty minutes before was by this time sufficiently peopled. These few\nstraight words filled it to its uttermost reaches, and nothing was now\nabsent from her consciousness, either, of the part she was called upon\nto play in it. Charlotte had marched straight in, dragging her rich\ntrain; she rose there beautiful and free, with her whole aspect and\naction attuned to the firmness of her speech. Maggie had kept the shawl\nshe had taken out with her, and, clutching it tight in her nervousness,\ndrew it round her as if huddling in it for shelter, covering herself\nwith it for humility. She looked out as from under an improvised\nhood--the sole headgear of some poor woman at somebody\'s proud door;\nshe waited even like the poor woman; she met her friend\'s eyes\nwith recognitions she couldn\'t suppress. She might sound it as she\ncould--\"What question then?\"--everything in her, from head to foot,\ncrowded it upon Charlotte that she knew. She knew too well--that she was\nshowing; so that successful vagueness, to save some scrap of her dignity\nfrom the imminence of her defeat, was already a lost cause, and the\none thing left was if possible, at any cost, even that of stupid\ninconsequence, to try to look as if she weren\'t afraid. If she could but\nappear at all not afraid she might appear a little not ashamed--that\nis not ashamed to be afraid, which was the kind of shame that could\nbe fastened on her, it being fear all the while that moved her. Her\nchallenge, at any rate, her wonder, her terror--the blank, blurred\nsurface, whatever it was that she presented became a mixture that ceased\nto signify; for to the accumulated advantage by which Charlotte was at\npresent sustained her next words themselves had little to add.\n\n\"Have you any ground of complaint of me? Is there any wrong you consider\nI\'ve done you? I feel at last that I\'ve a right to ask you.\"\n\nTheir eyes had to meet on it, and to meet long; Maggie\'s avoided at\nleast the disgrace of looking away. \"What makes you want to ask it?\"\n\n\"My natural desire to know. You\'ve done that, for so long, little\njustice.\"\n\nMaggie waited a moment. \"For so long? You mean you\'ve thought--?\"\n\n\"I mean, my dear, that I\'ve seen. I\'ve seen, week after week, that YOU\nseemed to be thinking--of something that perplexed or worried you. Is it\nanything for which I\'m in any degree responsible?\"\n\nMaggie summoned all her powers. \"What in the world SHOULD it be?\"\n\n\"Ah, that\'s not for me to imagine, and I should be very sorry to have\nto try to say! I\'m aware of no point whatever at which I may have failed\nyou,\" said Charlotte; \"nor of any at which I may have failed any one\nin whom I can suppose you sufficiently interested to care. If I\'ve been\nguilty of some fault I\'ve committed it all unconsciously, and am only\nanxious to hear from you honestly about it. But if I\'ve been mistaken\nas to what I speak of--the difference, more and more marked, as I\'ve\nthought, in all your manner to me--why, obviously, so much the\nbetter. No form of correction received from you could give me greater\nsatisfaction.\"\n\nShe spoke, it struck her companion, with rising, with extraordinary\nease; as if hearing herself say it all, besides seeing the way it was\nlistened to, helped her from point to point. She saw she was right--that\nthis WAS the tone for her to take and the thing for her to do, the thing\nas to which she was probably feeling that she had in advance, in\nher delays and uncertainties, much exaggerated the difficulty. The\ndifficulty was small, and it grew smaller as her adversary continued\nto shrink; she was not only doing as she wanted, but had by this time\neffectively done it and hung it up. All of which but deepened Maggie\'s\nsense of the sharp and simple need, now, of seeing her through to the\nend. \"\'If\' you\'ve been mistaken, you say?\"--and the Princess but barely\nfaltered. \"You HAVE been mistaken.\"\n\nCharlotte looked at her splendidly hard. \"You\'re perfectly sure it\'s ALL\nmy mistake?\"\n\n\"All I can say is that you\'ve received a false impression.\"\n\n\"Ah then--so much the better! From the moment I HAD received it I knew I\nmust sooner or later speak of it--for that, you see, is, systematically,\nmy way. And now,\" Charlotte added, \"you make me glad I\'ve spoken. I\nthank you very much.\"\n\nIt was strange how for Maggie too, with this, the difficulty seemed to\nsink. Her companion\'s acceptance of her denial was like a general pledge\nnot to keep things any worse for her than they essentially had to be; it\npositively helped her to build up her falsehood--to which, accordingly,\nshe contributed another block. \"I\'ve affected you evidently--quite\naccidentally--in some way of which I\'ve been all unaware. I\'ve NOT felt\nat any time that you\'ve wronged me.\"\n\n\"How could I come within a mile,\" Charlotte inquired, \"of such a\npossibility?\"\n\nMaggie, with her eyes on her more easily now, made no attempt to say;\nshe said, after a little, something more to the present point. \"I accuse\nyou--I accuse you of nothing.\"\n\n\"Ah, that\'s lucky!\"\n\nCharlotte had brought this out with the richness, almost, of gaiety; and\nMaggie, to go on, had to think, with her own intensity, of Amerigo--to\nthink how he, on his side, had had to go through with his lie to her,\nhow it was for his wife he had done so, and how his doing so had\ngiven her the clue and set her the example. He must have had his own\ndifficulty about it, and she was not, after all, falling below him. It\nwas in fact as if, thanks to her hovering image of him confronted with\nthis admirable creature even as she was confronted, there glowed upon\nher from afar, yet straight and strong, a deep explanatory light which\ncovered the last inch of the ground. He had given her something to\nconform to, and she hadn\'t unintelligently turned on him, \"gone back on\"\nhim, as he would have said, by not conforming. They were together thus,\nhe and she, close, close together--whereas Charlotte, though rising\nthere radiantly before her, was really off in some darkness of space\nthat would steep her in solitude and harass her with care. The heart of\nthe Princess swelled, accordingly, even in her abasement; she had kept\nin tune with the right, and something, certainly, something that might\nbe like a rare flower snatched from an impossible ledge, would, and\npossibly soon, come of it for her. The right, the right--yes, it took\nthis extraordinary form of her humbugging, as she had called it, to the\nend. It was only a question of not, by a hair\'s breadth, deflecting into\nthe truth. So, supremely, was she braced. \"You must take it from me that\nyour anxiety rests quite on a misconception. You must take it from\nme that I\'ve never at any moment fancied I could suffer by you.\" And,\nmarvellously, she kept it up--not only kept it up, but improved on\nit. \"You must take it from me that I\'ve never thought of you but as\nbeautiful, wonderful and good. Which is all, I think, that you can\npossibly ask.\"\n\nCharlotte held her a moment longer: she needed--not then to have\nappeared only tactless--the last word. \"It\'s much more, my dear, than I\ndreamed of asking. I only wanted your denial.\"\n\n\"Well then, you have it.\"\n\n\"Upon your honour?\"\n\n\"Upon my honour:\"\n\nAnd she made a point even, our young woman, of not turning away. Her\ngrip of her shawl had loosened--she had let it fall behind her; but she\nstood there for anything more and till the weight should be lifted.\nWith which she saw soon enough what more was to come. She saw it in\nCharlotte\'s face, and felt it make between them, in the air, a chill\nthat completed the coldness of their conscious perjury. \"Will you kiss\nme on it then?\"\n\nShe couldn\'t say yes, but she didn\'t say no; what availed her still,\nhowever, was to measure, in her passivity, how much too far Charlotte\nhad come to retreat. But there was something different also, something\nfor which, while her cheek received the prodigious kiss, she had her\nopportunity--the sight of the others, who, having risen from their cards\nto join the absent members of their party, had reached the open door\nat the end of the room and stopped short, evidently, in presence of\nthe demonstration that awaited them. Her husband and her father were in\nfront, and Charlotte\'s embrace of her--which wasn\'t to be distinguished,\nfor them, either, she felt, from her embrace of Charlotte--took on with\ntheir arrival a high publicity.\n\n\n\n XXXVII\n\nHer father had asked her, three days later, in an interval of calm, how\nshe was affected, in the light of their reappearance and of their now\nperhaps richer fruition, by Dotty and Kitty, and by the once formidable\nMrs. Rance; and the consequence of this inquiry had been, for the pair,\njust such another stroll together, away from the rest of the party and\noff into the park, as had asserted its need to them on the occasion of\nthe previous visit of these anciently more agitating friends--that of\ntheir long talk, on a sequestered bench beneath one of the great trees,\nwhen the particular question had come up for them the then purblind\ndiscussion of which, at their enjoyed leisure, Maggie had formed the\nhabit of regarding as the \"first beginning\" of their present situation.\nThe whirligig of time had thus brought round for them again, on their\nfinding themselves face to face while the others were gathering for tea\non the terrace, the same odd impulse quietly to \"slope\"--so Adam Verver\nhimself, as they went, familiarly expressed it--that had acted, in\nits way, of old; acted for the distant autumn afternoon and for the\nsharpness of their since so outlived crisis. It might have been funny\nto them now that the presence of Mrs. Rance and the Lutches--and with\nsymptoms, too, at that time less developed--had once, for their anxiety\nand their prudence, constituted a crisis; it might have been funny that\nthese ladies could ever have figured, to their imagination, as a symbol\nof dangers vivid enough to precipitate the need of a remedy. This amount\nof entertainment and assistance they were indeed disposed to extract\nfrom their actual impressions; they had been finding it, for months\npast, by Maggie\'s view, a resource and a relief to talk, with an\napproach to intensity, when they met, of all the people they weren\'t\nreally thinking of and didn\'t really care about, the people with whom\ntheir existence had begun almost to swarm; and they closed in at present\nround the spectres of their past, as they permitted themselves to\ndescribe the three ladies, with a better imitation of enjoying their\ntheme than they had been able to achieve, certainly, during the stay,\nfor instance, of the Castledeans. The Castledeans were a new joke,\ncomparatively, and they had had--always to Maggie\'s view--to teach\nthemselves the way of it; whereas the Detroit, the Providence party,\nrebounding so from Providence, from Detroit, was an old and ample one,\nof which the most could be made and as to which a humorous insistence\ncould be guarded.\n\nSharp and sudden, moreover, this afternoon, had been their well-nigh\nconfessed desire just to rest together, a little, as from some strain\nlong felt but never named; to rest, as who should say, shoulder to\nshoulder and hand in hand, each pair of eyes so yearningly--and indeed\nwhat could it be but so wearily?--closed as to render the collapse safe\nfrom detection by the other pair. It was positively as if, in short, the\ninward felicity of their being once more, perhaps only for half-an-hour,\nsimply daughter and father had glimmered out for them, and they had\npicked up the pretext that would make it easiest. They were husband and\nwife--oh, so immensely!--as regards other persons; but after they\nhad dropped again on their old bench, conscious that the party on the\nterrace, augmented, as in the past, by neighbours, would do beautifully\nwithout them, it was wonderfully like their having got together into\nsome boat and paddled off from the shore where husbands and wives,\nluxuriant complications, made the air too tropical. In the boat they\nwere father and daughter, and poor Dotty and Kitty supplied abundantly,\nfor their situation, the oars or the sail. Why, into the bargain, for\nthat matter--this came to Maggie--couldn\'t they always live, so far as\nthey lived together, in a boat? She felt in her face, with the question,\nthe breath of a possibility that soothed her; they needed only KNOW each\nother, henceforth, in the unmarried relation. That other sweet evening,\nin the same place, he had been as unmarried as possible--which had kept\ndown, so to speak, the quantity of change in their state. Well then,\nthat other sweet evening was what the present sweet evening would\nresemble; with the quite calculable effect of an exquisite inward\nrefreshment. They HAD, after all, whatever happened, always and ever\neach other; each other--that was the hidden treasure and the saving\ntruth--to do exactly what they would with: a provision full of\npossibilities. Who could tell, as yet, what, thanks to it, they wouldn\'t\nhave done before the end?\n\nThey had meanwhile been tracing together, in the golden air that, toward\nsix o\'clock of a July afternoon, hung about the massed Kentish woods,\nseveral features of the social evolution of her old playmates, still\nbeckoned on, it would seem, by unattainable ideals, still falling\nback, beyond the sea, to their native seats, for renewals of the moral,\nfinancial, conversational--one scarce knew what to call it--outfit, and\nagain and for ever reappearing like a tribe of Wandering Jewesses. Our\ncouple had finally exhausted, however, the study of these annals, and\nMaggie was to take up, after a drop, a different matter, or one at least\nwith which the immediate connection was not at first apparent. \"Were you\namused at me just now--when I wondered what other people could wish to\nstruggle for? Did you think me,\" she asked with some earnestness--\"well,\nfatuous?\"\n\n\"\'Fatuous\'?\"--he seemed at a loss.\n\n\"I mean sublime in OUR happiness--as if looking down from a height. Or,\nrather, sublime in our general position--that\'s what I mean.\" She spoke\nas from the habit of her anxious conscience something that disposed her\nfrequently to assure herself, for her human commerce, of the state of\nthe \"books\" of the spirit. \"Because I don\'t at all want,\" she explained,\n\"to be blinded, or made \'sniffy,\' by any sense of a social situation.\"\nHer father listened to this declaration as if the precautions of her\ngeneral mercy could still, as they betrayed themselves, have surprises\nfor him--to say nothing of a charm of delicacy and beauty; he might\nhave been wishing to see how far she could go and where she would, all\ntouchingly to him, arrive. But she waited a little--as if made nervous,\nprecisely, by feeling him depend too much on what she said. They were\navoiding the serious, standing off, anxiously, from the real, and they\nfell, again and again, as if to disguise their precaution itself, into\nthe tone of the time that came back to them from their other talk, when\nthey had shared together this same refuge. \"Don\'t you remember,\" she\nwent on, \"how, when they were here before, I broke it to you that I\nwasn\'t so very sure we, ourselves had the thing itself?\"\n\nHe did his best to do so. \"Had, you mean a social situation?\"\n\n\"Yes--after Fanny Assingham had first broken it to me that, at the rate\nwe were going, we should never have one.\"\n\n\"Which was what put us on Charlotte?\" Oh yes, they had had it over quite\noften enough for him easily to remember.\n\nMaggie had another pause--taking it from him that he now could both\naffirm and admit without wincing that they had been, at their critical\nmoment, \"put on\" Charlotte. It was as if this recognition had been\nthreshed out between them as fundamental to the honest view of their\nsuccess. \"Well,\" she continued, \"I recall how I felt, about Kitty and\nDotty, that even if we had already then been more \'placed,\' or whatever\nyou may call what we are now, it still wouldn\'t have been an excuse\nfor wondering why others couldn\'t obligingly leave me more exalted\nby having, themselves, smaller ideas. For those,\" she said, \"were the\nfeelings we used to have.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he responded philosophically--\"I remember the feelings we used\nto have.\"\n\nMaggie appeared to wish to plead for them a little, in tender\nretrospect--as if they had been also respectable. \"It was bad enough, I\nthought, to have no sympathy in your heart when you HAD a position. But\nit was worse to be sublime about it--as I was so afraid, as I\'m in fact\nstill afraid of being--when it wasn\'t even there to support one.\" And\nshe put forth again the earnestness she might have been taking herself\nas having outlived; became for it--which was doubtless too often even\nnow her danger--almost sententious. \"One must always, whether or no,\nhave some imagination of the states of others--of what they may feel\ndeprived of. However,\" she added, \"Kitty and Dotty couldn\'t imagine we\nwere deprived of anything. And now, and now--!\" But she stopped as for\nindulgence to their wonder and envy.\n\n\"And now they see, still more, that we can have got everything, and kept\neverything, and yet not be proud.\"\n\n\"No, we\'re not proud,\" she answered after a moment. \"I\'m not sure that\nwe\'re quite proud enough.\" Yet she changed the next instant that subject\ntoo. She could only do so, however, by harking back--as if it had been a\nfascination. She might have been wishing, under this renewed, this still\nmore suggestive visitation, to keep him with her for remounting the\nstream of time and dipping again, for the softness of the water, into\nthe contracted basin of the past. \"We talked about it--we talked about\nit; you don\'t remember so well as I. You too didn\'t know--and it\nwas beautiful of you; like Kitty and Dotty you too thought we had a\nposition, and were surprised when _I_ thought we ought to have told them\nwe weren\'t doing for them what they supposed. In fact,\" Maggie pursued,\n\"we\'re not doing it now. We\'re not, you see, really introducing them. I\nmean not to the people they want.\"\n\n\"Then what do you call the people with whom they\'re now having tea?\"\n\nIt made her quite spring round. \"That\'s just what you asked me the other\ntime--one of the days there was somebody. And I told you I didn\'t call\nanybody anything.\"\n\n\"I remember--that such people, the people we made so welcome, didn\'t\n\'count\'; that Fanny Assingham knew they didn\'t.\" She had awakened, his\ndaughter, the echo; and on the bench there, as before, he nodded his\nhead amusedly, he kept nervously shaking his foot. \"Yes, they were only\ngood enough--the people who came--for US. I remember,\" he said again:\n\"that was the way it all happened.\"\n\n\"That was the way--that was the way. And you asked me,\" Maggie\nadded, \"if I didn\'t think we ought to tell them. Tell Mrs. Rance, in\nparticular, I mean, that we had been entertaining her up to then under\nfalse pretences.\"\n\n\"Precisely--but you said she wouldn\'t have understood.\"\n\n\"To which you replied that in that case you were like her. YOU didn\'t\nunderstand.\"\n\n\"No, no--but I remember how, about our having, in our benighted\ninnocence, no position, you quite crushed me with your explanation.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" said Maggie with every appearance of delight, \"I\'ll crush\nyou again. I told you that you by yourself had one--there was no doubt\nof that. You were different from me--you had the same one you always\nhad.\"\n\n\"And THEN I asked you,\" her father concurred, \"why in that case you\nhadn\'t the same.\"\n\n\"Then indeed you did.\" He had brought her face round to him before, and\nthis held it, covering him with its kindled brightness, the result of\nthe attested truth of their being able thus, in talk, to live again\ntogether. \"What I replied was that I had lost my position by my\nmarriage. THAT one--I know how I saw it--would never come back. I had\ndone something TO it--I didn\'t quite know what; given it away, somehow,\nand yet not, as then appeared, really got my return. I had been\nassured--always by dear Fanny--that I COULD get it, only I must wake up.\nSo I was trying, you see, to wake up--trying very hard.\"\n\n\"Yes--and to a certain extent you succeeded; as also in waking me. But\nyou made much,\" he said, \"of your difficulty.\" To which he added:\n\"It\'s the only case I remember, Mag, of you ever making ANYTHING of a\ndifficulty.\"\n\nShe kept her eyes on him a moment. \"That I was so happy as I was?\"\n\n\"That you were so happy as you were.\"\n\n\"Well, you admitted\"--Maggie kept it up--\"that that was a good\ndifficulty. You confessed that our life did seem to be beautiful.\"\n\nHe thought a moment. \"Yes--I may very well have confessed it, for so it\ndid seem to me.\" But he guarded himself with his dim, his easier smile.\n\"What do you want to put on me now?\"\n\n\"Only that we used to wonder--that we were wondering then--if our life\nwasn\'t perhaps a little selfish.\" This also for a time, much at his\nleisure, Adam Verver retrospectively fixed. \"Because Fanny Assingham\nthought so?\"\n\n\"Oh no; she never thought, she couldn\'t think, if she would, anything\nof that sort. She only thinks people are sometimes fools,\" Maggie\ndeveloped; \"she doesn\'t seem to think so much about their being\nwrong--wrong, that is, in the sense of being wicked. She doesn\'t,\" the\nPrincess further adventured, \"quite so much mind their being wicked.\"\n\n\"I see--I see.\" And yet it might have been for his daughter that he\ndidn\'t so very vividly see. \"Then she only thought US fools?\"\n\n\"Oh no--I don\'t say that. I\'m speaking of our being selfish.\"\n\n\"And that comes under the head of the wickedness Fanny condones?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t say she CONDONES--!\" A scruple in Maggie raised its crest.\n\"Besides, I\'m speaking of what was.\"\n\nHer father showed, however, after a little, that he had not been reached\nby this discrimination; his thoughts were resting for the moment where\nthey had settled. \"Look here, Mag,\" he said reflectively--\"I ain\'t\nselfish. I\'ll be blowed if I\'m selfish.\"\n\nWell, Maggie, if he WOULD talk of that, could also pronounce. \"Then,\nfather, _I_ am.\"\n\n\"Oh shucks!\" said Adam Verver, to whom the vernacular, in moments of\ndeepest sincerity, could thus come back. \"I\'ll believe it,\" he presently\nadded, \"when Amerigo complains of you.\"\n\n\"Ah, it\'s just he who\'s my selfishness. I\'m selfish, so to speak, FOR\nhim. I mean,\" she continued, \"that he\'s my motive--in everything.\"\n\nWell, her father could, from experience, fancy what she meant. \"But\nhasn\'t a girl a right to be selfish about her husband?\"\n\n\"What I DON\'T mean,\" she observed without answering, \"is that I\'m\njealous of him. But that\'s his merit--it\'s not mine.\"\n\nHer father again seemed amused at her. \"You COULD be--otherwise?\"\n\n\"Oh, how can I talk,\" she asked, \"of otherwise? It ISN\'T, luckily for\nme, otherwise. If everything were different\"--she further presented her\nthought--\"of course everything WOULD be.\" And then again, as if that\nwere but half: \"My idea is this, that when you only love a little you\'re\nnaturally not jealous--or are only jealous also a little, so that it\ndoesn\'t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you\nare, in the same proportion, jealous; your jealousy has intensity and,\nno doubt, ferocity. When, however, you love in the most abysmal and\nunutterable way of all--why then you\'re beyond everything, and nothing\ncan pull you down.\"\n\nMr. Verver listened as if he had nothing, on these high lines, to\noppose. \"And that\'s the way YOU love?\"\n\nFor a minute she failed to speak, but at last she answered: \"It wasn\'t\nto talk about that. I do FEEL, however, beyond everything--and as a\nconsequence of that, I dare say,\" she added with a turn to gaiety, \"seem\noften not to know quite WHERE I am.\"\n\nThe mere fine pulse of passion in it, the suggestion as of a creature\nconsciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of\ndazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths, buoyant\namong dangers, in which fear or folly, or sinking otherwise than in\nplay, was impossible--something of all this might have been making once\nmore present to him, with his discreet, his half shy assent to it, her\nprobable enjoyment of a rapture that he, in his day, had presumably\nconvinced no great number of persons either of his giving or of\nhis receiving. He sat awhile as if he knew himself hushed, almost\nadmonished, and not for the first time; yet it was an effect that might\nhave brought before him rather what she had gained than what he had\nmissed.\n\nBesides, who but himself really knew what he, after all, hadn\'t, or even\nhad, gained? The beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate,\nas he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips\nwere over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash\nand the play become for him too a sensation. That couldn\'t be fixed upon\nhim as missing; since if it wasn\'t personally floating, if it wasn\'t\neven sitting in the sand, it could yet pass very well for breathing\nthe bliss, in a communicated irresistible way--for tasting the balm. It\ncould pass, further, for knowing--for knowing that without him nothing\nmight have been: which would have been missing least of all.\n\n\"I guess I\'ve never been jealous,\" he finally remarked. And it said more\nto her, he had occasion next to perceive, than he was intending; for it\nmade her, as by the pressure of a spring, give him a look that seemed to\ntell of things she couldn\'t speak.\n\nBut she at last tried for one of them. \"Oh, it\'s you, father, who are\nwhat I call beyond everything. Nothing can pull YOU down.\"\n\nHe returned the look as with the sociability of their easy communion,\nthough inevitably throwing in this time a shade of solemnity. He\nmight have been seeing things to say, and others, whether of a type\npresumptuous or not, doubtless better kept back. So he settled on the\nmerely obvious. \"Well then, we make a pair. We\'re all right.\"\n\n\"Oh, we\'re all right!\" A declaration launched not only with all her\ndiscriminating emphasis, but confirmed by her rising with decision\nand standing there as if the object of their small excursion required\naccordingly no further pursuit. At this juncture, however--with the\nact of their crossing the bar, to get, as might be, into port--there\noccurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat\nagainst the wind. Her father kept his place, and it was as if she had\ngot over first and were pausing for her consort to follow. If they were\nall right; they were all right; yet he seemed to hesitate and wait for\nsome word beyond. His eyes met her own, suggestively, and it was only\nafter she had contented herself with simply smiling at him, smiling ever\nso fixedly, that he spoke, for the remaining importance of it, from the\nbench; where he leaned back, raising his face to her, his legs thrust\nout a trifle wearily and his hands grasping either side of the seat.\nThey had beaten against the wind, and she was still fresh; they had\nbeaten against the wind, and he, as at the best the more battered\nvessel, perhaps just vaguely drooped. But the effect of their silence\nwas that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly\nalongside of her when, at the end of another minute, he found their\nword. \"The only thing is that, as for ever putting up again with your\npretending that you\'re selfish--!\"\n\nAt this she helped him out with it. \"You won\'t take it from me?\"\n\n\"I won\'t take it from you.\"\n\n\"Well, of course you won\'t, for that\'s your way. It doesn\'t matter, and\nit only proves--! But it doesn\'t matter, either, what it proves. I\'m at\nthis very moment,\" she declared, \"frozen stiff with selfishness.\"\n\nHe faced her awhile longer in the same way; it was, strangely, as if, by\nthis sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid,\nor at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it\nwas as if they were \"in\" for it, for something they had been ineffably\navoiding, but the dread of which was itself, in a manner, a seduction,\njust as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion. Then\nshe seemed to see him let himself go. \"When a person\'s of the nature you\nspeak of there are always other persons to suffer. But you\'ve just been\ndescribing to me what you\'d take, if you had once a good chance, from\nyour husband.\"\n\n\"Oh, I\'m not talking about my husband!\"\n\n\"Then whom, ARE you talking about?\"\n\nBoth the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything\npreviously exchanged, and they were followed, on Maggie\'s part, by a\nmomentary drop. But she was not to fall away, and while her companion\nkept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he weren\'t expecting her to\nname his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter\'s\nbliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. \"I\'m\ntalking about YOU.\"\n\n\"Do you mean I\'ve been your victim?\"\n\n\"Of course you\'ve been my victim. What have you done, ever done, that\nhasn\'t been FOR me?\"\n\n\"Many things; more than I can tell you--things you\'ve only to think of\nfor yourself. What do you make of all that I\'ve done for myself?\"\n\n\"\'Yourself\'?--\" She brightened out with derision.\n\n\"What do you make of what I\'ve done for American City?\"\n\nIt took her but a moment to say. \"I\'m not talking of you as a public\ncharacter--I\'m talking of you on your personal side.\"\n\n\"Well, American City--if \'personalities\' can do it--has given me a\npretty personal side. What do you make,\" he went on, \"of what I\'ve done\nfor my reputation?\"\n\n\"Your reputation THERE? You\'ve given it up to them, the awful people,\nfor less than nothing; you\'ve given it up to them to tear to pieces, to\nmake their horrible vulgar jokes against you with.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, I don\'t care for their horrible vulgar jokes,\" Adam Verver\nalmost artlessly urged.\n\n\"Then there, exactly, you are!\" she triumphed. \"Everything that\ntouches you, everything that surrounds you, goes on--by your splendid\nindifference and your incredible permission--at your expense.\"\n\nJust as he had been sitting he looked at her an instant longer; then\nhe slowly rose, while his hands stole into his pockets, and stood there\nbefore her. \"Of course, my dear, YOU go on at my expense: it has never\nbeen my idea,\" he smiled, \"that you should work for your living. I\nwouldn\'t have liked to see it.\" With which, for a little again, they\nremained face to face. \"Say therefore I HAVE had the feelings of a\nfather. How have they made me a victim?\"\n\n\"Because I sacrifice you.\"\n\n\"But to what in the world?\"\n\nAt this it hung before her that she should have had as never yet her\nopportunity to say, and it held her for a minute as in a vise, her\nimpression of his now, with his strained smile, which touched her to\ndeepest depths, sounding her in his secret unrest. This was the moment,\nin the whole process of their mutual vigilance, in which it decidedly\nmost hung by a hair that their thin wall might be pierced by the\nlightest wrong touch. It shook between them, this transparency, with\ntheir very breath; it was an exquisite tissue, but stretched on a frame,\nand would give way the next instant if either so much as breathed too\nhard. She held her breath, for she knew by his eyes, the light at the\nheart of which he couldn\'t blind, that he was, by his intention, making\nsure--sure whether or no her certainty was like his. The intensity of\nhis dependence on it at that moment--this itself was what absolutely\nconvinced her so that, as if perched up before him on her vertiginous\npoint and in the very glare of his observation, she balanced for thirty\nseconds, she almost rocked: she might have been for the time, in all her\nconscious person, the very form of the equilibrium they were, in their\ndifferent ways, equally trying to save. And they were saving it--yes,\nthey were, or at least she was: that was still the workable issue, she\ncould say, as she felt her dizziness drop. She held herself hard; the\nthing was to be done, once for all, by her acting, now, where she stood.\nSo much was crowded into so short a space that she knew already she\nwas keeping her head. She had kept it by the warning of his eyes; she\nshouldn\'t lose it again; she knew how and why, and if she had turned\ncold this was precisely what helped her. He had said to himself \"She\'ll\nbreak down and name Amerigo; she\'ll say it\'s to him she\'s sacrificing\nme; and its by what that will give me--with so many other things\ntoo--that my suspicion will be clinched.\" He was watching her lips,\nspying for the symptoms of the sound; whereby these symptoms had only to\nfail and he would have got nothing that she didn\'t measure out to him\nas she gave it. She had presently in fact so recovered herself that she\nseemed to know she could more easily have made him name his wife than\nhe have made her name her husband. It was there before her that if\nshe should so much as force him just NOT consciously to avoid saying\n\"Charlotte, Charlotte\" he would have given himself away. But to be sure\nof this was enough for her, and she saw more clearly with each lapsing\ninstant what they were both doing. He was doing what he had steadily\nbeen coming to; he was practically OFFERING himself, pressing himself\nupon her, as a sacrifice--he had read his way so into her best\npossibility; and where had she already, for weeks and days past, planted\nher feet if not on her acceptance of the offer? Cold indeed, colder and\ncolder she turned, as she felt herself suffer this close personal\nvision of his attitude still not to make her weaken. That was her very\ncertitude, the intensity of his pressure; for if something dreadful\nhadn\'t happened there wouldn\'t, for either of them, be these dreadful\nthings to do. She had meanwhile, as well, the immense advantage that\nshe could have named Charlotte without exposing herself--as, for that\nmatter, she was the next minute showing him.\n\n\"Why, I sacrifice you, simply, to everything and to every one. I take\nthe consequences of your marriage as perfectly natural.\"\n\nHe threw back his head a little, settling with one hand his eyeglass.\n\"What do you call, my dear, the consequences?\"\n\n\"Your life as your marriage has made it.\"\n\n\"Well, hasn\'t it made it exactly what we wanted?\" She just hesitated,\nthen felt herself steady--oh, beyond what she had dreamed. \"Exactly what\n_I_ wanted--yes.\"\n\nHis eyes, through his straightened glasses, were still on hers, and he\nmight, with his intenser fixed smile, have been knowing she was, for\nherself, rightly inspired. \"What do you make then of what I wanted?\"\n\n\"I don\'t make anything, any more than of what you\'ve got. That\'s exactly\nthe point. I don\'t put myself out to do so--I never have; I take from\nyou all I can get, all you\'ve provided for me, and I leave you to make\nof your own side of the matter what you can. There you are--the rest is\nyour own affair. I don\'t even pretend to concern myself--!\"\n\n\"To concern yourself--?\" He watched her as she faintly faltered, looking\nabout her now so as not to keep always meeting his face.\n\n\"With what may have REALLY become of you. It\'s as if we had agreed\nfrom the first not to go into that--such an arrangement being of course\ncharming for ME. You can\'t say, you know, that I haven\'t stuck to it.\"\n\nHe didn\'t say so then--even with the opportunity given him of her\nstopping once more to catch her breath. He said instead: \"Oh, my\ndear--oh, oh!\"\n\nBut it made no difference, know as she might what a past--still so\nrecent and yet so distant--it alluded to; she repeated her denial,\nwarning him off, on her side, from spoiling the truth of her contention.\n\"I never went into anything, and you see I don\'t; I\'ve continued to\nadore you--but what\'s that, from a decent daughter to such a father?\nwhat but a question of convenient arrangement, our having two houses,\nthree houses, instead of one (you would have arranged for fifty if I\nhad wished!) and my making it easy for you to see the child? You don\'t\nclaim, I suppose, that my natural course, once you had set up for\nyourself, would have been to ship you back to American City?\"\n\nThese were direct inquiries, they quite rang out, in the soft, wooded\nair; so that Adam Verver, for a minute, appeared to meet them with\nreflection. She saw reflection, however, quickly enough show him what\nto do with them. \"Do you know, Mag, what you make me wish when you talk\nthat way?\" And he waited again, while she further got from him the\nsense of something that had been behind, deeply in the shade, coming\ncautiously to the front and just feeling its way before presenting\nitself. \"You regularly make me wish that I had shipped back to American\nCity. When you go on as you do--\" But he really had to hold himself to\nsay it.\n\n\"Well, when I go on--?\"\n\n\"Why, you make me quite want to ship back myself. You make me quite feel\nas if American City would be the best place for us.\"\n\nIt made her all too finely vibrate. \"For \'us\'--?\"\n\n\"For me and Charlotte. Do you know that if we should ship, it would\nserve you quite right?\" With which he smiled--oh he smiled! \"And if you\nsay much more we WILL ship.\"\n\nAh, then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim,\noverflowed at a touch! THERE was his idea, the clearness of which for\nan instant almost dazzled her. It was a blur of light, in the midst\nof which she saw Charlotte like some object marked, by contrast, in\nblackness, saw her waver in the field of vision, saw her removed,\ntransported, doomed. And he had named Charlotte, named her again, and\nshe had MADE him--which was all she had needed more: it was as if she\nhad held a blank letter to the fire and the writing had come out still\nlarger than she hoped. The recognition of it took her some seconds, but\nshe might when she spoke have been folding up these precious lines and\nrestoring them to her pocket. \"Well, I shall be as much as ever then the\ncause of what you do. I haven\'t the least doubt of your being up to\nthat if you should think I might get anything out of it; even the little\npleasure,\" she laughed, \"of having said, as you call it, \'more.\' Let my\nenjoyment of this therefore, at any price, continue to represent for you\nwhat _I_ call sacrificing you.\"\n\nShe had drawn a long breath; she had made him do it ALL for her, and had\nlighted the way to it without his naming her husband. That silence had\nbeen as distinct as the sharp, the inevitable sound, and something now,\nin him, followed it up, a sudden air as of confessing at last fully to\nwhere she was and of begging the particular question. \"Don\'t you think\nthen I can take care of myself?\"\n\n\"Ah, it\'s exactly what I\'ve gone upon. If it wasn\'t for that--!\"\n\nBut she broke off, and they remained only another moment face to face.\n\"I\'ll let you know, my dear, the day _I_ feel you\'ve begun to sacrifice\nme.\"\n\n\"\'Begun\'?\" she extravagantly echoed.\n\n\"Well, it will be, for me, the day you\'ve ceased to believe in me.\"\n\nWith which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets,\nhis hat pushed back, his legs a little apart, he seemed to plant or to\nsquare himself for a kind of assurance it had occurred to him he might\nas well treat her to, in default of other things, before they changed\ntheir subject. It had the effect, for her, of a reminder--a reminder of\nall he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her\nperfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as\nhaving, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable\nof, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--illegitimately, to call\nher attention to. The \"successful,\" beneficent person, the beautiful,\nbountiful, original, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate\ncollector and infallible high authority he had been and still was--these\nthings struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful\nway, a character she must take into account in dealing with him either\nfor pity or for envy. He positively, under the impression, seemed to\nloom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments\nin a light of recognition which had had its brightness for her at many\nan hour of the past, but which had never been so intense and so almost\nadmonitory. His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of\neverything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite\npublic perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this\nquality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for the\npresent occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that placed him in\nher eyes as no precious a work of art probably had ever been placed\nin his own. There was a long moment, absolutely, during which her\nimpression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in\nthe still museum, before the named and dated object, the pride of the\ncatalogue, that time has polished and consecrated. Extraordinary,\nin particular, was the number of the different ways in which he thus\naffected her as showing. He was strong--that was the great thing. He\nwas sure--sure for himself, always, whatever his idea: the expression\nof that in him had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved\ntaste for the rare and the true. But what stood out beyond everything\nwas that he was always, marvellously, young--which couldn\'t but crown,\nat this juncture, his whole appeal to her imagination. Before she knew\nit she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great\nand deep and high little man, and that to love him with tenderness was\nnot to be distinguished, a whit, from loving him with pride. It came to\nher, all strangely, as a sudden, an immense relief. The sense that he\nwasn\'t a failure, and could never be, purged their predicament of every\nmeanness--made it as if they had really emerged, in their transmuted\nunion, to smile almost without pain. It was like a new confidence, and\nafter another instant she knew even still better why. Wasn\'t it because\nnow, also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his daughter, was\nTRYING her, during these mute seconds, as the child of his blood? Oh\nthen, if she wasn\'t with her little conscious passion, the child of any\nweakness, what was she but strong enough too? It swelled in her,\nfairly; it raised her higher, higher: she wasn\'t in that case a failure\neither--hadn\'t been, but the contrary; his strength was her strength,\nher pride was his, and they were decent and competent together. This was\nall in the answer she finally made him.\n\n\"I believe in you more than any one.\"\n\n\"Than any one at all?\"\n\nShe hesitated, for all it might mean; but there was--oh a thousand\ntimes!--no doubt of it. \"Than any one at all.\" She kept nothing of it\nback now, met his eyes over it, let him have the whole of it; after\nwhich she went on: \"And that\'s the way, I think, you believe in me.\"\n\nHe looked at her a minute longer, but his tone at last was right. \"About\nthe way--yes.\"\n\n\"Well then--?\" She spoke as for the end and for other matters--for\nanything, everything, else there might be. They would never return to\nit.\n\n\"Well then--!\" His hands came out, and while her own took them he drew\nher to his breast and held her. He held her hard and kept her long, and\nshe let herself go; but it was an embrace that, august and almost\nstern, produced, for all its intimacy, no revulsion and broke into no\ninconsequence of tears.\n\n\n\n XXXVIII\n\nMaggie was to feel, after this passage, how they had both been helped\nthrough it by the influence of that accident of her having been caught,\na few nights before, in the familiar embrace of her father\'s wife.\nHis return to the saloon had chanced to coincide exactly with this\ndemonstration, missed moreover neither by her husband nor by\nthe Assinghams, who, their card-party suspended, had quitted the\nbilliard-room with him. She had been conscious enough at the time of\nwhat such an impression, received by the others, might, in that extended\nstate, do for her case; and none the less that, as no one had appeared\nto wish to be the first to make a remark about it, it had taken on\nperceptibly the special shade of consecration conferred by unanimities\nof silence. The effect, she might have considered, had been almost\nawkward--the promptitude of her separation from Charlotte, as if\nthey had been discovered in some absurdity, on her becoming aware\nof spectators. The spectators, on the other hand--that was the\nappearance--mightn\'t have supposed them, in the existing relation,\naddicted to mutual endearments; and yet, hesitating with a fine scruple\nbetween sympathy and hilarity, must have felt that almost any spoken\nor laughed comment could be kept from sounding vulgar only by sounding,\nbeyond any permitted measure, intelligent. They had evidently looked,\nthe two young wives, like a pair of women \"making up\" effusively, as\nwomen were supposed to do, especially when approved fools, after\na broil; but taking note of the reconciliation would imply, on\nher father\'s part, on Amerigo\'s, and on Fanny Assingham\'s, some\nproportionate vision of the grounds of their difference. There had\nbeen something, there had been but too much, in the incident, for each\nobserver; yet there was nothing any one could have said without\nseeming essentially to say: \"See, see, the dear things--their quarrel\'s\nblissfully over!\" \"Our quarrel? What quarrel?\" the dear things\nthemselves would necessarily, in that case, have demanded; and the\nwits of the others would thus have been called upon for some agility of\nexercise. No one had been equal to the flight of producing, off-hand, a\nfictive reason for any estrangement--to take, that is, the place of the\ntrue, which had so long, for the finer sensibility, pervaded the air;\nand every one, accordingly, not to be inconveniently challenged, was\npretending, immediately after, to have remarked nothing that any one\nelse hadn\'t.\n\nMaggie\'s own measure had remained, all the same, full of the reflection\ncaught from the total inference; which had acted, virtually, by enabling\nevery one present--and oh Charlotte not least!--to draw a long breath.\nThe message of the little scene had been different for each, but it\nhad been this, markedly, all round, that it reinforced--reinforced even\nimmensely--the general effort, carried on from week to week and of late\ndistinctly more successful, to look and talk and move as if nothing in\nlife were the matter. Supremely, however, while this glass was held\nup to her, had Maggie\'s sense turned to the quality of the success\nconstituted, on the spot, for Charlotte. Most of all, if she was\nguessing how her father must have secretly started, how her husband must\nhave secretly wondered, how Fanny Assingham must have secretly, in\na flash, seen daylight for herself--most of all had she tasted, by\ncommunication, of the high profit involved for her companion. She\nFELT, in all her pulses, Charlotte feel it, and how publicity had been\nrequired, absolutely, to crown her own abasement. It was the added\ntouch, and now nothing was wanting--which, to do her stepmother\njustice, Mrs. Verver had appeared but to desire, from that evening, to\nshow, with the last vividness, that she recognised. Maggie lived over\nagain the minutes in question--had found herself repeatedly doing so; to\nthe degree that the whole evening hung together, to her aftersense, as\na thing appointed by some occult power that had dealt with her, that had\nfor instance--animated the four with just the right restlessness too,\nhad decreed and directed and exactly timed it in them, making their\ngame of bridge--however abysmal a face it had worn for her--give way,\nprecisely, to their common unavowed impulse to find out, to emulate\nCharlotte\'s impatience; a preoccupation, this latter, attached\ndetectedly to the member of the party who was roaming in her queerness\nand was, for all their simulated blindness, not roaming unnoted.\n\nIf Mrs. Verver meanwhile, then, had struck her as determined in a\ncertain direction by the last felicity into which that night had\nflowered, our young woman was yet not to fail of appreciating the truth\nthat she had not been put at ease, after all, with absolute permanence.\nMaggie had seen her, unmistakably, desire to rise to the occasion and\nbe magnificent--seen her decide that the right way for this would be to\nprove that the reassurance she had extorted there, under the high, cool\nlustre of the saloon, a twinkle of crystal and silver, had not only\npoured oil upon the troubled waters of their question, but had fairly\ndrenched their whole intercourse with that lubricant. She had exceeded\nthe limit of discretion in this insistence on her capacity to repay\nin proportion a service she acknowledged as handsome. \"Why handsome?\"\nMaggie would have been free to ask; since if she had been veracious the\nservice assuredly would not have been huge. It would in that case have\ncome up vividly, and for each of them alike, that the truth, on the\nPrincess\'s lips, presented no difficulty. If the latter\'s mood, in fact,\ncould have turned itself at all to private gaiety it might have failed\nto resist the diversion of seeing so clever a creature so beguiled.\nCharlotte\'s theory of a generous manner was manifestly to express that\nher stepdaughter\'s word, wiping out, as she might have said, everything,\nhad restored them to the serenity of a relation without a cloud. It had\nbeen, in short, in this light, ideally conclusive, so that no ghost of\nanything it referred to could ever walk again. What was the ecstasy of\nthat, however, but in itself a trifle compromising?--as truly, within\nthe week, Maggie had occasion to suspect her friend of beginning,\nand rather abruptly, to remember. Convinced as she was of the example\nalready given her by her husband, and in relation to which her\nprofession of trust in his mistress had been an act of conformity\nexquisitely calculated, her imagination yet sought in the hidden play of\nhis influence the explanation of any change of surface, any difference\nof expression or intention. There had been, through life, as we know,\nfew quarters in which the Princess\'s fancy could let itself loose; but\nit shook off restraint when it plunged into the figured void of\nthe detail of that relation. This was a realm it could people with\nimages--again and again with fresh ones; they swarmed there like the\nstrange combinations that lurked in the woods at twilight; they loomed\ninto the definite and faded into the vague, their main present sign\nfor her being, however, that they were always, that they were duskily,\nagitated. Her earlier vision of a state of bliss made insecure by the\nvery intensity of the bliss--this had dropped from her; she had ceased\nto see, as she lost herself, the pair of operatic, of high Wagnerian\nlovers (she found, deep within her, these comparisons) interlocked in\ntheir wood of enchantment, a green glade as romantic as one\'s dream of\nan old German forest. The picture was veiled, on the contrary, with\nthe dimness of trouble; behind which she felt, indistinguishable, the\nprocession of forms that had lost, all so pitifully, their precious\nconfidence. Therefore, though there was in these days, for her, with\nAmerigo, little enough even of the imitation, from day to day, of\nunembarrassed references--as she had foreseen, for that matter, from the\nfirst, that there would be--her active conception of his accessibility\nto their companion\'s own private and unextinguished right to break\nground was not much less active than before. So it was that her inner\nsense, in spite of everything, represented him as still pulling wires\nand controlling currents, or rather indeed as muffling the whole\npossibility, keeping it down and down, leading his accomplice\ncontinually on to some new turn of the road. As regards herself Maggie\nhad become more conscious from week to week of his ingenuities of\nintention to make up to her for their forfeiture, in so dire a degree,\nof any reality of frankness--a privation that had left on his lips\nperhaps a little of the same thirst with which she fairly felt her own\ndistorted, the torment of the lost pilgrim who listens in desert sands\nfor the possible, the impossible, plash of water. It was just this\nhampered state in him, none the less, that she kept before her when she\nwished most to find grounds of dignity for the hard little passion\nwhich nothing he had done could smother. There were hours enough,\nlonely hours, in which she let dignity go; then there were others when,\nclinging with her winged concentration to some deep cell of her heart,\nshe stored away her hived tenderness as if she had gathered it all from\nflowers. He was walking ostensibly beside her, but in fact given over,\nwithout a break, to the grey medium in which he helplessly groped; a\nperception on her part which was a perpetual pang and which might last\nwhat it would--for ever if need be--but which, if relieved at all, must\nbe relieved by his act alone. She herself could do nothing more for it;\nshe had done the utmost possible. It was meantime not the easier to bear\nfor this aspect under which Charlotte was presented as depending on him\nfor guidance, taking it from him even in doses of bitterness, and yet\nlost with him in devious depths. Nothing was thus more sharply to be\ninferred than that he had promptly enough warned her, on hearing from\nher of the precious assurance received from his wife, that she must take\ncare her satisfaction didn\'t betray something of her danger. Maggie\nhad a day of still waiting, after allowing him time to learn how\nunreservedly she had lied for him--of waiting as for the light of she\nscarce knew what slow-shining reflection of this knowledge in his\npersonal attitude. What retarded evolution, she asked herself in these\nhours, mightn\'t poor Charlotte all unwittingly have precipitated? She\nwas thus poor Charlotte again for Maggie even while Maggie\'s own head\nwas bowed, and the reason for this kept coming back to our young woman\nin the conception of what would secretly have passed. She saw her,\nface to face with the Prince, take from him the chill of his stiffest\nadmonition, with the possibilities of deeper difficulty that it\nrepresented for each. She heard her ask, irritated and sombre, what\ntone, in God\'s name--since her bravery didn\'t suit him--she was then\nto adopt; and, by way of a fantastic flight of divination, she heard\nAmerigo reply, in a voice of which every fine note, familiar and\nadmirable, came home to her, that one must really manage such prudences\na little for one\'s self. It was positive in the Princess that, for this,\nshe breathed Charlotte\'s cold air--turned away from him in it with\nher, turned with her, in growing compassion, this way and that, hovered\nbehind her while she felt her ask herself where then she should rest.\nMarvellous the manner in which, under such imaginations, Maggie thus\ncircled and lingered--quite as if she were, materially, following\nher unseen, counting every step she helplessly wasted, noting every\nhindrance that brought her to a pause.\n\nA few days of this, accordingly, had wrought a change in that\napprehension of the instant beatitude of triumph--of triumph magnanimous\nand serene--with which the upshot of the night-scene on the terrace had\ncondemned our young woman to make terms. She had had, as we know, her\nvision of the gilt bars bent, of the door of the cage forced open from\nwithin and the creature imprisoned roaming at large--a movement, on\nthe creature\'s part, that was to have even, for the short interval, its\nimpressive beauty, but of which the limit, and in yet another direction,\nhad loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees\nwith her father. It was when she saw his wife\'s face ruefully attached\nto the quarter to which, in the course of their session, he had so\nsignificantly addressed his own--it was then that Maggie could watch for\nits turning pale, it was then she seemed to know what she had meant\nby thinking of her, in she shadow of his most ominous reference, as\n\"doomed.\" If, as I say, her attention now, day after day, so circled and\nhovered, it found itself arrested for certain passages during which she\nabsolutely looked with Charlotte\'s grave eyes. What she unfailingly made\nout through them was the figure of a little quiet gentleman who mostly\nwore, as he moved, alone, across the field of vision, a straw hat, a\nwhite waistcoat and a blue necktie, keeping a cigar in his teeth and his\nhands in his pockets, and who, oftener than not, presented a somewhat\nmeditative back while he slowly measured the perspectives of the park\nand broodingly counted (it might have appeared) his steps. There were\nhours of intensity, for a week or two, when it was for all the world as\nif she had guardedly tracked her stepmother, in the great house, from\nroom to room and from window to window, only to see her, here and there\nand everywhere, TRY her uneasy outlook, question her issue and her fate.\nSomething, unmistakably, had come up for her that had never come\nup before; it represented a new complication and had begotten a new\nanxiety--things, these, that she carried about with her done up in the\nnapkin of her lover\'s accepted rebuke, while she vainly hunted for some\ncorner where she might put them safely down. The disguised solemnity,\nthe prolonged futility of her search might have been grotesque to a more\nironic eye; but Maggie\'s provision of irony, which we have taken for\nnaturally small, had never been so scant as now, and there were moments\nwhile she watched with her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being\nnear her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almost\nmoved to saying to her: \"Hold on tight, my poor dear--without TOO MUCH\nterror--and it will all come out somehow.\"\n\nEven to that indeed, she could reflect, Charlotte might have replied\nthat it was easy to say; even to that no great meaning could attach so\nlong as the little meditative man in the straw hat kept coming into view\nwith his indescribable air of weaving his spell, weaving it off there by\nhimself. In whatever quarter of the horizon the appearances were scanned\nhe was to be noticed as absorbed in this occupation; and Maggie was to\nbecome aware of two or three extraordinary occasions of receiving from\nhim the hint that he measured the impression he produced. It was not\nreally till after their recent long talk in the park that she knew how\ndeeply, how quite exhaustively, they had then communicated--so that they\nwere to remain together, for the time, in consequence, quite in the form\nof a couple of sociable drinkers who sit back from the table over which\nthey have been resting their elbows, over which they have emptied to the\nlast drop their respective charged cups. The cups were still there\non the table, but turned upside down; and nothing was left for the\ncompanions but to confirm by placid silences the fact that the wine had\nbeen good. They had parted, positively, as if, on either side, primed\nwith it--primed for whatever was to be; and everything between them, as\nthe month waned, added its touch of truth to this similitude. Nothing,\ntruly, WAS at present between them save that they were looking at each\nother in infinite trust; it fairly wanted no more words, and when they\nmet, during the deep summer days, met even without witnesses, when\nthey kissed at morning and evening, or on any of the other occasions of\ncontact that they had always so freely celebrated, a pair of birds of\nthe upper air could scarce have appeared less to invite each other to\nsit down and worry afresh. So it was that in the house itself, where\nmore of his waiting treasures than ever were provisionally ranged, she\nsometimes only looked at him--from end to end of the great gallery,\nthe pride of the house, for instance--as if, in one of the halls of a\nmuseum, she had been an earnest young woman with a Baedeker and he a\nvague gentleman to whom even Baedekers were unknown. He had ever, of\ncourse, had his way of walking about to review his possessions and\nverify their condition; but this was a pastime to which he now struck\nher as almost extravagantly addicted, and when she passed near him and\nhe turned to give her a smile she caught--or so she fancied--the greater\ndepth of his small, perpetual hum of contemplation. It was as if he\nwere singing to himself, sotto voce, as he went--and it was also,\non occasion, quite ineffably, as if Charlotte, hovering, watching,\nlistening, on her side too, kept sufficiently within earshot to make it\nout as song, and yet, for some reason connected with the very manner of\nit, stood off and didn\'t dare.\n\nOne of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage\nmost freely paid him was that of her interest in his rarities, her\nappreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and\nher grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them.\nMaggie had in due course seen her begin to \"work\" this fortunately\nnatural source of sympathy for all it was worth. She took possession of\nthe mound throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might\nhave remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband,\nALL the ground, the finest, clearest air and most breathable medium\ncommon to them. It had been given to Maggie to wonder if she didn\'t, in\nthese intensities of approbation, too much shut him up to his province;\nbut this was a complaint he had never made his daughter, and Charlotte\nmust at least have had for her that, thanks to her admirable instinct,\nher range of perception marching with his own and never falling behind,\nshe had probably not so much as once treated him to a rasping mistake or\na revealing stupidity. Maggie, wonderfully, in the summer days, felt\nit forced upon her that that was one way, after all, of being a genial\nwife; and it was never so much forced upon her as at these odd moments\nof her encountering the sposi, as Amerigo called them, under the coved\nceilings of Fawns while, so together, yet at the same time so separate,\nthey were making their daily round. Charlotte hung behind, with\nemphasised attention; she stopped when her husband stopped, but at the\ndistance of a case or two, or of whatever other succession of objects;\nand the likeness of their connection would not have been wrongly figured\nif he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the\nend of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck. He didn\'t\ntwitch it, yet it was there; he didn\'t drag her, but she came; and those\nindications that I have described the Princess as finding extraordinary\nin him were two or three mute facial intimations which his wife\'s\npresence didn\'t prevent his addressing his daughter--nor prevent his\ndaughter, as she passed, it was doubtless to be added, from flushing\na little at the receipt of. They amounted perhaps only to a wordless,\nwordless smile, but the smile was the soft shake of the twisted silken\nrope, and Maggie\'s translation of it, held in her breast till she got\nwell away, came out only, as if it might have been overheard, when some\ndoor was closed behind her. \"Yes, you see--I lead her now by the neck, I\nlead her to her doom, and she doesn\'t so much as know what it is, though\nshe has a fear in her heart which, if you had the chances to apply your\near there that I, as a husband, have, you would hear thump and thump and\nthump. She thinks it MAY be, her doom, the awful place over there--awful\nfor HER; but she\'s afraid to ask, don\'t you see? just as she\'s afraid of\nnot asking; just as she\'s afraid of so many other things that she\nsees multiplied round her now as portents and betrayals. She\'ll know,\nhowever--when she does know.\"\n\nCharlotte\'s one opportunity, meanwhile, for the air of confidence she\nhad formerly worn so well and that agreed so with her firm and charming\ntype, was the presence of visitors, never, as the season advanced,\nwholly intermitted--rather, in fact, so constant, with all the people\nwho turned up for luncheon and for tea and to see the house, now\nreplete, now famous, that Maggie grew to think again of this large\nelement of \"company\" as of a kind of renewed water-supply for the tank\nin which, like a party of panting gold-fish, they kept afloat. It helped\nthem, unmistakably, with each other, weakening the emphasis of so many\nof the silences of which their intimate intercourse would otherwise\nhave consisted. Beautiful and wonderful for her, even, at times, was the\neffect of these interventions--their effect above all in bringing home\nto each the possible heroism of perfunctory things. They learned fairly\nto live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day\nas might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central\nchamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda,\nwhere gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister\ncircular passages. Here they turned up for each other, as they said,\nwith the blank faces that denied any uneasiness felt in the approach;\nhere they closed numerous doors carefully behind them--all save the door\nthat connected the place, as by a straight tented corridor, with the\nouter world, and, encouraging thus the irruption of society, imitated\nthe aperture through which the bedizened performers of the circus are\npoured into the ring. The great part Mrs. Verver had socially played\ncame luckily, Maggie could make out, to her assistance; she had\n\"personal friends\"--Charlotte\'s personal friends had ever been, in\nLondon, at the two houses, one of the most convenient pleasantries--who\nactually tempered, at this crisis, her aspect of isolation; and it\nwouldn\'t have been hard to guess that her best moments were those in\nwhich she suffered no fear of becoming a bore to restrain her appeal\nto their curiosity. Their curiosity might be vague, but their clever\nhostess was distinct, and she marched them about, sparing them nothing,\nas if she counted, each day, on a harvest of half crowns. Maggie met\nher again, in the gallery, at the oddest hours, with the party she was\nentertaining; heard her draw out the lesson, insist upon the interest,\nsnub, even, the particular presumption and smile for the general\nbewilderment--inevitable features, these latter, of almost any\noccasion--in a manner that made our young woman, herself incurably\ndazzled, marvel afresh at the mystery by which a creature who could be\nin some connexions so earnestly right could be in others so perversely\nwrong. When her father, vaguely circulating, was attended by his wife,\nit was always Charlotte who seemed to bring up the rear; but he hung\nin the background when she did cicerone, and it was then perhaps that,\nmoving mildly and modestly to and fro on the skirts of the exhibition,\nhis appearance of weaving his spell was, for the initiated conscience,\nleast to be resisted. Brilliant women turned to him in vague emotion,\nbut his response scarce committed him more than if he had been the\nperson employed to see that, after the invading wave was spent, the\ncabinets were all locked and the symmetries all restored.\n\nThere was a morning when, during the hour before luncheon and shortly\nafter the arrival of a neighbourly contingent--neighbourly from ten\nmiles off--whom Mrs. Verver had taken in charge, Maggie paused on the\nthreshold of the gallery through which she had been about to pass,\nfaltered there for the very impression of his face as it met her from an\nopposite door. Charlotte, half-way down the vista, held together, as\nif by something almost austere in the grace of her authority, the\nsemi-scared (now that they were there!) knot of her visitors, who, since\nthey had announced themselves by telegram as yearning to inquire and\nadmire, saw themselves restricted to this consistency. Her voice, high\nand clear and a little hard, reached her husband and her step-daughter\nwhile she thus placed beyond doubt her cheerful submission to duty. Her\nwords, addressed to the largest publicity, rang for some minutes through\nthe place, every one as quiet to listen as if it had been a church\nablaze with tapers and she were taking her part in some hymn of praise.\nFanny Assingham looked rapt in devotion--Fanny Assingham who forsook\nthis other friend as little as she forsook either her host or the\nPrincess or the Prince or the Principino; she supported her, in slow\nrevolutions, in murmurous attestations of presence, at all such times,\nand Maggie, advancing after a first hesitation, was not to fail of\nnoting her solemn, inscrutable attitude, her eyes attentively lifted,\nso that she might escape being provoked to betray an impression. She\nbetrayed one, however, as Maggie approached, dropping her gaze to the\nlatter\'s level long enough to seem to adventure, marvellously, on a mute\nappeal. \"You understand, don\'t you, that if she didn\'t do this there\nwould be no knowing what she might do?\" This light Mrs. Assingham richly\nlaunched while her younger friend, unresistingly moved, became uncertain\nagain, and then, not too much to show it--or, rather, positively to\nconceal it, and to conceal something more as well--turned short round\nto one of the windows and awkwardly, pointlessly waited. \"The largest\nof the three pieces has the rare peculiarity that the garlands, looped\nround it, which, as you see, are the finest possible vieux Saxe, are not\nof the same origin or period, or even, wonderful as they are, of a taste\nquite so perfect. They have been put on at a later time, by a process of\nwhich there are very few examples, and none so important as this, which\nis really quite unique--so that, though the whole thing is a little\nbaroque, its value as a specimen is, I believe, almost inestimable.\"\n\nSo the high voice quavered, aiming truly at effects far over the heads\nof gaping neighbours; so the speaker, piling it up, sticking at nothing,\nas less interested judges might have said, seemed to justify the faith\nwith which she was honoured. Maggie meanwhile, at the window, knew the\nstrangest thing to be happening: she had turned suddenly to crying,\nor was at least on the point of it--the lighted square before her all\nblurred and dim. The high voice went on; its quaver was doubtless for\nconscious ears only, but there were verily thirty seconds during which\nit sounded, for our young woman, like the shriek of a soul in pain.\nKept up a minute longer it would break and collapse--so that Maggie felt\nherself, the next thing, turn with a start to her father. \"Can\'t she be\nstopped? Hasn\'t she done it ENOUGH?\"--some such question as that she\nlet herself ask him to suppose in her. Then it was that, across half\nthe gallery--for he had not moved from where she had first seen him--he\nstruck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp\nidentity of emotion. \"Poor thing, poor thing\"--it reached straight--\n\"ISN\'T she, for one\'s credit, on the swagger?\" After which, as, held\nthus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the\npity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish\neven, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away.\nThe affair but of a few muffled moments, this snatched communion yet\nlifted Maggie as on air--so much, for deep guesses on her own side\ntoo, it gave her to think of. There was, honestly, an awful mixture in\nthings, and it was not closed to her aftersense of such passages--we\nhave already indeed, in other cases, seen it open--that the deepest\ndepth of all, in a perceived penalty, was that you couldn\'t be sure\nsome of your compunctions and contortions wouldn\'t show for ridiculous.\nAmerigo, that morning, for instance, had been as absent as he at this\njuncture appeared to desire he should mainly be noted as being; he\nhad gone to London for the day and the night--a necessity that now\nfrequently rose for him and that he had more than once suffered to\noperate during the presence of guests, successions of pretty women, the\ntheory of his fond interest in whom had been publicly cultivated. It had\nnever occurred to his wife to pronounce him ingenuous, but there came at\nlast a high dim August dawn when she couldn\'t sleep and when, creeping\nrestlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded\nacres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception\nof that other almost equal prodigy. It rosily coloured her vision\nthat--even such as he was, yes--her husband could on occasion sin by\nexcess of candour. He wouldn\'t otherwise have given as his reason for\ngoing up to Portland Place in the August days that he was arranging\nbooks there. He had bought a great many of late, and he had had others,\na large number, sent from Rome--wonders of old print in which her father\nhad been interested. But when her imagination tracked him to the\ndusty town, to the house where drawn blinds and pale shrouds, where a\ncaretaker and a kitchenmaid were alone in possession, it wasn\'t to see\nhim, in his shirtsleeves, unpacking battered boxes.\n\nShe saw him, in truth, less easily beguiled--saw him wander, in the\nclosed dusky rooms, from place to place, or else, for long periods,\nrecline on deep sofas and stare before him through the smoke of\nceaseless cigarettes. She made him out as liking better than anything\nin the world just now to be alone with his thoughts. Being herself\nconnected with his thoughts, she continued to believe, more than she had\never been, it was thereby a good deal as if he were alone with HER. She\nmade him out as resting so from that constant strain of the perfunctory\nto which he was exposed at Fawns; and she was accessible to the\nimpression of the almost beggared aspect of this alternative. It was\nlike his doing penance in sordid ways--being sent to prison or being\nkept without money; it wouldn\'t have taken much to make her think of\nhim as really kept without food. He might have broken away, might easily\nhave started to travel; he had a right--thought wonderful Maggie now--to\nso many more freedoms than he took! His secret was of course that at\nFawns he all the while winced, was all the while in presences in respect\nto which he had thrown himself back, with a hard pressure, on whatever\nmysteries of pride, whatever inward springs familiar to the man of the\nworld, he could keep from snapping. Maggie, for some reason, had that\nmorning, while she watched the sunrise, taken an extraordinary measure\nof the ground on which he would have HAD to snatch at pretexts for\nabsence. It all came to her there--he got off to escape from a sound.\nThe sound was in her own ears still--that of Charlotte\'s high coerced\nquaver before the cabinets in the hushed gallery; the voice by which\nshe herself had been pierced the day before as by that of a creature in\nanguish and by which, while she sought refuge at the blurred window, the\ntears had been forced into her eyes. Her comprehension soared so high\nthat the wonder for her became really his not feeling the need of wider\nintervals and thicker walls. Before THAT admiration she also meditated;\nconsider as she might now, she kept reading not less into what he\nomitted than into what he performed a beauty of intention that touched\nher fairly the more by being obscure. It was like hanging over a garden\nin the dark; nothing was to be made of the confusion of growing things,\nbut one felt they were folded flowers, and their vague sweetness made\nthe whole air their medium. He had to turn away, but he wasn\'t at least\na coward; he would wait on the spot for the issue of what he had done\non the spot. She sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her\nwindow-seat, where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing\nthat his idea could only be to wait, whatever might come, at her side.\nIt was to her buried face that she thus, for a long time, felt him draw\nnearest; though after a while, when the strange wail of the gallery\nbegan to repeat its inevitable echo, she was conscious of how that\nbrought out his pale hard grimace.\n\n\n\n XXXIX\n\nThe resemblance had not been present to her on first coming out into the\nhot, still brightness of the Sunday afternoon--only the second Sunday,\nof all the summer, when the party of six, the party of seven including\nthe Principino, had practically been without accessions or invasions;\nbut within sight of Charlotte, seated far away, very much where she\nhad expected to find her, the Princess fell to wondering if her friend\nwouldn\'t be affected quite as she herself had been, that night on the\nterrace, under Mrs. Verver\'s perceptive pursuit. The relation, to-day,\nhad turned itself round; Charlotte was seeing her come, through patches\nof lingering noon, quite as she had watched Charlotte menace her through\nthe starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little\nas they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by\na recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged\nwith strange meanings, than that of the other occasion. The point,\nhowever, was that they had changed places; Maggie had from her window,\nseen her stepmother leave the house--at so unlikely an hour, three\no\'clock of a canicular August, for a ramble in garden or grove--and had\nthereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that\nhad made the spring of her companion\'s three weeks before. It was the\nhottest day of the season, and the shaded siesta, for people all at\ntheir ease, would certainly rather have been prescribed; but our young\nwoman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such\nrefinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the\nfeast. This was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great\nbedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had\njust been taking place without Mrs. Verver. She had been represented but\nby the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company\nby her husband, but offered directly to Mr. Verver himself, on their\nhaving assembled, by her maid, deputed for the effect and solemnly\nproducing it.\n\nMaggie had sat down, with the others, to viands artfully iced, to\nthe slow circulation of precious tinkling jugs, to marked reserves\nof reference in many directions--poor Fanny Assingham herself scarce\nthrusting her nose out of the padded hollow into which she had\nwithdrawn. A consensus of languor, which might almost have been taken\nfor a community of dread, ruled the scene--relieved only by the fitful\nexperiments of Father Mitchell, good holy, hungry man, a trusted and\noverworked London friend and adviser, who had taken, for a week or two,\nthe light neighbouring service, local rites flourishing under Maggie\'s\nmunificence, and was enjoying, as a convenience, all the bounties of the\nhouse. HE conversed undiscouraged, Father Mitchell--conversed mainly\nwith the indefinite, wandering smile of the entertainers, and the\nPrincess\'s power to feel him on the whole a blessing for these occasions\nwas not impaired by what was awkward in her consciousness of having,\nfrom the first of her trouble, really found her way without his\nguidance. She asked herself at times if he suspected how more than\nsubtly, how perversely, she had dispensed with him, and she balanced\nbetween visions of all he must privately have guessed and certitudes\nthat he had guessed nothing whatever. He might nevertheless have been\nso urbanely filling up gaps, at present, for the very reason that his\ninstinct, sharper than the expression of his face, had sufficiently\nserved him--made him aware of the thin ice, figuratively speaking, and\nof prolongations of tension, round about him, mostly foreign to the\ncircles in which luxury was akin to virtue. Some day in some happier\nseason, she would confess to him that she hadn\'t confessed, though\ntaking so much on her conscience; but just now she was carrying in her\nweak, stiffened hand a glass filled to the brim, as to which she had\nrecorded a vow that no drop should overflow. She feared the very breath\nof a better wisdom, the jostle of the higher light, of heavenly help\nitself; and, in addition, however that might be, she drew breath this\nafternoon, as never yet, in an element heavy to oppression. Something\ngrave had happened, somehow and somewhere, and she had, God knew, her\nchoice of suppositions: her heart stood still when she wondered above\nall if the cord mightn\'t at last have snapped between her husband and\nher father. She shut her eyes for dismay at the possibility of such a\npassage--there moved before them the procession of ugly forms it might\nhave taken. \"Find out for yourself!\" she had thrown to Amerigo, for\nher last word, on the question of who else \"knew,\" that night of the\nbreaking of the Bowl; and she flattered herself that she hadn\'t since\nthen helped him, in her clear consistency, by an inch. It was what she\nhad given him, all these weeks, to be busy with, and she had again and\nagain lain awake for the obsession of this sense of his uncertainty\nruthlessly and endlessly playing with his dignity. She had handed him\nover to an ignorance that couldn\'t even try to become indifferent\nand that yet wouldn\'t project itself, either, into the cleared air of\nconviction. In proportion as he was generous it had bitten into his\nspirit, and more than once she had said to herself that to break the\nspell she had cast upon him and that the polished old ivory of her\nfather\'s inattackable surface made so absolute, he would suddenly commit\nsome mistake or some violence, smash some windowpane for air, fail even\nof one of his blest inveteracies of taste. In that way, fatally, he\nwould have put himself in the wrong--blighting by a single false step\nthe perfection of his outward show.\n\nThese shadows rose and fell for her while Father Mitchell prattled; with\nother shadows as well, those that hung over Charlotte herself,\nthose that marked her as a prey to equal suspicions--to the idea, in\nparticular, of a change, such a change as she didn\'t dare to face, in\nthe relations of the two men. Or there were yet other possibilities, as\nit seemed to Maggie; there were always too many, and all of them things\nof evil when one\'s nerves had at last done for one all that nerves could\ndo; had left one in a darkness of prowling dangers that was like the\npredicament of the night-watcher in a beast-haunted land who has no\nmore means for a fire. She might, with such nerves, have supposed almost\nanything of any one; anything, almost, of poor Bob Assingham, condemned\nto eternal observances and solemnly appreciating her father\'s wine;\nanything, verily, yes, of the good priest, as he finally sat back with\nfat folded hands and twiddled his thumbs on his stomach. The good priest\nlooked hard at the decanters, at the different dishes of dessert--he\neyed them, half-obliquely, as if THEY might have met him to-day, for\nconversation, better than any one present. But the Princess had her\nfancy at last about that too; she was in the midst of a passage, before\nshe knew it, between Father Mitchell and Charlotte--some approach\nhe would have attempted with her, that very morning perhaps, to the\ncircumstance of an apparent detachment, recently noted in her, from any\npractice of devotion. He would have drawn from this, say, his artless\ninference--taken it for a sign of some smothered inward trouble and\npointed, naturally, the moral that the way out of such straits was\nnot through neglect of the grand remedy. He had possibly prescribed\ncontrition--he had at any rate quickened in her the beat of that false\nrepose to which our young woman\'s own act had devoted her at her all so\ndeluded instance. The falsity of it had laid traps compared to which the\nimputation of treachery even accepted might have seemed a path of roses.\nThe acceptance, strangely, would have left her nothing to do--she\ncould have remained, had she liked, all insolently passive; whereas the\nfailure to proceed against her, as it might have been called, left her\neverything, and all the more that it was wrapped so in confidence.\nShe had to confirm, day after day, the rightness of her cause and the\njustice and felicity of her exemption--so that wouldn\'t there have\nbeen, fairly, in any explicit concern of Father Mitchell\'s, depths of\npractical derision of her success?\n\nThe question was provisionally answered, at all events, by the time the\nparty at luncheon had begun to disperse--with Maggie\'s version of Mrs.\nVerver sharp to the point of representing her pretext for absence as\na positive flight from derision. She met the good priest\'s eyes before\nthey separated, and priests were really, at the worst, so to speak, such\nwonderful people that she believed him for an instant on the verge of\nsaying to her, in abysmal softness: \"Go to Mrs. Verver, my child--YOU\ngo: you\'ll find that you can help her.\" This didn\'t come, however;\nnothing came but the renewed twiddle of thumbs over the satisfied\nstomach and the full flush, the comical candour, of reference to the\nhand employed at Fawns for mayonnaise of salmon. Nothing came but\nthe receding backs of each of the others--her father\'s slightly bent\nshoulders, in especial, which seemed to weave his spell, by the force of\nhabit, not less patiently than if his wife had been present. Her husband\nindeed was present to feel anything there might be to feel--which was\nperhaps exactly why this personage was moved promptly to emulate so\ndefinite an example of \"sloping.\" He had his occupations--books to\narrange perhaps even at Fawns; the idea of the siesta, moreover, in all\nthe conditions, had no need to be loudly invoked. Maggie, was, in the\nevent, left alone for a minute with Mrs. Assingham, who, after waiting\nfor safety, appeared to have at heart to make a demonstration. The stage\nof \"talking over\" had long passed for them; when they communicated now\nit was on quite ultimate facts; but Fanny desired to testify to the\nexistence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped. She was\nlike the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the\nrest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the\noverworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably\nof embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and\nmeritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. What was clearest,\nalways, in our young woman\'s imaginings, was the sense of being herself\nleft, for any occasion, in the breach. She was essentially there to bear\nthe burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions,\nand it was eminently to that office she had been to-day abandoned--with\nthis one alleviation, as appeared, of Mrs. Assingham\'s keeping up\nwith her. Mrs. Assingham suggested that she too was still on the\nramparts--though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist\nnot a little of her curiosity. She had looked about and seen their\ncompanions beyond earshot.\n\n\"Don\'t you really want us to go--?\"\n\nMaggie found a faint smile. \"Do you really want to--?\"\n\nIt made her friend colour. \"Well then--no. But we WOULD, you know, at a\nlook from you. We\'d pack up and be off--as a sacrifice.\"\n\n\"Ah, make no sacrifice,\" said Maggie. \"See me through.\"\n\n\"That\'s it--that\'s all I want. I should be too base--! Besides,\" Fanny\nwent on, \"you\'re too splendid.\"\n\n\"Splendid?\"\n\n\"Splendid. Also, you know, you ARE all but \'through.\' You\'ve done it,\"\nsaid Mrs. Assingham. But Maggie only half took it from her.\n\n\"What does it strike you that I\'ve done?\"\n\n\"What you wanted. They\'re going.\"\n\nMaggie continued to look at her. \"Is that what I wanted?\"\n\n\"Oh, it wasn\'t for you to say. That was his business.\"\n\n\"My father\'s?\" Maggie asked after an hesitation.\n\n\"Your father\'s. He has chosen--and now she knows. She sees it all before\nher--and she can\'t speak, or resist, or move a little finger. That\'s\nwhat\'s the matter with HER,\" said Fanny Assingham.\n\nIt made a picture, somehow, for the Princess, as they stood there--the\npicture that the words of others, whatever they might be, always made\nfor her, even when her vision was already charged, better than any\nwords of her own. She saw, round about her, through the chinks of the\nshutters, the hard glare of nature--saw Charlotte, somewhere in it,\nvirtually at bay, and yet denied the last grace of any protecting truth.\nShe saw her off somewhere all unaided, pale in her silence and taking in\nher fate. \"Has she told you?\" she then asked.\n\nHer companion smiled superior. \"_I_ don\'t need to be told--either! I\nsee something, thank God, every day.\" And then as Maggie might appear to\nbe wondering what, for instance: \"I see the long miles of ocean and the\ndreadful great country, State after State--which have never seemed to me\nso big or so terrible. I see THEM at last, day by day and step by step,\nat the far end--and I see them never come back. But NEVER--simply. I\nsee the extraordinary \'interesting\' place--which I\'ve never been to, you\nknow, and you have--and the exact degree in which she will be expected\nto be interested.\"\n\n\"She WILL be,\" Maggie presently replied. \"Expected?\"\n\n\"Interested.\"\n\nFor a little, after this, their eyes met on it; at the end of which\nFanny said: \"She\'ll be--yes--what she\'ll HAVE to be. And it will\nbe--won\'t it? for ever and ever.\" She spoke as abounding in her friend\'s\nsense, but it made Maggie still only look at her.\n\nThese were large words and large visions--all the more that now, really,\nthey spread and spread. In the midst of them, however, Mrs. Assingham\nhad soon enough continued. \"When I talk of \'knowing,\' indeed, I don\'t\nmean it as you would have a right to do. You know because you see--and I\ndon\'t see HIM. I don\'t make him out,\" she almost crudely confessed.\n\nMaggie again hesitated. \"You mean you don\'t make out Amerigo?\"\n\nBut Fanny shook her head, and it was quite as if, as an appeal to one\'s\nintelligence, the making out of Amerigo had, in spite of everything,\nlong been superseded. Then Maggie measured the reach of her allusion,\nand how what she next said gave her meaning a richness. No other name\nwas to be spoken, and Mrs. Assingham had taken that, without delay, from\nher eyes--with a discretion, still, that fell short but by an inch. \"You\nknow how he feels.\"\n\nMaggie at this then slowly matched her headshake. \"I know nothing.\"\n\n\"You know how YOU feel.\"\n\nBut again she denied it. \"I know nothing. If I did--!\"\n\n\"Well, if you did?\" Fanny asked as she faltered.\n\nShe had had enough, however. \"I should die,\" she said as she turned\naway.\n\nShe went to her room, through the quiet house; she roamed there a\nmoment, picking up, pointlessly, a different fan, and then took her way\nto the shaded apartments in which, at this hour, the Principino would\nbe enjoying his nap. She passed through the first empty room, the day\nnursery, and paused at an open door. The inner room, large, dim and\ncool, was equally calm; her boy\'s ample, antique, historical, royal\ncrib, consecrated, reputedly, by the guarded rest of heirs-apparent, and\na gift, early in his career, from his grandfather, ruled the scene from\nthe centre, in the stillness of which she could almost hear the child\'s\nsoft breathing. The prime protector of his dreams was installed beside\nhim; her father sat there with as little motion--with head thrown back\nand supported, with eyes apparently closed, with the fine foot that\nwas so apt to betray nervousness at peace upon the other knee, with\nthe unfathomable heart folded in the constant flawless freshness of\nthe white waistcoat that could always receive in its armholes the firm\nprehensile thumbs. Mrs. Noble had majestically melted, and the whole\nplace signed her temporary abdication; yet the actual situation was\nregular, and Maggie lingered but to look. She looked over her fan, the\ntop of which was pressed against her face, long enough to wonder if her\nfather really slept or if, aware of her, he only kept consciously quiet.\nDid his eyes truly fix her between lids partly open, and was she to\ntake this--his forebearance from any question--only as a sign again that\neverything was left to her? She at all events, for a minute, watched\nhis immobility--then, as if once more renewing her total submission,\nreturned, without a sound, to her own quarters.\n\nA strange impulse was sharp in her, but it was not, for her part, the\ndesire to shift the weight. She could as little have slept as she could\nhave slept that morning, days before, when she had watched the first\ndawn from her window. Turned to the east, this side of her room was now\nin shade, with the two wings of the casement folded back and the charm\nshe always found in her seemingly perched position--as if her outlook,\nfrom above the high terraces, was that of some castle-tower mounted on\na rock. When she stood there she hung over, over the gardens and the\nwoods--all of which drowsed below her, at this hour, in the immensity of\nlight. The miles of shade looked hot, the banks of flowers looked\ndim; the peacocks on the balustrades let their tails hang limp and the\nsmaller birds lurked among the leaves. Nothing therefore would have\nappeared to stir in the brilliant void if Maggie, at the moment she was\nabout to turn away, had not caught sight of a moving spot, a clear green\nsunshade in the act of descending a flight of steps. It passed down\nfrom the terrace, receding, at a distance, from sight, and carried,\nnaturally, so as to conceal the head and back of its bearer; but Maggie\nhad quickly recognised the white dress and the particular motion of this\nadventurer--had taken in that Charlotte, of all people, had chosen the\nglare of noon for an exploration of the gardens, and that she could be\nbetaking herself only to some unvisited quarter deep in them, or beyond\nthem, that she had already marked as a superior refuge. The Princess\nkept her for a few minutes in sight, watched her long enough to feel\nher, by the mere betrayal of her pace and direction, driven in a kind of\nflight, and then understood, for herself, why the act of sitting still\nhad become impossible to either of them. There came to her, confusedly,\nsome echo of an ancient fable--some vision of Io goaded by the gadfly or\nof Ariadne roaming the lone sea-strand. It brought with it all the sense\nof her own intention and desire; she too might have been, for the hour,\nsome far-off harassed heroine--only with a part to play for which\nshe knew, exactly, no inspiring precedent. She knew but that, all the\nwhile--all the while of her sitting there among the others without\nher--she had wanted to go straight to this detached member of the party\nand make somehow, for her support, the last demonstration. A pretext was\nall that was needful, and Maggie after another instant had found\none. She had caught a glimpse, before Mrs. Verver disappeared, of her\ncarrying a book--made out, half lost in the folds of her white dress,\nthe dark cover of a volume that was to explain her purpose in case of\nher being met with surprise, and the mate of which, precisely, now lay\non Maggie\'s table. The book was an old novel that the Princess had a\ncouple of days before mentioned having brought down from Portland\nPlace in the charming original form of its three volumes. Charlotte had\nhailed, with a specious glitter of interest, the opportunity to read it,\nand our young woman had, thereupon, on the morrow, directed her maid to\ncarry it to Mrs. Verver\'s apartments. She was afterwards to observe that\nthis messenger, unintelligent or inadvertent, had removed but one of\nthe volumes, which happened not to be the first. Still possessed,\naccordingly, of the first while Charlotte, going out, fantastically, at\nsuch an hour, to cultivate romance in an arbour, was helplessly armed\nwith the second, Maggie prepared on the spot to sally forth with\nsuccour. The right volume, with a parasol, was all she required--in\naddition, that is, to the bravery of her general idea. She passed again\nthrough the house, unchallenged, and emerged upon the terrace, which\nshe followed, hugging the shade, with that consciousness of turning\nthe tables on her friend which we have already noted. But so far as\nshe went, after descending into the open and beginning to explore the\ngrounds, Mrs. Verver had gone still further--with the increase of the\noddity, moreover, of her having exchanged the protection of her room for\nthese exposed and shining spaces. It was not, fortunately, however,\nat last, that by persisting in pursuit one didn\'t arrive at regions\nof admirable shade: this was the asylum, presumably, that the poor\nwandering woman had had in view--several wide alleys, in particular,\nof great length, densely overarched with the climbing rose and the\nhoneysuckle and converging, in separate green vistas, at a sort of\numbrageous temple, an ancient rotunda, pillared and statued, niched and\nroofed, yet with its uncorrected antiquity, like that of everything\nelse at Fawns, conscious hitherto of no violence from the present and\nno menace from the future. Charlotte had paused there, in her frenzy, or\nwhat ever it was to be called; the place was a conceivable retreat, and\nshe was staring before her, from the seat to which she appeared to have\nsunk, all unwittingly, as Maggie stopped at the beginning of one of the\nperspectives.\n\nIt was a repetition more than ever then of the evening on the terrace;\nthe distance was too great to assure her she had been immediately seen,\nbut the Princess waited, with her intention, as Charlotte on the other\noccasion had waited--allowing, oh allowing, for the difference of the\nintention! Maggie was full of the sense of THAT--so full that it made\nher impatient; whereupon she moved forward a little, placing herself in\nrange of the eyes that had been looking off elsewhere, but that she had\nsuddenly called to recognition. Charlotte had evidently not dreamed of\nbeing followed, and instinctively, with her pale stare, she stiffened\nherself for protest. Maggie could make that out--as well as, further,\nhowever, that her second impression of her friend\'s approach had an\ninstant effect on her attitude. The Princess came nearer, gravely and\nin silence, but fairly paused again, to give her time for whatever\nshe would. Whatever she would, whatever she could, was what Maggie\nwanted--wanting above all to make it as easy for her as the case\npermitted. That was not what Charlotte had wanted the other night, but\nthis never mattered--the great thing was to allow her, was fairly to\nproduce in her, the sense of highly choosing. At first, clearly, she had\nbeen frightened; she had not been pursued, it had quickly struck her,\nwithout some design on the part of her pursuer, and what might she\nnot be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the\npursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose? It\nhad sunk into Maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and Mrs. Verver\nhad felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance\nof pressure successfully applied had naturally, till now, remained with\nher. But her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure,\nso dishonestly come by, for which her companion\'s still countenance, at\nthe hour and afterwards, had consented to serve as the deep soil, might\nhave worked up again to the surface, to be thrown back upon her hands.\nYes, it was positive that during one of these minutes the Princess had\nthe vision of her particular alarm. \"It\'s her lie, it\'s her lie that has\nmortally disagreed with her; she can keep down no longer her rebellion\nat it, and she has come to retract it, to disown it and denounce it--to\ngive me full in my face the truth instead.\" This, for a concentrated\ninstant, Maggie felt her helplessly gasp--but only to let it bring home\nthe indignity, the pity of her state. She herself could but tentatively\nhover, place in view the book she carried, look as little dangerous,\nlook as abjectly mild, as possible; remind herself really of people she\nhad read about in stories of the wild west, people who threw up their\nhands, on certain occasions, as a sign they weren\'t carrying revolvers.\nShe could almost have smiled at last, troubled as she yet knew herself,\nto show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume, which was\nso weak a weapon, and while she continued, for consideration, to keep\nher distance, she explained with as quenched a quaver as possible. \"I\nsaw you come out--saw you from my window, and couldn\'t bear to think you\nshould find yourself here without the beginning of your book. THIS is\nthe beginning; you\'ve got the wrong volume, and I\'ve brought you out the\nright.\"\n\nShe remained after she had spoken; it was like holding a parley with a\npossible adversary, and her intense, her exalted little smile asked for\nformal leave. \"May I come nearer now?\" she seemed to say--as to which,\nhowever, the next minute, she saw Charlotte\'s reply lose itself in a\nstrange process, a thing of several sharp stages, which she could stand\nthere and trace. The dread, after a minute, had dropped from her face;\nthough, discernibly enough, she still couldn\'t believe in her having, in\nso strange a fashion, been deliberately made up to. If she had been made\nup to, at least, it was with an idea--the idea that had struck her at\nfirst as necessarily dangerous. That it wasn\'t, insistently wasn\'t, this\nshone from Maggie with a force finally not to be resisted; and on that\nperception, on the immense relief so constituted, everything had by the\nend of three minutes extraordinarily changed. Maggie had come out to\nher, really, because she knew her doomed, doomed to a separation\nthat was like a knife in her heart; and in the very sight of her\nuncontrollable, her blinded physical quest of a peace not to be grasped,\nsomething of Mrs. Assingham\'s picture of her as thrown, for a grim\nfuture, beyond the great sea and the great continent had at first found\nfulfilment. She had got away, in this fashion--burning behind her,\nalmost, the ships of disguise--to let her horror of what was before\nher play up without witnesses; and even after Maggie\'s approach had\npresented an innocent front it was still not to be mistaken that she\nbristled with the signs of her extremity. It was not to be said for\nthem, either, that they were draped at this hour in any of her usual\ngraces; unveiled and all but unashamed, they were tragic to the Princess\nin spite of the dissimulation that, with the return of comparative\nconfidence, was so promptly to operate. How tragic, in essence, the very\nchange made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride--this\nfor possible defence if not for possible aggression. Pride indeed,\nthe next moment, had become the mantle caught up for protection and\nperversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her\nfreedom. To be doomed was, in her situation, to have extravagantly\nincurred a doom, so that to confess to wretchedness was, by the same\nstroke, to confess to falsity. She wouldn\'t confess, she didn\'t--a\nthousand times no; she only cast about her, and quite frankly and\nfiercely, for something else that would give colour to her having burst\nher bonds. Her eyes expanded, her bosom heaved as she invoked it, and\nthe effect upon Maggie was verily to wish she could only help her to it.\nShe presently got up--which seemed to mean \"Oh, stay if you like!\" and\nwhen she had moved about awhile at random, looking away, looking at\nanything, at everything but her visitor; when she had spoken of the\ntemperature and declared that she revelled in it; when she had uttered\nher thanks for the book, which, a little incoherently, with her second\nvolume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had\nlet Maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute\nin question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate: when\nshe had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less\nvisibly in possession of her part. Our young woman was to have passed,\nin all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her\ncompanion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she\nwas finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive\necstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with\nwhich she might be inspired. Vague, but increasingly brighter, this\npossibility glimmered on her. It at last hung there adequately plain\nto Charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said)\ngrovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. It had absolutely, within\nthe time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them\nalike.\n\n\"I\'m glad to see you alone--there\'s something I\'ve been wanting to say\nto you. I\'m tired,\" said Mrs. Verver, \"I\'m tired--!\"\n\n\"Tired--?\" It had dropped the next thing; it couldn\'t all come at once;\nbut Maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition\nwas in her face.\n\n\"Tired of this life--the one we\'ve been leading. You like it, I know,\nbut I\'ve dreamed another dream.\" She held up her head now; her lighted\neyes more triumphantly rested; she was finding, she was following\nher way. Maggie, by the same influence, sat in sight of it; there was\nsomething she was SAVING, some quantity of which she herself was judge;\nand it was for a long moment, even with the sacrifice the Princess\nhad come to make, a good deal like watching her, from the solid\nshore, plunge into uncertain, into possibly treacherous depths. \"I see\nsomething else,\" she went on; \"I\'ve an idea that greatly appeals to\nme--I\'ve had it for a long time. It has come over me that we\'re wrong.\nOur real life isn\'t here.\"\n\nMaggie held her breath. \"\'Ours\'--?\"\n\n\"My husband\'s and mine. I\'m not speaking for you.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Maggie, only praying not to be, not even to appear, stupid.\n\n\"I\'m speaking for ourselves. I\'m speaking,\" Charlotte brought out, \"for\nHIM.\"\n\n\"I see. For my father.\"\n\n\"For your father. For whom else?\" They looked at each other hard now,\nbut Maggie\'s face took refuge in the intensity of her interest. She\nwas not at all even so stupid as to treat her companion\'s question as\nrequiring an answer; a discretion that her controlled stillness had\nafter an instant justified. \"I must risk your thinking me selfish--for\nof course you know what it involves. Let me admit it--I AM selfish. I\nplace my husband first.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie smiling and smiling, \"since that\'s where I place\nmine--!\"\n\n\"You mean you\'ll have no quarrel with me? So much the better then;\nfor,\" Charlotte went on with a higher and higher flight, \"my plan is\ncompletely formed.\"\n\nMaggie waited--her glimmer had deepened; her chance somehow was at hand.\nThe only danger was her spoiling it; she felt herself skirting an abyss.\n\"What then, may I ask IS your plan?\"\n\nIt hung fire but ten seconds; it came out sharp. \"To take him home--to\nhis real position. And not to wait.\"\n\n\"Do you mean--a--this season?\"\n\n\"I mean immediately. And--I may as well tell you now--I mean for my own\ntime. I want,\" Charlotte said, \"to have him at last a little to myself;\nI want, strange as it may seem to you\"--and she gave it all its weight\n\"to KEEP the man I\'ve married. And to do so, I see, I must act.\"\n\nMaggie, with the effort still to follow the right line, felt herself\ncolour to the eyes. \"Immediately?\" she thoughtfully echoed.\n\n\"As soon as we can get off. The removal of everything is, after all,\nbut a detail. That can always be done; with money, as he spends it,\neverything can. What I ask for,\" Charlotte declared, \"is the definite\nbreak. And I wish it now.\" With which her head, like her voice rose\nhigher. \"Oh,\" she added, \"I know my difficulty!\"\n\nFar down below the level of attention, in she could scarce have said\nwhat sacred depths, Maggie\'s inspiration had come, and it had trembled\nthe next moment into sound. \"Do you mean I\'M your difficulty?\"\n\n\"You and he together--since it\'s always with you that I\'ve had to see\nhim. But it\'s a difficulty that I\'m facing, if you wish to know; that\nI\'ve already faced; that I propose to myself to surmount. The struggle\nwith it--none too pleasant--hasn\'t been for me, as you may imagine, in\nitself charming; I\'ve felt in it at times, if I must tell you all, too\ngreat and too strange, an ugliness. Yet I believe it may succeed.\"\n\nShe had risen, with this, Mrs. Verver, and had moved, for the emphasis\nof it, a few steps away; while Maggie, motionless at first, but sat and\nlooked at her. \"You want to take my father FROM me?\"\n\nThe sharp, successful, almost primitive wail in it made Charlotte turn,\nand this movement attested for the Princess the felicity of her deceit.\nSomething in her throbbed as it had throbbed the night she stood in\nthe drawing-room and denied that she had suffered. She was ready to lie\nagain if her companion would but give her the opening. Then she should\nknow she had done all. Charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare\nher face with her note of resentment; and Maggie, feeling this, met it\nwith the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of\ndefeat. \"I want really to possess him,\" said Mrs. Verver. \"I happen also\nto feel that he\'s worth it.\"\n\nMaggie rose as if to receive her. \"Oh--worth it!\" she wonderfully threw\noff.\n\nThe tone, she instantly saw, again had its effect: Charlotte flamed\naloft--might truly have been believing in her passionate parade. \"You\'ve\nthought YOU\'VE known what he\'s worth?\"\n\n\"Indeed then, my dear, I believe I have--as I believe I still do.\"\n\nShe had given it, Maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed.\nCharlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the\nwords--Maggie had known they would come--of which she had pressed the\nspring. \"How I see that you loathed our marriage!\"\n\n\"Do you ASK me?\" Maggie after an instant demanded.\n\nCharlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on\na bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the\nrelegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again: she was\nin presence, visibly, of her last word. She opened her sunshade with\na click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. \"\'Ask\' you? Do I\nneed? How I see,\" she broke out, \"that you\'ve worked against me!\"\n\n\"Oh, oh, oh!\" the Princess exclaimed.\n\nHer companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this\nturned round with a flare. \"You haven\'t worked against me?\"\n\nMaggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as\nif it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to\nher breast. Then she opened her eyes to speak. \"What does it matter--if\nI\'ve failed?\"\n\n\"You recognise then that you\'ve failed?\" asked Charlotte from the\nthreshold.\n\nMaggie waited; she looked, as her companion had done a moment before,\nat the two books on the seat; she put them together and laid them\ndown; then she made up her mind. \"I\'ve failed!\" she sounded out before\nCharlotte, having given her time, walked away. She watched her, splendid\nand erect, float down the long vista; then she sank upon a seat. Yes,\nshe had done all.\n\n\n\n\nPART SIXTH.\n\n XL\n\n\"I\'ll do anything you like,\" she said to her husband on one of the last\ndays of the month, \"if our being here, this way at this time, seems to\nyou too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too impossible. We\'ll either\ntake leave of them now, without waiting--or we\'ll come back in time,\nthree days before they start. I\'ll go abroad with you, if you but say\nthe word; to Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Italian Alps, to whichever of\nyour old high places you would like most to see again--those beautiful\nones that used to do you good after Rome and that you so often told me\nabout.\"\n\nWhere they were, in the conditions that prompted this offer, and where\nit might indeed appear ridiculous that, with the stale London September\nclose at hand, they should content themselves with remaining, was where\nthe desert of Portland Place looked blank as it had never looked, and\nwhere a drowsy cabman, scanning the horizon for a fare, could sink to\noblivion of the risks of immobility. But Amerigo was of the odd opinion,\nday after day, that their situation couldn\'t be bettered; and he even\nwent at no moment through the form of replying that, should their ordeal\nstrike her as exceeding their patience, any step they might take would\nbe for her own relief. This was, no doubt, partly because he stood out\nso wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least,\nthat any element of their existence WAS, or ever had been, an ordeal; no\ntrap of circumstance, no lapse of \"form,\" no accident of irritation, had\nlanded him in that inconsequence. His wife might verily have suggested\nthat he was consequent--consequent with the admirable appearance he had\nfrom the first so undertaken, and so continued, to present--rather too\nrigidly at HER expense; only, as it happened, she was not the little\nperson to do anything of the sort, and the strange tacit compact\nactually in operation between them might have been founded on an\nintelligent comparison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of\npatience proper to each. She was seeing him through--he had engaged\nto come out at the right end if she WOULD see him: this understanding,\ntacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the\nprocession of the weeks, the consecration of time; but it scarce needed\nto be insisted on that she was seeing him on HIS terms, not all on\nhers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and\nuncharted, his one practicably workable way. If that way, by one of the\nintimate felicities the liability to which was so far from having even\nyet completely fallen from him, happened handsomely to show him as more\nbored than boring (with advantages of his own freely to surrender, but\nnone to be persuadedly indebted to others for,) what did such a false\nface of the matter represent but the fact itself that she was pledged?\nIf she had questioned or challenged or interfered--if she had reserved\nherself that right--she wouldn\'t have been pledged; whereas there were\nstill, and evidently would be yet a while, long, tense stretches\nduring which their case might have been hanging, for every eye, on her\npossible, her impossible defection. She must keep it up to the last,\nmustn\'t absent herself for three minutes from her post: only on those\nlines, assuredly, would she show herself as with him and not against\nhim.\n\nIt was extraordinary how scant a series of signs she had invited him to\nmake of being, of truly having been at any time, \"with\" his wife: that\nreflection she was not exempt from as they now, in their suspense,\nsupremely waited--a reflection under the brush of which she recognised\nher having had, in respect to him as well, to \"do all,\" to go the whole\nway over, to move, indefatigably, while he stood as fixed in his place\nas some statue of one of his forefathers. The meaning of it would seem\nto be, she reasoned in sequestered hours, that he HAD a place, and that\nthis was an attribute somehow indefeasible, unquenchable, which laid\nupon others--from the moment they definitely wanted anything of him--\nthe necessity of taking more of the steps that he could, of circling\nround him, of remembering for his benefit the famous relation of the\nmountain to Mahomet. It was strange, if one had gone into it, but such\na place as Amerigo\'s was like something made for him beforehand by\ninnumerable facts, facts largely of the sort known as historical, made\nby ancestors, examples, traditions, habits; while Maggie\'s own had come\nto show simply as that improvised \"post\"--a post of the kind spoken of\nas advanced--with which she was to have found herself connected in the\nfashion of a settler or a trader in a new country; in the likeness even\nof some Indian squaw with a papoose on her back and barbarous bead-work\nto sell. Maggie\'s own, in short, would have been sought in vain in the\nmost rudimentary map of the social relations as such. The only geography\nmarking it would be doubtless that of the fundamental passions. The\n\"end\" that the Prince was at all events holding out for was represented\nto expectation by his father-in-law\'s announced departure for America\nwith Mrs. Verver; just as that prospective event had originally figured\nas advising, for discretion, the flight of the younger couple, to say\nnothing of the withdrawal of whatever other importunate company, before\nthe great upheaval of Fawns. This residence was to be peopled for a\nmonth by porters, packers and hammerers, at whose operations it had\nbecome peculiarly public--public that is for Portland Place--that\nCharlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed\nscale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to Maggie\'s\nmind as one day when the dear Assinghams swam back into her ken\nbesprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen Samson\npull down the temple. They had seen at least what she was not seeing,\nrich dim things under the impression of which they had retired; she\nhaving eyes at present but for the clock by which she timed her husband,\nor for the glass--the image perhaps would be truer--in which he was\nreflected to her as HE timed the pair in the country. The accession of\ntheir friends from Cadogan Place contributed to all their intermissions,\nat any rate, a certain effect of resonance; an effect especially marked\nby the upshot of a prompt exchange of inquiries between Mrs. Assingham\nand the Princess. It was noted, on the occasion of that anxious lady\'s\nlast approach to her young friend at Fawns, that her sympathy had\nventured, after much accepted privation, again to become inquisitive,\nand it had perhaps never so yielded to that need as on this question of\nthe present odd \"line\" of the distinguished eccentrics.\n\n\"You mean to say really that you\'re going to stick here?\" And then\nbefore Maggie could answer: \"What on earth will you do with your\nevenings?\"\n\nMaggie waited a moment--Maggie could still tentatively smile. \"When\npeople learn we\'re here--and of course the papers will be full of\nit!--they\'ll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever they are, to\ncatch us. You see you and the Colonel have yourselves done it. As for\nour evenings, they won\'t, I dare say, be particularly different from\nanything else that\'s ours. They won\'t be different from our mornings or\nour afternoons--except perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us\nto get through them. I\'ve offered to go anywhere,\" she added; \"to take\na house if he will. But THIS--just this and nothing else--is Amerigo\'s\nidea. He gave it yesterday\" she went on, \"a name that, as, he said,\ndescribed and fitted it. So you see\"--and the Princess indulged again\nin her smile that didn\'t play, but that only, as might have been said,\nworked--\"so you see there\'s a method in our madness.\"\n\nIt drew Mrs. Assingham\'s wonder. \"And what then is the name?\"\n\n\"\'The reduction to its simplest expression of what we ARE doing\'--that\'s\nwhat he called it. Therefore as we\'re doing nothing, we\'re doing it in\nthe most aggravated way--which is the way he desires.\" With which Maggie\nfurther said: \"Of course I understand.\"\n\n\"So do I!\" her visitor after a moment breathed. \"You\'ve had to vacate\nthe house--that was inevitable. But at least here he doesn\'t funk.\"\n\nOur young woman accepted the expression. \"He doesn\'t funk.\"\n\nIt only, however, half contented Fanny, who thoughtfully raised her\neyebrows. \"He\'s prodigious; but what is there--as you\'ve \'fixed\' it--TO\ndodge? Unless,\" she pursued, \"it\'s her getting near him; it\'s--if you\'ll\npardon my vulgarity--her getting AT him. That,\" she suggested, \"may\ncount with him.\"\n\nBut it found the Princess prepared. \"She can get near him here. She can\nget \'at\' him. She can come up.\"\n\n\"CAN she?\" Fanny Assingham questioned.\n\n\"CAN\'T she?\" Maggie returned.\n\nTheir eyes, for a minute, intimately met on it; after which the elder\nwoman said: \"I mean for seeing him alone.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" said the Princess.\n\nAt which Fanny, for her reasons, couldn\'t help smiling. \"Oh, if it\'s for\nTHAT he\'s staying--!\"\n\n\"He\'s staying--I\'ve made it out--to take anything that comes or calls\nupon him. To take,\" Maggie went on, \"even that.\" Then she put it as she\nhad at last put it to herself. \"He\'s staying for high decency.\"\n\n\"Decency?\" Mrs. Assingham gravely echoed.\n\n\"Decency. If she SHOULD try--!\"\n\n\"Well--?\" Mrs. Assingham urged.\n\n\"Well, I hope--!\"\n\n\"Hope he\'ll see her?\"\n\nMaggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. \"It\'s useless\nhoping,\" she presently said. \"She won\'t. But he ought to.\" Her friend\'s\nexpression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar,\nprolonged its sharpness to her ear--that of an electric bell under\ncontinued pressure. Stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly,\nthat the feasibility of Charlotte\'s \"getting at\" the man who for so\nlong had loved her should now be in question? Strangest of all things,\ndoubtless, this care of Maggie\'s as to what might make for it or make\nagainst it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague\ncalculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband,\nof some direct sounding of the subject. Would it be too monstrous, her\nsuddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks:\n\"Wouldn\'t it really seem that you\'re bound in honour to do something for\nher, privately, before they go?\" Maggie was capable of weighing the\nrisk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense\nlittle absences, even while conversing, as now, with the person who had\nmost of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities.\nIt was true that Mrs. Assingham could at such times somewhat restore\nthe balance--by not wholly failing to guess her thought. Her thought,\nhowever, just at present, had more than one face--had a series that it\nsuccessively presented. These were indeed the possibilities involved in\nthe adventure of her concerning herself for the quantity of compensation\nthat Mrs. Verver might still look to. There was always the possibility\nthat she WAS, after all, sufficiently to get at him--there was in fact\nthat of her having again and again done so. Against this stood\nnothing but Fanny Assingham\'s apparent belief in her privation--more\nmercilessly imposed, or more hopelessly felt, in the actual relation\nof the parties; over and beyond everything that, from more than three\nmonths back, of course, had fostered in the Princess a like conviction.\nThese assumptions might certainly be baseless--inasmuch as there were\nhours and hours of Amerigo\'s time that there was no habit, no pretence\nof his accounting for; inasmuch too as Charlotte, inevitably, had had\nmore than once, to the undisguised knowledge of the pair in Portland\nPlace, been obliged to come up to Eaton Square, whence so many of her\npersonal possessions were in course of removal. She didn\'t come to\nPortland Place--didn\'t even come to ask for luncheon on two separate\noccasions when it reached the consciousness of the household there\nthat she was spending the day in London. Maggie hated, she scorned, to\ncompare hours and appearances, to weigh the idea of whether there\nhadn\'t been moments, during these days, when an assignation, in easy\nconditions, a snatched interview, in an air the season had so cleared\nof prying eyes, mightn\'t perfectly work. But the very reason of this was\npartly that, haunted with the vision of the poor woman carrying off\nwith such bravery as she found to her hand the secret of her not being\nappeased, she was conscious of scant room for any alternative image.\nThe alternative image would have been that the secret covered up was the\nsecret of appeasement somehow obtained, somehow extorted and cherished;\nand the difference between the two kinds of hiding was too great to\npermit of a mistake. Charlotte was hiding neither pride nor joy--she\nwas hiding humiliation; and here it was that the Princess\'s passion,\nso powerless for vindictive flights, most inveterately bruised its\ntenderness against the hard glass of her question.\n\nBehind the glass lurked the WHOLE history of the relation she had so\nfairly flattened her nose against it to penetrate--the glass Mrs. Verver\nmight, at this stage, have been frantically tapping, from within, by\nway of supreme, irrepressible entreaty. Maggie had said to herself\ncomplacently, after that last passage with her stepmother in the garden\nof Fawns, that there was nothing left for her to do and that she could\nthereupon fold her hands. But why wasn\'t it still left to push further\nand, from the point of view of personal pride, grovel lower?--why wasn\'t\nit still left to offer herself as the bearer of a message reporting to\nhim their friend\'s anguish and convincing him of her need?\n\nShe could thus have translated Mrs. Verver\'s tap against the glass, as I\nhave called it, into fifty forms; could perhaps have translated it most\ninto the form of a reminder that would pierce deep. \"You don\'t know what\nit is to have been loved and broken with. You haven\'t been broken with,\nbecause in your RELATION what can there have been, worth speaking of, to\nbreak? Ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with\nthe wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better\nmeaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your\nhour, for blight, why was I myself dealt with all for deception? why\ncondemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame--oh,\nthe golden flame!--a mere handful of black ashes?\" Our young woman\nso yielded, at moments, to what was insidious in these foredoomed\ningenuities of her pity, that for minutes together, sometimes, the\nweight of a new duty seemed to rest upon her--the duty of speaking\nbefore separation should constitute its chasm, of pleading for some\nbenefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object\nof price of the emigre, the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and\nnegotiable some day in the market of misery.\n\nThis imagined service to the woman who could no longer help herself was\none of the traps set for Maggie\'s spirit at every turn of the road;\nthe click of which, catching and holding the divine faculty fast, was\nfollowed inevitably by a flutter, by a struggle of wings and even, as\nwe may say, by a scattering of fine feathers. For they promptly enough\nfelt, these yearnings of thought and excursions of sympathy, the\nconcussion that couldn\'t bring them down--the arrest produced by the so\nremarkably distinct figure that, at Fawns, for the previous weeks, was\nconstantly crossing, in its regular revolution, the further end of any\nwatched perspective. Whoever knew, or whoever didn\'t, whether or to what\nextent Charlotte, with natural business in Eaton Square, had shuffled\nother opportunities under that cloak, it was all matter for the kind of\nquiet ponderation the little man who so kept his wandering way had made\nhis own. It was part of the very inveteracy of his straw hat and his\nwhite waistcoat, of the trick of his hands in his pockets, of the\ndetachment of the attention he fixed on his slow steps from behind his\nsecure pince-nez. The thing that never failed now as an item in the\npicture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife\'s immaterial\ntether, so marked to Maggie\'s sense during her last month in the\ncountry. Mrs. Verver\'s straight neck had certainly not slipped it;\nnor had the other end of the long cord--oh, quite conveniently\nlong!--disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with\nhis fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. To have\nrecognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might\ninevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension\nsubjected, but could never be to doubt either of its adequacy to its\noffice or of its perfect durability. These reminded states for the\nPrincess were in fact states of renewed gaping. So many things her\nfather knew that she even yet didn\'t!\n\nAll this, at present, with Mrs. Assingham, passed through her in quick\nvibrations. She had expressed, while the revolution of her thought\nwas incomplete, the idea of what Amerigo \"ought,\" on his side, in the\npremises, to be capable of, and then had felt her companion\'s answering\nstare. But she insisted on what she had meant. \"He ought to wish to see\nher--and I mean in some protected and independent way, as he used to--in\ncase of her being herself able to manage it. That,\" said Maggie with the\ncourage of her conviction, \"he ought to be ready, he ought to be happy,\nhe ought to feel himself sworn--little as it is for the end of such\na history!--to take from her. It\'s as if he wished to get off without\ntaking anything.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham deferentially mused. \"But for what purpose is it your\nidea that they should again so intimately meet?\"\n\n\"For any purpose they like. That\'s THEIR affair.\"\n\nFanny Assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her\nconstant position. \"You\'re splendid--perfectly splendid.\" To which, as\nthe Princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn\'t have it again at all,\nshe subjoined: \"Or if you\'re not it\'s because you\'re so sure. I mean\nsure of HIM.\"\n\n\"Ah, I\'m exactly NOT sure of him. If I were sure of him I shouldn\'t\ndoubt--!\" But Maggie cast about her.\n\n\"Doubt what?\" Fanny pressed as she waited.\n\n\"Well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays--and how that\nought to keep her present to him.\"\n\nThis, in its turn, after an instant, Mrs. Assingham could meet with a\nsmile. \"Trust him, my dear, to keep her present! But trust him also to\nkeep himself absent. Leave him his own way.\"\n\n\"I\'ll leave him everything,\" said Maggie. \"Only--you know it\'s my\nnature--I THINK.\"\n\n\"It\'s your nature to think too much,\" Fanny Assingham a trifle coarsely\nrisked.\n\nThis but quickened, however, in the Princess the act she reprobated.\n\"That may be. But if I hadn\'t thought--!\"\n\n\"You wouldn\'t, you mean, have been where you are?\"\n\n\"Yes, because they, on their side, thought of everything BUT that. They\nthought of everything but that I might think.\"\n\n\"Or even,\" her friend too superficially concurred, \"that your father\nmight!\"\n\nAs to this, at all events, Maggie discriminated. \"No, that wouldn\'t have\nprevented them; for they knew that his first care would be not to make\nme do so. As it is,\" Maggie added, \"that has had to become his last.\"\n\nFanny Assingham took it in deeper--for what it immediately made her give\nout louder. \"HE\'S splendid then.\" She sounded it almost aggressively; it\nwas what she was reduced to--she had positively to place it.\n\n\"Ah, that as much as you please!\"\n\nMaggie said this and left it, but the tone of it had the next moment\ndetermined in her friend a fresh reaction. \"You think, both of you, so\nabysmally and yet so quietly. But it\'s what will have saved you.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Maggie returned, \"it\'s what--from the moment they discovered we\ncould think at all--will have saved THEM. For they\'re the ones who are\nsaved,\" she went on. \"We\'re the ones who are lost.\"\n\n\"Lost--?\"\n\n\"Lost to each other--father and I.\" And then as her friend appeared to\ndemur, \"Oh yes,\" Maggie quite lucidly declared, \"lost to each other much\nmore, really, than Amerigo and Charlotte are; since for them it\'s just,\nit\'s right, it\'s deserved, while for us it\'s only sad and strange and\nnot caused by our fault. But I don\'t know,\" she went on, \"why I talk\nabout myself, for it\'s on father it really comes. I let him go,\" said\nMaggie.\n\n\"You let him, but you don\'t make him.\"\n\n\"I take it from him,\" she answered.\n\n\"But what else can you do?\"\n\n\"I take it from him,\" the Princess repeated. \"I do what I knew from the\nfirst I SHOULD do. I get off by giving him up.\"\n\n\"But if he gives you?\" Mrs. Assingham presumed to object. \"Doesn\'t it\nmoreover then,\" she asked, \"complete the very purpose with which he\nmarried--that of making you and leaving you more free?\"\n\nMaggie looked at her long. \"Yes--I help him to do that.\"\n\nMrs. Assingham hesitated, but at last her bravery flared. \"Why not call\nit then frankly his complete success?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Maggie, \"that\'s all that\'s left me to do.\"\n\n\"It\'s a success,\" her friend ingeniously developed, \"with which you\'ve\nsimply not interfered.\" And as if to show that she spoke without levity\nMrs. Assingham went further. \"He has made it a success for THEM--!\"\n\n\"Ah, there you are!\" Maggie responsively mused. \"Yes,\" she said the next\nmoment, \"that\'s why Amerigo stays.\"\n\n\"Let alone it\'s why Charlotte goes.\" that Mrs. Assingham, and\nemboldened, smiled \"So he knows--?\"\n\nBut Maggie hung back. \"Amerigo--?\" After which, however, she blushed--to\nher companion\'s recognition.\n\n\"Your father. He knows what YOU know? I mean,\" Fanny faltered--\"well,\nhow much does he know?\" Maggie\'s silence and Maggie\'s eyes had in fact\narrested the push of the question--which, for a decent consistency, she\ncouldn\'t yet quite abandon. \"What I should rather say is does he know\nhow much?\" She found it still awkward. \"How much, I mean, they did. How\nfar\"--she touched it up--\"they went.\"\n\nMaggie had waited, but only with a question. \"Do you think he does?\"\n\n\"Know at least something? Oh, about him I can\'t think. He\'s beyond me,\"\nsaid Fanny Assingham.\n\n\"Then do you yourself know?\"\n\n\"How much--?\"\n\n\"How much.\"\n\n\"How far--?\"\n\n\"How far.\"\n\nFanny had appeared to wish to make sure, but there was something she\nremembered--remembered in time and even with a smile. \"I\'ve told you\nbefore that I know absolutely nothing.\"\n\n\"Well--that\'s what _I_ know,\" said the Princess.\n\nHer friend again hesitated. \"Then nobody knows--? I mean,\" Mrs.\nAssingham explained, \"how much your father does.\"\n\nOh, Maggie showed that she understood. \"Nobody.\"\n\n\"Not--a little--Charlotte?\"\n\n\"A little?\" the Princess echoed. \"To know anything would be, for her, to\nknow enough.\"\n\n\"And she doesn\'t know anything?\"\n\n\"If she did,\" Maggie answered, \"Amerigo would.\"\n\n\"And that\'s just it--that he doesn\'t?\"\n\n\"That\'s just it,\" said the Princess profoundly.\n\nOn which Mrs. Assingham reflected. \"Then how is Charlotte so held?\"\n\n\"Just by that.\"\n\n\"By her ignorance?\"\n\n\"By her ignorance.\" Fanny wondered. \"A torment--?\"\n\n\"A torment,\" said Maggie with tears in her eyes.\n\nHer companion a moment watched them. \"But the Prince then--?\"\n\n\"How is HE held?\" Maggie asked.\n\n\"How is HE held?\"\n\n\"Oh, I can\'t tell you that!\" And the Princess again broke off.\n\n\n\n XLI\n\nA telegram, in Charlotte\'s name, arrived early--\"We shall come and ask\nyou for tea at five, if convenient to you. Am wiring for the Assinghams\nto lunch.\" This document, into which meanings were to be read, Maggie\npromptly placed before her husband, adding the remark that her father\nand his wife, who would have come up the previous night or that morning,\nhad evidently gone to an hotel. The Prince was in his \"own\" room, where\nhe often sat now alone; half-a-dozen open newspapers, the \"Figaro\"\nnotably, as well as the \"Times,\" were scattered about him; but, with a\ncigar in his teeth and a visible cloud on his brow, he appeared actually\nto be engaged in walking to and fro. Never yet, on thus approaching\nhim--for she had done it of late, under one necessity or another,\nseveral times--had a particular impression so greeted her; supremely\nstrong, for some reason, as he turned quickly round on her entrance. The\nreason was partly the look in his face--a suffusion like the flush of\nfever, which brought back to her Fanny Assingham\'s charge, recently\nuttered under that roof, of her \"thinking\" too impenetrably. The word\nhad remained with her and made her think still more; so that, at first,\nas she stood there, she felt responsible for provoking on his part an\nirritation of suspense at which she had not aimed. She had been going\nabout him these three months, she perfectly knew, with a maintained\nidea--of which she had never spoken to him; but what had at last\nhappened was that his way of looking at her, on occasion, seemed a\nperception of the presence not of one idea, but of fifty, variously\nprepared for uses with which he somehow must reckon. She knew herself\nsuddenly, almost strangely, glad to be coming to him, at this hour, with\nnothing more abstract than a telegram; but even after she had stepped\ninto his prison under her pretext, while her eyes took in his face\nand then embraced the four walls that enclosed his restlessness, she\nrecognised the virtual identity of his condition with that aspect of\nCharlotte\'s situation for which, early in the summer and in all the\namplitude of a great residence, she had found, with so little seeking,\nthe similitude of the locked cage. He struck her as caged, the man\nwho couldn\'t now without an instant effect on her sensibility give an\ninstinctive push to the door she had not completely closed behind her.\nHe had been turning twenty ways, for impatiences all his own, and when\nshe was once shut in with him it was yet again as if she had come to him\nin his more than monastic cell to offer him light or food. There was\na difference none the less, between his captivity and Charlotte\'s--the\ndifference, as it might be, of his lurking there by his own act and\nhis own choice; the admission of which had indeed virtually been in\nhis starting, on her entrance, as if even this were in its degree an\ninterference. That was what betrayed for her, practically, his fear of\nher fifty ideas, and what had begun, after a minute, to make her wish to\nrepudiate or explain. It was more wonderful than she could have told;\nit was for all the world as if she was succeeding with him beyond her\nintention. She had, for these instants, the sense that he exaggerated,\nthat the imputation of purpose had fairly risen too high in him. She had\nbegun, a year ago, by asking herself how she could make him think more\nof her; but what was it, after all, he was thinking now? He kept his\neyes on her telegram; he read it more than once, easy as it was, in\nspite of its conveyed deprecation, to understand; during which she found\nherself almost awestruck with yearning, almost on the point of marking\nsomehow what she had marked in the garden at Fawns with Charlotte--that\nshe had truly come unarmed. She didn\'t bristle with intentions--she\nscarce knew, as he at this juncture affected her, what had become of the\nonly intention she had come with. She had nothing but her old idea, the\nold one he knew; she hadn\'t the ghost of another. Presently in fact,\nwhen four or five minutes had elapsed, it was as if she positively,\nhadn\'t so much even as that one. He gave her back her paper, asking with\nit if there were anything in particular she wished him to do.\n\nShe stood there with her eyes on him, doubling the telegram together\nas if it had been a precious thing and yet all the while holding her\nbreath. Of a sudden, somehow, and quite as by the action of their merely\nhaving between them these few written words, an extraordinary fact came\nup. He was with her as if he were hers, hers in a degree and on a\nscale, with an intensity and an intimacy, that were a new and a strange\nquantity, that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where\nthey had stuck and making them feel they floated. What was it that, with\nthe rush of this, just kept her from putting out her hands to him, from\ncatching at him as, in the other time, with the superficial impetus he\nand Charlotte had privately conspired to impart, she had so often, her\nbreath failing her, known the impulse to catch at her father? She\ndid, however, just yet, nothing inconsequent--though she couldn\'t\nimmediately have said what saved her; and by the time she had neatly\nfolded her telegram she was doing something merely needful. \"I wanted\nyou simply to know--so that you mayn\'t by accident miss them. For it\'s\nthe last,\" said Maggie.\n\n\"The last?\"\n\n\"I take it as their good-bye.\" And she smiled as she could always smile.\n\"They come in state--to take formal leave. They do everything that\'s\nproper. Tomorrow,\" she said, \"they go to Southampton.\"\n\n\"If they do everything that\'s proper,\" the Prince presently asked, \"why\ndon\'t they at least come to dine?\"\n\nShe hesitated, yet she lightly enough provided her answer. \"That we\nmust certainly ask them. It will be easy for you. But of course they\'re\nimmensely taken--!\"\n\nHe wondered. \"So immensely taken that they can\'t--that your father\ncan\'t--give you his last evening in England?\"\n\nThis, for Maggie, was more difficult to meet; yet she was still not\nwithout her stop-gap. \"That may be what they\'ll propose--that we shall\ngo somewhere together, the four of us, for a celebration--except that,\nto round it thoroughly off, we ought also to have Fanny and the Colonel.\nThey don\'t WANT them at tea, she quite sufficiently expresses; they\npolish them off, poor dears, they get rid of them, beforehand. They want\nonly us together; and if they cut us down to tea,\" she continued, \"as\nthey cut Fanny and the Colonel down to luncheon, perhaps it\'s for the\nfancy, after all, of their keeping their last night in London for each\nother.\"\n\nShe said these things as they came to her; she was unable to keep them\nback, even though, as she heard herself, she might have been throwing\neverything to the winds. But wasn\'t that the right way--for sharing his\nlast day of captivity with the man one adored? It was every moment more\nand more for her as if she were waiting with him in his prison--waiting\nwith some gleam of remembrance of how noble captives in the French\nRevolution, the darkness of the Terror, used to make a feast, or a\nhigh discourse, of their last poor resources. If she had broken with\neverything now, every observance of all the past months, she must simply\nthen take it so--take it that what she had worked for was too near,\nat last, to let her keep her head. She might have been losing her head\nverily in her husband\'s eyes--since he didn\'t know, all the while, that\nthe sudden freedom of her words was but the diverted intensity of her\ndisposition personally to seize him. He didn\'t know, either, that this\nwas her manner--now she was with him--of beguiling audaciously the\nsupremacy of suspense. For the people of the French Revolution,\nassuredly, there wasn\'t suspense; the scaffold, for those she was\nthinking of, was certain--whereas what Charlotte\'s telegram announced\nwas, short of some incalculable error, clear liberation. Just the\npoint, however, was in its being clearer to herself than to him; her\nclearnesses, clearances--those she had so all but abjectly laboured\nfor--threatened to crowd upon her in the form of one of the clusters\nof angelic heads, the peopled shafts of light beating down through iron\nbars, that regale, on occasion, precisely, the fevered vision of those\nwho are in chains. She was going to know, she felt, later on--was going\nto know with compunction, doubtless, on the very morrow, how thumpingly\nher heart had beaten at this foretaste of their being left together:\nshe should judge at leisure the surrender she was making to the\nconsciousness of complications about to be bodily lifted. She should\njudge at leisure even that avidity for an issue which was making so\nlittle of any complication but the unextinguished presence of the\nothers; and indeed that she was already simplifying so much more than\nher husband came out for her next in the face with which he listened.\nHe might certainly well be puzzled, in respect to his father-in-law\nand Mrs. Verver, by her glance at their possible preference for a\nconcentrated evening. \"But it isn\'t--is it?\" he asked--\"as if they were\nleaving each other?\"\n\n\"Oh no; it isn\'t as if they were leaving each other. They\'re only\nbringing to a close--without knowing when it may open again--a time that\nhas been, naturally, awfully interesting to them.\" Yes, she could talk\nso of their \"time\"--she was somehow sustained; she was sustained even to\naffirm more intensely her present possession of her ground. \"They have\ntheir reasons--many things to think of; how can one tell? But there\'s\nalways, also, the chance of his proposing to me that we shall have our\nlast hours together; I mean that he and I shall. He may wish to take\nme off to dine with him somewhere alone--and to do it in memory of old\ndays. I mean,\" the Princess went on, \"the real old days; before my grand\nhusband was invented and, much more, before his grand wife was: the\nwonderful times of his first great interest in what he has since done,\nhis first great plans and opportunities, discoveries and bargains. The\nway we\'ve sat together late, ever so late, in foreign restaurants, which\nhe used to like; the way that, in every city in Europe, we\'ve stayed on\nand on, with our elbows on the table and most of the lights put out, to\ntalk over things he had that day seen or heard of or made his offer for,\nthe things he had secured or refused or lost! There were places he took\nme to--you wouldn\'t believe!--for often he could only have left me with\nservants. If he should carry me off with him to-night, for old sake\'s\nsake, to the Earl\'s Court Exhibition, it will be a little--just a very,\nvery little--like our young adventures.\" After which while Amerigo\nwatched her, and in fact quite because of it, she had an inspiration, to\nwhich she presently yielded. If he was wondering what she would say\nnext she had found exactly the thing. \"In that case he will leave you\nCharlotte to take care of in our absence. You\'ll have to carry her off\nsomewhere for your last evening; unless you may prefer to spend it with\nher here. I shall then see that you dine, that you have everything,\nquite beautifully. You\'ll be able to do as you like.\"\n\nShe couldn\'t have been sure beforehand, and had really not been; but\nthe most immediate result of this speech was his letting her see that\nhe took it for no cheap extravagance either of irony or of oblivion.\nNothing in the world, of a truth, had ever been so sweet to her, as his\nlook of trying to be serious enough to make no mistake about it. She\ntroubled him--which hadn\'t been at all her purpose; she mystified\nhim--which she couldn\'t help and, comparatively, didn\'t mind; then it\ncame over her that he had, after all, a simplicity, very considerable,\non which she had never dared to presume. It was a discovery--not like\nthe other discovery she had once made, but giving out a freshness; and\nshe recognised again in the light of it the number of the ideas of which\nhe thought her capable. They were all, apparently, queer for him, but\nshe had at least, with the lapse of the months, created the perception\nthat there might be something in them; whereby he stared there,\nbeautiful and sombre, at what she was at present providing him with.\nThere was something of his own in his mind, to which, she was sure, he\nreferred everything for a measure and a meaning; he had never let go\nof it, from the evening, weeks before, when, in her room, after his\nencounter with the Bloomsbury cup, she had planted it there by flinging\nit at him, on the question of her father\'s view of him, her determined\n\"Find out for yourself!\" She had been aware, during the months, that he\nhad been trying to find out, and had been seeking, above all, to avoid\nthe appearance of any evasions of such a form of knowledge as might\nreach him, with violence or with a penetration more insidious, from any\nother source. Nothing, however, had reached him; nothing he could at\nall conveniently reckon with had disengaged itself for him even from\nthe announcement, sufficiently sudden, of the final secession of their\ncompanions. Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he\nhimself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the\nrest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that\npersonage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between\nconsequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous\npoetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation.\nWhat renewed the obscurity was her strange image of their common offer\nto him, her father\'s and her own, of an opportunity to separate from\nMrs. Verver with the due amount of form--and all the more that he was,\nin so pathetic a way, unable to treat himself to a quarrel with it on\nthe score of taste. Taste, in him, as a touchstone, was now all at sea;\nfor who could say but that one of her fifty ideas, or perhaps forty-nine\nof them, wouldn\'t be, exactly, that taste by itself, the taste he had\nalways conformed to, had no importance whatever? If meanwhile, at all\nevents, he felt her as serious, this made the greater reason for her\nprofiting by it as she perhaps might never be able to profit again. She\nwas invoking that reflection at the very moment he brought out, in\nreply to her last words, a remark which, though perfectly relevant and\nperfectly just, affected her at first as a high oddity. \"They\'re doing\nthe wisest thing, you know. For if they were ever to go--!\" And he\nlooked down at her over his cigar.\n\nIf they were ever to go, in short, it was high time, with her father\'s\nage, Charlotte\'s need of initiation, and the general magnitude of the\njob of their getting settled and seasoned, their learning to \"live into\"\ntheir queer future--it was high time that they should take up their\ncourage. This was eminent sense, but it didn\'t arrest the Princess, who,\nthe next moment, had found a form for her challenge. \"But shan\'t you\nthen so much as miss her a little? She\'s wonderful and beautiful, and I\nfeel somehow as if she were dying. Not really, not physically,\" Maggie\nwent on--\"she\'s so far, naturally, splendid as she is, from having done\nwith life. But dying for us--for you and me; and making us feel it by\nthe very fact of there being so much of her left.\"\n\nThe Prince smoked hard a minute. \"As you say, she\'s splendid, but there\nis--there always will be--much of her left. Only, as you also say, for\nothers.\"\n\n\"And yet I think,\" the Princess returned, \"that it isn\'t as if we had\nwholly done with her. How can we not always think of her? It\'s as if her\nunhappiness had been necessary to us--as if we had needed her, at her\nown cost, to build us up and start us.\"\n\nHe took it in with consideration, but he met it with a lucid inquiry.\n\"Why do you speak of the unhappiness of your father\'s wife?\"\n\nThey exchanged a long look--the time that it took her to find her reply.\n\"Because not to--!\"\n\n\"Well, not to--?\"\n\n\"Would make me have to speak of him. And I can\'t,\" said Maggie, \"speak\nof him.\"\n\n\"You \'can\'t\'--?\"\n\n\"I can\'t.\" She said it as for definite notice, not to be repeated.\n\"There are too many things,\" she nevertheless added. \"He\'s too great.\"\n\nThe Prince looked at his cigar-tip, and then as he put back the weed:\n\"Too great for whom?\" Upon which as she hesitated, \"Not, my dear, too\ngreat for you,\" he declared. \"For me--oh, as much as you like.\"\n\n\"Too great for me is what I mean. I know why I think it,\" Maggie said.\n\"That\'s enough.\"\n\nHe looked at her yet again as if she but fanned his wonder; he was on\nthe very point, she judged, of asking her why she thought it. But her\nown eyes maintained their warning, and at the end of a minute he had\nuttered other words. \"What\'s of importance is that you\'re his daughter.\nThat at least we\'ve got. And I suppose that, if I may say nothing else,\nI may say at least that I value it.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, you may say that you value it. I myself make the most of it.\"\n\nThis again he took in, letting it presently put forth for him a striking\nconnection. \"She ought to have known you. That\'s what\'s present to me.\nShe ought to have understood you better.\"\n\n\"Better than you did?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he gravely maintained, \"better than I did. And she didn\'t really\nknow you at all. She doesn\'t know you now.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes she does!\" said Maggie.\n\nBut he shook his head--he knew what he meant. \"She not only doesn\'t\nunderstand you more than I, she understands you ever so much less.\nThough even I--!\"\n\n\"Well, even you?\" Maggie pressed as he paused. \"Even I, even I even\nyet--!\" Again he paused and the silence held them.\n\nBut Maggie at last broke it. \"If Charlotte doesn\'t understand me, it is\nthat I\'ve prevented her. I\'ve chosen to deceive her and to lie to her.\"\n\nThe Prince kept his eyes on her. \"I know what you\'ve chosen to do. But\nI\'ve chosen to do the same.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Maggie after an instant--\"my choice was made when I had\nguessed yours. But you mean,\" she asked, \"that she understands YOU?\"\n\n\"It presents small difficulty!\"\n\n\"Are you so sure?\" Maggie went on.\n\n\"Sure enough. But it doesn\'t matter.\" He waited an instant; then looking\nup through the fumes of his smoke, \"She\'s stupid,\" he abruptly opined.\n\n\"O--oh!\" Maggie protested in a long wail.\n\nIt had made him in fact quickly change colour. \"What I mean is that\nshe\'s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.\" And he recovered, with this,\nall his logic. \"Why is she unhappy if she doesn\'t know?\"\n\n\"Doesn\'t know--?\" She tried to make his logic difficult.\n\n\"Doesn\'t know that YOU know.\"\n\nIt came from him in such a way that she was conscious, instantly, of\nthree or four things to answer. But what she said first was: \"Do you\nthink that\'s all it need take?\" And before he could reply, \"She knows,\nshe knows!\" Maggie proclaimed.\n\n\"Well then, what?\"\n\nBut she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him.\n\"Oh, I needn\'t tell you! She knows enough. Besides,\" she went on, \"she\ndoesn\'t believe us.\"\n\nIt made the Prince stare a little. \"Ah, she asks too much!\" That drew,\nhowever, from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in\nhim a judgment. \"She won\'t let you take her for unhappy.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know better than any one else what she won\'t let me take her\nfor!\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Amerigo, \"you\'ll see.\"\n\n\"I shall see wonders, I know. I\'ve already seen them, and I\'m\nprepared for them.\" Maggie recalled--she had memories enough. \"It\'s\nterrible\"--her memories prompted her to speak. \"I see it\'s ALWAYS\nterrible for women.\"\n\nThe Prince looked down in his gravity. \"Everything\'s terrible, cara, in\nthe heart of man. She\'s making her life,\" he said. \"She\'ll make it.\"\n\nHis wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely\nsetting objects straight. \"A little by the way then too, while she\'s\nabout it, she\'s making ours.\" At this he raised his eyes, which met her\nown, and she held him while she delivered herself of some thing that had\nbeen with her these last minutes.\n\n\"You spoke just now of Charlotte\'s not having learned from you that\nI \'know.\' Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my\nknowledge?\"\n\nHe did the inquiry all the honours--visibly weighed its importance and\nweighed his response. \"You think I might have been showing you that a\nlittle more handsomely?\"\n\n\"It isn\'t a question of any beauty,\" said Maggie; \"it\'s only a question\nof the quantity of truth.\"\n\n\"Oh, the quantity of truth!\" the Prince richly, though ambiguously,\nmurmured.\n\n\"That\'s a thing by itself, yes. But there are also such things, all the\nsame, as questions of good faith.\"\n\n\"Of course there are!\" the Prince hastened to reply. After which he\nbrought up more slowly: \"If ever a man, since the beginning of time,\nacted in good faith!\" But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.\n\nFor that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some\nhandful of gold-dust thrown into the air--for that then Maggie showed\nherself, as deeply and strangely taking it. \"I see.\" And she even wished\nthis form to be as complete as she could make it. \"I see.\"\n\nThe completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine.\n\"Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear--!\" It was all he could say.\n\nShe wasn\'t talking, however, at large. \"You\'ve kept up for so long a\nsilence--!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I know what I\'ve kept up. But will you do,\" he asked, \"still\none thing more for me?\"\n\nIt was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her\nturn pale. \"Is there even one thing left?\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!\"--it had pressed again in him the fine\nspring of the unspeakable. There was nothing, however, that the Princess\nherself couldn\'t say. \"I\'ll do anything, if you\'ll tell me what.\"\n\n\"Then wait.\" And his raised Italian hand, with its play of admonitory\nfingers, had never made gesture more expressive. His voice itself\ndropped to a tone--! \"Wait,\" he repeated. \"Wait.\"\n\nShe understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him. \"Till\nthey\'ve been here, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yes, till they\'ve gone. Till they\'re away.\"\n\nShe kept it up. \"Till they\'ve left the country?\" She had her eyes on him\nfor clearness; these were the conditions of a promise--so that he put\nthe promise, practically, into his response. \"Till we\'ve ceased to see\nthem--for as long as God may grant! Till we\'re really alone.\"\n\n\"Oh, if it\'s only that--!\" When she had drawn from him thus then, as she\ncould feel, the thick breath of the definite--which was the intimate,\nthe immediate, the familiar, as she hadn\'t had them for so long--she\nturned away again, she put her hand on the knob of the door. But her\nhand rested at first without a grasp; she had another effort to make,\nthe effort of leaving him, of which everything that had just passed\nbetween them, his presence, irresistible, overcharged with it, doubled\nthe difficulty. There was something--she couldn\'t have told what; it was\nas if, shut in together, they had come too far--too far for where they\nwere; so that the mere act of her quitting him was like the attempt to\nrecover the lost and gone. She had taken in with her something that,\nwithin the ten minutes, and especially within the last three or four,\nhad slipped away from her--which it was vain now, wasn\'t it? to try to\nappear to clutch or to pick up. That consciousness in fact had a pang,\nand she balanced, intensely, for the lingering moment, almost with a\nterror of her endless power of surrender. He had only to press, really,\nfor her to yield inch by inch, and she fairly knew at present, while she\nlooked at him through her cloud, that the confession of this precious\nsecret sat there for him to pluck. The sensation, for the few seconds,\nwas extraordinary; her weakness, her desire, so long as she was yet not\nsaving herself, flowered in her face like a light or a darkness. She\nsought for some word that would cover this up; she reverted to the\nquestion of tea, speaking as if they shouldn\'t meet sooner. \"Then about\nfive. I count on you.\"\n\nOn him too, however, something had descended; as to which this exactly\ngave him his chance. \"Ah, but I shall see you--! No?\" he said, coming\nnearer.\n\nShe had, with her hand still on the knob, her back against the door, so\nthat her retreat, under his approach must be less than a step, and yet\nshe couldn\'t for her life, with the other hand, have pushed him away.\nHe was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him,\nkiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his\nface--frowning, smiling, she mightn\'t know which; only beautiful and\nstrange--was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in\ndreams. She closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her\npurpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he\nheld. Then it was that, from behind her closed eyes, the right word\ncame. \"Wait!\" It was the word of his own distress and entreaty, the word\nfor both of them, all they had left, their plank now on the great sea.\nTheir hands were locked, and thus she said it again. \"Wait. Wait.\" She\nkept her eyes shut, but her hand, she knew, helped her meaning--which\nafter a minute she was aware his own had absorbed. He let her go--he\nturned away with this message, and when she saw him again his back was\npresented, as he had left her, and his face staring out of the window.\nShe had saved herself and she got off.\n\n\n\n XLII\n\nLater on, in the afternoon, before the others arrived, the form of their\nreunion was at least remarkable: they might, in their great eastward\ndrawing-room, have been comparing notes or nerves in apprehension of\nsome stiff official visit. Maggie\'s mind, in its restlessness, even\nplayed a little with the prospect; the high cool room, with its\nafternoon shade, with its old tapestries uncovered, with the perfect\npolish of its wide floor reflecting the bowls of gathered flowers and\nthe silver and linen of the prepared tea-table, drew from her a remark\nin which this whole effect was mirrored, as well as something else\nin the Prince\'s movement while he slowly paced and turned. \"We\'re\ndistinctly bourgeois!\" she a trifle grimly threw off, as an echo of\ntheir old community; though to a spectator sufficiently detached they\nmight have been quite the privileged pair they were reputed, granted\nonly they were taken as awaiting the visit of Royalty. They might have\nbeen ready, on the word passed up in advance, to repair together to the\nfoot of the staircase--the Prince somewhat in front, advancing indeed to\nthe open doors and even going down, for all his princedom, to meet, on\nthe stopping of the chariot, the august emergence. The time was stale,\nit was to be admitted, for incidents of magnitude; the September hush\nwas in full possession, at the end of the dull day, and a couple of the\nlong windows stood open to the balcony that overhung the desolation--\nthe balcony from which Maggie, in the springtime, had seen Amerigo and\nCharlotte look down together at the hour of her return from the Regent\'s\nPark, near by, with her father, the Principino and Miss Bogle. Amerigo\nnow again, in his punctual impatience, went out a couple of times and\nstood there; after which, as to report that nothing was in sight, he\nreturned to the room with frankly nothing else to do. The Princess\npretended to read; he looked at her as he passed; there hovered in\nher own sense the thought of other occasions when she had cheated\nappearances of agitation with a book. At last she felt him standing\nbefore her, and then she raised her eyes.\n\n\"Do you remember how, this morning, when you told me of this event, I\nasked you if there were anything particular you wished me to do? You\nspoke of my being at home, but that was a matter of course. You spoke of\nsomething else,\" he went on, while she sat with her book on her knee and\nher raised eyes; \"something that makes me almost wish it may happen.\nYou spoke,\" he said, \"of the possibility of my seeing her alone. Do you\nknow, if that comes,\" he asked, \"the use I shall make of it?\" And then\nas she waited: \"The use is all before me.\"\n\n\"Ah, it\'s your own business now!\" said his wife. But it had made her\nrise.\n\n\"I shall make it my own,\" he answered. \"I shall tell her I lied to her.\"\n\n\"Ah no!\" she returned.\n\n\"And I shall tell her you did.\"\n\nShe shook her head again. \"Oh, still less!\"\n\nWith which therefore they stood at difference, he with his head erect\nand his happy idea perched, in its eagerness, on his crest. \"And how\nthen is she to know?\"\n\n\"She isn\'t to know.\"\n\n\"She\'s only still to think you don\'t--?\"\n\n\"And therefore that I\'m always a fool? She may think,\" said Maggie,\n\"what she likes.\"\n\n\"Think it without my protest--?\"\n\nThe Princess made a movement. \"What business is it of yours?\"\n\n\"Isn\'t it my right to correct her--?\"\n\nMaggie let his question ring--ring long enough for him to hear it\nhimself; only then she took it up. \"\'Correct\' her?\"--and it was her own\nnow that really rang. \"Aren\'t you rather forgetting who she is?\" After\nwhich, while he quite stared for it, as it was the very first clear\nmajesty he had known her to use, she flung down her book and raised a\nwarning hand. \"The carriage. Come!\"\n\nThe \"Come!\" had matched, for lucid firmness, the rest of her speech,\nand, when they were below, in the hall, there was a \"Go!\" for him,\nthrough the open doors and between the ranged servants, that matched\neven that. He received Royalty, bareheaded, therefore, in the persons of\nMr. and Mrs. Verver, as it alighted on the pavement, and Maggie was at\nthe threshold to welcome it to her house. Later on, upstairs again, she\neven herself felt still more the force of the limit of which she\nhad just reminded him; at tea, in Charlotte\'s affirmed presence--as\nCharlotte affirmed it--she drew a long breath of richer relief. It was\nthe strangest, once more, of all impressions; but what she most felt,\nfor the half-hour, was that Mr. and Mrs. Verver were making the occasion\neasy. They were somehow conjoined in it, conjoined for a present effect\nas Maggie had absolutely never yet seen them; and there occurred, before\nlong, a moment in which Amerigo\'s look met her own in recognitions that\nhe couldn\'t suppress. The question of the amount of correction to which\nCharlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant, only\nto sink, conspicuously, by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed\nto give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of\nserenity she succeeded in making. The shade of the official, in her\nbeauty and security, never for a moment dropped; it was a cool, high\nrefuge, like the deep, arched recess of some coloured and gilded image,\nin which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her\nhusband and remembered her mission. Her mission had quite taken form--it\nwas but another name for the interest of her great opportunity--that of\nrepresenting the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar\noff, in ignorance. Maggie had sufficiently intimated to the Prince,\nten minutes before, that she needed no showing as to what their friend\nwouldn\'t consent to be taken for; but the difficulty now indeed was to\nchoose, for explicit tribute of admiration, between the varieties of her\nnobler aspects. She carried it off, to put the matter coarsely, with a\ntaste and a discretion that held our young woman\'s attention, for the\nfirst quarter-of-an-hour, to the very point of diverting it from the\nattitude of her overshadowed, her almost superseded companion. But Adam\nVerver profited indeed at this time, even with his daughter, by his so\nmarked peculiarity of seeming on no occasion to have an attitude; and so\nlong as they were in the room together she felt him still simply weave\nhis web and play out his long fine cord, knew herself in presence of\nthis tacit process very much as she had known herself at Fawns. He had\na way, the dear man, wherever he was, of moving about the room,\nnoiselessly, to see what it might contain; and his manner of now\nresorting to this habit, acquainted as he already was with the objects\nin view, expressed with a certain sharpness the intention of leaving his\nwife to her devices. It did even more than this; it signified, to the\napprehension of the Princess, from the moment she more directly took\nthought of him, almost a special view of these devices, as actually\nexhibited in their rarity, together with an independent, a settled\nappreciation of their general handsome adequacy, which scarcely required\nthe accompaniment of his faint contemplative hum.\n\nCharlotte throned, as who should say, between her hostess and her host,\nthe whole scene having crystallised, as soon as she took her place, to\nthe right quiet lustre; the harmony was not less sustained for being\nsuperficial, and the only approach to a break in it was while Amerigo\nremained standing long enough for his father-in-law, vaguely wondering,\nto appeal to him, invite or address him, and then, in default of any\nsuch word, selected for presentation to the other visitor a plate of\npetits fours. Maggie watched her husband--if it now could be called\nwatching--offer this refreshment; she noted the consummate way--for\n\"consummate\" was the term she privately applied--in which Charlotte\ncleared her acceptance, cleared her impersonal smile, of any betrayal,\nany slightest value, of consciousness; and then felt the slow surge of a\nvision that, at the end of another minute or two, had floated her\nacross the room to where her father stood looking at a picture, an early\nFlorentine sacred subject, that he had given her on her marriage. He\nmight have been, in silence, taking his last leave of it; it was a\nwork for which he entertained, she knew, an unqualified esteem. The\ntenderness represented for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had\nbecome, to her sense, a part of the whole infusion, of the immortal\nexpression; the beauty of his sentiment looked out at her, always, from\nthe beauty of the rest, as if the frame made positively a window for his\nspiritual face: she might have said to herself, at this moment, that in\nleaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms, he was doing\nthe most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self.\nShe put her hand over his shoulder, and their eyes were held again,\ntogether, by the abiding felicity; they smiled in emulation, vaguely,\nas if speech failed them through their having passed too far; she would\nhave begun to wonder the next minute if it were reserved to them, for\nthe last stage, to find their contact, like that of old friends reunited\ntoo much on the theory of the unchanged, subject to shy lapses.\n\n\"It\'s all right, eh?\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear--rather!\"\n\nHe had applied the question to the great fact of the picture, as she\nhad spoken for the picture in reply, but it was as if their words for an\ninstant afterwards symbolised another truth, so that they looked about\nat everything else to give them this extension. She had passed her arm\ninto his, and the other objects in the room, the other pictures, the\nsofas, the chairs, the tables, the cabinets, the \"important\" pieces,\nsupreme in their way, stood out, round them, consciously, for\nrecognition and applause. Their eyes moved together from piece to piece,\ntaking in the whole nobleness--quite as if for him to measure the wisdom\nof old ideas. The two noble persons seated, in conversation, at tea,\nfell thus into the splendid effect and the general harmony: Mrs. Verver\nand the Prince fairly \"placed\" themselves, however unwittingly, as high\nexpressions of the kind of human furniture required, esthetically, by\nsuch a scene. The fusion of their presence with the decorative elements,\ntheir contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and\nadmirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than\nthe occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete\nattestations of a rare power of purchase. There was much indeed in\nthe tone in which Adam Verver spoke again, and who shall say where his\nthought stopped? \"Le compte y est. You\'ve got some good things.\"\n\nMaggie met it afresh--\"Ah, don\'t they look well?\" Their companions, at\nthe sound of this, gave them, in a spacious intermission of slow talk,\nan attention, all of gravity, that was like an ampler submission to the\ngeneral duty of magnificence; sitting as still, to be thus appraised, as\na pair of effigies of the contemporary great on one of the platforms of\nMadame Tussaud. \"I\'m so glad--for your last look.\"\n\nWith which, after Maggie--quite in the air--had said it, the note was\nstruck indeed; the note of that strange accepted finality of relation,\nas from couple to couple, which almost escaped an awkwardness only by\nnot attempting a gloss. Yes, this was the wonder, that the occasion\ndefied insistence precisely because of the vast quantities with which it\ndealt--so that separation was on a scale beyond any compass of parting.\nTo do such an hour justice would have been in some degree to question\nits grounds--which was why they remained, in fine, the four of them, in\nthe upper air, united in the firmest abstention from pressure. There was\nno point, visibly, at which, face to face, either Amerigo or Charlotte\nhad pressed; and how little she herself was in danger of doing so Maggie\nscarce needed to remember. That her father wouldn\'t, by the tip of a\ntoe--of that she was equally conscious: the only thing was that, since\nhe didn\'t, she could but hold her breath for what he would do instead.\nWhen, at the end of three minutes more, he had said, with an effect of\nsuddenness, \"Well, Mag--and the Principino?\" it was quite as if that\nwere, by contrast, the hard, the truer voice.\n\nShe glanced at the clock. \"I \'ordered\' him for half-past five--which\nhasn\'t yet struck. Trust him, my dear, not to fail you!\"\n\n\"Oh, I don\'t want HIM to fail me!\" was Mr. Verver\'s reply; yet uttered\nin so explicitly jocose a relation to the possibilities of failure that\neven when, just afterwards, he wandered in his impatience to one of the\nlong windows and passed out to the balcony, she asked herself but for\na few seconds if reality, should she follow him, would overtake or meet\nher there. She followed him of necessity--it came, absolutely, so near\nto his inviting her, by stepping off into temporary detachment, to\ngive the others something of the chance that she and her husband had so\nfantastically discussed. Beside him then, while they hung over the great\ndull place, clear and almost coloured now, coloured with the odd, sad,\npictured, \"old-fashioned\" look that empty London streets take on in\nwaning afternoons of the summer\'s end, she felt once more how impossible\nsuch a passage would have been to them, how it would have torn them to\npieces, if they had so much as suffered its suppressed relations to peep\nout of their eyes. This danger would doubtless indeed have been more to\nbe reckoned with if the instinct of each--she could certainly at least\nanswer for her own--had not so successfully acted to trump up other\napparent connexions for it, connexions as to which they could pretend to\nbe frank.\n\n\"You mustn\'t stay on here, you know,\" Adam Verver said as a result of\nhis unobstructed outlook. \"Fawns is all there for you, of course--to\nthe end of my tenure. But Fawns so dismantled,\" he added with mild\nruefulness, \"Fawns with half its contents, and half its best things,\nremoved, won\'t seem to you, I\'m afraid, particularly lively.\"\n\n\"No,\" Maggie answered, \"we should miss its best things. Its best things,\nmy dear, have certainly been removed. To be back there,\" she went on,\n\"to be back there--!\" And she paused for the force of her idea.\n\n\"Oh, to be back there without anything good--!\" But she didn\'t hesitate\nnow; she brought her idea forth. \"To be back there without Charlotte is\nmore than I think would do.\" And as she smiled at him with it, so she\nsaw him the next instant take it--take it in a way that helped her\nsmile to pass all for an allusion to what she didn\'t and couldn\'t\nsay. This quantity was too clear--that she couldn\'t at such an hour be\npretending to name to him what it was, as he would have said, \"going to\nbe,\" at Fawns or anywhere else, to want for HIM. That was now--and in a\nmanner exaltedly, sublimely--out of their compass and their question;\nso that what was she doing, while they waited for the Principino,\nwhile they left the others together and their tension just sensibly\nthreatened, what was she doing but just offer a bold but substantial\nsubstitute? Nothing was stranger moreover, under the action of\nCharlotte\'s presence, than the fact of a felt sincerity in her words.\nShe felt her sincerity absolutely sound--she gave it for all it might\nmean. \"Because Charlotte, dear, you know,\" she said, \"is incomparable.\"\nIt took thirty seconds, but she was to know when these were over that\nshe had pronounced one of the happiest words of her life. They had\nturned from the view of the street; they leaned together against the\nbalcony rail, with the room largely in sight from where they stood, but\nwith the Prince and Mrs. Verver out of range. Nothing he could try, she\nimmediately saw, was to keep his eyes from lighting; not even his taking\nout his cigarette-case and saying before he said anything else: \"May I\nsmoke?\" She met it, for encouragement, with her \"My dear!\" again, and\nthen, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be\nnervous--a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to\nfalter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all\nshe cared, reach the pair inside: \"Father, father--Charlotte\'s great!\"\n\nIt was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her.\n\"Charlotte\'s great.\"\n\nThey could close upon it--such a basis as they might immediately feel\nit make; and so they stood together over it, quite gratefully, each\nrecording to the other\'s eyes that it was firm under their feet. They\nhad even thus a renewed wait, as for proof of it; much as if he\nwere letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed\ncompanions, that this was finally just why--but just WHY! \"You see,\" he\npresently added, \"how right I was. Right, I mean, to do it for you.\"\n\n\"Ah, rather!\" she murmured with her smile. And then, as to be herself\nideally right: \"I don\'t see what you would have done without her.\"\n\n\"The point was,\" he returned quietly, \"that I didn\'t see what you were\nto do. Yet it was a risk.\"\n\n\"It was a risk,\" said Maggie--\"but I believed in it. At least for\nmyself!\" she smiled.\n\n\"Well NOW,\" he smoked, \"we see.\"\n\n\"We see.\"\n\n\"I know her better.\"\n\n\"You know her best.\"\n\n\"Oh, but naturally!\" On which, as the warranted truth of it hung in\nthe air--the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present\nopportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted--she\nfound herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet\nknown, in the vision of all he might mean. The sense of it in her\nrose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him\nlinger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and\nlooking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail,\nat the grey, gaunt front of the house, \"She\'s beautiful, beautiful!\"\nher sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. It was all she\nmight have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the\nnote of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing\ntill now had done the reality of their parting. They were parting, in\nthe light of it, absolutely on Charlotte\'s VALUE--the value that was\nfilling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play,\nand with which the Prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger\nacquaintance. If Maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last\nconclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might\nhave found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon\nhigh values. Somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her\ngifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of Charlotte\'s! What\nelse had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as\ngreat? Great for the world that was before her--that he proposed she\nshould be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan.\nMaggie held to this then--that she wasn\'t to be wasted. To let his\ndaughter know it he had sought this brief privacy. What a blessing,\naccordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! His face, meanwhile,\nat all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy\nwent straight. \"It\'s success, father.\"\n\n\"It\'s success. And even this,\" he added as the Principino, appearing\nalone, deep within, piped across an instant greeting--\"even this isn\'t\naltogether failure!\"\n\nThey went in to receive the boy, upon whose introduction to the room\nby Miss Bogle Charlotte and the Prince got up--seemingly with an\nimpressiveness that had caused Miss Bogle not to give further effect\nto her own entrance. She had retired, but the Principino\'s presence, by\nitself, sufficiently broke the tension--the subsidence of which, in the\ngreat room, ten minutes later, gave to the air something of the quality\nproduced by the cessation of a sustained rattle. Stillness, when the\nPrince and Princess returned from attending the visitors to their\ncarriage, might have been said to be not so much restored as created;\nso that whatever next took place in it was foredoomed to remarkable\nsalience. That would have been the case even with so natural, though so\nfutile, a movement as Maggie\'s going out to the balcony again to follow\nwith her eyes her father\'s departure. The carriage was out of sight--it\nhad taken her too long solemnly to reascend, and she looked awhile only\nat the great grey space, on which, as on the room still more, the shadow\nof dusk had fallen. Here, at first, her husband had not rejoined her; he\nhad come up with the boy, who, clutching his hand, abounded, as usual,\nin remarks worthy of the family archives; but the two appeared then\nto have proceeded to report to Miss Bogle. It meant something for the\nPrincess that her husband had thus got their son out of the way, not\nbringing him back to his mother; but everything now, as she vaguely\nmoved about, struck her as meaning so much that the unheard chorus\nswelled. Yet THIS above all--her just being there as she was and waiting\nfor him to come in, their freedom to be together there always--was the\nmeaning most disengaged: she stood in the cool twilight and took in, all\nabout her, where it lurked, her reason for what she had done. She knew\nat last really why--and how she had been inspired and guided, how she\nhad been persistently able, how, to her soul, all the while, it had\nbeen for the sake of this end. Here it was, then, the moment, the golden\nfruit that had shone from afar; only, what were these things, in the\nfact, for the hand and for the lips, when tested, when tasted--what were\nthey as a reward? Closer than she had ever been to the measure of her\ncourse and the full face of her act, she had an instant of the terror\nthat, when there has been suspense, always precedes, on the part of the\ncreature to be paid, the certification of the amount. Amerigo knew it,\nthe amount; he still held it, and the delay in his return, making her\nheart beat too fast to go on, was like a sudden blinding light on a wild\nspeculation. She had thrown the dice, but his hand was over her cast.\n\nHe opened the door, however, at last--he hadn\'t been away ten minutes;\nand then, with her sight of him renewed to intensity, she seemed to have\na view of the number. His presence alone, as he paused to look at her,\nsomehow made it the highest, and even before he had spoken she had begun\nto be paid in full. With that consciousness, in fact, an extraordinary\nthing occurred; the assurance of her safety so making her terror drop\nthat already, within the minute, it had been changed to concern for his\nown anxiety, for everything that was deep in his being and everything\nthat was fair in his face. So far as seeing that she was \"paid\" went, he\nmight have been holding out the money-bag for her to come and take it.\nBut what instantly rose, for her, between the act and her acceptance was\nthe sense that she must strike him as waiting for a confession. This, in\nturn, charged her with a new horror: if that was her proper payment she\nwould go without money. His acknowledgment hung there, too monstrously,\nat the expense of Charlotte, before whose mastery of the greater style\nshe had just been standing dazzled. All she now knew, accordingly, was\nthat she should be ashamed to listen to the uttered word; all, that is,\nbut that she might dispose of it on the spot forever.\n\n\"Isn\'t she too splendid?\" she simply said, offering it to explain and to\nfinish.\n\n\"Oh, splendid!\" With which he came over to her.\n\n\"That\'s our help, you see,\" she added--to point further her moral.\n\nIt kept him before her therefore, taking in--or trying to--what she so\nwonderfully gave. He tried, too clearly, to please her--to meet her in\nher own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept\nbefore him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing\nher, he presently echoed: \"\'See\'? I see nothing but you.\" And the truth\nof it had, with this force, after a moment, so strangely lighted his\neyes that, as for pity and dread of them, she buried her own in his\nbreast.'"