 CHAPTER XXXII. If Maggie had not so firmly made up her mind never to say, either to her good friend or to anyone else, more than she meant about her father, she might have found herself betrayed into some such overflow during the weeks spent in London with her husband after the others had adjourned a fawns for the summer. This was because of the odd element of the unnatural imparted to the so simple fact of their brief separation by the assumptions resident in their course of life hitherto. She was used herself, certainly, by this time, to dealing with odd elements, but she dropped instantly even from such peace as she had patched up when it was a question of feeling that her unpenetrated parent might be alone with them. She thought of him as alone with them when she thought of him as alone with Charlotte, and this strangely enough, even while fixing her sense to the full on his wife's power of preserving, quite of enhancing, every felicitous appearance. Charlotte had done that, under immeasurably fewer difficulties indeed, during the numerous months of their hymenial absence from England, the period prior to that wonderful reunion of the couples and the interest of the larger play of all the virtues of each, which was now bearing, for Mrs. Verver's stepdaughter at least, such remarkable fruit. It was the present so much briefer interval, in a situation, possibly in a relation, so changed, it was the new terms of her problem that would tax Charlotte's art. The princess could pull herself up repeatedly by remembering that the real relation between her father and his wife was a thing that she knew nothing about, and that in strictness was none of her business. But she nonetheless failed to keep quiet, as she would have called it, before the projected image of their ostensibly happy isolation. Nothing could have had less of the quality of quietude than a certain queer wish that fitfully flickered up in her, a wish that usurped, perversely, the place of a much more natural one. If Charlotte, while she was about it, could only have been worse, that idea Maggie fell to invoking instead of the idea that she might desirably have been better. For exceedingly odd as it was to feel in such ways, she believed she mightn't have worried so much, if she didn't somehow make her stepmother out, under the beautiful trees and among the dear old gardens, as lavish of fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds at least of gentleness. Gentleness and confidence were certainly the right thing, as from a charming woman to her husband. But the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady's hands, and flung over her companion as a light, muffling veil, formed precisely a rot transparency through which she felt her father's eyes continually rest on herself. The reach of his gaze came to her straighter from a distance. It showed him as still more conscious, down there alone, of the suspected, the felt elaboration of the process of their not alarming or hurting him. She had herself now, for weeks and weeks and all unwinkingly, traced the extension of this pious effort. But her perfect success in giving no sign, she did herself that credit, would have been an achievement quite wasted if Mrs. Verver should make with him those mistakes of proportion, one set of them too abruptly, too incoherently designed to correct another set, that she had made with his daughter. However, if she had been worse, poor woman, who should say that her husband would, to a certainty, have been better? One groped noiselessly among such questions, and it was actually not even definite for the princess that her own Amorigo, left alone with her in town, had arrived at the golden mean of non-precautionary gallantry, which would tend, by his calculation, to brush private criticism from its last perching place. The truth was, in this connection, that she had different sorts of terrors, and there were hours when it came to her that these days were a prolonged repetition of that night drive, of weeks before, from the other house to their own, when he had tried to charm her, by his sovereign personal power, into some collapse that would commit her to a repudiation of consistency. She was never alone with him, it was to be said, without her having sooner or later to ask herself what had already become of her consistency. Yet at the same time, so long as she breathed no charge, she kept hold of a remnant of appearance that could save her from attack. Real attack from him, as he would conduct it, was what she above all dreaded. She was so far from sure that under that experience she mightn't drop into some depth of weakness, mightn't show him some shortest way with her that he would know how to use again. Therefore, since she had given him, as yet, no moment's pretext for pretending to her that she had either lost faith, or suffered by a feather's weight in happiness, she left him it was easy to reason, with an immense advantage for all waiting and all tension. She wished him for the present to make up to her for nothing. Who could say to what making up might lead, into what consenting or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her? She loved him too helplessly still, to dare to open the door by an inch, to his treating her as if either of them had wronged the other. Something or somebody, and who at this, which of them all, would inevitably, would in the gust of momentary selfishness, be sacrificed to that. Whereas what she intelligently needed was to know where she was going. Knowledge. Knowledge was a fascination as well as a fear, and a part precisely of the strangeness of this juncture was the way her apprehension that he would break out to her with some merely general profession was mixed with her dire need to forgive him, to reassure him, to respond to him on no ground that she didn't fully measure. To do these things it must be clear to her what they were for, but to act in that light was, by the same effect, to learn horribly what the other things had been. He might tell her only what he wanted, only what would work upon her by the beauty of his appeal, and the result of the direct appeal of any beauty in him would be her helpless submission to his terms. All her temporary safety, her hand to mouth success, accordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor diviningness, thanks to such means as she could take to prevent him. Take, literally from hour to hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. From hour to hour she fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. Ah, yes, it has been as you think. I've strayed away, I've fancied myself free, given myself another quantities with larger generalities, because I thought you were different, different from what I now see. But it was only, only because I didn't know, and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my mistake, to which I confess, for which I'll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, I too beautifully feel, to get completely over. That was what, while she watched herself, she potentially heard him bring out. And while she carried to an end another day, another sequence, and yet another of their hours together, without his producing it, she felt herself occupied with him beyond even the intensity of surrender. She was keeping her head, for a reason, for a cause, and the labor of this detachment, with the labor of her keeping the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy, compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air. Her greatest danger, or at least her greatest motive for care, was the obsession of the thought that, if he actually did suspect, the fruit of his attention to her couldn't help being a sense of the growth of her importance. Taking the measure with him, as she had taken it with her father, of the prescribed reach of her hypocrisy, she saw how it would have to stretch even to her seeking to prove that she was not all the same important. A single touch from him, oh, she should know it in case of its coming. Any brush of his hand, of his lips, of his voice, inspired by recognition of her probable interest as distinct from pity for her virtual gloom, would hand her over to him bound hand and foot. Therefore to be free, to be free to act, other than abjectly, for her father, she must conceal from him the validity that, like a microscopic insect pushing a grain of sand, she was taking on even for herself. She could keep it up with a change in sight, but she couldn't keep it up forever. So that really, one extraordinary effect of their weak of untempered confrontation, which bristled with new marks, was to make her reach out, in thought, to their customary companions and calculate the kind of relief that rejoining them would bring. She was learning, almost from minute to minute, to be a mistress of shades, since always, when there were possibilities enough of intimacy, there were also by that fact, in intercourse, possibilities of iridescence. But she was working against an adversary who was a master of shades too, and on whom, if she didn't look out, she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle. To feel him, in fact, to think of his feeling himself, her adversary in things of this fineness, to see him at all, in short, brave a name that would represent him as an opposition, was already to be nearly reduced to a visible smothering of her cry of alarm. Should he guess they were having, in their so-accult manner, a high fight, and that it was she, all the while, in her supposed stupidity, who had made it high, and was keeping it high, in the event of his doing this before they could leave town, she should verily be lost. The possible respite for her at funds would come from the fact that observation in him, there, would inevitably find some of its directness diverted. This would be the case if only because the remarkable strain of her father's placidity might be thought of as likely to claim some larger part of his attention, besides which there would be always Charlotte herself to draw him off. Charlotte would help him again doubtless to study anything right or left that might be symptomatic. But Maggie could see that this very fact might perhaps contribute in its degree to protect the secret of her own fermentation. It is not even incredible that she may have discovered the gleam of a comfort that was to broaden in the conceivable effect on the Prince's spirit, on his nerves, on his finer irritability, of some of the very heirs and aspects the light graces themselves of Mrs. Verver's two perfect competence. What it would most come to, after all, she said to herself, was a renewal for him of the privilege of watching that lady watch her. Very well, then. With the elements after all so mixed in him, how long would he go on enjoying mere spectatorship of that act? For she had by this time made up her mind that in Charlotte's company he deferred to Charlotte's easier art of mounting guard. Wouldn't he get tired, to put it only at that, of seeing her always on the rampart, erect and elegant, with her lace flouched parasol now folded and now shouldered, marched to and fro against a gold-colored east or west? He had gone far, truly for a view of the question of this particular reaction, and she was not incapable of pulling herself up with the rebuke that she counted her chickens before they were hatched. How sure she should have to be of so many things before she might thus find a weariness in Amorigo's expression and a logic in his weariness. One of her dissimulated arts for meeting their tension, meanwhile, was to interweave Mrs. Asingham as plausibly as possible with the undulations of their surface, to bring it about that she should join them of an afternoon when they drove together or if they went to look at things, looking at things being almost as much a feature of their life as if they were a bizarre opening royalties. Then there were such combinations, later in the day, as her attendance on them, and the colonels as well, for such whimsical matters as visits to the opera, no matter who was singing, and sudden outbreaks of curiosity about the British drama. The good couple from Cadogan Place could always unprotestingly dine with them and go on afterwards to such publicities as the princess cultivated the boldness of now perversely preferring. It may be said of her that during these passages she plucked her sensations by the way, detached nervously, the small wild blossoms of her dim forest, so that she could smile over them at least with a spacious appearance for her companions, for her husband above all, of bravely, of altogether frivolously, going amaing. She had her intense, her smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations. She had, in particular, the extravagant, positively at moments the amused sense of using her friend to the topmost notch, a company with the high luxury of not having to explain. Never, no never, should she have to explain to Fanny Assingham again, who, poor woman on her own side, would be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher ingenuity. She put it all off on Fanny, and the dear thing herself might henceforth appraise the quantity. More and more magnificent now in her blameless egoism, Maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only signified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her. She didn't care for what devotions, what dinners of their own the Assingham's might have been booked. That was a detail, and she could think without wincing of the ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them. It all fell in beautifully, moreover, so that, as hard at this time, in spite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the creative hand. She had but to have the fancy of presenting herself, of presenting her husband, in a certain high and convenient manner, to make it natural they should go about with their gentleman and their lady. To what else but this exactly had Charlotte, during so many weeks of the earlier season, worked her up. Herself assuming and discharging, so far as might be, the character and office of one of those revolving subordinate presences that flowed in the wake of greatness. The precedent was therefore established, and the group normally constituted. Mrs. Assingham, meanwhile, at table, on the stairs, in the carriage or the opera box, might, with her constant overflow of expression, for that matter, and its singularly resonant character where men in a special were concerned, look across at Amorigo in whatever sense she liked. It was not of that Maggie proposed to be afraid. She might warn him, she might rebuke him, she might reassure him, she might, if it were impossible not to, absolutely make love to him. Even this was open to her as a matter simply between them, if it would help her to answer for the impeccability he had guaranteed. And Maggie desired, in fact, only to strike her as acknowledging the efficacy of her aid, when she mentioned to her one evening a small project for the morrow, privately entertained, the idea irresistible, intense, of going to pay, at the museum, a visit to Mr. Crichton. Mr. Crichton, as Mrs. Assingham could easily remember, was the most accomplished and obliging of public functionaries, whom everyone knew and who knew everyone, who had from the first in particular lent himself freely, and for the love of art and history to becoming one of the steadier lights of Mr. Verver's adventurous path. The custodian of one of the richest departments of the great national collection of precious things, he could feel for this sincere private collector and urge him on his way, even when condemned to be present at his capture of trophies sacrificed by the country to parliamentary thrift. He carried his amiability to the point of saying that, since London, under pedophogging views, had to miss from time to time its rarest opportunities, he was almost consoled to see such lost causes invariably wander at last, one by one, with the tormenting tinkle of their silver bells, and to the wondrous, the already famous foal beyond the Mississippi. There was a charm in his almost that was not to be resisted, especially after Mr. Verver and Maggie had grown sure, or almost again, of enjoying the monopoly of them, and on this basis of envy changed his sympathy by the more familiar view of the father and the daughter, Mr. Crichton had at both houses, though especially in Eaton Square, learned to fill out the responsive and suggestive character. It was at his invitation, fanny well recalled, that Maggie, one day long before, and under her own attendance precisely, had, for the glory of the name she bore, paid a visit to one of the ample shrines of the supreme Exhibitory Temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the golden brown, golden ivory of old Italian bindings, and consecrated to the records of the Prince's race. It had been an impression that penetrated, that remained, yet Maggie had sighed ever so prettily at its having to be so superficial. She was to go back some day to dive deeper, to linger and taste, in spite of which, however, Mrs. Assingham could not recollect perceiving that the visit had been repeated. The second occasion had given way for a long time, in her happy life to other occasions, all testifying, in their degree, to the quality of her husband's blood, its rich mixture and its many remarkable references, after which, no doubt, the charming piety involved had grown on still further grounds bewildered and faint. It now appeared, none the less, that some renewed conversation with Mr. Crichton had breathed on the faintness revivingly, and Maggie mentioned her purpose as a conception of her very own, to the success of which she designed to devote her mourning. Visits of gracious ladies, under his protection, lighted up rosely, for this perhaps most flower-loving and honey-sipping member of the Great Bloomsbury Hive, its packed passages and cells, and though not sworn of the province toward which his friend had found herself, according to her appeal to him, mourning again, nothing was easier for him than to put her in relation with the presiding urbanities. So it had been settled, Maggie said to Mrs. Asingham, and she was to dispense with Amorigo's company. Fanny was to remember later on that she had at first taken this last fact for one of the finer notes of her young woman's detachment. Imagine she must be going along because of the shade of irony that, in these ambiguous days, her husband's personal presence might be felt to confer, practically, on any tribute to his transmitted significance. Then as the next moment she felt it clear that so much plotted freedom was virtually a refinement of reflection, an impulse to commemorate a fresh whatever might still survive of pride and hope, her sense of ambiguity happily fell, and she congratulated her companion on having anything so exquisite to do, and on being so exquisitely in the humor to do it. After the occasion had come and gone she was confirmed in her optimism. She made out in the evening that the hour spent among the projected lights, the annals and illustrations, the partchments and portraits, the emblazoned volumes and the murmured commentary, had been for the princess enlarging and inspiring. Maggie had said to her some days before, very sweetly but very firmly, Invite us to dine, please, for Friday and have any one you like or you can, it doesn't in the least matter whom. And the pair in Cadogan Place had bent to this mandate with a docility not in the least ruffled by all that it took for granted. It provided for an evening, this had been Maggie's view, and she lived up to her view in her friend's eyes by treating the occasion, more or less explicitly, as new and strange. The good assingums had feasted in fact at the two other boards on a scale so disproportionate to the scant solicitations of their own that it was easy to make a joke of seeing how they fed at home, how they met themselves, the question of giving to eat. Maggie dined with them in short, and arrived at making her husband appear to dine, much in the manner of a pair of young sovereigns who have, in the frail humor of the golden years of reigns, proposed themselves to a pair of faithfully serving subjects. She showed an interest in their arrangements, an inquiring tenderness almost for their economies, so that her hostess not unnaturally, as they might have said, put it all down, the tone and the freedom of which she set the example, to the effect wrought in her afresh by one of the lessons learned in the morning at the altar of the past. Hadn't she picked it up from an anecdote or two offered again to her attention that there were, for princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a heroine? Maggie's way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by the extravagance of her affability. She was doubtless not positively boisterous. Yet, though Mrs. Asingham, as a bland critic, had never doubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it into being what might have been called assertive. It was all attuned to which Fanny's heart could privately palpitate. Her guest was happy, happy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was making the prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps always enabling him to find that absolutely not foolish. Foolish in public, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his wife's being thought to be, so that there hovered before their friend the possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in the carriage or at home, of slightly sarcastic inquiry, but promptly invited explanation. A scene that, according as Maggie should play her part in it, might or might not precipitate developments. What made these appearances practically thrilling, meanwhile, was this mystery, a mystery it was clear, to Amorigo himself, of the incident or the influence that had so peculiarly determined them. The Lady of Cadogan Place was to read deeper, however, within three days, and the page was turned for her on the eave of her young confidence leaving London. The awaited migration to Fonz was to take place on the morrow, and it was known, meanwhile, to Mrs. Asingham, that their party of four were to dine that night at the American Embassy with another and a larger party, so that the elder woman had a sense of surprise on receiving from the younger, under date of six o'clock, a telegram requesting her immediate attendance. Please come to me at once, dress early if necessary, so that we shall have time. The carriage ordered for us will take you back first. Mrs. Asingham, on quick deliberation, dressed, though not perhaps with full lucidity, and by seven o'clock was in Portland Place, where her friend, upstairs and described to her on her arrival as herself engaged in dressing, instantly received her. She knew on the spot, poor Fanny, as she was afterwards to declare to the Colonel that her feared crisis had popped up as at the touch of a spring, that her impossible hour was before her. Her impossible hour was the hour of its coming out that she had known of old so much more than she had ever said, and she had often put it to herself in apprehension. She tried to think even in preparation that she should recognize the approach of her doom by a consciousness akin to that of the blowing open of a window on some night of the highest wind and the lowest thermometer. It would be all in vain to have crouched so long by the fire. The glass would have been smashed. The icy air would fill the place. If the air in Maggie's room, then, on her going up, was not as yet quite the polar blast she had expected, it was distinctly nonetheless such an atmosphere as they had not hitherto breathed together. The princess she perceived was completely dressed. That business was over. It added, indeed, to the effect of her importantly awaiting the assistance she had summoned of her showing a deck cleared, so to speak, for action. Her maid had already left her, and she presented herself in the large, clear room where everything was admirable but where nothing was out of place, as for the first time in her life, rather, bedisoned. Was it that she had put on too many things, overcharged herself with jewels, who were in particular more of them than usual, and bigger ones in her hair, a question her visitor presently answered by attributing this appearance largely to the bright red spot, red as some monstrous ruby that burned in either of her cheeks? These two items of her aspect had, promptly enough, their own light for Mrs. Asingham, who made out by it that nothing more pathetic could be imagined than the refuge and disguise her agitation had instinctively asked of the arts of dress, multiplied to extravagance, almost incoherence. She had had visibly her idea that of not betraying herself by inattentions into which she had never yet fallen, and she stood there circled about and furnished forth as always in a manner that testified to her perfect little personal processes. It had ever been her sign that she was, for all occasions, found ready, without loose ends or exposed accessories or unremoveds or profluities, a suggestion of the swept and garnished and her hulls splendid, yet thereby more or less encumbered and embroidered setting, that reflected her small, still passion for order and symmetry, for objects with their backs to the walls and spoke even of some probable reference in her American blood to dusting and polishing New England grandmothers. If her apartment was princely in the clearness of the lingering day, she looked as if she had been carried there prepared, all attired and decorated like some holy image in a procession, and left precisely to show what wonders she could work under pressure. Her friend felt, how could she not, as the truly pious priest might feel when confronted, behind the altar, before the festa, with his miraculous Madonna. Such an occasion would be grave in general, with all the gravity of what he might look for. But the gravity to-night would be of the rarest. What he might look for would depend so on what he could give. CHAPTER XXXIII. Nothing very strange has happened, and I think you ought to know it. Maggie spoke this indeed without extravagance, yet with the effect of making her guest-measure anew the force of her appeal, it was their definite understanding, whatever Fanny knew Fanny's faith would provide for, and she knew accordingly, at the end of five minutes, what the extraordinary, in the late occurrence, had consisted of, and how it had all come of Maggie's achieved hour under Mr. Crichton's protection at the museum. He had desired Mr. Crichton, with characteristic kindness, after the wonderful show, after offered luncheon at his incorporated lodge hard by, to see her safely home. Especially on his noting, in attending her to the great steps that she had dismissed her carriage, which she had done really just for the harmless amusement of taking her way alone. She had known she should find herself, as the consequence of such an hour, in a sort of exalted state, under the influence of which a walk through the London streets would be exactly what would suit her best. An independent ramble, impressed, excited, contented, with nothing to mind and nobody to talk to, and shop windows and plenty to look at if she liked. A low taste of the essence, it was to be supposed, of her nature, that she had of late for so many reasons but unable to gratify. She had taken her leave with her thanks, she knew her way quite enough, it being also sufficiently the case that she had even a shy hope of not going too straight. To wander a little wild was what would truly amuse her, so that keeping clear of Oxford Street and cultivating an impression as of part she didn't know, she had ended with what she had more or less had been fancying, an encounter with three or four shops, an old booksellers, an old printmongers, a couple of places with dim antiquities in the window, that were not as so many of the other shops those in Sloan Street say, a hollow parade which had long since ceased to beguile. There had remained with her, moreover, an illusion of charlots of some months before, seed dropped into her imagination in the form of a casual speech about there being in Bloomsbury such funny little fascinating places and even sometimes such unexpected finds. There could perhaps have been no stronger mark than this sense of well-nigh romantic opportunity, no livelier sign of the impression made on her and always so long retained, so watchfully nursed by any observation of charlots, however lightly thrown off. And then she had felt somehow more at her ease than for months and months before. She didn't know why, but her time at the museum, oddly, had done it. It was as if she hadn't come into so many noble and beautiful associations, nor secured them also for her boy, secured them even for her father, only to see them turn to vanity and doubt, turn possibly to something still worse. I believed in him again as much as ever, and I felt how I believed in him, she said with bright fixed eyes. I felt it in the streets as I walked along, and it was as if that helped me and lifted me up, my being off by myself there, not having for the moment to wonder and watch, having on the contrary almost nothing on my mind. It was so much as if everything would come out right that she had fallen to thinking of her father's birthday, had given herself this as a reason for trying what she could pick up for it. They would keep it at fawns, where they had kept it before, since it would be the twenty-first of the month, and she mightn't have another chance of making sure of something to offer him. There was always the impossibility, of course, of finding him anything, the least bit good, that he wouldn't already long ago in his rummaging's, have seen himself, and only not to think a quarter good enough. This, however, was an old story, and one could not have had any fun with him but for his sweet theory that the individual gift the friendship's offering was, by a rigorous law of nature, a fordoomed aberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed, and the more one cherished it for showing how friendly it had been. The infirmity of art was the candor of affection, the grossness of pedigree, the refinement of sympathy. The ugliest objects, in fact, as a general thing, were the bravest, the tenderest mementos, and as such, figured in glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home, but not worthy of the temple, dedicated to the grimacing, not to the clear-faced gods. She herself, naturally, through the past years, had come to be much represented in those receptacles, against the thick-locked pains of which she still liked to flatten her nose, finding in its place each time everything she had on successive anniversaries tried to believe he might pretend, at her suggestion, to be put off with, or at least think curious. She was now ready to try it again. They had all ways, with his pleasure in her pretense and her pleasure in his, with the funny betrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played the game so happily. To this end, on her way home, she had loitered everywhere, quite too dilutedly among the old books and the old prints, which had yielded nothing to her purpose, but with a strange inconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian, a queer little foreign man who had shown her a number of things, shown her finally something that, struck with it, is rather a rarity in thinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively do, she had bought, bought really when it came to that, for a price. "'It appears now it won't do it all,' said Maggie. Something has happened since that puts it quite out of the question. I had only my day of satisfaction in it, but I feel at the same time as I keep it here before me that I wouldn't have missed it for the world.' She had talked, from the first of her friend's entrances, coherently enough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm. But she held her breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and deprave she didn't pant, all of which marked for Fanny the depth of her commotion. Her reference to her thought about her father, about her chance to pick up something that might divert him, her mention in fine of his fortitude under presence, having meanwhile naturally it should be said. Much less an amplitude of insistence on the speaker's lips than a power to produce on the part of the listener herself the prompt response and full comprehension of memory and sympathy of old amused observation. The picture was filled out by the latter's fond fancy. But Maggie was at any rate under arms. She knew what she was doing, and had already her plan. A plan for making, for allowing, as yet, no difference, an accordance with which she would still dine out, and not with red eyes, nor convulsed features, nor neglected items of appearance, nor anything that would raise a question. Yet there was some knowledge that, exactly to this support of her not breaking down, she desired, she required, possession of. And with the sinister rise and fall of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, it played before Mrs. Asingham's eyes that she herself should have, at whatever risk or whatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need. All our friend's instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the ground would bear. She would take no step nearer and less intelligibly to meet her, and awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and distorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of bald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start could lead to. She caught, however, after a second's thought, at the princess's allusion to her lost reassurance. You mean you were so at your ease on Monday the night you dined with us? I was very happy then, said Maggie. Yes, we thought you so gay and so brilliant. Fanny felt it feeble, but she went on. We were so glad you were happy. Maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. You thought me all right, eh? Surely, dearest, we thought you all right. Well, I dare say it was natural, but in point of fact I never was more wrong in my life. For all the while, if you please, this was brewing. Mrs. Asingham indulged as nearly as possible to luxury her vagueness. This? That, replied the princess, whose eyes her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which among so many precious objects, the ververs wherever they might be always reveled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments, her visitor had not taken heed. Do you mean the gilt cup? I mean the gilt cup. The piece now recognized by Fanny as neuter her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted by a short stem on an ample foot, which held a central position above the fireplace, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the Louis C.'s clock that accompanied the candelabra. This latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendor and style. Mrs. Asingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing, but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring it a distance. But what has that to do? It has everything, you'll see, with which again, however, for the moment, Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. He knew her before, before I had ever seen him. He knew? But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it. Amarigo knew Charlotte more than I ever dreamed. Fanny felt then it was stare for stare. Miss Shirley you always knew they had met. I didn't understand. I knew too little. Don't you see what I mean? The Princess asked. Mrs. Asingham wondered, during these instances, how much she even now knew. It had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking, with that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt first a strange, barely credible relief. She drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting any way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. She shouldn't be judged, saved by herself, which was her own wretched business. The next moment, however, at all events, she blushed within for her immediate cowardice. She had thought of herself, thought of getting off, before so much as thinking, that is, of pitifully seeing, that she was in the presence of an appeal that was all an appeal that utterly accepted its necessity. In a general way, dear child, yes, but not in connection with what you've been telling me. They were intimates, you see. Intimate, said the princess. Fanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history so dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis of the far away other time. There's always the question of what one considers. What one considers intimate? Well, I know what I consider intimate now. Too intimate, said Maggie, to let me know anything about it. It was quiet, yes, but not too quiet for Fanny Asingham's capacity to wince. Only compatible with letting me, you mean? She had asked it after a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney and wondering, even while she took relief from it at this gap in her experience. But here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is perfect. They went about together, they're known to have done it, and I don't mean only before, I mean after. After? said Fanny Asingham. Before we were married, yes, but after we were engaged. Ah, I've known nothing about that, and she said it with a braver assurance, clutching with comfort at something that was apparently new to her. That bowl, Maggie went on, is so strangely, too strangely almost to believe at this time of day, the proof. They were together all the while, up to the very eve of our marriage. Don't you remember how just before that she came back so unexpectedly from America? The question had for Mrs. Asingham, and whether all consciously or not, the oddest pathos of simplicity. Oh yes, dear, of course, I remember how she came back from America, and how she stayed with us and what view one had of it. Maggie's eyes still, all the time, pressed and penetrated, so that during a moment just here, she might have given the little flair, had made the little pounce of asking what then one's view had been. To the small flash of this eruption Fanny stood, for her minute, wittingly exposed. But she saw it as quickly ceased to threaten, quite saw the princess even though in all her pain refused, in the interest of their strange and exalted bargain, to take advantage of the opportunity for planting the stab of her approach, the opportunity thus coming all of itself. She saw her, or she believed she saw her, look at her chance for straight denunciation, look at it and then pass it by. And she felt herself, with this fact, hushed well nigh to awe at the lucid higher intention that no distress could confound and that no discovery, since it was, however obscurely, a case of discovery, could make less needful. These seconds were brief, they rapidly passed, but they lasted long enough to renew our friend's sense of her own extraordinary undertaking, the function again imposed on her, the answerability again drilled into her by this intensity of intimation. She was reminded of the terms on which she was let off, her quantity of release having made it sufficient show and that recall of her relation to Charlotte's old reappearance, and deep within the whole impression glowed, awe so inspiringly when it came to that, her steady view, clear from the first, of the beauty of her companion's motive. It was like a fresh sacrifice for a larger conquest. Only see me through now, do it in the face of this and in spite of it, and I leave you a hand of which the freedom isn't to be said. The aggravation of fear, or call it apparently of knowledge, had jumped straight into its place as an aggravation above all for her father, the effect of this being but to quicken to passion her reasons for making his protectiveness, or in other words, the forms of his ignorance, still the law of her attitude and the key to her solution. She kept as tight hold of these reasons and these forms and her confirmed horror as the rider of a plunging horse grasped his seat with his knees, and she might absolutely have been putting it to her guests that she believed she could stay on if they should only meet nothing more. Though ignorant still of what she had definitely met, fanny yearned within over her spirit, and so no word about it said passed through mere pitying eyes, avow to walk ahead and at crossroads with a lantern for the darkness and wavings away for unadvised traffic look out for alarms, there was accordingly no weight in Maggie's reply. They spent hours together, spent at least a morning, the certainty of which has come back to me now, but that I didn't dream of it at the time. That cup there has charmed witness by the most wonderful of chances. That's why, since it has been here, I've stood it out for my husband to see, put it where it would meet him almost immediately if he should come into the room. I've wanted it to meet him, she went on, and I've wanted him to meet it and to be myself present at the meeting. But that hasn't taken place as yet, often as he has lately been in the way of coming to see me here. Yes, in particular lately, he hasn't showed to-day. It was with her managed quietness more and more that she talked, an achieved coherence that helped her evidently to hear and to watch herself. There was support, and thereby an awful harmony, but which meant a further guidance in the facts she could add together. It's quite as if he had an instinct, something that has warned him off or made him uneasy. He doesn't quite know naturally what has happened, but guesses with his beautiful cleverness that something has, and isn't in a hurry to be confronted with it, so in his vague fear he keeps off. But being meanwhile in the house—I've no idea, not having seen him to-day by exception since before luncheon, he spoke to me then, the Princess freely explained, of a ballot of great importance at a club, for somebody, some personal friend, I think, who's coming up and is supposed to be in danger. To make an effort for him he thought he had better lunch there. You see the efforts he can make, for which Maggie found a smile that went to her friend's heart. He's in so many ways the kindest of men, but it was hours ago. Mrs. Asingham thought, The more danger, then, of his coming in and finding me here, I don't know you see what you now consider that you've ascertained, nor anything of the connection with it of that object that you declare so damning. Her eyes rested on this odd acquisition and then quitted it, went back to it and again turned from it. It was inscrutable in its rather stupid elegance, and yet, from the moment one had thus appraised it, vivid and definite in its domination of the scene, Fanny could no more overlook it now than she could have overlooked a lighted Christmas tree, but nervously and all in vain she dipped into her mind for some floating reminiscence of it. At the same time that this attempt left her blank, she understood a good deal. She even not a little shared the Prince's mystic apprehension. The golden bowl put on, under consideration, a sturdy, a conscious perversity. As a document, somehow, it was ugly, though it might have a decorative grace. This finding me here in presence of it might be more flagrantly disagreeable for all of us than you intend, or that would necessarily help us, and I must take time truly to understand what it means. You are safe as far as that goes, Maggie returned. You may take it from me that he won't come in, and that I shall only find him below waiting for me when I go down to the carriage. Fanny Asingham took it from her, took it and more. Were to sit together at the ambassadors, then, or at least you two are, with this new complication thrust up before you all unexplained, and to look at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour not to be seeing it? Maggie looked at her with a face that might have been the one she was preparing. Unexplained, my dear? Quite the contrary, explained. Fully intensely, admirably explained, with nothing really to add. My own love, she kept it up. I don't want anything more. I've plenty to go upon and to do with as it is. Fanny Asingham stood there in her comparative darkness with her links verily still missing. But the most acceptable effect of this was, singularly as yet, a cold fear of getting nearer the fact. But when you come home, I mean he'll come up with you again. Won't he see it then? On which Maggie gave her, after an instant's visible thought, the strangest of slow head shakes. I don't know. Perhaps he'll never see it, if it only stands there waiting for him. He may never again, said the Princess, come into this room. Fanny more deeply wondered. Never again? Oh! Yes, it may be. How do I know? With this? She quietly went on. She had not looked again at the incriminating peace, but there was a marvel to her friend in the way the little word representing it seemed to express and include for her the whole of her situation. Then you intend not to speak to him? Maggie waited. To speak? Well, about your having it and about what you consider that it represents. Oh, I don't know that I shall speak if he doesn't. But he's keeping away from me because of that. What will that be but to speak? He can't say or do more. It won't be for me to speak, Maggie added in a different tone, one of the tones that had already so penetrated her guest. It will be for me to listen. Mrs. Asingham turned it over. Then it all depends on that object that you regard for your reasons as evidence. I think I may say that I depend on it. I can't, said Maggie, treat it as nothing now. Mrs. Asingham at this went closer to the cup on the chimney, quite liking to feel that she did so moreover without going closer to her companion's vision. She looked at the precious thing, if precious it was, found herself in fact eyeing it as if by her dim solicitation to draw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of Maggie's knowledge. It was brave and rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow, and without the square torment about it would, thanks to her love of plenty of yellow, figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession really desirable. She didn't touch it, but if after a minute she turned away from it the reason was rather oddly and suddenly, and her fear of doing so. Then it all depends on the bowl. I mean your future does, for that's what it comes to, I think. What it comes to, Maggie presently returned, is what that thing has put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning, how far they had originally gone together. If there was so much between them before, there can't, with all the other appearances, not be a great deal more now. And she went on and on, she steadily made her points. If such things were already then between them they make all the difference for possible doubt of what may have been between them since. If there had been nothing before there might be explanations, but it makes today too much to explain. I mean to explain away, she said. Fanny Asingham was there to explain away, of this she was duly conscious, for that at least had been true up to now. In the light, however, of Maggie's demonstration the quantity, even without her taking as yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever. Besides which, with or without exactness, the effect of each successive minute in the place was to put her more in presence of what Maggie herself saw. Maggie herself saw the truth, and that was really, while they remained there together, enough for Mrs. Asingham's relation to it. There was a force in the princess's mere manner about it that made the detail of what she knew of matter of minor importance. Fanny had in fact something like a momentary shame over her own need of asking for this detail. I don't pretend to repudiate, she said after a little, of my own impressions of the different times I suppose you speak of. Any more, she added, than I can forget what difficulties, and as it constantly seemed to me, what dangers, every course of action, whatever I should decide upon, made for me. I tried, I tried hard to act for the best. And you know, she next pursued while, at the sound of her own statement, a slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came back to her, and you know I believe it's what I shall turn out to have done. This produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened and deepened, was that of silence only, and the long charged look, all of which found virtual consecration when Maggie at last spoke. I'm sure you tried to act for the best. It kept Fanny assing him again a minute in silence. I never thought, dearest, you weren't an angel. Not, however, that this alone was much help. It was up to the very eve, you see, the princess went on, up to within two or three days of our marriage, that, that, you know, and she broke down for strangely smiling. Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me, but I didn't know it. That is, said Fanny assing him, I didn't know of anything in particular. It sounded weak that she felt, but she had really her point to make. What I mean is that I don't know for knowledge now anything I didn't then, that's how I am. She still, however, floundered. I mean, it's how I was. But don't they, how you were and how you are, Maggie asked, come practically to the same thing? The elder woman's words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. The situation had changed by, well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite, and this could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm enough as she pursued. It was on the whole thing that Amorigo married me, with which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory peace. And it was on that, it was on that, but they came back to her visitor. And it was on at all that Father married her. Her visitor took it as might be. They both married, ah, that you must believe, with the highest intentions. Father did certainly. And then, at the renewal of this consciousness, it all rolled over her. Ah, to thrust such things on us, to do them here between us and with us, day after day, and in return, in return, to do it to him, to him, to him. Fanny hesitated. You mean it's for him you most suffer? And then, as the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room, which made the question somehow seem a blunder, I ask, she continued, because I think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be made for him, quite as if it hadn't been. But Maggie had the next moment faced about as if without hearing her. Father did it for me, did it all, and only for me. Mrs. Asingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head, but she faltered again before she spoke. Well, it was only an intended word, but Maggie showed after an instant that it had reached her. Do you mean that that's the reason, that that's a reason? Fanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn't say all she meant. She said, for the moment, something else instead. He did it for you, largely at least for you, and it was for you that I did, in my smaller, interested way, well, what I could do, for I could do something, she continued. I thought I saw your interest as he himself saw it, and I thought I saw Charlotte's, I believed in her. And I believed in her, said Maggie. Mrs. Asingham waited again, but she presently pushed on. She believed then in herself. Ah, Maggie murmured. Something exquisite, faintly eager, and the prompt simplicity of it, supported her friend further. And the prince believed. His belief was real, just as he believed in himself. Maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. He believed in himself? Just as I, too, believed in him, for I absolutely did, Maggie, to which Fanny then added, and I believe in him yet. I mean, she subjoined, well, I mean I do. Maggie again took it from her, after which she was again, restlessly set afloat. Then when this had come to an end. And do you believe in Charlotte yet? Mrs. Asingham had a demure that she felt she could now afford. We'll talk of Charlotte some other day. They both, at any rate, thought themselves safe at the time. Then why did they keep from me everything I might have known? The friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. Why did I myself keep it from you? Oh, you weren't for honor obliged. Dearest Maggie, the poor woman broke out on this, you are divine. They pretended to love me, the princess went on, and they pretended to love him. And pray, what was there that I didn't pretend? At any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amorigo and for Charlotte, they were much more interesting, it was perfectly natural. How couldn't you like Amorigo? Maggie continued. Mrs. Asingham gave it up. How couldn't I, how couldn't I? Then with a fine freedom she went all her way. How can't I, how can't I? It fixed afresh Maggie's wide eyes on her. I see, I see. Well it's beautiful for you to be able to. And of course, she added, you wanted to help Charlotte. Yes, Fanny considered it. I wanted to help Charlotte, but I wanted also you see to help you, by not digging up a pass that I believed was so much on top of it solidly buried. I want that as I still want, she richly declared, to help everyone. It set Maggie once more in movement, movement which, however, spent itself again with a quick emphasis. Then it's a good deal my fault if everything really began so well. Fanny Asingham met it as she could. You've been only too perfect, you've thought only too much. But the Princess had already caught at the words. Yes, I've thought only too much. But she appeared to continue for the minute full of that fault. She had it, in fact, by this prompted thought all before her. Of him, dear man, of him. Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. That way might safety lie. It was like a wider chink of light. He believed, with a beauty, in Charlotte. Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn't mean to at the time so much, for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it. I did it, the Princess declared. With a beauty, ah, with a beauty, you too, Mrs. Asingham insisted. Maggie, however, was seeing for herself. It was another matter. The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible. Manny again hesitated. The Prince made her think? Maggie stared. She had meant her father. But her vision seemed to spread. They both made her think. She wouldn't have thought without them. Yet Amorigo's good faith, Mrs. Asingham assisted, was perfect. And there was nothing, all the more, she added, against her father's. The remark, however, kept Maggie for a moment still. Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew. Knew? That he was doing it so much for me. To what extent, she suddenly asked of her friend, do you think he was aware that she knew? Ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation? The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous. And Mrs. Asingham conclusively smiled. He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself. As much that is as was right for her. Yes, then, as was right for her. The point is, Fanny declared, that whatever his knowledge, it made all the way it went for his good faith. Maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. Isn't the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took? Fanny Asingham thought. He recognized he adopted your long friendship, but he founded on it no selfishness. No, said Maggie, with still deeper consideration. He counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own. So you may say. Very well, Maggie went on. If he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her on her side to have as little, and she may only sense have found that out. Mrs. Asingham looked blank. Since? And he may have become aware, Maggie pursued, that she has found it out, that she has taken the measure since their marriage, she explained, of how much she had asked of her, more say than she had understood at the time. He may have made out at last how such a demand was in the long run to affect her. He may have done many things, Mrs. Asingham responded, but there's one thing he certainly won't have done. He'll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give. I've often wondered, Maggie mused, what Charlotte really understood, but it's one of the things she has never told me. Then as it's one of the things she has never told me either, we shall probably never know it, and we may regard it as none of our business. There are many things, said Mrs. Asingham, that we shall never know. Maggie took it in with a long reflection. Never. But there are others, her friend went on, that stare us in the face and that, under whatever difficulty you may feel you labor, may now be enough for us. Your father has been extraordinary. It had been as if Maggie were feeling her way, but she rallied to this with a rush. Extraordinary. Magnificent, said Fanny Asingham. Her companion held tight to it. Magnificent. Then he'll do for himself whatever there may be to do. What he undertook for you he'll do to the end. He didn't undertake it to break down. In what quiet, patient exquisite as he is, did he ever break down. He had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and he won't have done it on this occasion. Ah, this occasion. And Maggie's wail showed her of a sudden, thrown back on it. Am I in the least sure that with everything he even knows what it is, and yet am I in the least sure he doesn't? If he doesn't, then, so much the better. Leave him alone. Do you mean give him up? Leave her, Fanny Asingham went on. Leave her to him. Maggie looked at her darkly. Do you mean leave him to her, after this? After everything. Aren't they for that matter intimately together now? Intimately, how do I know? But Fanny kept it up. Aren't you and your husband, in spite of everything? Maggie's eye is still further if possible dilated. It remains to be seen. If you're not, then, where's your faith? And my husband? Mrs. Asingham for an instant hesitated. And your father, it all comes back to that. Rest on it. Is this ignorance? Fanny met it again. On whatever he may offer you, take that. Take it, Maggie stared. Mrs. Asingham held up her head. And be grateful. On which for a minute she let the princess face her. Do you see? I see, said Maggie at last. Then there you are. But Maggie had turned away, moving to the window as if still to keep something in her face from sight. She stood there with her eyes on the street while Mrs. Asingham's reverted to that complicating object on the chimney, as to which her condition, so oddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent protest. She went over it, looked at it afresh, and yielded now to her impulse to feel it in her hands. She laid them on it, lifting it up, and was surprised, thus, with the weight of it. She had seldom handled so much massive gold. That effect itself somehow prompted her to further freedom and presently to saying, I don't believe in this, you know. It brought Maggie round to her. Don't believe in it, you will when I tell you. Ah, tell me nothing. I won't have it, said Mrs. Asingham. She kept the cup in her hand, held it there in a manner that gave Maggie's attention to her. She saw the next moment a quality of excited suspense. This suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty she was taking, an error of intention, and the impression betrayed by her companion's eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning. It's of value, but it's values impaired, I've learned, by a crack. A crack in the gold? It isn't gold, with which somewhat strangely Maggie smiled. That's the point. What is it then? It's glass, and cracked under the guilt, as I say at that. Glass of this weight? Well, said Maggie, it's crystal, and was once, I suppose, precious. But what, she then asked, do you mean to do with it? She had come away from her window, one of the three by which the wide room, enjoying an advantageous back, commanded the western sky and caught a glimpse of the evening flush, while Mrs. Asingham possessed of the bowl, and possessed two of this indication of a flaw, approached another for the benefit of the slowly fading light. Here, thumbing the singular piece, weighing it, turning it over, and growing suddenly more conscious, above all, of an irresistible impulse, she presently spoke again. A crack? Then your whole idea has a crack. Maggie, by this time, at some distance from her, waited a moment. If you mean by my idea the knowledge that has come to me that, but Fanny, with decision, had already taken her up, there's only one knowledge that concerns us, one fact with which we can have anything to do. Which one, then? The fact that your husband has never, never, never, but the very gravity of this statement while she raised her eyes to her friend across the room, made her for an instant hang fire. Well, never what? Never been half so interested in you as now, but don't you, my dear, really feel it? She considered. Oh, I think what I've told you helps me to feel it. His having today given up even his forms. His keeping away from me. His not having come. And she shook her head as against all easy glosses. It is because of that, you know. Well, then, if it's because of this—and Fanny Asingham, who had been casting about her and whose inspiration decidedly had come, raised the cup in her two hands, used it positively above her head, and from under it solemnly, smiled at the princess as a signal of intention. So for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she dashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it, with the violence of the crash, lie shattered. She had flushed with the force of her effort, as Maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and this high reflection in their faces was all that passed between them for a minute more, after which, "'Whatever you meant by it, and I don't want to know now, has ceased to exist,' Mrs. Asingham said. "'And what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?' That sound, as at the touch of a spring, rang out as the first effect of Fanny's speech. It broke upon the two women's absorption with a sharpness almost equal to the smash of the crystal, for the door of the room had been opened by the prince without their taking heed. He had apparently had time moreover to catch the conclusion of Fanny's act. His eyes attached themselves, through the large space allowing just there, as happened, a free view to the shining fragments at this lady's feet. His question had been addressed to his wife, but he moved his eyes immediately afterwards to those of her visitor, whose own then held them in a manner of which neither party had been capable doubtless for mute penetration since the hour spent by him in Cadogan Place on the eve of his marriage and the afternoon of Charlotte's reappearance. Something now again became possible for these communicants under the intensity of their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might have been a redemption of pledges then exchanged. This rapid play of suppressed appeal and disguised response lasted indeed long enough for more results than one. Long enough for Mrs. Asingham to measure the feet of quick self-recovery, possibly therefore of recognition still more immediate, accompanying Amarigo's vision and estimate of the evidence with which she had been, so admirably she felt as she looked at him, inspired to deal. She looked at him and looked at him. There were so many things she wanted on the spot to say, but Maggie was looking too, and was moreover looking at them both, so that these things for the elder woman quickly enough reduced themselves to one. She met his question, not too late since and their silence it had remained in the air. Gathering herself to go, leaving the golden bowl split into three pieces on the ground, she simply referred him to his wife. She should see them later, they would all meet soon again, and meanwhile as to what Maggie had meant, she said in her turn from the door, why Maggie herself was doubtless by this time ready to tell him. CHAPTER 34 OF THE GOLDEN BOWL This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James. BOOK 4 CHAPTER 34 Left with her husband, Maggie, however, for the time, said nothing. She only felt on the spot a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again till he should have had a minute to arrange it. She had seen it enough for her temporary clearness and her next movement, seen it as it showed during the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. Then it was that she knew how hugely expert she had been made for judging it quickly by that vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that had flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return from Machum. The expression worn by it at that juncture, for our ever few instance, had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the most relevant of which might have been playing up for her before the consummation of Fanny Asingham's retreat, just long enough to be recognized. What she had recognized in it was his recognition, the result of his having been forced by the flush of their visitor's attitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account of the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident on which he had unexpectedly dropped. He had not unnaturally failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable, which lay there on the floor, and which, even across the width of the room, his kept interval reminded him, unmistakably though confusedly of something known, some other unforgotten image. That was a mere shock. That was a pain. As if Fanny's violence had been a violence redoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. Maggie knew, as she turned away from him, that she didn't want his pain. What she wanted was her own simple certainty, not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. If she could have gone on with bandaged eyes, she would have liked that best, if it were a question of saying what she now apparently should have to, and of taking from him what he would say any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a boon. She went in silence to where her friend, never in intention visibly so much her friend is at that moment, had braced herself to so amazing an energy, and there, under Amorigo's eyes, she picked up the shining pieces. Bedisond enjouled in her rustling finery, she paid with humility of attitude this prompt tribute to order, only to find, however, that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. She brought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place occupied by the cup before Fanny's appropriation of it, and after laying them carefully down, went back for what remained, the solid detached foot. With this she returned to the mantel shelf, placing a deliberation in the center, and then for a minute occupying herself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels. After she had squared again her little objects on the chimney, she was, within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal, besides its being lucid for her all the while, that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he wasn't dressed, and that though she herself was, she was yet in all probability so horribly red in the face and so awry, in many ways with agitation, that in view of the ambassador's company of possible comments and constructions she should need before her glass some restoration of appearances. Amorigo, meanwhile, after all, could clearly make the most of her having enjoined on him to wait, suggested it by the positive pomp of her dealings with the smashed cup. To wait that is till she should pronounce as Mrs. Asingham had promised for her. This delay again certainly tested her presence of mind, though that strain was not what presently made her speak. Keep her eyes for the time, from her husbands as she might, she soon found herself much more drivingly conscious of the strain on his own wit. There was even a minute when her back was turned to him, in which she knew once more the strangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already, fifty times, brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the wild wing of some bird of the air, who might blindly have swooped for an instant into the shaft of a well, darkening there by his momentary flutter the far off round of sky. It was extraordinary this quality and the taste of her wrong, which made her completed sense of it seem rather to soften than to harden, and it was the more extraordinary the more she had to recognize it. For what it came to was that seeing herself finally sure, knowing everything, having the fact, and all its abomination so utterly before her that there was nothing else to add, what it came to was that merely by being with him there in silence she felt within her the sudden split between conviction and action. They had begun to cease on the spot surprisingly, to be connected. Conviction that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil, but action began to hover like some lighter and larger but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground. It would be free, it would be independent, it would go in, wouldn't it, for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own. What would condemn it so to speak to the responsibility of freedom, this glimmered on Maggie even now, was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have, on the whole question, a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds. It struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all, would indeed absolutely by this circumstance, be really needing her for the first one in their whole connection. No he had used her, had even exceedingly enjoyed her before this, but there had been no precedent for that character of approved necessity to him which she was rapidly taking on. The immense advantage of this particular clue, moreover, was that she should have now to arrange, alter, to falsify nothing, should have to be but consistently simple and straight. She asked herself, with concentration, while her back was still presented, what would be the very ideal of that method, after which the next instant it had all come to her, and she had turned round upon him for the application. Fanny Asingham broke it, knowing it had a crack and that it would go if she used sufficient force. She thought, when I had told her, that that would be the best thing to do with it, thought so from her own point of view. That hadn't been at all my idea, but she acted before I understood. I had, on the contrary, she explained. Put it here in full view, exactly that you might see. He stood with his hands in his pockets, he had carried his eyes to the fragments on the chimney-piece, and she could already distinguish the element of relief, absolutely of succor, and his acceptance from her of the opportunity to consider the fruits of their friend's violence, every added inch of reflection and delay having the advantage, from this point on, of counting for him double. It had operated within her now to the last intensity, her glimpse of the precious truth that by her helping him, helping him to help himself as it were, she should help him to help her. Didn't she fairly got into his labyrinth with him? Wasn't she indeed in the very act of placing herself there for him, at its center and core, whence on that definite orientation, and by an instinct all her own, she might securely guide him out of it? She offered him thus assuredly a kind of support that was not to have been imagined in advance, and that moreover required, almost truly, some close looking at before it could be believed in, and pronounced void of treachery. Yes, look, look. She seemed to see him hear her say, even while her sounded words were other. Look, look, both of the truth that still survives in that smashed evidence, and at the even more remarkable appearance that I'm not such a fool as you supposed me. Look at the possibility that, since I am different, there may still be something in it for you, if you're capable of working with me to get that out. Consider, of course, as you must, the question of what you may have to surrender on your side, what price you may have to pay, whom you may have to pay with, to set this advantage free, but take in at any rate that there is something for you if you don't too blindly spoil your chance for it. He went no nearer of the damnatory pieces, but he eyed them from where he stood, with a degree of recognition just visibly less to be dissimulated, all of which represented for her a certain traceable process. And her uttered words, meanwhile, were different enough from those he might have inserted below the lines of her already spoken. It's the golden bowl, you know, that you saw the little antiquarios in Bloomsbury so long ago, when you went there with Charlotte, when you spent those hours with her, unknown to me, a day or two before our marriage. It was shown you both, but you didn't take it. You left it for me, and I came upon it extraordinarily, through happening to go into the same shop on Monday last. In walking home and prowling about to pick up some small old thing for Father's birthday, after my visit to the museum, my appointment there with Mr. Crichton, of which I told you. It was shown me, and I was struck with it and took it, knowing nothing about it at the time. But I now know I've learned since. I learned this afternoon, a couple of hours ago, receiving from it naturally a great impression. So there it is, in its three pieces. You can handle them, don't be afraid, if you want to make sure the thing is the thing you and Charlotte saw together. Its having come apart makes an unfortunate difference for its beauty, its artistic value, but none for anything else. Its other value is just the same. I mean that of its having given me so much of the truth about you. I don't therefore so much care what becomes of it now, unless perhaps you may yourself, when you come to think, have some good use for it. In that case, Maggie wound up. We can easily take the pieces with us to fawns. It was wonderful how she felt, by the time she had seen herself through this narrow pass, that she had really achieved something, that she was emerging a little in fine, with the prospect less contracted. She had done for him, that is, what her instinct enjoined, had laid a basis not merely momentary on which he could meet her. When by the turn of his head he did finally meet her, this was the last thing that glimmered out of his look. But it came into sight, none the less, as a perception of his distress, and almost as a question of his eyes. So that for still another minute, before he committed himself, there occurred between them a kind of unprecedented moral exchange over which her superior Lucidity presided. It was not, however, that when he did commit himself the show was promptly pretentious. But what in the world has Fanny Asingham had to do with it? She could verily, out of all her smothered soreness, almost have smiled. His question so affected her as giving the whole thing up to her. But it left her only to go the straighter. She has had to do with it that I immediately sent for her and that she immediately came. She was the first person I wanted to see, because I knew she would know. No more about what I had learned, I mean, that I could make out for myself. I made out as much as I could for myself. That I also wanted to have done. But it didn't, in spite of everything, take me very far. And she has really been a help. Not so much as she would like to be. Not so much as, poor dear, she just now tried to be. Yet she has done her very best for you. Never forget that. And has kept me along a measurably better than I should have been able to come without her. She has gained me time. And that these three months, don't you see, has been everything. She had said, don't you see, on purpose, and was to feel the next moment that it had acted. These three months, the prince asked. Counting from the night you came home so late from Machum, counting from the hours you spent with Charlotte at Gloucester, your visit to the cathedral, which you won't have forgotten describing to me in so much detail, for that was the beginning of my being sure. Before it I had been sufficiently in doubt. Sure, Maggie developed, of your having, and of your having for a long time, had two relations with Charlotte. He stared a little at sea as he took it up. Two, something in the tone of it gave it a sense, or an ambiguity, almost foolish, leaving Maggie to feel, as in a flash, how such a consequence, a fordoomed infelicity, partaking of the ridiculous, even in one of the cleverest, might be of the very essence of the penalty of wrongdoing. Oh, you may have had fifty, had the same relation with her fifty times. It's of the number of kinds of relation with her that I speak, a number that doesn't matter, really, so long as there wasn't only one kind, as father and I supposed. One kind, she went on, was there before us. We took that fully for granted, as you saw, and accepted it. We never thought of there being another, kept out of our sight. But after the evening I speak of, I knew there was something else. As I say I had before that my idea, which you never dreamed I had, from the moment I speak of it had more to go upon, and you became yourselves, you and she, vaguely, yet uneasily conscious of the difference. But it's within these last hours that I've most seen where we are, and as I've been in communication with Fanny Asingham about my doubts, so I wanted to let her know my certainty, with the determination of which, however, you must understand, she has had nothing to do, she defends you, Maggie remarked. He had given her all his attention, and with this impression for her again, that he was, in essence, fairly reaching out to her for time, time, only time, she could sufficiently imagine, and to whatever strangeness, that he absolutely liked her to talk, even at the cost of his losing almost everything else by it. It was still, for a minute, as if he waited for something worse, wanted everything that was in her to come out, any definite fact, anything more precisely nameable, so that he, too, as was his right, should know where he was. What stirred in him above all, while he followed in her face the clear train of her speech, must have been the impulse to take up something she put before him that he was yet afraid directly to touch. He wanted to make free with it, but had to keep his hands off, for reasons he had already made out. And the discomfort of his privation yearned at her out of his eyes with an announcing gleam of the fever, the none too tolerable chill of specific recognition. She affected him as speaking more or less for her father as well, and his eyes might have been trying to hypnotize her into giving him the answer without his asking the question. Had he his idea, and as he now with you anything more? Those were the words he had to hold himself from not speaking, and that she would as yet certainly do nothing to make easy. She felt with her sharpest thrill how he was straightened and tied, and with the miserable pity of it, her present conscious purpose of keeping him so could nonetheless perfectly accord. To name her father on any such basis of anxiety, of compunction, would be to do the impossible thing, to do neither more nor less than give Charlotte away. Visibly, palpably, traceably, he stood off from this, moved back from it as from an open chasm now suddenly perceived, but which had been between the two with so much, so strangely much else, quite uncalculated. Verily it towered before her this history of their confidence. They had built strong and piled high, based as it was on such appearances, their conviction that, thanks to her native complacencies of so many sorts, she would always, quite to the end and through and through, take them as nobly sparing her. Amorigo was at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid, a particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as unprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person. And she, meanwhile, however abjectly simple, was further discerning for herself that whatever he might have to take from her, she being on her side beautifully free, he would absolutely not be able for any qualifying purpose to name Charlotte either. As his father-in-law's wife, Mrs. Verver, rose between them there for the time, in august and prohibitive form. To protect her, defend her, explain about her, was, at the least, to bring her into the question, which would be by the same stroke to bring her husband. But this was exactly the door Maggie wouldn't open to him, on all of which she was the next moment asking herself if, thus warned and embarrassed, he were not fairly writhing in his pain. He writhed on that hypothesis some seconds more, for it was not till then that he had chosen between what he could do and what he couldn't. You were apparently drawing immense conclusions from very small matters. Won't you perhaps feel in fairness that you're striking out, triumphing or whatever I may call it, rather too easily, feel it when I perfectly admit that your smashed cup there does come back to me? I frankly confess now, to the occasion, and to having wished not to speak of it to you at the time. We took two or three hours together by arrangement. It was on the eve of my marriage, at the moment, you say. But that put it on the eve of yours, too, my dear, which was directly the point. It was desired to find for you at the eleventh hour some small wedding present. I'll hunt for something worth giving you, and yet possible from other points of view as well, in which it seemed I could be of use. You were naturally not to be told, precisely because it was all for you. We went forth together and we looked. We rummaged about, and as I remember we called it, we prowled. Then it was that, as I freely recognize, we came across that crystal cup, which I'm bound to say upon my honor, I think it rather a pity fanny-assing him, from whatever good motive should have treated so. He had kept his hands in his pockets. He churned his eyes again, but more complacently now, to the ruins of the precious vessel. And Maggie could feel him exhale into the achieved quietness of his explanation, a long deep breath of comparative relief. Behind everything, beneath everything, it was somehow a comfort to him at last to be talking with her, and he seemed to be proving to himself that he could talk. It was at a little shop in Bloomsbury. I think I could go to the place now. The man understood Italian, I remember. He wanted awfully to work off his bowl. But I didn't believe in it, and we didn't take it. Maggie had listened with an interest that wore all the expression of candor. Oh, you left it for me, but what did you take? He looked at her, first as if he were trying to remember, then as if he might have been trying to forget. Nothing, I think, at that place. What did you take then at any other? What did you get me, since that was your aim and end, for a wedding gift? The Prince continued very nobly to be think himself. Didn't we get you anything? Maggie waited a little. She had for some time now kept her eyes on him steadily, but they wandered at this to the fragments on her chimney. Yes, it comes round after all to your having got me the bowl. I myself was to come upon it the other day by so wonderful a chance, was to find it in the same place and to have it pressed upon me by the same little man, who does, as you say, understand Italian. I did believe in it, you see. Must have believed in it somehow instinctively, for I took it as soon as I saw it, though I didn't know at all then, she added, what I was taking with it. The Prince paid her for an instant visibly, the deference of trying to imagine what this might have been. I agree with you that the coincidence is extraordinary, the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels and plays, but I don't see, you must let me say, the importance or the connection. Of my having made the purchase where you failed of it? She had quickly taken him up, but she had with her eyes on him once more another drop into the order of her thoughts, to which through whatever he might say she was still adhering. It's not my having gone into the place at the end of four years that makes the strangest of the coincidence, for don't such chances as that in London easily occur. The strangeness, she lucidly said, is in what my purchase was to represent to me after I had got at home. Which value came, she explained, from the wonder of my having found such a friend. As a wonder assuredly her husband could but take it. As the little man in the shop, he did for me more than he knew, I owe it to him. He took an interest in me, Maggie said. In taking that interest he recalled your visit. He remembered you and spoke of you to me. On which the Prince passed the comment of a skeptical smile. Ah, but my dear, the extraordinary things come from people's taking an interest in you. My life in that case, she asked, must be very agitated? Well, he liked me. I mean very particularly. It's only so I can account for my afterwards hearing from him, and in fact he gave me that today, she pursued. He gave me it frankly as his reason. Today the Prince inquiringly echoed. But she was singularly able, it had been marvelously given her, she afterwards said to herself, to abide for her light, for her clue, by her own order. I inspired him with sympathy, there you are. But the miracle is that he should have a sympathy to offer that could be of use to me. That was really the oddity of my chance. And the Princess proceeded. That I should have been moved in my ignorance to go precisely to him. He saw her so keep her course, that it was as if he could, at the best, but stand aside to watch her and let her pass. He only made a vague demonstration that was like an ineffective gesture. I'm sorry to say any ill of your friends, and the thing was a long time ago, besides which there was nothing to make me occur to it. But I remember the man striking me as a decided little beast. She gave a slow head shake. As if no, after consideration, not that way were an issue. I can only think of him as kind, for he had nothing to gain. He had in fact only to lose. It was what he came to tell me, that he had asked me too high a price, more than the object was really worth. There was a particular reason, which he hadn't mentioned, and which had made him consider and repent. He wrote for leave to see me again, wrote in such terms that I saw him here this afternoon. Here? It made the Prince look about him. Downstairs, in the little red room. While he was waiting he looked at the few photographs that stand about there and recognized two of them. Though it was so long ago, he remembered the visit made him by the lady and the gentleman, and that gave him his connection. It gave me mine, for he remembered everything and told me everything. You see you too had produced your effect. Only unlike you, he had thought of it again. He had recurred to it. He told me of your having wished to make each other presence, but of that's not having come off. The lady was greatly taken with the peace I had bought of him, that you had your reason against receiving it from her, and you had been right. He would think that of you more than ever now. Maggie went on. He would see how wisely you would guess the flaw and how easily the bowl could be broken. I had bought it myself, you see, for a present. He knew I was doing that. This was what had worked in him, especially after the price I had paid. Her story had dropped an instant. She still brought it out in small waves of energy, each of which spent its force, so that he had an opportunity to speak before this force was renewed. But the quaint thing was what he now said. And what prey was the price? She paused again a little. It was high, certainly, for those fragments. I think I feel as I look at them there rather ashamed to say. The prince then again looked at them. He might have been growing used to the sight. But shall you at least get your money back? Oh, I'm far from wanting it back. I feel so that I'm getting its worth. With which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition. The great fact about the day we're talking of seems to me to have been, quite remarkably, that no present was then made me. If your undertaking had been for that, that was not at least what came of it. You received then nothing at all. The prince looked vague and grave, almost retrospectively concerned. Nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets, which was made me, as if it mattered a mite, ever so frankly, ever so beautifully and touchingly. This Amorigo heard with interest, yet not with confusion. Ah, of course you couldn't have minded. Distinctly as she went on, he was getting the better of the mere awkwardness of his arrest, quite as if making out that he needs suffer a rest from her now, before they should go forth to show themselves in the world together, in no greater quantity than an occasion ill-chosen that the best for a scene might decently make room for. He looked at his watch. Their engagement all the while remained before him. But I don't make out you see what case to against me you rest. On everything I'm telling you? Why the whole case? The case of your having for so long so successfully deceived me. The idea of your finding something for me, charming as that would have been, was what had least to do with your taking a morning together at that moment. What had really to do with it, said Maggie, was that you had to, you couldn't not from the moment you were again face to face. And the reason of that was that there had been so much between you before, before I came between you at all. Her husband had been for these last moments moving about under her eyes, but at this as to check any show of impatience he again stood still. You've never been more sacred to me than you were at that hour, unless perhaps you've become so at this one. The assurance of his speech she could note quite held up its head in him. His eyes met her own so, for the declaration, that it was as if something cold and momentarily unimaginable breathed upon her, from afar off, out of his strange consistency. She kept her direction still, however, under that. Oh, the thing I've known best of all is that you've never wanted together to offend us. You've wanted quite intensely not to, and the precautions you've had to take for it have been for a long time one of the strongest of my impressions. That, I think, she added, is the way I've best known. Known, he repeated after a moment. Known, known that you were older friends and so much more intimate ones than I had any reason to suppose when we married, known there were things that hadn't been told me and that gave their meaning little by little to other things that were before me. Would they have made a difference in the matter of our marriage? The Prince pleasantly asked. If you had known them, she took her time to think. I grant you not in the matter of hours. And then, as he again fixed her with his hard yearning, which he couldn't keep down. The question is so much bigger than that. You see how much what I know makes of it for me. That was what acted on him, this iteration of her knowledge into the question of the validity of the various bearings of which he couldn't on the spot trust himself to pretend in any high way to go. What her claim, as she made it, represented for him that he couldn't help betraying, if only as a consequence of the effect of the word itself, her repeated distinct, no, no, on his nerves. She was capable of being sorry for his nerves at a time when he should need them for dining out pompously, rather responsibly, without his heart in it. Yet she was not to let that prevent her using with all economy, so precious a chance for supreme clearness. I didn't force this upon you, you must recollect, and it probably wouldn't have happened for you if you hadn't come in. Ah, said the Prince. I was liable to come in, you know. I didn't think you were this evening. And why not? Well, she answered, you have many liabilities of different sorts, with which she recalled what she had said to Fanny Assingham. And then you're so deep. It produced in his features, in spite of his control of them, one of those quick plays of expression, the shade of a grimace that testified as nothing else did to his race. It's you, Kara, who are deep, which after an instant she had accepted from him, she could so feel at last that it was true, then I shall have need of it all. What would you have done, he was by this time asking, if I hadn't come in? I don't know, she had hesitated. What would you? Oh, that isn't the question. I depend upon you, I go on. You would have spoken tomorrow. I think I would have waited. And for what, he asked. To see what difference it would make for myself, my possession at last I mean of real knowledge. Oh, said the Prince. My only point now, at any rate, she went on, is the difference as I say, that it may make for you, your knowing was, from the moment you did come in, all I had in view. And she sounded it again, he should have it once more. You're knowing that I've ceased, that you've ceased, with her pause in fact, she had fairly made him press her for it. Why, to be as I was, not to know. It was once more then, after a little, that he had had to stand receptive, yet the singular effect of this was that there was still something of the same sort he was made to want. He had another hesitation, but at last this odd quantity showed. Then does anyone else know? It was as near as he could come to naming her father, and she kept him at that distance. Anyone? Anyone I mean, but fanny ussing him. I should have supposed you had, by this time, particular means of learning. I don't see, she said, why you ask me. Then, after an instant, and only after an instant, as she saw, he made out what she meant, and it gave her, all strangely enough, the still further light that Charlotte for herself knew as little as he had known. The vision loomed in this light, it fairly glared for the few seconds, the vision of the two others alone together at Fonz, and Charlotte as one of them, having gropingly to go on, always not knowing and not knowing. The picture flushed at the same time with all its essential color, that of the so possible identity of her father's motive and principle with her own. He was deep, as Amarigo called it, so that no vibration of the still air should reach his daughter, just as she had earned that description by making and by, for that matter, intending still to make, her care for his serenity, or at any rate for the firm outer shell of his dignity, all marvelous enamel, her paramount law. More strangely, even than anything else, her husband seemed to speak now, but to help her in this. I know nothing but what you tell me. Then I've told you all I intended. Find out the rest. Find it out. He waited. She stood before him a moment. It took that time to go on. Depth upon depth of her situation, as she met his face, surged and sank within her. But would the effect somehow once more that they rather lifted her than let her drop? She had her feet somewhere through it all. It was her companion absolutely who was at sea. And she kept her feet. She pressed them to what was beneath her. She went over to the bell beside the chimney and gave a ring that he could but take as a summons for her maid. It stopped everything for the present. It was an intimation to him to go and dress. But she had to insist. Find out for yourself. End of chapter 34.