Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/100

THE GOLDEN BOWL "Perhaps then," said Bob Assingham, "that's what has been her idea. Take it, for God's sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will do," he added, "for discipline to me as well."

She was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. "It isn't in the least, you know, for instance, that I believe she's bad. Never, never," Mrs. Assingham declared. "I don't think that of her."

"Then why isn't that enough?"

Nothing was enough, Mrs. Assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. "She doesn't deliberately intend, she doesn't consciously wish, the least complication. It's perfectly true that she thinks Maggie a dear—as who doesn't? She's incapable of any plan to hurt a hair of her head. Yet here she is—and there they are," she wound up.

Her husband again for a little smoked in silence. "What in the world, between them, ever took place?"

"Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why nothing—except their having to recognise that nothing could. That was their little romance—it was even their little tragedy."

"But what the deuce did they do?"

"Do? They fell in love with each other—but, seeing it wasn't possible, gave each other up."

"Then where was the romance?"

"Why in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the facts in the face."

"What facts?" the Colonel went on.

"Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them 70