Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/112

THE GOLDEN BOWL things, God grant, that it will always be. That I could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues to make me happy."

"Then why aren't you quiet?"

"I am quiet," said Fanny Assingham.

He looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she moved about again a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration of her tranquillity. He was as silent at first as if he had taken her answer, but he wasn't to keep it long. "What do you make of it that, by your own show, Charlotte couldn't tell her all? What do you make of it that the Prince didn't tell her anything? Say one understands that there are things she can't be told—since, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked." He produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. But she was roaming still when he concluded his enquiry. "If there hadn't been anything there shouldn't have been between the pair before Charlotte bolted—in order, precisely, as you say, that there shouldn't be: why in the world was what there had been too bad to be spoken of?"

Mrs. Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate—not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped. "I thought you wanted me to be quiet."

"So I do—and I'm trying to make you so much so that you won't worry more. Can't you be quiet on that?"

She thought a moment—then seemed to try. "To relate that she had to 'bolt' for the reasons we speak 82