Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/133

THE PRINCE "Ah of course it must be all in that."

But she had made her question, all the same, interesting to him. "What it comes to—one can see what you mean—is the way she believes in one. That is if she believes at all."

"Yes, that's what it comes to," said Charlotte Stant.

"And why," he asked almost soothingly, "should it be terrible?" He couldn't at the worst see that.

"Because it's always so—the idea of having to pity people."

"Not when there's also with it the idea of helping them."

"Yes, but if we can't help them?"

"We can—we always can. That is," he competently added, "if we care for them. And that's what we're talking about."

"Yes"—she on the whole assented. "It comes back then to our absolutely refusing to be spoiled."

"Certainly. But everything," the Prince laughed as they went on—"all your 'decency,' I mean—comes back to that."

She walked beside him a moment. " It's just what I meant," she then reasonably said.