Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/147

THE PRINCE there is a split." And she looked down again at the bowl. "There is a split, eh? Crystal does split, eh? "

"On lines and by laws of its own."

"You mean if there's a weak place?"

For all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest sweetest sound. "Where's the weak place?"

She then did the question justice. "Well, for me only the price. I'm poor, you see—very poor. But I thank you and I'll think." The Prince, on the other side of the shop- window, had finally faced about and, as to see if she hadn't done, was trying to reach with his eyes the comparatively dim interior. "I like it," she said—"I want it. But I must decide what I can do."

The man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. "Well, I'll keep it for you."

The small quarter of an hour had had its marked oddity—this she felt even by the time the open air and the Bloomsbury aspects had again, in their protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her more or less their own. Yet the oddity might have been registered as small as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much further, she had to take account of with her companion. This latter was simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer inevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. They didn't say so, but it was on the line of giving up Maggie's present that they practically proceeded—the line of giving it up without more reference to it. 117