Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/184

THE GOLDEN BOWL it was altogether new. When, in their common past, when till this moment, had she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? They had had fears together just as they had had joys, but all of hers at least had been for what equally concerned them. Here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. He was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands—as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it were, to be disengaged, contrasted or opposed, in short objectively presented. But time finally had done it; their relation was altered: he again saw the difference lighted for her. This marked it to himself—and it wasn't a question simply of a Mrs. Rance the more or the less. For Maggie too at a stroke, almost beneficently, their visitor had, from being an inconvenience, become a sign. They had made vacant by their marriage his immediate foreground, his personal precinct—they being the Princess and the Prince. They had made room in it for others—so others had become aware. He became aware himself, for that matter, during the minute Maggie stood there before speaking; and with the sense moreover of what he saw her see he had the sense of what she saw him. This last, it may be added, would have been his intensest perception hadn't there the next instant been more for him in Fanny Assingham. Her face couldn't keep it from him; she had seen, on top of everything, in her quick way, what they both were seeing.