Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/206

THE GOLDEN BOWL "It is easy—that's exactly what I think. If there were things he did miss, and if in spite of them he were always sweet, then, no doubt, he would be a more or less unappreciated hero. He could be a hero—he will be one if it's ever necessary. But it will be about something better than our dreariness. I know," the Princess declared, "where he's magnificent." And she rested a minute on that. She ended, however, as she had begun. "We're not, all the same, committed to anything stupid. If we ought to be grander, as Fanny thinks, we can be grander. There's nothing to prevent."

"Is it a strict moral obligation?" Adam Verver enquired.

"No—it's for the amusement."

"For whose? For Fanny's own?"

"For everyone's—though I dare say Fanny's would be a large part." She paused; she had now, it might have appeared, something more to bring out, which she finally produced. "For yours in particular, say—if you go into the question." She even bravely followed it up. "I haven't really, after all, had to think much to see that much more can be done for you than is done."

Mr. Verver uttered an odd vague sound. "Don't you think a good deal's done when you come out and talk to me this way?"

"Ah," said his daughter, smiling at him, "we make too much of that!" And then to explain: "That's good, and it's natural—but it isn't great. We forget that we're as free as air."

"Well, that's great," Mr. Verver pleaded. 176