Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/215

THE PRINCE "Can't I give it—generally—for dignity? Dignity, I mean, in misfortune."

"You've got to postulate the misfortune first."

"Well," said Maggie, "I can do that. Isn't it always a misfortune to be—when you're so fine—so wasted? And yet," she went on, "not to wail about it, not to look even as if you knew it?"

Mr. Verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then, after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop. "Well, she mustn't be wasted. We won't at least have waste."

It produced in Maggie's face another gratitude. "Then, dear sir, that's all I want."

And it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk if her father hadn't, after a little, shown the disposition to revert. "How many times are you supposing she has tried?"

Once more, at this, and as if she hadn't been, couldn't be, hated to be, in such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. "Oh I don't say she absolutely ever tried—!"

He looked perplexed. "But if she has so absolutely failed, what then has she done?"

"She has suffered—she has done that." And the Princess added: "She has loved—and she has lost."

Mr. Verver, however, still wondered. "But how many times?"

Maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. "Once is enough. Enough, that is, for one to be kind to her."

Her father listened, yet not challenging—only as 185