Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/225

THE PRINCE of us to go by appointment to her room at night, or to take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. No doubt even she was rather impatient."

"Of the poor things?" Mr. Verver had here enquired while he waited.

"Well, of your not yourselves being so—and of your not in particular. I haven't the least doubt in the world, par exemple, that she thinks you too meek."

"Oh she thinks me too meek?"

"And she had been sent for, on the very face of it, to work right in. All she had to do after all was to be nice to you."

"To—a—me?" said Adam Verver.

He could remember now that his friend had positively had a laugh for his tone. "To you and to every one. She had only to be what she is—and to be it all round. If she's charming, how can she help it? So it was, and so only, that she 'acted'—as the Borgia wine used to act. One saw it come over them—the extent to which, in her particular way, a woman, a woman other, and so other, than themselves, could be charming. One saw them understand and exchange looks, then one saw them lose heart and decide to move. For what they had to take home was that it's she who's the real thing."

"Ah it's she who's the real thing?" As he hadn't hitherto taken it home as completely as the Miss Lutches and Mrs. Rance, so doubtless he had now a little appeared to offer submission in his appeal. "I see, I see"—he could at least simply take it home now; yet as not without wanting at the same time to be sure 195