Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/251

THE PRINCE before me? That I'm old has at least that fact about it to the good—that I've known you long and from far back."

"Do you think you've 'known' me?" asked Charlotte Stant.

He debated—for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him doubt. Just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling—this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own could warn him. All that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink glow. He wasn't rabid, but he wasn't either, as a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. "What is that then—if I accept it—but as strong a reason as I can want for just learning to know you?"

She faced him always—kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same time, in her odd way, as for mercy. "How can you tell whether if you did you would?" It was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. "I mean when it's a question of learning one learns sometimes too late."

"I think it's a question," he promptly enough made answer, "of liking you the more just for your saying these things. You should make something," he added, "of my liking you."

"I make everything. But are you sure of having exhausted all other ways?"

This of a truth enlarged his gaze. "But what other ways—?" 221