Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/294

THE GOLDEN BOWL void of any vulgarity of triumph. She merely completed, for truth's sake, her demonstration. "What's a quarrel with me but a quarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain? But I can carry them out alone," she said as she turned away. She turned to meet the Ambassador and the Prince, who, their colloquy with their Field-Marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she was aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed. She had made her point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it thoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction before her, unmistakeably moved to admiration by her exceptional radiance. She at first but watched this reflexion, taking no note of any less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor Fanny—poor Fanny left to stare at her incurred "score," chalked up in so few strokes on the wall; then she made out what the Ambassador was saying in French, what he was apparently repeating to her.

"A desire for your presence, Madame, has been expressed en très-haut lieu, and I've let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of the honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that so august an impatience is not kept waiting." The greatest possible Personage had in short, according to the odd formula of societies subject to the greatest personages possible, "sent for" her, and she asked, in her surprise, "What in the world does he want to do 264