Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/305

THE PRINCE responsibility—to you. So far as I ever had it I've done with it."

He had been all the while beautifully smiling; but she made his look now penetrate her again more. "As to whom then do you confess it?"

"Ah mio caro, that's—if to any one—my own business!"

He continued to look at her hard. "You give me up then?"

It was what Charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place. She was on the point of replying "Do you and she agree together for what you'll say to me?"—but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time, little as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it. "I think I don't know what to make of you."

"You must receive me at least," he said.

"Oh please not till I'm ready for you!"—and though she found a laugh for it she had to turn away. She had never turned away from him before, and it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of him.