Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/307

THE PRINCE she let herself wince at being thus incriminated only that she might protest, not less quickly, against mere blind terror. It had become, for the occasion preposterously terror—of which she must shake herself free before she could properly measure her ground. The perception of this necessity had in truth soon aided her; since she found on trying that, lurid as her prospect might hover there, she could none the less give it no name. The sense of seeing was strong in her, but she clutched at the comfort of not being sure of what she saw. Not to know what it would represent on a longer view was a help, in turn, to not making out that her hands were embrued; since if she had stood in the position of a producing cause she should surely be less vague about what she had produced. This, further, in its way, was a step toward reflecting that when one's connexion with any matter was too indirect to be traced it might be described also as too slight to be deplored. By the time they were nearing Cadogan Place she had in fact recognised that she couldn't be so curious as she desired without arriving at some conviction of her being as innocent. But there had been a moment in the dim desert of Eaton Square when she broke into speech.

"It's only their defending themselves so much more than they need—it's only that that makes me wonder. It's their having so remarkably much to say for themselves."

Her husband had as usual lighted his cigar, remaining apparently as busy with it as she with her agitation. "You mean it makes you feel that you have nothing?" To which, as she failed to answer, the 277