Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/308

THE GOLDEN BOWL Colonel added: "What in the world did you ever suppose was going to happen? The man's in a position in which he has nothing in life to do."

Her silence seemed to characterise this statement as superficial, and her thoughts, as always in her husband's company, pursued an independent course. He made her, when they were together, talk, but as if for some other person; who was in fact for the most part herself. Yet she addressed herself with him as she could never have done without him. "He has behaved beautifully—he did from the first. I've thought it all along wonderful of him; and I've more than once when I've had a chance told him so. Therefore, therefore—!" But it died away as she mused.

"Therefore he has a right, for a change, to kick up his heels?"

"It isn't a question of course however," she undivertedly went on, "of their behaving beautifully apart. It's a question of their doing as they should when together—which is another matter."

"And how do you think then," the Colonel asked with interest, "that when together they should do? The less they do, one would say, the better—if you see so much in it."

His wife appeared at this to hear him. "I don't see in it what you'd see. And don't, my dear," she further answered, "think it necessary to be horrid or low about them. They're the last people really to make anything of that sort come in right."

"I'm surely never horrid or low," he returned, "about any one but my extravagant wife. I can do 278