Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/373

THE PRINCE taste from which they hadn't heretofore by a hair's breadth deviated. "If it didn't sound so vulgar I should say that we're—fatally, as it were—safe. Pardon the low expression—since it's what we happen to be. We're so because they are. And they're so because they can't be anything else from the moment that, having originally intervened for them, she wouldn't now be able to bear herself if she didn't keep them so. That's the way she's inevitably with us," said Charlotte over her smile. "We hang essentially together."

Well, the Prince candidly allowed she did bring it home to him. Every way it worked out. "Yes, I see. We hang essentially together."

His friend had a shrug—a shrug that had a grace. "Cosa volete?" The effect, beautifully, nobly, was more than Roman. "Ah beyond doubt it's a case."

He stood looking at her. "It's a case. There can't," he said, "have been many."

"Perhaps never, never, never any other. That," she smiled, "I confess I should like to think. Only ours."

"Only ours—most probably. Speriamo." To which, as after hushed connexions, he presently added: "Poor Fanny!" But Charlotte had already with a start and a warning hand turned from a glance at the clock. She sailed away to dress, while he watched her reach the staircase. His eyes followed her till, with a simple swift look round at him, she vanished. Something in the sight however appeared to have renewed the spring of his last exclamation, which he breathed again upon the air. "Poor, poor Fanny!" 343