Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/377

THE PRINCE their fortune. How to bring it by some brave free lift up to the same height was the idea with which, behind and beneath everything, he was restlessly occupied, and in the exploration of which, as in that of the sun-chequered greenwood of romance, his spirit thus, at the opening of a vista, met hers. They were already from that moment so hand-in-hand in the place that he found himself making use five minutes later of exactly the same tone as Charlotte's for telling Mrs. Assingham that he was likewise in the matter of the return to London sorry for what mightn't be.

This had become of a sudden the simplest thing in the world—the sense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he should feel for evermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease with her. He went in fact a step further than Charlotte—put the latter forward as creating his necessity. She was staying over luncheon to oblige their hostess—as a consequence of which he must also stay to see her decently home. He must deliver her safe and sound, he felt, in Eaton Square. Regret as he might too the difference made by this obligation, he frankly didn't mind, inasmuch as, over and above the pleasure itself, his scruple would certainly gratify both Mr. Verver and Maggie. They never yet had absolutely and entirely learned, he even found deliberation to intimate, how little he really neglected the first—as it seemed nowadays quite to have become—of his domestic duties: therefore he still constantly felt how little he must remit his effort to make them remark it. To which he added with equal lucidity that they would return in time for dinner, 347