Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/388

THE GOLDEN BOWL proclaim it; it was blown into their faces as by the lips of the morning. He knew why he had from the first of his marriage tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had given up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he had at any rate gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having, in a manner sold himself, for a situation nette. It had all been just in order that his—well, what on earth should he call it but his freedom?—should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl. He hadn't struggled nor snatched; he was taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. Here precisely it was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as Mrs. Verver appeared, afar off, in one of the smaller doorways. She came toward him in silence while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular front, at Matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of their meeting and the successions of their consciousness. It wasn't till she had come quite close that he produced for her his "Glo'ster, Glo'ster, Glo'ster," and his "Look at it over there!"

She knew just where to look. "Yes—isn't it one of the best? There are cloisters or towers or something." And her eyes, which, though her lips smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance, came back to him. "Or the tomb of some old king."

"We must see the old king; we must 'do' the cathedral," he said; "we must know all about it. If 358