Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/399

THE PRINCE "The Prince and Charlotte?"

"The Prince and Charlotte. That's how they're so remarkable. And the beauty," she explained, "is that they're afraid for them. Afraid I mean for the others."

"For Mr. Verver and Maggie?" It did take some following. "Afraid of what?"

"Afraid of themselves."

The Colonel wondered. "Of 'themselves'? Of Mr. Verver's and Maggie's selves?"

Mrs. Assingham remained patient as well as lucid. "Yes—of such blindness too. But most of all of their own danger."

He turned it over. "That danger being the blindness—?" "That danger being their position. What their position contains—of all the elements—I needn't at this time of day attempt to tell you. It contains, luckily—for that's the mercy—everything but blindness: I mean on their part. The blindness," said Fanny, "is primarily her husband's."

He stood for a moment; he would have it straight. "Whose husband's?"

"Mr. Verver's," she went on. "The blindness is most of all his. That they feel—that they see. But it's also his wife's."

"Whose wife's?" he asked as she continued to gloom at him in a manner at variance with the comparative cheer of her contention. And then as she only gloomed: "The Prince's?"

"Maggie's own—Maggie's very own," she pursued as for herself. 369