Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/431

THE PRINCE "Ah for the best of reasons! Because we're much more so."

He wondered. "But how can we be more—?"

"For them? Oh easily! We can be anything."

"Absolute idiots then?"

"Absolute idiots. And oh," Fanny breathed, "the way it will rest us!"

Well, he looked as if there were something in that. "But won't they know we're not?"

She barely hesitated. "Charlotte and the Prince think we are—which is so much gained. Mr. Verver believes in our intelligence—but he doesn't matter."

"And Maggie? Doesn't she know?"

"That we see before our noses?" Yes, this indeed took longer. "Oh so far as she may guess it she'll give no sign. So it comes to the same thing."

He raised his eyebrows. "Comes to our not being able to help her?"

"That's the way we shall help her."

"By looking like fools?"

She threw up her hands. "She only wants, herself, to look like a bigger! So there we are!" With which she brushed it away—his conformity was promised. Something nevertheless still held her; it broke, to her own vision, as a last wave of clearness. "Moreover now" she said, "I see! I mean," she added, "what you were asking me: how I knew to-day in Eaton Square that Maggie's awake." And she had indeed visibly got it. "It was by seeing them together."

"Seeing her with her father?" He fell behind again. "But you've seen her often enough before." 401