Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/57

THE PRINCE "How can you be sure," she asked, "where I should take you?"

"Why from your having brought me safely thus far. I should never have got here without you. You've provided the ship itself, and if you've not quite seen me aboard you've attended me ever so kindly to the dock. Your own vessel is all conveniently in the next berth, and you can't desert me now."

She showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive, as if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated him in fine as if he were not uttering truths but making pretty figures for her diversion. "My vessel, dear Prince?" she smiled. "What vessel in the world have I? This little house is all our ship, Bob's and mine—and thankful we are now to have it. We've wandered far, living, as you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our feet. But the time has come for us at last to draw in."

He made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. "You talk about rest—it's too selfish!—when you're just launching me on adventures?"

She shook her head with her kind lucidity. "Not adventures—heaven forbid!—You've had yours—as I've had mine; and my idea has been all along that we should neither of us begin again. My own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. But it consists simply in having conducted you to rest. You talk about ships, but they're not the comparison. Your tossings are over—you're practically in port. The port," she concluded, "of the Golden Isles." 27