Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/58

THE GOLDEN BOWL He looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then after an hesitation seemed to speak certain words instead of certain others. "Oh I know where I am—! I do decline to be left, but what I came for of course was to thank you. If to-day has seemed for the first time the end of preliminaries, I feel how little there would have been any at all without you. The first were wholly yours."

"Well," said Mrs. Assingham, "they were remarkably easy. I've seen them, I've had them," she smiled, "more difficult. Everything, you must feel, went of itself. So, you must feel, everything still goes."

The Prince quickly agreed. "Oh beautifully! But you had the conception."

"Ah Prince, so had you!"

He looked at her harder a moment. "You had it first. You had it most."

She returned his look as if it had made her wonder. "I liked it, if that's what you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest that I had easy work with you. I had only at last—when I thought it was time—to speak for you."

"All that's quite true. But you're leaving me all the same, you're leaving me—you're washing your hands of me," he went on. "However, that won't be easy; I won't be left." And he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had lately retired with "Bob." "I shall keep this spot in sight. Say what you will I shall need you. I'm not, you 28