Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/86

THE GOLDEN BOWL discretion let him articulate. "You haven't, I rather gather, particularly liked your country?" They would stick for the time to their English.

"It doesn't, I fear, seem particularly mine. And it doesn't in the least matter over there whether one likes it or not—that is to any one but one's self. But I didn't like it," said Charlotte Stant.

"That's not encouraging then to me, is it?" the Prince went on.

"Do you mean because you're going?"

"Oh yes, of course we're going. I've wanted immensely to go."

She waited. "But now?—immediately?"

"In a month or two—it seems to be the new idea." On which there was something in her face—as he imagined—that made him say: "Didn't Maggie write to you?"

"Not of your going at once. But of course you must go. And of course you must stay"—Charlotte was easily clear—"as long as possible."

"Is that what you did?" he laughed. "You stayed as long as possible?"

"Well, it seemed to me so—but I hadn't 'interests.' You'll have them—on a great scale. It's the country for interests," said Charlotte. "If I had only had a few I doubtless wouldn't have left it."

He waited an instant; they were still on their feet. "Yours then are rather here?"

"Oh mine!"—the girl smiled. "They take up little room, wherever they are."

It determined in him, the way this came from her and what it somehow did for her—it determined in 56