Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/99

THE PRINCE in sympathy—no more were the people she saw. Then it's hideously dear; she can't, on her means, begin to live there. Not at all as she can, in a way, here."

"In the way, you mean, of living with us?"

"Of living with any one. She can't live by visits alone—and she doesn't want to. She's too good for it even if she could. But she will—she must, sooner or later—stay with them. Maggie will want her—Maggie will make her. Besides, she'll want to herself."

"Then why won't that do," the Colonel asked, "for you to think it's what she has come for?"

"How will it do, how?"—she went on as without hearing him. "That's what one keeps feeling."

"Why shouldn't it do beautifully?"

"That anything of the past," she brooded, "should come back now? How will it do, how will it do?"

"It will do, I dare say, without your wringing your hands over it. When, my dear," the Colonel pursued as he smoked, "have you ever seen anything of yours—anything that you've done—not do?"

"Ah I didn't do this!" It brought her answer straight. "I didn't bring her back."

"Did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?"

"Not a bit—for I shouldn't have minded her coming after their marriage. It's her coming this way before." To which she added with inconsequence: "I'm too sorry for her—of course she can't enjoy it. But I don't see what perversity rides her. She needn't have looked it all so in the face—as she doesn't do it, I suppose, simply for discipline. It's almost—that's the bore of it—discipline to me." 69