Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/101

THE PRINCESS the last corner, left over, of my old show. That's the only take-off, that it has made us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid—lying like gods together, all careless of mankind."

"Do you consider that we're languid? "—that form of rejoinder she had jumped at for the sake of its pretty lightness. "Do you consider that we're careless of mankind?—living as we do in the biggest crowd in the world and running about always pursued and pursuing."

It had made him think indeed a little longer than she had meant; but he came up again, as she might have said, smiling. "Well, I don't know. We get nothing but the fun, do we?"

"No," she had hastened to declare; "we certainly get nothing but the fun."

"We do it all," he had remarked, "so beautifully."

"We do it all so beautifully." She hadn't denied this for a moment. "I see what you mean."

"Well, I mean too," he had gone on, "that we haven't no doubt enough the sense of difficulty."

"Enough? Enough for what?"

"Enough not to be selfish."

"I don't think you are selfish," she had returned—and had managed not to wail it.

"I don't say it's me particularly—or that it's you or Charlotte or Amerigo. But we're selfish together—we move as a selfish mass. You see we want always the same thing," he had gone on—"and that holds us, that binds us, together. We want each other," he had further explained; "only wanting it, each time, for each other. That's what I call the 91