Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/120

THE GOLDEN BOWL with which it seemed to shine. "Is what it comes to that you're jealous of Charlotte?"

"Do you mean whether I hate her?"—and Maggie thought. "No; not on account of father."

"Ah," Mrs. Assingham returned, "that isn't what one would suppose. What I ask is if you're jealous on account of your husband."

"Well," said Maggie presently, "perhaps that may be all. If I'm unhappy I'm jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you at least I'm not afraid of the word. If I'm jealous, don't you see? I'm tormented," she went on—"and all the more if I'm helpless. And if I'm both helpless and tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can't keep it longer; I've pulled it out and here I am fairly screaming at you. They're away," she wound up, "so they can't hear; and I'm by a miracle of arrangement not at luncheon with father at home. I live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which I admit are my own; I go about on tiptoe, I watch for every sound, I feel every breath, and yet I try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. Have you ever thought of me," she asked, "as really feeling as I do?"

Her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. "Jealous, unhappy, tormented—? No," said Mrs. Assingham; "but at the same time—and though you may laugh at me for it!—I'm bound to confess I've never been so awfully sure of what I may call knowing you. Here you are indeed, as you say—such 110