Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/124

THE GOLDEN BOWL "you see they sometimes have to be." And then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: "Now do you think I'm modest?"

With time however Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. "I think you're wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your question. It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no 'awfulness'—I suspect none. I'm deeply distressed," she added, "that you should do anything else."

It drew again from Maggie a long look. "You've never even imagined anything?"

"Ah God forbid!—for it's exactly as a woman of imagination that I speak. There's no moment of my life at which I'm not imagining something; and it's thanks to that, darling," Mrs. Assingham pursued, "that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable adorable wife." She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this—as to Maggie's measure of which however no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort. "He wouldn't hurt a hair of your head."

It had produced in Maggie at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. "Ah there it is!"

But her guest had already gone on. "And I'm absolutely certain that Charlotte wouldn't either."

It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. "No—Charlotte wouldn't either. That's how they've had again to go off together. They've been afraid not to—lest it should disturb me, 114