Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/128

THE GOLDEN BOWL "Oh!" dropped from Fanny as if she couldn't help it.

"But I don't think—strangely enough—that he regards me as nasty. I think that at bottom—for that is," said the Princess, "the strangeness—he's sorry for me. Yes, I think that deep within he pities me."

Her companion wondered. "For the state you've let yourself get into?"

"For not being happy when I've so much to make me so."

"You've everything," said Mrs. Assingham with alacrity. Yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. "Yet I don't understand how, if you've done nothing—"

An impatience from Maggie had checked her. "I've not done absolutely 'nothing.'"

"But what then—?"

"Well," she went on after a minute, "he knows what I've done."

It produced on Mrs. Assingham's part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. "And what then has he done?"

Maggie took again a minute. "He has been splendid."

"'Splendid'? Then what more do you want?"

"Ah what you see!" said Maggie. "Not to be afraid."

It made her guest again hang fire. "Not to be afraid really to speak?"

"Not to be afraid not to speak." 118