Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/133

THE PRINCESS "To lie 'for' her?" The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity.

"To lie to her, up and down, and in and out—it comes to the same thing. It will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince about one's belief in him; to Charlotte about one's belief in her; to Mr. Verver, dear sweet man, about one's belief in every one. So we've work cut out—with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we like to be there for such a purpose. We hate it unspeakably—I'm more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let every one, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. I speak at least for myself. For you," she had added, "as I've given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with Maggie, you'll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her."

"And what do you make," the Colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, "of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the Prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom—to say nothing of my weak good nature about it—you give such a pretty picture?"

To the picture in question she had in fact been always able contemplatively to return. "The difficulty of my enjoyment of that is, don't you see? that I'm making, in my loyalty to Maggie, a sad hash of his affection for me."

"You find means to call it then, this whitewashing of his crime, being 'loyal' to Maggie?" 123