Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/184

THE GOLDEN BOWL conclusively smiled. "He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself."

"As much, that is, as was right for her."

"Yes then—as was right for her. The point is," Fanny declared, "that whatever his knowledge it made all the way it went for his good faith."

Maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. " Isn't the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?"

Fanny Assingham thought. "He recognised, he adopted, your long friendship. But he founded on it no selfishness."

"No," said Maggie with still deeper consideration: "he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own."

"So you may say."

"Very well," Maggie went on; "if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little. And she may only since have found that out."

Mrs. Assingham looked blank. "Since—?"

"And he may have become aware," Maggie pursued, "that she has found it out. That she has taken the measure, since their marriage," she explained, "of how much he had asked of her—more say than she had understood at the time. He may have made out at last how such a demand was in the long run to affect her."

"He may have done many things," Mrs. Assingham responded; "but there's one thing he certainly 174