Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/191

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with her husband Maggie however for the time said nothing; she only felt on the spot a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again till he should have had a minute to arrange it. She had seen it enough for her temporary clearness and her next movement—seen as it showed during the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. Then it was that she knew how hugely expert she had been made—made for judging it quickly—by the vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that had flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return from Matcham. The expression worn by it at that juncture for however few instants had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the most relevant of which might have been playing up for her, before the consummation of Fanny Assingham's retreat, just long enough to be recognised. What she had recognised in it was his recognition, the result of his having been forced, by the flush of their visitor's attitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account of the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident, on which he had unexpectedly dropped. He had not unnaturally failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable which lay there on the floor and which even across the width of the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakeably though confusedly, of something known, some other 181