Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/194

THE GOLDEN BOWL under it the while as the pulse of fever throbs under the doctor's thumb?

Maggie's sense accordingly in his presence was that though the bowl had been broken her reason hadn't; the reason for which she had made up her mind, the reason for which she had summoned her friend, the reason for which she had addressed the place to her husband's eyes; it was all one reason, and as her intense little clutch held the matter what had happened by Fanny's act and by his apprehension of it hadn't in the least happened to her, but absolutely and directly to himself, as he must proceed to take in. There it was that her wish for time interposed—time for Amerigo's use, not for hers, since she for ever so long now, for hours and hours as they seemed, had been living with eternity; with which she would continue to live. She wanted to say to him "Take it, take it, take all you need of it; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be at any rate least distorted and disfigured. Only see, see that I see, and make up your mind on this new basis at your convenience. Wait—it won't be long—till you can confer again with Charlotte, for you'll do it much better then, more easily to both of us. Above all don't show me, till you've got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority." After she had squared again her little objects on the chimney she was within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its being lucid for her all the while that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he wasn't 184