Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/196

THE GOLDEN BOWL silence she felt within her the sudden split between conviction and action. They had begun to cease on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil—but action began to hover like some lighter and larger but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground. It would be free, it would be independent, it would go in—wouldn't it?—for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own. What would condemn it, so to speak, to the responsibility of freedom—this glimmered on Maggie even now—was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have on the whole question a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds. It struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all; would indeed absolutely by this circumstance be really needing her for the first time in their whole connexion. No, he had used her, he had even exceedingly enjoyed her, before this; but there had been no precedent for that character of a proved necessity to him which she was rapidly taking on. The immense advantage of this particular clue moreover was that she should have now to arrange, to alter, to falsify nothing; should have to be but consistently simple and straight. She asked herself with concentration, while her back was still presented, what would be the very ideal of that method; but the next instant it had all come to her and she had turned round on him for the application. "Fanny Assingham broke it—knowing it had a crack and that it would go if she used sufficient force. 186