Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/213

THE PRINCESS his dignity, all marvellous enamel, her paramount law. More strangely even than anything else her husband seemed to speak now but to help her in this. "I know nothing but what you tell me."

"Then I've told you all I intended. Find out the rest—!"

"Find it out—?" He waited.

She stood before him a moment—it took that time to go on. Depth upon depth of her situation, as she met his face, surged and sank within her; but with the effect somehow once more that they rather lifted her than let her drop. She had her feet somewhere through it all—it was her companion absolutely who was at sea. And she kept her feet; she pressed them to what was beneath her. She went over to the bell beside the chimney and gave a ring that he could but take as a summons of her maid. It stopped everything for the present; it was an intimation to him to go and dress. But she had to insist. "Find out for yourself!"