Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/224

THE GOLDEN BOWL said Maggie, "and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that I'm not in possession of anything. And that somehow for my own help seems to me immense."

"Immense, my dear!" Mrs. Assingham applausively murmured, though not quite even as yet seeing all the way. "He's keeping quiet then on purpose?"

"On purpose." Maggie's lighted eyes at least looked further than they had ever looked. "He'll never tell her now."

Fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic lucidity. She stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place. This importance breathed upon her comrade. "So you're all right?"

"Oh all right's a good deal to say. But I seem at least to see as I haven't before where I am with it."

Fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. "And you have it from him?—your husband himself has told you?"

"'Told' me—?"

"Why what you speak of. It isn't of an assurance received from him then that you do speak?"

At which Maggie had continued to stare. "Dear me, no. Do you suppose I've asked him for an assurance?"

"Ah you haven't?" Her companion smiled. 214