Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/226

THE GOLDEN BOWL "Why just by that. I put him in possession of the difference; the difference made about me by the fact that I hadn't been after all—though with a wonderful chance, I admitted, helping me—too stupid to have arrived at knowledge. He had to see that I'm changed for him—quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on with. It became a question then of his really taking in the change—and what I now see is that he's doing so."

Fanny followed as she could. "Which he shows by letting you, as you say, alone?"

Maggie looked at her a minute. "And by letting her."

Mrs. Assingham did what she might to embrace it—checked a little however by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in this almost too large air, to an inspiration. "Ah but does Charlotte let him?"

"Oh that's another affair—with which I've practically nothing to do. I dare say however she doesn't." And the Princess had a more distant gaze for the image evoked by the question. "I don't in fact well see how she can. But the point for me is that he understands."

"Yes," Fanny Assingham cooed, "understands—?"

"Well, what I want. I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger."

"A brilliant perfect surface—to begin with at least. I see."

"The golden bowl—as it was to have been." And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. 216