Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/233

THE PRINCESS and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel. He hadn't liked what he had done and what he had above all made such a "good thing" of having done; at the thought of his purchaser's good faith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquisition which would make it verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he had known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more remarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having troubled him in other connexions. She had recognised the oddity of her adventure and left it to show for what it was. She hadn't been unconscious on the other hand that if it hadn't touched Amerigo so nearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflexion. He had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and a howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing: "Oh most certainly he told me his reason was because he 'liked' me!"—though she remained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked most by the familiarities she had offered or by those that, so pictured, she had had to endure. That the partner of her bargain had yearned to see her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this also she had frankly expressed herself to the Prince as having, in no snubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative and indebted spirit, not delayed to make out. He had wished ever so seriously to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly declined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she hadn't, 223