Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/276

THE GOLDEN BOWL to me what you'd take, if you had once a good chance, from your husband."

"Oh I'm not talking about my husband!"

"Then whom are you talking about?"

Both the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything previously exchanged, and they were followed on Maggie's part by a momentary drop. But she wasn't to fall away, and while her companion kept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he weren't expecting her to name his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter's bliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. "I'm talking about you."

"Do you mean I've been your victim?"

"Of course you've been my victim. What have you done, ever done, that hasn't been for me?"

"Many things; more than I can tell you—things you've only to think of for yourself. What do you make of all that I've done for myself?"

"'Yourself'?"—She brightened out with derision.

"What do you make of what I've done for American City?"

It took her but a moment to say. "I'm not talking of you as a public character—I'm talking of you on your personal side."

"Well, American City—if 'personalities' can do it—has given me a pretty personal side. What do you make," he went on, "of what I've done for my reputation?"

"Your reputation there? You've given it up to them, the awful people, for less than nothing; you've 266