Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/279

THE PRINCESS force him just not consciously to avoid saying "Charlotte, Charlotte" he would have given himself away. But to be sure of this was enough for her, and she saw more clearly with each lapsing instant what they were both doing. He was doing what he had steadily been coming to; he was practically offering himself, pressing himself upon her, as a sacrifice—he had read his way so into her best possibility; and where had she already for weeks and days past planted her feet if not on her acceptance of the offer? Cold indeed, colder and colder she turned as she felt herself suffer this close personal vision of his attitude still not to make her weaken. That was her very certitude, the intensity of his pressure; for if something dreadful hadn't happened there wouldn't for either of them be these dreadful things to do. She had meanwhile as well the immense advantage that she could have named Charlotte without exposing herself—as for that matter she was the next minute showing him.

"Why I sacrifice you simply to everything and to every one. I take the consequences of your marriage as perfectly natural."

He threw back his head a little, settling with one hand his nippers. "What do you call, my dear, the consequences?"

"Your life as your marriage has made it."

"Well, hasn't it made it exactly what we wanted?"

She just hesitated, then felt herself steady—oh beyond what she had dreamed. "Exactly what I wanted—yes."

His eyes, through his straightened glasses, were still on hers, and he might, with his intenser fixed 269