Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/281

THE PRINCESS I suppose, that my natural course, once you had set up for yourself, would have been to ship you back to American City?"

These were direct enquiries, they quite rang out in the soft wooded air; so that Adam Verver for a minute appeared to meet them with reflexion. She saw reflexion however quickly enough show him what to do with them. "Do you know, Mag, what you make me wish when you talk that way?" And he waited again while she further got from him the sense of something that had been behind, deeply in the shade, coming cautiously to the front and just feeling its way before presenting itself. "You regularly make me wish I had shipped back to American City. When you go on as you do—" But he really had to hold himself to say it.

"Well, when I go on—?"

"Why you make me quite want to ship back myself. You make me quite feel as if American City would be the best place for us."

It made her all too finely vibrate. "For 'us '—?"

"For me and Charlotte. Do you know that if we should ship it would serve you quite right?" With which he smiled—oh he smiled! "And if you say much more we will ship."

Ah then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim, overflowed at a touch! There was his idea, the clearness of which for an instant almost dazzled her. It was a blur of light in the midst of which she saw Charlotte like some object marked by contrast in blackness, saw her waver in the field of vision, saw her removed, transported, doomed. 271