Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/282

THE GOLDEN BOWL And he had named Charlotte, named her again, and she had made him—which was all she had needed more: it was as if she had held a blank letter to the fire and the writing had come out still larger than she hoped. The recognition of it took her some seconds, but she might when she spoke have been folding up these precious lines and restoring them to her pocket. "Well, I shall be as much as ever then the cause of what you do. I haven't the least doubt of your being up to that if you should think I might get anything out of it; even the little pleasure," she laughed, "of having said, as you call it, 'more.' Let my enjoyment of this therefore, at any price, continue to represent for you what I call sacrificing you."

She had drawn a long breath; she had made him do it all for her, and had lighted the way to it without his naming her husband. That silence had been as distinct as the sharp, the inevitable sound, and something now in him followed it up, a sudden air as of confessing at last fully to where she was and of begging the particular question. "Don't you think then I can take care of myself?"

"Ah it's exactly what I've gone upon. If it wasn't for that—!"

But she broke off and they remained only another moment face to face. "I'll let you know, my dear, the day I feel you've begun to sacrifice me."

"'Begun'?" she extravagantly echoed.

"Well, it will be for me the day you've ceased to believe in me."

With which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little 272