Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/325

THE PRINCESS "Well," said Maggie, smiling and smiling, "since that's where I place mine—!"

"You mean you'll have no quarrel with me? So much the better then; for," Charlotte went on with a higher and higher flight, "my plan's completely formed."

Maggie waited—her glimmer had deepened; her chance somehow was at hand. The only danger was her spoiling it; she felt herself skirting an abyss. "What then, may I ask, is your plan?"

It hung fire but ten seconds; it came out sharp. "To take him home—to his real position. And not to wait."

"Do you mean—a—this season?"

"I mean immediately. And—I may as well tell you now—I mean for my own time. I want," Charlotte said, "to have him at last a little to myself; I want, strange as it may seem to you"—and she gave it all its weight—"to keep the man I've married. And to do so I see I must act."

Maggie, with the effort still to follow the right line, felt herself colour to the eyes. "Immediately?" she thoughtfully echoed.

"As soon as we can get off. The removal of everything is after all but a detail. That can always be done; with money, as he spends it, everything can. What I ask for," Charlotte declared, "is the definite break. And I wish it now." With which her head, like her voice, rose higher. "Oh," she added, "I know my difficulty!"

Far down below the level of attention, in she could scarce have said what sacred depths, Maggie's 315