Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/358

THE GOLDEN BOWL "Well, even you?" Maggie pressed as he paused.

"Even I, even I even yet—!" Again he paused and the silence held them.

But Maggie at last broke it. "If Charlotte doesn't understand me it's because I've prevented her. I've chosen to deceive her and to lie to her."

The Prince kept his eyes on her. "I know what you've chosen to do. But I've chosen to do the same."

"Yes," said Maggie after an instant—"my choice was made when I had guessed yours. But you mean," she asked, "that she understands you?"

"It presents small difficulty!"

"Are you so sure?" Maggie went on.

"Sure enough. But it doesn't matter." He waited an instant; then looking up through the fumes of his smoke, "She's stupid," he abruptly opined.

"O-oh!" Maggie protested in a long wail.

It had made him in fact quickly change colour. "What I mean is that she's not, as you pronounce her, unhappy." And he recovered with this all his logic. "Why is she unhappy if she doesn't know?"

"Doesn't know—" She tried to make his logic difficult.

"Doesn't know that you know."

It came from him in such a way that she was conscious instantly of three or four things to answer. But what she said first was: "Do you think that's all it need take?" And before he could reply, "She knows, she knows!" Maggie proclaimed.

"Well then what?"

But she threw back her head, she turned impatiently 348