Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/36

THE GOLDEN BOWL the heart of her earnestness—plucking it, in the garden of thought, as if it had been some full-blown flower that she could present to him on the spot. Well, it was the flower of participation, and as that, then and there, she held it out to him, putting straightway into execution the idea, so needlessly, so absurdly obscured, of her sharing with him, whatever the enjoyment, the interest, the experience might be—and sharing also for that matter with Charlotte.

She had thrown herself at dinner into every feature of the recent adventure of the companions, letting him see without reserve that she wished to hear everything about it, and making Charlotte in particular, Charlotte's judgement of Matcham, Charlotte's aspect, her success there, her effect traceably produced, her clothes inimitably worn, her cleverness gracefully displayed, her social utility, in fine, brilliantly exemplified, the subject of endless enquiry. Maggie's enquiry was most sympathetic, moreover, for the whole happy thought of the cathedral-hunt, which she was so glad they had entertained and as to the pleasant results of which, down to the cold beef and bread-and-cheese, the queer old smell and the dirty tablecloth at the inn, Amerigo was good-humouredly responsive. He had looked at her across the table more than once, as if touched by the humility of this welcome offered to impressions at second-hand, the amusements, the large freedoms only of others—as if recognising in it something fairly exquisite; and at the end, while they were alone, before she had rung for a servant, he had renewed again his condonation of the little irregularity, such as it was, on which she 26