Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/374

THE GOLDEN BOWL and saying before he said anything else:

"May I smoke?" She met it for encouragement with her "My dear!" again, and then while he struck his match she had just another minute to be nervous—a minute that she made use of however not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair inside: "Father, father—Charlotte's great!"

It was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her. "Charlotte's great."

They could close upon it—such a basis as they might immediately feel it make; and so they stood together over it quite gratefully, each recording to the other's eyes that it was firm under their feet. They had even thus a renewed wait as for proof of it; much as if he were letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed companions, that this was finally just why—but just why! "You see," he presently added, "how right I was. Right, I mean, to do it for you."

"Ah rather!" she murmured with her smile. And then as to be herself ideally right: "I don't see what you would have done without her."

"The point was," he returned quietly, "that I didn't see what you were to do. Yet it was a risk."

"It was a risk," said Maggie—"but I believed in it. At least for myself!" she smiled.

"Well now," he smoked, "we see."

"We see."

"I know her better."

"You know her best."

"Oh but naturally!" On which, as the warranted 364