Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/61

THE PRINCESS The point of view—that one—was what she read in their free contemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in Amerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give. She might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate with a rare imitation of nature, "Oh yes, I'm here all the while; I'm also in my way a solid little fact and I cost originally a great deal of money: cost, that is, my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains—toward my training—that money would scarce represent." Well, she would meet them in some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner, before they dispersed, by engaging them all unconventionally, almost violently, to dine with her in Portland Place just as they were, if they didn't mind the same party, which was the party she wanted. Oh she was going, she was going—she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song. There were breaks in the connexion, as there would be hitches in the process; she didn't yet wholly see what they would do for her, nor quite how herself she should handle them; but she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least begun something—she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for convergence of wonder. It wasn't after all either that their wonder so much signified—that of the cornered six whom it glimmered before her that she 51