Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/72

THE GOLDEN BOWL again; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or shorter, of recovered independence. Amerigo was for the instant but doing as he didn't like, and it was as if she were watching his effort without disguise. "What's your father's idea this year then about Fawns? Will he go at Whitsuntide and will he then stay on?"

Maggie went through the form of thought. "He'll really do, I imagine, as he has in so many ways so often done before; do whatever may seem most agreeable to yourself. And there's of course always Charlotte to be considered. Only their going early to Fawns, if they do go, she said, "needn't in the least entail your and my going."

"Ah," Amerigo echoed, "it needn't in the least entail your and my going?"

"We can do as we like. What they may do needn't trouble us, since they're by good fortune perfectly happy together."

"Oh," the Prince returned, "your father's never so happy as with you near him to enjoy his being so."

"Well, I may enjoy it," said Maggie, "but I'm not the cause of it."

"You're the cause," her husband declared, "of the greater part of everything that's good among us." But she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: "If Mrs. Verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she'll scarcely do it—or you scarcely will—by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose."

"I see what you mean," Maggie mused.

He let her for a little give her attention to it; after 62