Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/75

THE PRINCESS the Prince went on, "by proposing to me an excursion."

"And you'd go with him?" Maggie immediately asked.

He hung fire but an instant. "Per Dio!"

She also had her pause, but she broke it—since gaiety was in the air—with an intense smile. "You can say that safely because the proposal's one that he won't make of his own motion."

She couldn't have narrated afterwards—and in fact was at a loss to tell herself—by what transition, what rather marked abruptness of change in their personal relation, their drive came to its end with a kind of interval established, almost confessed to, between them. She felt it in the tone with which he repeated after her "'Safely'—?"

"Safely as regards being thrown with him perhaps after all in such a case too long. He's a person to think you might easily feel yourself to be. So it won't," Maggie said, "come from father. He's too modest."

Their eyes continued to meet on it from corner to corner of the brougham. "Oh your modesty, between you—!" But he still smiled for it. "So that unless I insist—?"

"We shall simply go on as we are."

"Well, we're going on beautifully," he answered—though by no means with the effect it would have had if their mute transaction, that of attempted capture and achieved escape, hadn't taken place. As Maggie said nothing none the less to gainsay his remark, it was open to him to find himself the next moment 65