Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/233

 as you see it!' he exclaimed, after he had looked at her a minute in silent admiration.

'I see simply this: that what we are doing is at least worth trying, and that as none of those who have the power, the place, the means, will try anything else, on their head be the responsibility, on their head be the blood!'

'Princess,' said Hyacinth, clasping his hands and feeling that he trembled, 'dearest Princess, if anything should happen to you'—and his voice fell; the horror of it, a dozen hideous images of her possible perversity and her possible punishment were again before him, as he had already seen them in sinister musings; they seemed to him worse than anything he had imagined for himself.

She threw back her head, looking at him almost in anger. 'To me! And pray why not to me? What title have I to exemption, to security, more than any one else? Why am I so sacrosanct and so precious?'

'Simply because there is no one in the world, and there has never been any one in the world, like you.'

'Oh, thank you!' said the Princess, with a kind of dry impatience, turning away.

The manner in which she spoke put an end to their conversation. It expressed an indifference to what it might interest him to think about her to-day, and even a contempt for it, which brought tears to his eyes. His tears, however, were concealed by the fact that he bent his head over her hand, which he had taken to kiss; after which he left the room without looking at her.