It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. 'No—Charlotte wouldn't either. That's how they've had again to go off together. They've been afraid not to—lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me. As I insisted that they must, that we couldn't all fail—though father and Charlotte hadn't really accepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. Their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I've seemed to accept and that I've given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting. Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away—so that it's all as wonderful as you may conceive. They move at any rate among the dangers I speak of—between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence, or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.' Her tone, by this time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up. 'And that's how I make them do what I like!'
It had an effect on Mrs. Assingham, who rose with the deliberation that, from point to point, marked the widening of her grasp. 'My dear child, you're amazing.'
'Amazing—?'
'You're terrible.'
Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. 'No; I'm not terrible, and you don't think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt—but surprisingly mild. Because—don't you see?—I AM mild. I can bear anything.'
'Oh, 'bear'!' Mrs. Assingham fluted.
'For love,' said the Princess.
Fanny hesitated. 'Of your father?'
'For love,' Maggie repeated.
It kept her friend watching. 'Of your husband?'
'For love,' Maggie said again.
It was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives. Mrs. Assingham's rejoinder, at all events—however much or however little it was a choice—was presently a triumph. 'Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father's wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?' And then as the Princess didn't at first answer: 'Do you call such an allegation as that 'mild'?'
'Oh, I'm not pretending to be mild to you. But I've told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I've been to them.'
Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. 'Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?'
'Ah, there wouldn't be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.'
Mrs. Assingham faced her—quite steady now. 'Are you really conscious, love, of what you're saying?'
'I'm saying that I'm bewildered and tormented, and that I've no one but you to speak to. I've thought, I've in fact been sure, that you've seen for yourself how much this is the case. It's why I've believed you would meet me half way.'
'Half way to what? To denouncing,' Fanny asked, 'two persons, friends of years, whom I've always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I haven't the shadow of a charge to make?'
Maggie looked at her with wide eyes. 'I had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me,' she said, 'if you can see your way.' It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. 'If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig—!'
'Well?' said Mrs. Assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.
'I think I shall be saved.'
Her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head. 'You say you've no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings—not having, as you call it, given yourself away. Have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?'
'I've spoken to him,' said Maggie.
Mrs. Assingham stared. 'Ah, then it isn't true that you've made no sign.'
Maggie had a silence. 'I've made no trouble. I've made no scene. I've taken no stand. I've neither reproached nor accused him. You'll say there's a way in all that of being nasty enough.'
'Oh!' dropped from Fanny as if she couldn't help it.
'But I don't think—strangely enough—that he regards me as nasty. I think that at bottom—for that IS,' said the Princess, 'the strangeness—he's sorry for me. Yes, I think that, deep within, he pities me.'
Her companion wondered. 'For the state you've let yourself get into?'
'For not being happy when I've so much to make me so.'
'You've everything,' said Mrs. Assingham with alacrity. Yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. 'I don't understand, however, how, if you've done nothing—'
An impatience from Maggie had checked her. 'I've not done absolutely 'nothing.''
'But what then—?'
'Well,' she went on after a minute, 'he knows what I've done.'
It produced on Mrs. Assingham's part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged, and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. 'And what then
