The Golden Bowl

- the documents signed an hour ago, de part et d'autre, and the telegram from his backers, who had reached Paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little, poor dears, seemed to thin

r and leather, in which they've dressed themselves as much as possible. Which all means, however, that you'll see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. We must be very easy with them. Maggie's too wonderful - her preparations

afraid?" his hostess

t good days; they're neither one thing nor the other. I've really got noth

stead of soothing him. And to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe - that was what he had come for. "Marriag

er expression. "I'm starting on the great voyage - across the unknown sea; my ship's all rigged and appointed, the cargo's stowed away and the company complete. But what seems the matter with me is that I can't sail alone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste

," she asked, "where

provided the ship itself, and, if you've not quite seen me aboard, you've attended me, ever so kindl

uths, but making pretty figures for her diversion. "My vessel, dear Prince?" she smiled. "What vessel, in the world, have I? This little house is all our ship, Bob's and mine - and tha

otest. "You talk about rest - it's too selfish!

ld neither of us begin again. My own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. But it consists simply in having conducted you to re

tain others. "Oh, I know where I AM-! I do decline to be left, but what I came for, of course, was to thank you. If today has seemed, fo

them, I've HAD them," she smiled, "more difficult. Everything, you

d. "Oh, beautifully! But

nce, so

a moment. "You had it

t you mean. But you liked it surely yourself. I protest, that I had easy work

t." And he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which

ou're not - are you trying to make me

to make my engagement possible. It remains beautiful for me that you did; it's charming and unforgett

t meaning can anything I say have for you? Don't you really after all feel," she added while nothing came from h

nding me over - it was a matter of your handing her. It was a matter of HER fate still more than of mine. You thought

nd this was what, visibly, determined a repeti

good faith or my humility. I'm awfully humble," the young man insisted; "that's the way I've

he really troubled her a littl

it's what I wanted you to come

if you're 'humble' yo

id: "I don't in the least want to lose sight of y

pt that I'm stupid. I can do pretty well anything I SEE. But I've got to see it first." And he pursued his demonstration. "I don't in the least mind its having to be shown me - in fact I like that better. Therefore i

e would come to, but she spoke with a certain i

owing it. That's what I shall always trust you for - to tell me when I am. No - with you people it's a s

ourse she had always liked him. "I should be interested," sh

no more like yours than the tortuous stone staircase - half-ruined into the bargain!- in some castle of our quattrocento is like the 'lightning elevator' in one of Mr. Verver's fifteen-storey buildings. Your moral

ingham smiled, "to g

at all. However," he added, "I

!" she simpl

ou really believe I have his perversity you wouldn't say it. But it's all

, drew from her visitor a fresh declaration of all the comfort of his being able so to depend on her. He had been with her, at this point, some twenty minutes; but he had paid her much longer visits, and he stayed now as if to make his attitude prove his appreciation. He stayed moreover - THAT was really the sign of the hour - in spite of the nervous unrest that had brought him and that had in truth much rather fed on the scepticism by which she had apparently meant to soothe it. She had not soothed him, and there arrived, remarkably, a moment when the cause of her failure gleamed out. He had not frightened her, as she called it - he felt that; yet she was herself not at ease. She had been nervous, though trying to disguise it; the sight of him, following on the announcement of his name, had shown her as disconcerted. This conviction, for the young man, deepened and sharpened; yet with the effect, too, of making him glad in spite of it. It was as if, in calling, he had done

present her insistently as a daughter of the south, or still more of the east, a creature formed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and waited upon by slaves. She looked as if her most active effort might be to take up, as she lay back, her mandolin, or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle. She was in fact, however, neither a pampered Jewess nor a lazy Creole; New York had been, recordedly, her birthplace and "Europe" punctually her discipline. She wore yellow and purple because she thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like the Queen of Sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overd

he also said, sit up. She had in her life two great holes to fill, and she described herself as dropping social scraps into them as she had known o

iest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age, a primitive period when such things - such things as American girls accepted as "good enough"- had not begun to be;- so that the pleasant pair had been, as to the risk taken on either side, bold and original, honourably marked, for the evening of life, as discoverers of a kind of hymeneal Northwest Passage. Mrs. Assingham knew better, knew there had been no historic hour, from that of Pocahontas down, when some young Englishman hadn't precipitately believed and some American girl hadn't, with a few more gradations, availed herself to the full of her incapacity to doubt; but she accepted resignedly the laurel of the founder, since she was in fact pretty well the doyenne, above ground, of her transpla

eply, was a trifle dim. "Am I obliged to

ly concern me. Then you shouldn't keep it back. You know with what care I desire to pro

had after an instant an o

ur friends. Either M

turned; "something has happened for which I hadn't been pr

roperly'? I somehow see volumes in it. It's the way people put a thing when the

t moment, had drawn

ake your share of it. Charlotte Stant

parency through which his eyes met his friend's with a certain hardnes

from Southampton; at an hotel. She dropped upon me

ith an interest too great for his gaiety. "You

seemed just now eager to take.

consistency, and she could now see that he

w then what t

think it cou

an asked. "Only," she smiled, "because

ened colour, still looking at her, still adjust

least looked for her. Any more," said Mrs. A

very natural and true: "No - quite right. Maggie hasn't looked f

s hostess spoke with a di

" the Prince went on. "Has

ng her things here. I can't have her,"

I s

t stay with me." He quite too

y moment. If you wa

xt showed himself. "If it wasn't for what's going on these next days Maggie would certainly want to have her. In fact," he lucidly continued, "isn't what's happening just a reason to MAKE her want to?" M

gh. "Why, for just what y

- he wo

'for' your great event. And then," s

en you that

ounds, poor dear, in reasons. But there's one that

e looked as if he ough

home - absolutely none whatever

in. "And also has

, with the expense of railways and hote

But she doesn't

ution, for the moment, amused his hostess. "She has rebound

, at this time of day, I might say mine. I quite feel, I assure

Charlotte owns almost nothing in the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which I have g

come with designs upon me?" And then in a moment, as if even this were almost too grave, he sounded the note that had least to do

nse, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. It's all in the way she affects

ot fair!" sai

Then there you ar

cellent effect, in grateful docility. "I only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done w

to keep out of it as long as one

she paused. "Then k

he smiled, "I don'

before anything else, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used. "I quite understand, of course, that, given her

beautifully," s

y, counted the cost. She'll have it to count, in a manne

little. "You'll

ook aft

's all

Mrs. Assingham. "Then

nly for a minute. "I'm n

ver the sill for his support, had gaily and gallantly come to show himself: always moreover less in his own interest than in that of spectators and subjects whose need to admire, even to gape, was periodically to be considered. The young man's expression became, after this fashion, something vivid and concrete - a beautiful personal presence, that of a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, patron, lighting up brave

M not!" he ra

rtant as if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. The only thing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established Mrs. Assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and s

herself. "But still," he said, "if we'r

lever, odd girl staying with

as if the question were new to h

How in the world can I kno

s. You

of it amused her afresh.

he wo

it out of her for me - the p

ion and the challenge. "I daresay,

for she had heard, within the minute, the