第232章 Chapter 3(4)

But she did n't hesitate now; she brought her idea forth. "To be back there without Charlotte is more than I think would do." And as she smiled at him with it, so she saw him the next instant take it--take it in a way that helped her smile to pass all for an allusion to what she did n't and could n't say. This quantity was too clear--that she could n't at such an hour be pretending to name to him what it was, as he would have said, "going to be," at Fawns or anywhere else, to want for HIM. That was now--and in a manner exaltedly, sublimely--out of their compass and their question; so that what was she doing while they waited for the Principino, while they left the others together and their tension just sensibly threatened, what was she doing but just offer a bold but substantial substitute? Nothing was stranger moreover, under the action of Charlotte's presence, than the fact of a felt sincerity in her words. She felt her sincerity absolutely sound--she gave it for all it might mean. "Because Charlotte, dear, you know," she said, "is incomparable." It took thirty seconds, but she was to feel when these were over that she had pronounced one of the happiest words of her life. They had turned from the view of the street; they leaned together against the balcony rail, with the room largely in sight from where they stood, but with the Prince and Mrs. Verver out of range. Nothing he could try, she immediately saw, was to keep his eyes from lighting; not even his taking out his cigarette-case (364) and saying before he said anything else: "May I smoke?" She met it for encouragement with her "My dear!" again, and then while he struck his match she had just another minute to be nervous--a minute that she made use of however not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair inside: "Father, father--Charlotte's great!"

It was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her. "Charlotte's great."

They could close upon it--such a basis as they might immediately feel it make; and so they stood together over it quite gratefully, each recording to the other's eyes that it was firm under their feet. They had even thus a renewed wait as for proof of it; much as if he were letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed companions, that this was finally just why--but just WHY! "You see," he presently added, "how right I was. Right, I mean, to do it for you."

"Ah rather!" she murmured with her smile. And then as to be herself ideally right: "I don't see what you would have done without her."

"The point was," he returned quietly, "that I did n't see what YOU were to do. Yet it was a risk."

"It was a risk," said Maggie--"but I believed in it. At least for myself!" she smiled.

"Well NOW," he smoked, "we see."

"We see."

"I know her better."

"You know her best."

"Oh but naturally!" On which, as the warranted (365) truth of it hung in the air--the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted--she found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet known, in the vision of all he might mean. The sense of it in her rose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him linger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and looking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail, at the grey gaunt front of the house, "She's beautiful, beautiful!" her sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. It was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control;

and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting. They were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on Charlotte's VALUE--the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the Prince on his side was perhaps making larger acquaintance. If Maggie had desired at so late an hour some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values. Somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of Charlotte's! What else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great?