THE GOLDEN BOWL
from it, admiring it at a distance. "But what has that to do—?"
"It has everything. You'll see." With which again however for the moment Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. "He knew her before—before I had ever seen him."
'"'He' knew—?" But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it.
"Amerigo knew Charlotte—more than I ever dreamed."
Fanny felt then it was stare for stare. "But surely you always knew they had met."
"I didn't understand. I knew too little. Don't you see what I mean?" the Princess asked.
Mrs. Assingham wondered during these instants how much she even now knew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking. With that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt first a strange barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any consequence of judgement. She shouldn't be judged—save by herself; which was her own wretched business. The next moment however at all events she inwardly blushed not for her immediate cowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of "getting off," before so much as thinking—that is of pitifully seeing—that she was in presence of an appeal that was all an appeal, that utterly accepted
160
