THE GOLDEN BOWL
physical quest of a peace not to be grasped, something of Mrs. Assingham's picture of her as thrown for a grim future beyond the great sea and the great continent had at first found fulfilment. She had got away in this fashion—burning behind her almost the ships of disguise—to let her horror of what was before her play up without witnesses; and even after Maggie's approach had presented an innocent front it was still not to be mistaken that she bristled with the signs of her extremity. It wasn't to be said for them either that they were draped at this hour in any of her usual graces; unveiled and all but unashamed, they were tragic to the Princess in spite of the dissimulation that with the return of comparative confidence was so promptly to operate. How tragic in essence the very change made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride—this for possible defence if not for possible aggression. Pride indeed had the next moment become the mantle caught up for protection and perversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her freedom. To be doomed was in her situation to have extravagantly incurred a doom, so that to confess to wretchedness was by the same stroke to confess to falsity. She wouldn't confess, she didn't—a thousand times no; she only cast about her, and quite frankly and fiercely, for something else that would give colour to her having burst her bonds. Her eyes expanded, her bosom heaved as she invoked it, and the effect upon Maggie was verily to wish she could only help her to it. She presently got up—which seemed to mean "Oh stay if you like!"—and when she had
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