when he concluded his inquiry. "If there hadn't been anything there shouldn't have been between the pair before Charlotte bolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there SHOULDN'T be: why in the world was what there HAD been too bad to be spoken of?"
Mrs. Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped.
"I thought you wanted me to be quiet."
"So I do--and I'm trying to make you so much so that you won't worry more. Can't you be quiet on THAT?"
She thought a moment--then seemed to try. "To relate that she had to 'bolt' for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wished--THAT I can perfectly feel Charlotte's not wanting to do."
"Ah then, if it HAS done for her what she wished-!" But the Colonel's conclusion hung by the "if" which his wife didn't take up. So it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again. "All one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him."
"Say she hasn't come back to him. Not really to HIM."
"I'll say anything you like. But that won't do me the same good as your saying it."
"Nothing, my dear, will do you good," Mrs. Assingham returned. "You don't care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be grossly amused because I don't keep washing my hands--!"
"I thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this is precisely what you do."
But his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as she had gone on before. "You're perfectly indifferent, really; you're perfectly immoral. You've taken part in the sack of cities, and I'm sure you've done dreadful things yourself. But I DON'T trouble my head, if you like. 'So now there!'" she laughed.
He accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. "Well, I back poor Charlotte."
"'Back' her?"
"To know what she wants."
"Ah then, so do I. She does know what she
