第99章 Chapter 5(3)

"Never." They treated the matter not exactly with solemnity, but with a certain decency, even perhaps urgency, of distinctness. "It would probably have been better," Charlotte added. "But things turn out--! And it leaves us"--she made the point--"more alone."

He seemed to wonder. "It leaves YOU more alone."

"Oh," she again returned, "don't put it all on me! Maggie would have given herself to his child, I'm (308) sure, scarcely less than he gives himself to yours. It would have taken more than any child of mine," she explained--"it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could I have had them--to keep our sposi apart." She smiled as for the breadth of the image, but as he seemed to take it in spite of this for important she then spoke gravely enough. "It's as strange as you like, but we're immensely alone." He kept vaguely moving, but there were moments when again, with an awkward ease and his hands in his pockets, he was more directly before her. He stood there at these last words, which had the effect of making him for a little throw back his head and, as thinking something out, stare up at the ceiling. "What will you say," she meanwhile asked, "that you've been doing?" This brought his consciousness and his eyes back to her, and she pointed her question. "I mean when she comes in--for I suppose she WILL, some time, come in. It seems to me we must say the same thing."

Well, he thought again. "Yet I can scarce pretend to have had what I have n't."

"Ah WHAT haven't you had?--what aren't you having?"

Her question rang out as they lingered face to face, and he still took it, before he answered, from her eyes. "We must at least then, not to be absurd together, do the same thing. We must act, it would really seem, in concert."

"It would really seem!" Her eyebrows, her shoulders went up, quite in gaiety, as for the relief this brought her. "It's all in the world I pretend.

We (309) must act in concert. Heaven knows," she said, "THEY do!"

So it was that he evidently saw and that, by his admission, the case could fairly be put. But what he evidently saw appeared to come over him, at the same time, as too much for him, so that he fell back suddenly to ground where she wasn't awaiting him. "The difficulty is, and will always be, that I don't understand them. I did n't at first, but I thought I should learn to. That was what I hoped, and it appeared then that Fanny Assingham might help me."

"Oh Fanny Assingham!" said Charlotte Verver.

He stared a moment at her tone. "She would do anything for us."

To which Charlotte at first said nothing--as if from the sense of too much. Then, indulgently enough, she shook her head. "We're beyond her."

He thought a moment--as of where this placed them. "She'd do anything then for THEM."

"Well, so would we--so that doesn't help us. She has broken down. She does n't understand us. And really, my dear," Charlotte added, "Fanny Assingham does n't matter."

He wondered again. "Unless as taking care of THEM."

"Ah," Charlotte instantly said, "isn't it for us, only, to do that?"

She spoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty.

"I think we want no one's aid."