第42章 Chapter 6(4)

Charlotte, wondering but resisting, bent over the bowl again. "Then it's impossible. It's more than I can afford."

"Ah," the man returned, "one can sometimes afford for a present more than one can afford for one's self."

He said it so coaxingly that she found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his place. "Oh of course it would be only for a present--!"

"Then it would be a lovely one."

"Does one make a present," she asked, "of an object that contains to one's knowledge a flaw?"

"Well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. The good faith," the man smiled, "is always there."

"And leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover it?"

"He would n't discover it--if you're speaking of a gentleman."

"I'm not speaking of any one in particular," Charlotte said.

(116) "Well, whoever it might be. He might know--and he might try. But he would n't find."

She kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet had a fancy for the bowl. "Not even if the thing should come to pieces?"

And then as he was silent: "Not even if he should have to say to me 'The Golden Bowl is broken'?"

He was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. "Ah if any one should WANT to smash it--!"

She laughed; she almost admired the little man's expression. "You mean one could smash it with a hammer?"

"Yes, if nothing else would do. Or perhaps even by dashing it with violence--say upon a marble floor."

"Oh marble floors--!" But she might have been thinking--for they were a connexion, marble floors; a connexion with many things: with her old Rome, and with HIS; with the palaces of his past and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the Ververs. All the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. "Does crystal then break--when it IS crystal? I thought its beauty was its hardness."

Her friend, in his way, discriminated. "Its beauty is its BEING crystal.

But its hardness is certainly its safety. It does n't break," he went on, "like vile glass. It splits--if there is a split."

"Ah!"--Charlotte breathed with interest. "If (117) there IS a split."

And she looked down again at the bowl. "There IS a split, eh? Crystal does split, eh?"

"On lines and by laws of its own."

"You mean if there's a weak place?"

For all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest sweetest sound.

"Where's the weak place?"

She then did the question justice. "Well, for me only the price. I'm poor, you see--very poor. But I thank you and I'll think." The Prince, on the other side of the shop-window, had finally faced about and, as to see if she had n't done, was trying to reach with his eyes the comparatively dim interior. "I like it," she said--"I want it. But I must decide what I can do."

The man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. "Well, I'll keep it for you."

The small quarter of an hour had had its marked oddity--this she felt even by the time the open air and the Bloomsbury aspects had again, in their protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her more or less their own. Yet the oddity might have been registered as small as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much further, she had to take account of with her companion. This latter was simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer inevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. They did n't say so, but it was on the line of giving up Maggie's present that they practically proceeded--the line of giving it up without more reference to it. (118) The Prince's first reference was in fact quite independently made. "I hope you satisfied yourself, before you had done, of what was the matter with that bowl."

"No indeed, I satisfied myself of nothing. Of nothing at least but that the more I looked at it the more I liked it, and that if you were n't so unaccommodating this would be just the occasion for your giving me the pleasure of accepting it."

He looked graver for her at this than he had looked all the morning.