第88章 Chapter 2(3)

If this far red spark, which might have been figured by her mind as the headlight of an approaching train seen through the length of a tunnel, was not, on her side, an ignis fatuus, a mere subjective phenomenon, it twinkled there at the direct expense of what the Prince was inviting her to understand. Meanwhile too, however, and unmistakeably, the real treatment of their subject did, at a given moment, sound. This was when he proceeded, with just the same perfect possession of his thought--on the manner of which he could n't have improved--to complete his successful simile by another, in fact (272) by just the supreme, touch, the touch for which it had till now been waiting. "For Mrs. Verver to be known to people so intensely and exclusively as her husband's wife something is wanted that, you know, they have n't exactly got. He should manage to be known--or at least to be seen--a little more as his wife's husband. You surely must by this time have seen for yourself that he has his own habits and his own ways, and that he makes, more and more--as of course he has a perfect right to do--his own discriminations. He's so perfect, so ideal a father, and, doubtless largely by that very fact, so generous, so comfortable, so admirable a father-in-law, that I should really feel it base to avail myself of any standpoint whatever to criticise him. To YOU nevertheless I may make just one remark; for you're not stupid--you always understand so blessedly what one means."

He paused an instant, as if even this one remark might be difficult for him should she give no sign of encouraging him to produce it. Nothing would have induced her, however, to encourage him; she was now conscious of having never in her life stood so still or sat, inwardly, as it. were, so tight; she felt like the horse of the adage, brought--and brought by her own fault--to the water, but strong, for the occasion, in the one fact that she could n't be forced to drink. Invited, in other words, to understand, she held her breath for fear of showing she did, and this for the excellent reason that she was at last fairly afraid to. It was sharp for her, at the same time, that she was certain, in advance, of his remark; that she heard it before it had sounded, that she already tasted in fine (273) the bitterness it would have for her special sensibility But her companion, from an inward and different need of his own, was presently not deterred by her silence. "What I really don't see is why, from his own point of view--given, that is, his conditions, so fortunate as they stood--he should have wished to marry at all." There it was then--exactly what she knew would come, and exactly, for reasons that seemed now to thump at her heart, as distressing to her. Yet she was resolved meanwhile not to suffer, as they used to say of the martyrs, then and there; not to suffer, odiously, helplessly, in public--which could be prevented but by her breaking off with whatever inconsequence; by her treating their discussion as ended and getting away. She suddenly wanted to go home--much as she had wanted, an hour or two before, to come. She wanted to leave well behind her both her question and the couple in whom it had abruptly taken such vivid form--but it was dreadful to have the appearance of disconcerted flight. Discussion had of itself, to her sense, become danger--such light, as from open crevices, it let in; and the overt recognition of danger was worse than anything else. The worst in fact came while she was thinking how she could retreat and still not overtly recognise. Her face had betrayed her trouble, and with that she was lost. "I'm afraid, however," the Prince said, "that I, for some reason, distress you--for which I beg your pardon. We've always talked so well together--it has been, from the beginning, the greatest pull for me." Nothing so much as such a tone could have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now (274) at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it. "We shall talk again, all the same, better than ever--I depend on it too much. Don't you remember what I told you so definitely one day before my marriage?--that, moving as I did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any I had known, I looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through. I beg you to believe," he added, "that I look to you yet."

His very insistence had fortunately the next moment affected her as bringing her help; with which at least she could hold up her head to speak.

"Ah, you ARE through--you were through long ago. Or if you are n't you ought to be."

"Well then if I ought to be it's all the more reason why you should continue to help me. Because very distinctly I assure you I'm not. The new things--or ever so many of them--are still for me new things; the mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense element that I've failed to puzzle out. As we've happened so luckily to find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as soon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good kind hour. If you refuse it me"--and he addressed himself to her continued reserve--"I shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your responsibility."

At this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved a weak vessel. She could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on her mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press. "Oh I deny (275) responsibility--to you. So far as I ever had it I've done with it."

He had been all the while beautifully smiling; but she made his look now penetrate her again more. "As to whom then do you confess it?"

"Ah mio caro, that's--if to any one--my own business!"

He continued to look at her hard. "You give me up then?

It was what Charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place. She was on the point of replying "Do you and she agree together for what you'll say to me?"--but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time, little as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it. "I think I don't know what to make of you."

"You must receive me at least," he said.

"Oh please not till I'm ready for you!"--and though she found a laugh for it she had to turn away. She had never turned away from him before, and it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of him.