“Oh well, I’d help you,” the Princess said with decision, “as against her—­if that’s all you require.  It’s too funny,” she went on before he again spoke, “that Mrs. Rance should be here at all.  But if you talk of the life we lead, much of it is, altogether, I’m bound to say, too funny.  The thing is,” Maggie developed under this impression, “that I don’t think we lead, as regards other people, any life at all.  We don’t at any rate, it seems to me, lead half the life we might.  And so it seems, I think, to Amerigo.  So it seems also, I’m sure, to Fanny Assingham.”

Mr. Verver-as if from due regard for these persons—­considered a little.  “What life would they like us to lead?”

“Oh, it’s not a question, I think, on which they quite feel together.  She thinks, dear Fanny, that we ought to be greater.”

“Greater—?” He echoed it vaguely.  “And Amerigo too, you say?”

“Ah yes"-her reply was prompt “but Amerigo doesn’t mind.  He doesn’t care, I mean, what we do.  It’s for us, he considers, to see things exactly as we wish.  Fanny herself,” Maggie pursued, “thinks he’s magnificent.  Magnificent, I mean, for taking everything as it is, for accepting the ‘social limitations’ of our life, for not missing what we don’t give him.”

Mr. Verver attended.  “Then if he doesn’t miss it his magnificence is easy.”

“It is easy-that’s exactly what I think.  If there were things he did miss, and if in spite of them he were always sweet, then, no doubt, he would be a more or less unappreciated hero.  He could be a Hero—­he will be one if it’s ever necessary.  But it will be about something better than our dreariness. I know,” the Princess declared, “where he’s magnificent.”  And she rested a minute on that.  She ended, however, as she had begun.  “We’re not, all the same, committed to anything stupid.  If we ought to be grander, as Fanny thinks, we can be grander.  There’s nothing to prevent.”

“Is it a strict moral obligation?” Adam Verver inquired.

“No—­it’s for the amusement.”

“For whose?  For Fanny’s own?”

“For everyone’s—­though I dare say Fanny’s would be a large part.”  She hesitated; she had now, it might have appeared, something more to bring out, which she finally produced.  “For yours in particular, say—­if you go into the question.”  She even bravely followed it up.  “I haven’t really, after all, had to think much to see that much more can be done for you than is done.”

Mr. Verver uttered an odd vague sound.  “Don’t you think a good deal is done when you come out and talk to me this way?”

“Ah,” said his daughter, smiling at him, “we make too much of that!” And then to explain:  “That’s good, and it’s natural—­but it isn’t great.  We forget that we’re as free as air.”

“Well, that’s great,” Mr. Verver pleaded.  “Great if we act on it.  Not if we don’t.”