“Sure enough.  But it doesn’t matter.”  He waited an instant; then looking up through the fumes of his smoke, “She’s stupid,” he abruptly opined.

“O—­oh!” Maggie protested in a long wail.

It had made him in fact quickly change colour.  “What I mean is that she’s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.”  And he recovered, with this, all his logic.  “Why is she unhappy if she doesn’t know?”

“Doesn’t know—?” She tried to make his logic difficult.

“Doesn’t know that you know.”

It came from him in such a way that she was conscious, instantly, of three or four things to answer.  But what she said first was:  “Do you think that’s all it need take?” And before he could reply, “She knows, she knows!” Maggie proclaimed.

“Well then, what?”

But she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him.  “Oh, I needn’t tell you!  She knows enough.  Besides,” she went on, “she doesn’t believe us.”

It made the Prince stare a little.  “Ah, she asks too much!” That drew, however, from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in him a judgment.  “She won’t let you take her for unhappy.”

“Oh, I know better than any one else what she won’t let me take her for!”

“Very well,” said Amerigo, “you’ll see.”

“I shall see wonders, I know.  I’ve already seen them, and I’m prepared for them.”  Maggie recalled—­she had memories enough.  “It’s terrible”—­her memories prompted her to speak.  “I see it’s always terrible for women.”

The Prince looked down in his gravity.  “Everything’s terrible, cara, in the heart of man.  She’s making her life,” he said.  “She’ll make it.”

His wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely setting objects straight.  “A little by the way then too, while she’s about it, she’s making ours.”  At this he raised his eyes, which met her own, and she held him while she delivered herself of some thing that had been with her these last minutes.

“You spoke just now of Charlotte’s not having learned from you that I ‘know.’  Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?”

He did the inquiry all the honours—­visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response.  “You think I might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?”

“It isn’t a question of any beauty,” said Maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.”

“Oh, the quantity of truth!” the Prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured.

“That’s a thing by itself, yes.  But there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.”

“Of course there are!” the Prince hastened to reply.  After which he brought up more slowly:  “If ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.

For that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air—­for that then Maggie showed herself, as deeply and strangely taking it.  “I see.”  And she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it.  “I see.”