Her best comprehension of Amerigo’s success in not committing himself was in her recall, meanwhile, of the inquiries he had made of her on their only return to the subject, and which he had in fact explicitly provoked their return in order to make.  He had had it over with her again, the so distinctly remarkable incident of her interview at home with the little Bloomsbury shopman.  This anecdote, for him, had, not altogether surprisingly, required some straighter telling, and the Prince’s attitude in presence of it had represented once more his nearest approach to a cross-examination.  The difficulty in respect to the little man had been for the question of his motive—­his motive in writing, first, in the spirit of retraction, to a lady with whom he had made a most advantageous bargain, and in then coming to see her so that his apology should be personal.  Maggie had felt her explanation weak; but there were the facts, and she could give no other.  Left alone, after the transaction, with the knowledge that his visitor designed the object bought of him as a birthday-gift to her father—­for Maggie confessed freely to having chattered to him almost as to a friend—­the vendor of the golden bowl had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any class, and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel.  He hadn’t liked what he had done, and what he had above all made such a “good thing” of having done; at the thought of his purchaser’s good faith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquestion which would make it, verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he had known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more remarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having troubled him in other connexions.  She had recognised the oddity of her adventure and left it to show for what it was.  She had not been unconscious, on the other hand, that if it hadn’t touched Amerigo so nearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflection.  He had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and a howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing:  “Oh, most certainly, he told me his reason was because he ‘liked’ me”—­though she remained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked most by the familiarities she had offered or by those that, so pictured, she had had to endure.  That the partner of her bargain had yearned to see her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this also she had frankly expressed herself to the Prince as having, in no snubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative and indebted spirit, not delayed to make out.  He had wished, ever so seriously, to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly declined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she had not, at all events, already devoted the crystal cup to the beautiful purpose she had, so kindly and so fortunately,