at the heart of that resurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves with calling his irritation—­deep in the bosom of this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety.  There were situations that were ridiculous, but that one couldn’t yet help, as for instance when one’s wife chose, in the most usual way, to make one so.  Precisely here, however, was the difference; it had taken poor Maggie to invent a way so extremely unusual—­yet to which, none the less, it would be too absurd that he should merely lend himself.  Being thrust, systematically, with another woman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to like, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable—­this was a predicament of which the dignity depended all on one’s own handling.  What was supremely grotesque, in fact, was the essential opposition of theories—­as if a galantuomo, as he at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything but blush to “go about” at such a rate with such a person as Mrs. Verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the Fall.  The grotesque theory, as he would have called it, was perhaps an odd one to resent with violence, and he did it—­also as a man of the world—­all merciful justice; but, assuredly, none the less, there was but one way really to mark, and for his companion as much as for himself, the commiseration in which they held it.  Adequate comment on it could only be private, but it could also at least be active, and of rich and effectual comment Charlotte and he were fortunately alike capable.  Wasn’t this consensus literally their only way not to be ungracious?  It was positively as if the measure of their escape from that danger were given by the growth between them, during their auspicious visit, of an exquisite sense of complicity.

XXI

He found himself therefore saying, with gaiety, even to Fanny Assingham, for their common, concerned glance at Eaton Square, the glance that was so markedly never, as it might have been, a glance at Portland Place:  “What would our cari sposi have made of it here? what would they, you know, really?”—­which overflow would have been reckless if, already, and surprisingly perhaps even to himself, he had not got used to thinking of this friend as a person in whom the element of protest had of late been unmistakably allayed.  He exposed himself of course to her replying:  “Ah, if it would have been so bad for them, how can it be so good for you?”—­but, quite apart from the small sense the question would have had at the best, she appeared already to unite with him in confidence and cheer.  He had his view, as well—­or at least a partial one—­of the inner spring of this present comparative humility, which was all consistent with the retraction he had practically seen her make after Mr. Verver’s