“Absolute idiots then?”

“Absolute idiots.  And oh,” Fanny breathed, “the way it will rest us!”

Well, he looked as if there were something in that.  “But won’t they know we’re not?”

She barely hesitated.  “Charlotte and the Prince think we are—­ which is so much gained.  Mr. Verver believes in our intelligence—­but he doesn’t matter.”

“And Maggie?  Doesn’t she know—?”

“That we see before our noses?” Yes, this indeed took longer.  “Oh, so far as she may guess it she’ll give no sign.  So it comes to the same thing.”

He raised his eyebrows.  “Comes to our not being able to help her?”

“That’s the way we shall help her.”

“By looking like fools?”

She threw up her hands.  “She only wants, herself, to look like a bigger!  So there we are!” With which she brushed it away—­his conformity was promised.  Something, however, still held her; it broke, to her own vision, as a last wave of clearness.  “Moreover now,” she said, “I see!  I mean,” she added,—­what you were asking me:  how I knew to-day, in Eaton Square, that Maggie’s awake.”  And she had indeed visibly got it.  “It was by seeing them together.”

“Seeing her with her father?” He fell behind again.  “But you’ve seen her often enough before.”

“Never with my present eyes.  For nothing like such a test—­that of this length of the others’ absence together—­has hitherto occurred.”

“Possibly!  But if she and Mr. Verver insisted upon it—?”

“Why is it such a test?  Because it has become one without their intending it.  It has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands.”

“It has soured, eh?” the Colonel said.

“The word’s horrible—­say rather it has ‘changed.’  Perhaps,” Fanny went on, “she did wish to see how much she can bear.  In that case she has seen.  Only it was she alone who—­about the visit—­insisted.  Her father insists on nothing.  And she watches him do it.”

Her husband looked impressed.  “Watches him?”

“For the first faint sign.  I mean of his noticing.  It doesn’t, as I tell you, come.  But she’s there for it to see.  And I felt,” she continued, “How she’s there; I caught her, as it were, in the fact.  She couldn’t keep it from me—­though she left her post on purpose—­came home with me to throw dust in my eyes.  I took it all—­her dust; but it was what showed me.”  With which supreme lucidity she reached the door of her room.  “Luckily it showed me also how she has succeeded.  Nothing—­from him—­has come.”

“You’re so awfully sure?”

“Sure.  Nothing will.  Good-night,” she said.  “She’ll die first.”

THE GOLDEN BOWL, VOLUME II

BOOK SECOND:  THE PRINCESS

PART FOURTH