“What it comes to,” Maggie presently returned, “is what that thing has put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning:  how far they had originally gone together.  If there was so much between them before, there can’t—­with all the other appearances—­not be a great deal more now.”  And she went on and on; she steadily made her points.  “If such things were already then between them they make all the difference for possible doubt of what may have been between them since.  If there had been nothing before there might be explanations.  But it makes to-day too much to explain.  I mean to explain away,” she said.

Fanny Assingham was there to explain away—­of this she was duly conscious; for that at least had been true up to now.  In the light, however, of Maggie’s demonstration the quantity, even without her taking as yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever.  Besides which, with or without exactness, the effect of each successive minute in the place was to put her more in presence of what Maggie herself saw.  Maggie herself saw the truth, and that was really, while they remained there together, enough for Mrs. Assingham’s relation to it.  There was a force in the Princess’s mere manner about it that made the detail of what she knew a matter of minor importance.  Fanny had in fact something like a momentary shame over her own need of asking for this detail.  “I don’t pretend to repudiate,” she said after a little, “my own impressions of the different times I suppose you speak of; any more,” she added, “than I can forget what difficulties and, as it constantly seemed to me, what dangers, every course of action—­whatever I should decide upon—­made for me.  I tried, I tried hard, to act for the best.  And, you know,” she next pursued, while, at the sound of her own statement, a slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came back to her—­“and, you know, I believe it’s what I shall turn out to have done.”

This produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened and deepened, was that of silence only, and the long, charged look; all of which found virtual consecration when Maggie at last spoke.  “I’m sure you tried to act for the best.”

It kept Fanny Assingham again a minute in silence.  “I never thought, dearest, you weren’t an angel.”

Not, however, that this alone was much help!  “It was up to the very eve, you see,” the Princess went on—­“up to within two or three days of our marriage.  That, that, you know—!” And she broke down for strangely smiling.

“Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me.  But I didn’t know it.  That is,” said Fanny Assingham, “I didn’t know of anything in particular.”  It sounded weak—­that she felt; but she had really her point to make.  “What I mean is that I don’t know, for knowledge, now, anything I didn’t then.  That’s how I am.”  She still, however, floundered.  “I mean it’s how I was.”