“A crack?—­in the gold—?”

“It isn’t gold.”  With which, somewhat strangely, Maggie smiled.

“That’s the point.”

“What is it then?”

“It’s glass—­and cracked, under the gilt, as I say, at that.”

“Glass?—­of this weight?”

“Well,” said Maggie, “it’s crystal—­and was once, I suppose, precious.  But what,” she then asked, “do you mean to do with it?”

She had come away from her window, one of the three by which the wide room, enjoying an advantageous “back,” commanded the western sky and caught a glimpse of the evening flush; while Mrs. Assingham, possessed of the bowl, and possessed too of this indication of a flaw, approached another for the benefit of the slowly-fading light.  Here, thumbing the singular piece, weighing it, turning it over, and growing suddenly more conscious, above all, of an irresistible impulse, she presently spoke again.  “A crack?  Then your whole idea has a crack.”

Maggie, by this time at some distance from her, waited a moment. 
“If you mean by my idea the knowledge that has come to me that—­”

But Fanny, with decision, had already taken her up.  “There’s only one knowledge that concerns us—­one fact with which we can have anything to do.”

“Which one, then?”

“The fact that your husband has never, never, never—!” But the very gravity of this statement, while she raised her eyes to her friend across the room, made her for an instant hang fire.

“Well, never what?”

“Never been half so interested in you as now.  But don’t you, my dear, really feel it?”

Maggie considered.  “Oh, I think what I’ve told you helps me to feel it.  His having to-day given up even his forms; his keeping away from me; his not having come.”  And she shook her head as against all easy glosses.  “It is because of that, you know.”

“Well then, if it’s because of this—!” And Fanny Assingham, who had been casting about her and whose inspiration decidedly had come, raised the cup in her two hands, raised it positively above her head, and from under it, solemnly, smiled at the Princess as a signal of intention.  So for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she dashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it, with the violence of the crash, lie shattered.  She had flushed with the force of her effort, as Maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and this high reflection in their faces was all that passed between them for a minute more.  After which, “Whatever you meant by it—­and I don’t want to know now—­has ceased to exist,” Mrs. Assingham said.