Straighter than ever, thus, the Princess again felt it all put upon her, and there was a minute, just a supreme instant, during which there burned in her a wild wish that her father would only look up.  It throbbed for these seconds as a yearning appeal to him—­she would chance it, that is, if he would but just raise his eyes and catch them, across the larger space, standing in the outer dark together.  Then he might be affected by the sight, taking them as they were; he might make some sign—­she scarce knew what—­that would save her; save her from being the one, this way, to pay all.  He might somehow show a preference—­ distinguishing between them; might, out of pity for her, signal to her that this extremity of her effort for him was more than he asked.  That represented Maggie’s one little lapse from consistency—­the sole small deflection in the whole course of her scheme.  It had come to nothing the next minute, for the dear man’s eyes had never moved, and Charlotte’s hand, promptly passed into her arm, had already, had very firmly drawn her on—­quite, for that matter, as from some sudden, some equal perception on her part too of the more ways than one in which their impression could appeal.  They retraced their steps along the rest of the terrace, turning the corner of the house, and presently came abreast of the other windows, those of the pompous drawing-room, still lighted and still empty.  Here Charlotte again paused, and it was again as if she were pointing out what Maggie had observed for herself, the very look the place had of being vivid in its stillness, of having, with all its great objects as ordered and balanced as for a formal reception, been appointed for some high transaction, some real affair of state.  In presence of this opportunity she faced her companion once more; she traced in her the effect of everything she had already communicated; she signified, with the same success, that the terrace and the sullen night would bear too meagre witness to the completion of her idea.  Soon enough then, within the room, under the old lustres of Venice and the eyes of the several great portraits, more or less contemporary with these, that awaited on the walls of Fawns their final far migration—­soon enough Maggie found herself staring, and at first all too gaspingly, at the grand total to which each separate demand Mrs. Verver had hitherto made upon her, however she had made it, now amounted.

“I’ve been wanting—­and longer than you’d perhaps believe—­to put a question to you for which no opportunity has seemed to me yet quite so good as this.  It would have been easier perhaps if you had struck me as in the least disposed ever to give me one.  I have to take it now, you see, as I find it.”  They stood in the centre of the immense room, and Maggie could feel that the scene of life her imagination had made of it twenty minutes before was by this time sufficiently peopled.  These few straight words filled it to its uttermost reaches, and nothing was