She spoke, it struck her companion, with rising, with extraordinary ease; as if hearing herself say it all, besides seeing the way it was listened to, helped her from point to point.  She saw she was right—­that this was the tone for her to take and the thing for her to do, the thing as to which she was probably feeling that she had in advance, in her delays and uncertainties, much exaggerated the difficulty.  The difficulty was small, and it grew smaller as her adversary continued to shrink; she was not only doing as she wanted, but had by this time effectively done it and hung it up.  All of which but deepened Maggie’s sense of the sharp and simple need, now, of seeing her through to the end. “‘If’ you’ve been mistaken, you say?”—­and the Princess but barely faltered.  “You have been mistaken.”

Charlotte looked at her splendidly hard.  “You’re perfectly sure it’s all my mistake?”

“All I can say is that you’ve received a false impression.”

“Ah then—­so much the better!  From the moment I had received it I knew I must sooner or later speak of it—­for that, you see, is, systematically, my way.  And now,” Charlotte added, “you make me glad I’ve spoken.  I thank you very much.”

It was strange how for Maggie too, with this, the difficulty seemed to sink.  Her companion’s acceptance of her denial was like a general pledge not to keep things any worse for her than they essentially had to be; it positively helped her to build up her falsehood—­to which, accordingly, she contributed another block.  “I’ve affected you evidently—­quite accidentally—­in some way of which I’ve been all unaware.  I’ve not felt at any time that you’ve wronged me.”

“How could I come within a mile,” Charlotte inquired, “of such a possibility?”

Maggie, with her eyes on her more easily now, made no attempt to say; she said, after a little, something more to the present point.  “I accuse you—­I accuse you of nothing.”

“Ah, that’s lucky!”

Charlotte had brought this out with the richness, almost, of gaiety; and Maggie, to go on, had to think, with her own intensity, of Amerigo—­to think how he, on his side, had had to go through with his lie to her, how it was for his wife he had done so, and how his doing so had given her the clue and set her the example.  He must have had his own difficulty about it, and she was not, after all, falling below him.  It was in fact as if, thanks to her hovering image of him confronted with this admirable creature even as she was confronted, there glowed upon her from afar, yet straight and strong, a deep explanatory light which covered the last inch of the ground.  He had given her something to conform to, and she hadn’t unintelligently turned on him, “gone back on” him, as he would have said, by not conforming.  They were together thus, he and she, close, close together—­whereas Charlotte, though rising there radiantly before her, was really