It was not to be said for them, either, that they were draped at this hour in any of her usual graces; unveiled and all but unashamed, they were tragic to the Princess in spite of the dissimulation that, with the return of comparative confidence, was so promptly to operate.  How tragic, in essence, the very change made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride—­this for possible defence if not for possible aggression.  Pride indeed, the next moment, had become the mantle caught up for protection and perversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her freedom.  To be doomed was, in her situation, to have extravagantly incurred a doom, so that to confess to wretchedness was, by the same stroke, to confess to falsity.  She wouldn’t confess, she didn’t—­a thousand times no; she only cast about her, and quite frankly and fiercely, for something else that would give colour to her having burst her bonds.  Her eyes expanded, her bosom heaved as she invoked it, and the effect upon Maggie was verily to wish she could only help her to it.  She presently got up—­which seemed to mean “Oh, stay if you like!” and when she had moved about awhile at random, looking away, looking at anything, at everything but her visitor; when she had spoken of the temperature and declared that she revelled in it; when she had uttered her thanks for the book, which, a little incoherently, with her second volume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had let Maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute in question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate:  when she had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less visibly in possession of her part.  Our young woman was to have passed, in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive ecstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired.  Vague, but increasingly brighter, this possibility glimmered on her.  It at last hung there adequately plain to Charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said) grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large.  It had absolutely, within the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them alike.

“I’m glad to see you alone—­there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you.  I’m tired,” said Mrs. Verver, “I’m tired—!”

“Tired—?” It had dropped the next thing; it couldn’t all come at once; but Maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition was in her face.