“It isn’t a question of any beauty,” said Maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.”

“Oh, the quantity of truth!” the Prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured.

“That’s a thing by itself, yes.  But there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.”

“Of course there are!” the Prince hastened to reply.  After which he brought up more slowly:  “If ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.

For that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air—­for that then Maggie showed herself, as deeply and strangely taking it.  “I see.”  And she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it.  “I see.”

The completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine.  “Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear—!” It was all he could say.

She wasn’t talking, however, at large.  “You’ve kept up for so long a silence—!”

“Yes, yes, I know what I’ve kept up.  But will you do,” he asked, “still one thing more for me?”

It was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her turn pale.  “Is there even one thing left?”

“Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!”—­it had pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable.  There was nothing, however, that the Princess herself couldn’t say.  “I’ll do anything, if you’ll tell me what.”

“Then wait.”  And his raised Italian hand, with its play of admonitory fingers, had never made gesture more expressive.  His voice itself dropped to a tone—!  “Wait,” he repeated.  “Wait.”

She understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him.  “Till they’ve been here, you mean?”

“Yes, till they’ve gone.  Till they’re away.”

She kept it up.  “Till they’ve left the country?” She had her eyes on him for clearness; these were the conditions of a promise—­so that he put the promise, practically, into his response.  “Till we’ve ceased to see them—­for as long as God may grant!  Till we’re really alone.”

“Oh, if it’s only that—!” When she had drawn from him thus then, as she could feel, the thick breath of the definite—­which was the intimate, the immediate, the familiar, as she hadn’t had them for so long—­she turned away again, she put her hand on the knob of the door.  But her hand rested at first without a grasp; she had another effort to make, the effort of leaving him, of which everything that had just passed between them, his presence, irresistible, overcharged with it, doubled the difficulty.  There was something—­she couldn’t have told what; it was as if, shut in together, they had come too far—­too far for where they were; so that the mere act of her quitting him was like the attempt to recover the lost and gone.  She had taken in with her something that, within the ten minutes, and especially within the last three