Her question rang out as they lingered face to face, and he still took it, before he answered, from her eyes.  “We must at least then, not to be absurd together, do the same thing.  We must act, it would really seem, in concert.”

“It would really seem!” Her eyebrows, her shoulders went up, quite in gaiety, as for the relief this brought her.  “It’s all in the world I pretend.  We must act in concert.  Heaven knows,” she said, “They do!”

So it was that he evidently saw and that, by his admission, the case, could fairly be put.  But what he evidently saw appeared to come over him, at the same time, as too much for him, so that he fell back suddenly to ground where she was not awaiting him.  “The difficulty is, and will always be, that I don’t understand them.  I didn’t at first, but I thought I should learn to.  That was what I hoped, and it appeared then that Fanny Assingham might help me.”

“Oh, Fanny Assingham!” said Charlotte Verver.

He stared a moment at her tone.  “She would do anything for us.”

To which Charlotte at first said nothing—­as if from the sense of too much.  Then, indulgently enough, she shook her head.  “We’re beyond her.”

He thought a moment—­as of where this placed them.  “She’d do anything then for them.”

“Well, so would we—­so that doesn’t help us.  She has broken down.  She doesn’t understand us.  And really, my dear,” Charlotte added, “Fanny Assingham doesn’t matter.”

He wondered again.  “Unless as taking care of them.”

“Ah,” Charlotte instantly said, “isn’t it for us, only, to do that?” She spoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty.  “I think we want no one’s aid.”

She spoke indeed with a nobleness not the less effective for coming in so oddly; with a sincerity visible even through the complicated twist by which any effort to protect the father and the daughter seemed necessarily conditioned for them.  It moved him, in any case, as if some spring of his own, a weaker one, had suddenly been broken by it.  These things, all the while, the privilege, the duty, the opportunity, had been the substance of his own vision; they formed the note he had been keeping back to show her that he was not, in their so special situation, without a responsible view.  A conception that he could name, and could act on, was something that now, at last, not to be too eminent a fool, he was required by all the graces to produce, and the luminous idea she had herself uttered would have been his expression of it.  She had anticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty, nothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged.  A large response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited perception all his own, in the glory of which—­as it almost might be called—­what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him.  “They’re extraordinarily happy.”