rd of her
before."

"Then it's grave," said the Colonel.

She hesitated. "Do you mean grave for me?"

"Oh, that everything's grave for 'you' is what we take for granted and
are fundamentally talking about. It's grave--it WAS--for Charlotte. And
it's grave for Maggie. That is it WAS--when he did see her. Or when she
did see HIM."

"You don't torment me as much as you would like," she presently went on,
"because you think of nothing that I haven't a thousand times thought
of, and because I think of everything that you never will. It would
all," she recognised, "have been grave if it hadn't all been right. You
can't make out," she contended, "that we got to Rome before the end of
February."

He more than agreed. "There's nothing in life, my dear, that I CAN make
out."

Well, there was nothing in life, apparently, that she, at real need,
couldn't. "Charlotte, who had been there, that year, from early, quite
from November, left suddenly, you'll quite remember, about the 10th of
April. She was to have stayed on--she was to have stayed, naturally,
more or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the
Ververs, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in Paris, were at
last really coming. They were coming--that is Maggie was--largely to
see her, and above all to be with her THERE. It was all altered--by
Charlotte's going to Florence. She went from one day to the other--you
forget everything. She gave her reasons, but I thought it odd, at the
time; I had a sense that something must have happened. The difficulty
was that, though I knew a little, I didn't know enough. I didn't know
her relation with him had been, as you say, a 'near' thing--that is I
didn't know HOW near. The poor girl's departure was a flight--she went
to save herself."

He had listened more than he showed--as came out in his tone. "To save
herself?"

"Well, also, really, I think, to save HIM too. I saw it afterwards--I
see it all now. He would have been sorry--he didn't want to hurt her."

"Oh, I daresay," the Colonel laughed. "They generally don't!"

"At all events," his wife pursued, "she escaped--they both did; for they
had had simply to face it. Their marriage couldn't be, and, if that was
so, the sooner they put the Apennines between them the better. It had
taken them, it is true, some time to feel this and to find it out. They
had met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they
had met more than was known--