rect aid to him? If she
had spoken in Florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had,
come back at any time--till within a few weeks ago; if she hadn't gone
to New York and hadn't held out there: if she hadn't done these things
all that has happened since would certainly have been different.
Therefore she's in a position to be consistent now. She knows the
Prince," Mrs. Assingham repeated. It involved even again her former
recognition. "And Maggie, dear thing, doesn't."

She was high, she was lucid, she was almost inspired; and it was but
the deeper drop therefore to her husband's flat common sense. "In other
words Maggie is, by her ignorance, in danger? Then if she's in danger,
there IS danger."

"There WON'T be--with Charlotte's understanding of it. That's where she
has had her conception of being able to be heroic, of being able in fact
to be sublime. She is, she will be"--the good lady by this time glowed.
"So she sees it--to become, for her best friend, an element of POSITIVE
safety."

Bob Assingham looked at it hard. "Which of them do you call her best
friend?"

She gave a toss of impatience. "I'll leave you to discover!" But the
grand truth thus made out she had now completely adopted. "It's for US,
therefore, to be hers."

"'Hers'?"

"You and I. It's for us to be Charlotte's. It's for us, on our side, to
see HER through."

"Through her sublimity?"

"Through her noble, lonely life. Only--that's essential--it mustn't be
lonely. It will be all right if she marries."

"So we're to marry her?"

"We're to marry her. It will be," Mrs. Assingham continued, "the great
thing I can do." She made it out more and more. "It will make up."

"Make up for what?" As she said nothing, however, his desire for
lucidity renewed itself. "If everything's so all right what is there to
make up for?"

"Why, if I did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. If I made a
mistake."

"You'll make up for it by making another?" And then as she again took
her time: "I thought your whole point is just that you're sure."

"One can never be ideally sure of anything. There are always
possibilities."

"Then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?"

It made her again look at him. "Where would you have been, my dear, if I
hadn't meddled with YOU?"

"Ah, that wasn't meddling--I was your own. I was your own," said the
Colonel, "from the moment I didn't object."

"Well, these people won't object. They are my