ounced or encountered an obstacle. "I'm
afraid I'm not sure."

"Then how do you know?"

"Well, I don't KNOW"--and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic.
"I only make it out for myself."

"But you must make it out about someone in particular."

She had another pause. "I don't think I want even for myself to put
names and times, to pull away any veil. I've an idea there has been,
more than once, somebody I'm not acquainted with--and needn't be or
want to be. In any case it's all over, and, beyond giving her credit for
everything, it's none of my business."

Mr. Verver deferred, yet he discriminated. "I don't see how you can give
credit without knowing the facts."

"Can't I give it--generally--for dignity? Dignity, I mean, in
misfortune."

"You've got to postulate the misfortune first."

"Well," said Maggie, "I can do that. Isn't it always a misfortune to
be--when you're so fine--so wasted? And yet," she went on, "not to wail
about it, not to look even as if you knew it?"

Mr. Verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then,
after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop.
"Well, she mustn't be wasted. We won't at least have waste."

It produced in Maggie's face another gratitude. "Then, dear sir, that's
all I want."

And it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk
if her father had not, after a little, shown the disposition to revert.
"How many times are you supposing that she has tried?"

Once more, at this, and as if she hadn't been, couldn't be, hated to be,
in such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. "Oh, I
don't say she absolutely ever TRIED--!"

He looked perplexed. "But if she has so absolutely failed, what then had
she done?"

"She has suffered--she has done that." And the Princess added: "She has
loved--and she has lost."

Mr. Verver, however, still wondered. "But how many times."

Maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. "Once is enough. Enough, that is,
for one to be kind to her."

Her father listened, yet not challenging--only as with a need of some
basis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm. "But
has she told you nothing?"

"Ah, thank goodness, no!"

He stared. "Then don't young women tell?"

"Because, you mean, it's just what they're supposed to do?" She looked
at him, flushed again now; with which, after another hesitation, "Do
young men tell?" she asked.

He gave a short la