effect of her
coming to see him, him only, had, while he stood waiting, a singular
intensity--though after some minutes had passed the certainty of this
began to drop. Perhaps she had NOT come, or had come only for Maggie;
perhaps, on learning below that the Princess had not returned, she was
merely leaving a message, writing a word on a card. He should see, at
any rate; and meanwhile, controlling himself, would do nothing. This
thought of not interfering took on a sudden force for him; she would
doubtless hear he was at home, but he would let her visit to him be all
of her own choosing. And his view of a reason for leaving her free was
the more remarkable that, though taking no step, he yet intensely hoped.
The harmony of her breaking into sight while the superficial conditions
were so against her was a harmony with conditions that were far from
superficial and that gave, for his imagination, an extraordinary value
to her presence. The value deepened strangely, moreover, with the rigour
of his own attitude--with the fact too that, listening hard, he neither
heard the house-door close again nor saw her go back to her cab; and
it had risen to a climax by the time he had become aware, with his
quickened sense, that she had followed the butler up to the landing from
which his room opened. If anything could further then have added to
it, the renewed pause outside, as if she had said to the man "Wait a
moment!" would have constituted this touch. Yet when the man had shown
her in, had advanced to the tea-table to light the lamp under the kettle
and had then busied himself, all deliberately, with the fire, she made
it easy for her host to drop straight from any height of tension and
to meet her, provisionally, on the question of Maggie. While the butler
remained it was Maggie that she had come to see and Maggie that--in
spite of this attendant's high blankness on the subject of all
possibilities on that lady's part--she would cheerfully, by the fire,
wait for. As soon as they were alone together, however, she mounted, as
with the whizz and the red light of a rocket, from the form to the fact,
saying straight out, as she stood and looked at him: "What else, my
dear, what in the world else can we do?"

It was as if he then knew, on the spot, why he had been feeling, for
hours, as he had felt--as if he in fact knew, within the minute, things
he had not known even while she was panting, as from the effect of the
staircase, at the