haven't you had?--what aren't you having?"

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
s