he had herself uttered would have been his expression of it. She had
anticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty,
nothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged. A large
response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited
perception all his own, in the glory of which--as it almost might be
called--what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him.
"They're extraordinarily happy."

Oh, Charlotte's measure of it was only too full. "Beatifically."

"That's the great thing," he went on; "so that it doesn't matter,
really, that one doesn't understand. Besides, you do--enough."

"I understand my husband perhaps," she after an instant conceded. "I
don't understand your wife."

"You're of the same race, at any rate--more or less; of the same general
tradition and education, of the same moral paste. There are things you
have in common with them. But I, on my side, as I've gone on trying to
see if I haven't some of these things too--I, on my side, have more and
more failed. There seem at last to be none worth mentioning. I can't
help seeing it--I'm decidedly too different."

"Yet you're not"--Charlotte made the important point--"too different
from ME."

"I don't know--as we're not married. That brings things out. Perhaps if
we were," he said, "you WOULD find some abyss of divergence."

"Since it depends on that then," she smiled, "I'm safe--as you are
anyhow. Moreover, as one has so often had occasion to feel, and even to
remark, they're very, very simple. That makes," she added, "a difficulty
for belief; but when once one has taken it in it makes less difficulty
for action. I HAVE at last, for myself, I think, taken it in. I'm not
afraid."

He wondered a moment. "Not afraid of what?"

"Well, generally, of some beastly mistake. Especially of any mistake
founded on one's idea of their difference. For that idea," Charlotte
developed, "positively makes one so tender."

"Ah, but rather!"

"Well then, there it is. I can't put myself into Maggie's skin--I can't,
as I say. It's not my fit--I shouldn't be able, as I see it, to breathe
in it. But I can feel that I'd do anything--to shield it from a bruise.
Tender as I am for her too," she went on, "I think I'm still more so for
my husband. HE'S in truth of a sweet simplicity--!"

The Prince turned over a while the sweet simplicity of Mr. Verver.
"Well, I don't know that I can choose. At night all cats are grey.