guaranteed for him
by the intensity of his accord with Charlotte. It was impossible that he
should not now and again meet Charlotte's eyes, as it was also visible
that she too now and again met her husband's. For her as well, in all
his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. It put them, it kept them
together, through the vain show of their separation, made the two other
faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the
flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge
between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for
that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of
"care," would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound.

XX

The main interest of these hours for us, however, will have been in
the way the Prince continued to know, during a particular succession of
others, separated from the evening in Eaton Square by a short interval,
a certain persistent aftertaste. This was the lingering savour of a
cup presented to him by Fanny Assingham's hand after dinner, while the
clustered quartette kept their ranged companions, in the music-room,
moved if one would, but conveniently motionless. Mrs. Assingham
contrived, after a couple of pieces, to convey to her friend that, for
her part, she was moved--by the genius of Brahms--beyond what she could
bear; so that, without apparent deliberation, she had presently floated
away, at the young man's side, to such a distance as permitted them
to converse without the effect of disdain. It was the twenty minutes
enjoyed with her, during the rest of the concert, in the less associated
electric glare of one of the empty rooms--it was their achieved and, as
he would have said, successful, most pleasantly successful, talk on one
of the sequestered sofas, it was this that was substantially to underlie
his consciousness of the later occasion. The later occasion, then mere
matter of discussion, had formed her ground for desiring--in a light
undertone into which his quick ear read indeed some nervousness--these
independent words with him: she had sounded, covertly but distinctly, by
the time they were seated together, the great question of what it might
involve. It had come out for him before anything else, and so abruptly
that this almost needed an explanation. Then the abruptness itself
had appeared to explain--which had introduced, in turn, a slight
awkwardne