YOU?"

She looked at him again for an interval. "They believe in it themselves.
They take it for what it is. And that," she said, "saves them."

"But if what it 'is' is just their chance--?"

"It's their chance for what I told you when Charlotte first turned up.
It's their chance for the idea that I was then sure she had."

The Colonel showed his effort to recall. "Oh, your idea, at different
moments, of any one of THEIR ideas!" This dim procession, visibly,
mustered before him, and, with the best will in the world, he could but
watch its immensity. "Are you speaking now of something to which you can
comfortably settle down?"

Again, for a little, she only glowered at him. "I've come back to my
belief, and that I have done so--"

"Well?" he asked as she paused.

"Well, shows that I'm right--for I assure you I had wandered far. Now
I'm at home again, and I mean," said Fanny Assingham, "to stay here.
They're beautiful," she declared.

"The Prince and Charlotte?"

"The Prince and Charlotte. THAT'S how they're so remarkable. And the
beauty," she explained, "is that they're afraid for them. Afraid, I
mean, for the others."

"For Mr. Verver and Maggie?" It did take some following. "Afraid of
what?"

"Afraid of themselves."

The Colonel wondered. "Of THEMSELVES? Of Mr. Verver's and Maggie's
selves?"

Mrs. Assingham remained patient as well as lucid. "Yes--of SUCH
blindness too. But most of all of their own danger."

He turned it over. "That danger BEING the blindness--?"

"That danger being their position. What their position contains--of
all the elements--I needn't at this time of day attempt to tell you. It
contains, luckily--for that's the mercy--everything BUT blindness:
I mean on their part. The blindness," said Fanny, "is primarily her
husband's."

He stood for a moment; he WOULD have it straight. "Whose husband's?"

"Mr. Verver's," she went on. "The blindness is most of all his. That
they feel--that they see. But it's also his wife's."

"Whose wife's?" he asked as she continued to gloom at him in a manner at
variance with the comparative cheer of her contention. And then as she
only gloomed: "The Prince's?"

"Maggie's own--Maggie's very own," she pursued as for herself.

He had a pause. "Do you think Maggie so blind?"

"The question isn't of what I think. The question's of the conviction
that guides the Prince and Charlotte--who have better opportunities than
I for judging."

The Colonel a