ed. Nothing IS happening."

He looked a trifle disappointed. "I see. For US."

"For us. For whom else?" And he was to feel indeed how she wished him
to understand it. "We know nothing on earth--!" It was an undertaking he
must sign.

So he wrote, as it were, his name. "We know nothing on earth." It was
like the soldiers' watchword at night.

"We're as innocent," she went on in the same way, "as babes."

"Why not rather say," he asked, "as innocent as they themselves are?"

"Oh, for the best of reasons! Because we're much more so."

He wondered. "But how can we be more--?"

"For them? Oh, easily! We can be anything."

"Absolute idiots then?"

"Absolute idiots. And oh," Fanny breathed, "the way it will rest us!"

Well, he looked as if there were something in that. "But won't they know
we're not?"

She barely hesitated. "Charlotte and the Prince think we are--which is
so much gained. Mr. Verver believes in our intelligence--but he doesn't
matter."

"And Maggie? Doesn't SHE know--?"

"That we see before our noses?" Yes, this indeed took longer. "Oh, so
far as she may guess it she'll give no sign. So it comes to the same
thing."

He raised his eyebrows. "Comes to our not being able to help her?"

"That's the way we SHALL help her."

"By looking like fools?"

She threw up her hands. "She only wants, herself, to look like a bigger!
So there we are!" With which she brushed it away--his conformity was
promised. Something, however, still held her; it broke, to her own
vision, as a last wave of clearness. "Moreover NOW," she said, "I see! I
mean," she added,--"what you were asking me: how I knew to-day, in Eaton
Square, that Maggie's awake." And she had indeed visibly got it. "It was
by seeing them together."

"Seeing her with her father?" He fell behind again. "But you've seen her
often enough before."

"Never with my present eyes. For nothing like such a test--that of this
length of the others' absence together--has hitherto occurred."

"Possibly! But if she and Mr. Verver insisted upon it--?"

"Why is it such a test? Because it has become one without their
intending it. It has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands."

"It has soured, eh?" the Colonel said.

"The word's horrible--say rather it has 'changed.' Perhaps," Fanny went
on, "she did wish to see how much she can bear. In that case she HAS
seen. Only it was she alone who--about the visit--insisted. Her father
insists on nothing. And she watche