Through her sublimity?
Through her noble, lonely life. Onlythats essentialit mustnt be lonely. It will be all right if she marries.
So were to marry her?
Were to marry her. It will be, Mrs. Assingham continued, the great thing I can do. She made it out more and more. It will make up.
Make up for what? As she said nothing, however, his desire for lucidity renewed itself. If everythings so all right what is there to make up for?
Why, if I did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. If I made a mistake.
Youll make up for it by making another? And then as she again took her time: I thought your whole point is just that youre sure.
One can never be ideally sure of anything. There are always possibilities.
Then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?
It made her again look at him. Where would you have been, my dear, if I hadnt meddled with YOU?
Ah, that wasnt meddlingI was your own. I was your own, said the Colonel, from the moment I didnt object.
Well, these people wont object. They are my own tooin the sense that Im awfully fond of them. Also in the sense, she continued, that I think theyre not so very much less fond of me. Our relation, all round, existsits a reality, and a very good one; were mixed up, so to speak, and its too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it. Therefore to see that Charlotte gets a good husband as soon as possiblethat, as I say, will be one of my ways of living. It will cover, she said with conviction, all the ground. And then as his own conviction appeared to continue as little to match: The ground, I mean, of any nervousness I may ever feel. It will be in fact my duty and I shant rest till my dutys performed. She had arrived by this time at something like exaltation. I shall give, for the next year or two if necessary, my life to it. I shall have done in that case what I can.
He took it at last as it came. You hold theres no limit to what you can?
I dont say theres no limit, or anything of the sort. I say there are good chancesenough of them for hope. Why shouldnt there be when a girl is, after all, all that she is?
By after all you mean after shes in love with somebody else?
The Colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. Shes not too much in love not herself to want to marry. She would now particularly like to.
Has she told you so?
Not yet. Its too soon. But she will. Meanwhile, however, I dont require the information. Her marrying will prove the truth.
And what truth?
The truth of everything I say.
Prove it to whom?
Well, to myself, to begin with. That will be enough for meto work for her. What it will prove, Mrs. Assingham presently went on, will be that shes cured. That she accepts the situation.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. The situation of doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?
His wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was merely vulgar. The one thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. The thing that, before any other, will be wise and right. The thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.
He slowly emitted his smoke. And best give you, by the same token, yours to be magnificent with her?
I shall be as magnificent, at least, as I can.
Bob Assingham got up. And you call ME immoral?
She hesitated. Ill call you stupid if you prefer. But stupidity pushed to a certain point IS, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality but high intelligence? This he was unable to tell her; which left her more definitely to conclude. Besides, its all, at the worst, great fun.
Oh, if you simply put it at THAT!
His implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldnt catch her by it. Oh, I dont mean, she said from the threshold, the fun that you mean. Good-night. In answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. He HAD apparently meant some particular kind.
V
Well, now I must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest. So Charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park. I dont want to pretend, and I cant pretend a moment longer. You may think of me what you will, but I dont care. I knew I shouldnt and I find now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else. For this, she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the Prince had already come to a pause.
For this? He spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were vague to himor were, rather, a quantity that couldnt, at the most, be much.
It would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. To have one hour alone with you. It had rained heavily in the night, and though the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the August morning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was cool and grey. The multitudinous green of the Park had been deepened, and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. Charlotte had looked about her, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart of London, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed English type. It was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly, an Americanas indeed you had to be, blessedly, an American for all sorts of things: so long as you hadnt, blessedly or not, to remain in America. The Prince had, by half-past tenas also by definite appointmentcalled in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assinghams visitor, and then, after brief delay, the two had walked together up Sloane Street and got straight into the Park from Knightsbridge. The understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in Mrs. Assinghams drawing-room. It was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidateeverything, much rather, to place in a light, and as to which, obviously, it wouldnt have fitted that anyone should raise an objection. Who was there, for that matter, to raise one, from the moment Mrs. Assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, didnt intervene? This the young man had asked himselfwith a very sufficient sense of what would have made him ridiculous. He wasnt going to beginthat at least was certainby showing a fear. Even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval.