se she can't enjoy it. But
I don't see what perversity rides her. She needn't have looked it all
so in the face--as she doesn't do it, I suppose, simply for discipline.
It's almost--that's the bore of it--discipline to ME."

"Perhaps then," said Bob Assingham, "that's what has been her idea. Take
it, for God's sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. It will
do," he added, "for discipline to me as well."

She was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with
such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in
justice, be blind. "It isn't in the least, you know, for instance, that
I believe she's bad. Never, never," Mrs. Assingham declared. "I don't
think that of her."

"Then why isn't that enough?"

Nothing was enough, Mrs. Assingham signified, but that she should
develop her thought. "She doesn't deliberately intend, she doesn't
consciously wish, the least complication. It's perfectly true that she
thinks Maggie a dear--as who doesn't? She's incapable of any PLAN to
hurt a hair of her head. Yet here she is--and there THEY are," she wound
up.

Her husband again, for a little, smoked in silence. "What in the world,
between them, ever took place?"

"Between Charlotte and the Prince? Why, nothing--except their having to
recognise that nothing COULD. That was their little romance--it was even
their little tragedy."

"But what the deuce did they DO?"

"Do? They fell in love with each other--but, seeing it wasn't possible,
gave each other up."

"Then where was the romance?"

"Why, in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the
facts in the face."

"What facts?" the Colonel went on.

"Well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means
to marry. If she had had even a little--a little, I mean, for two--I
believe he would bravely have done it." After which, as her husband but
emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. "I mean if he himself
had had only a little--or a little more than a little, a little for a
prince. They would have done what they could"--she did them justice"--if
there had been a way. But there wasn't a way, and Charlotte, quite to
her honour, I consider, understood it. He HAD to have money--it was a
question of life and death. It wouldn't have been a bit amusing, either,
to marry him as a pauper--I mean leaving him one. That was what she
had--as HE had--the reason to see."

"And their reason is what you call th