n with the
overworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably
of embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and
meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. What was clearest,
always, in our young woman's imaginings, was the sense of being herself
left, for any occasion, in the breach. She was essentially there to bear
the burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions,
and it was eminently to that office she had been to-day abandoned--with
this one alleviation, as appeared, of Mrs. Assingham's keeping up
with her. Mrs. Assingham suggested that she too was still on the
ramparts--though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist
not a little of her curiosity. She had looked about and seen their
companions beyond earshot.

"Don't you really want us to go--?"

Maggie found a faint smile. "Do you really want to--?"

It made her friend colour. "Well then--no. But we WOULD, you know, at a
look from you. We'd pack up and be off--as a sacrifice."

"Ah, make no sacrifice," said Maggie. "See me through."

"That's it--that's all I want. I should be too base--! Besides," Fanny
went on, "you're too splendid."

"Splendid?"

"Splendid. Also, you know, you ARE all but 'through.' You've done it,"
said Mrs. Assingham. But Maggie only half took it from her.

"What does it strike you that I've done?"

"What you wanted. They're going."

Maggie continued to look at her. "Is that what I wanted?"

"Oh, it wasn't for you to say. That was his business."

"My father's?" Maggie asked after an hesitation.

"Your father's. He has chosen--and now she knows. She sees it all before
her--and she can't speak, or resist, or move a little finger. That's
what's the matter with HER," said Fanny Assingham.

It made a picture, somehow, for the Princess, as they stood there--the
picture that the words of others, whatever they might be, always made
for her, even when her vision was already charged, better than any
words of her own. She saw, round about her, through the chinks of the
shutters, the hard glare of nature--saw Charlotte, somewhere in it,
virtually at bay, and yet denied the last grace of any protecting truth.
She saw her off somewhere all unaided, pale in her silence and taking in
her fate. "Has she told you?" she then asked.

Her companion smiled superior. "_I_ don't need to be told--either! I
see something, thank God, every day." And then as Maggie might ap