pear to
be wondering what, for instance: "I see the long miles of ocean and the
dreadful great country, State after State--which have never seemed to me
so big or so terrible. I see THEM at last, day by day and step by step,
at the far end--and I see them never come back. But NEVER--simply. I
see the extraordinary 'interesting' place--which I've never been to, you
know, and you have--and the exact degree in which she will be expected
to be interested."

"She WILL be," Maggie presently replied. "Expected?"

"Interested."

For a little, after this, their eyes met on it; at the end of which
Fanny said: "She'll be--yes--what she'll HAVE to be. And it will
be--won't it? for ever and ever." She spoke as abounding in her friend's
sense, but it made Maggie still only look at her.

These were large words and large visions--all the more that now, really,
they spread and spread. In the midst of them, however, Mrs. Assingham
had soon enough continued. "When I talk of 'knowing,' indeed, I don't
mean it as you would have a right to do. You know because you see--and I
don't see HIM. I don't make him out," she almost crudely confessed.

Maggie again hesitated. "You mean you don't make out Amerigo?"

But Fanny shook her head, and it was quite as if, as an appeal to one's
intelligence, the making out of Amerigo had, in spite of everything,
long been superseded. Then Maggie measured the reach of her allusion,
and how what she next said gave her meaning a richness. No other name
was to be spoken, and Mrs. Assingham had taken that, without delay, from
her eyes--with a discretion, still, that fell short but by an inch. "You
know how he feels."

Maggie at this then slowly matched her headshake. "I know nothing."

"You know how YOU feel."

But again she denied it. "I know nothing. If I did--!"

"Well, if you did?" Fanny asked as she faltered.

She had had enough, however. "I should die," she said as she turned
away.

She went to her room, through the quiet house; she roamed there a
moment, picking up, pointlessly, a different fan, and then took her way
to the shaded apartments in which, at this hour, the Principino would
be enjoying his nap. She passed through the first empty room, the day
nursery, and paused at an open door. The inner room, large, dim and
cool, was equally calm; her boy's ample, antique, historical, royal
crib, consecrated, reputedly, by the guarded rest of heirs-apparent, and
a gift, early in his career, from