hing, at everything but her visitor; when she had spoken of the
temperature and declared that she revelled in it; when she had uttered
her thanks for the book, which, a little incoherently, with her second
volume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had
let Maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute
in question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate: when
she had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less
visibly in possession of her part. Our young woman was to have passed,
in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her
companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she
was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive
ecstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with
which she might be inspired. Vague, but increasingly brighter, this
possibility glimmered on her. It at last hung there adequately plain
to Charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said)
grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. It had absolutely, within
the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them
alike.

"I'm glad to see you alone--there's something I've been wanting to say
to you. I'm tired," said Mrs. Verver, "I'm tired--!"

"Tired--?" It had dropped the next thing; it couldn't all come at once;
but Maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition
was in her face.

"Tired of this life--the one we've been leading. You like it, I know,
but I've dreamed another dream." She held up her head now; her lighted
eyes more triumphantly rested; she was finding, she was following
her way. Maggie, by the same influence, sat in sight of it; there was
something she was SAVING, some quantity of which she herself was judge;
and it was for a long moment, even with the sacrifice the Princess
had come to make, a good deal like watching her, from the solid
shore, plunge into uncertain, into possibly treacherous depths. "I see
something else," she went on; "I've an idea that greatly appeals to
me--I've had it for a long time. It has come over me that we're wrong.
Our real life isn't here."

Maggie held her breath. "'Ours'--?"

"My husband's and mine. I'm not speaking for you."

"Oh!" said Maggie, only praying not to be, not even to appear, stupid.

"I'm speaking for ourselves. I'm speaking," Charlotte brought out, "for
HIM."

"I see.