have yourselves done it. As for
our evenings, they won't, I dare say, be particularly different from
anything else that's ours. They won't be different from our mornings or
our afternoons--except perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us
to get through them. I've offered to go anywhere," she added; "to take
a house if he will. But THIS--just this and nothing else--is Amerigo's
idea. He gave it yesterday" she went on, "a name that, as, he said,
described and fitted it. So you see"--and the Princess indulged again
in her smile that didn't play, but that only, as might have been said,
worked--"so you see there's a method in our madness."

It drew Mrs. Assingham's wonder. "And what then is the name?"

"'The reduction to its simplest expression of what we ARE doing'--that's
what he called it. Therefore as we're doing nothing, we're doing it in
the most aggravated way--which is the way he desires." With which Maggie
further said: "Of course I understand."

"So do I!" her visitor after a moment breathed. "You've had to vacate
the house--that was inevitable. But at least here he doesn't funk."

Our young woman accepted the expression. "He doesn't funk."

It only, however, half contented Fanny, who thoughtfully raised her
eyebrows. "He's prodigious; but what is there--as you've 'fixed' it--TO
dodge? Unless," she pursued, "it's her getting near him; it's--if you'll
pardon my vulgarity--her getting AT him. That," she suggested, "may
count with him."

But it found the Princess prepared. "She can get near him here. She can
get 'at' him. She can come up."

"CAN she?" Fanny Assingham questioned.

"CAN'T she?" Maggie returned.

Their eyes, for a minute, intimately met on it; after which the elder
woman said: "I mean for seeing him alone."

"So do I," said the Princess.

At which Fanny, for her reasons, couldn't help smiling. "Oh, if it's for
THAT he's staying--!"

"He's staying--I've made it out--to take anything that comes or calls
upon him. To take," Maggie went on, "even that." Then she put it as she
had at last put it to herself. "He's staying for high decency."

"Decency?" Mrs. Assingham gravely echoed.

"Decency. If she SHOULD try--!"

"Well--?" Mrs. Assingham urged.

"Well, I hope--!"

"Hope he'll see her?"

Maggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. "It's useless
hoping," she presently said. "She won't. But he ought to." Her friend's
expression of a moment before, which had been apologis