s wife?"

They exchanged a long look--the time that it took her to find her reply.
"Because not to--!"

"Well, not to--?"

"Would make me have to speak of him. And I can't," said Maggie, "speak
of him."

"You 'can't'--?"

"I can't." She said it as for definite notice, not to be repeated.
"There are too many things," she nevertheless added. "He's too great."

The Prince looked at his cigar-tip, and then as he put back the weed:
"Too great for whom?" Upon which as she hesitated, "Not, my dear, too
great for you," he declared. "For me--oh, as much as you like."

"Too great for me is what I mean. I know why I think it," Maggie said.
"That's enough."

He looked at her yet again as if she but fanned his wonder; he was on
the very point, she judged, of asking her why she thought it. But her
own eyes maintained their warning, and at the end of a minute he had
uttered other words. "What's of importance is that you're his daughter.
That at least we've got. And I suppose that, if I may say nothing else,
I may say at least that I value it."

"Oh yes, you may say that you value it. I myself make the most of it."

This again he took in, letting it presently put forth for him a striking
connection. "She ought to have known you. That's what's present to me.
She ought to have understood you better."

"Better than you did?"

"Yes," he gravely maintained, "better than I did. And she didn't really
know you at all. She doesn't know you now."

"Ah, yes she does!" said Maggie.

But he shook his head--he knew what he meant. "She not only doesn't
understand you more than I, she understands you ever so much less.
Though even I--!"

"Well, even you?" Maggie pressed as he paused. "Even I, even I even
yet--!" Again he paused and the silence held them.

But Maggie at last broke it. "If Charlotte doesn't understand me, it is
that I've prevented her. I've chosen to deceive her and to lie to her."

The Prince kept his eyes on her. "I know what you've chosen to do. But
I've chosen to do the same."

"Yes," said Maggie after an instant--"my choice was made when I had
guessed yours. But you mean," she asked, "that she understands YOU?"

"It presents small difficulty!"

"Are you so sure?" Maggie went on.

"Sure enough. But it doesn't matter." He waited an instant; then looking
up through the fumes of his smoke, "She's stupid," he abruptly opined.

"O--oh!" Maggie protested in a long wail.

It had made him in fact quickly change