ped it, offering it simply for that.

For that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some
handful of gold-dust thrown into the air--for that then Maggie showed
herself, as deeply and strangely taking it. "I see." And she even wished
this form to be as complete as she could make it. "I see."

The completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine.
"Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear--!" It was all he could say.

She wasn't talking, however, at large. "You've kept up for so long a
silence--!"

"Yes, yes, I know what I've kept up. But will you do," he asked, "still
one thing more for me?"

It was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her
turn pale. "Is there even one thing left?"

"Ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!"--it had pressed again in him the fine
spring of the unspeakable. There was nothing, however, that the Princess
herself couldn't say. "I'll do anything, if you'll tell me what."

"Then wait." And his raised Italian hand, with its play of admonitory
fingers, had never made gesture more expressive. His voice itself
dropped to a tone--! "Wait," he repeated. "Wait."

She understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him. "Till
they've been here, you mean?"

"Yes, till they've gone. Till they're away."

She kept it up. "Till they've left the country?" She had her eyes on him
for clearness; these were the conditions of a promise--so that he put
the promise, practically, into his response. "Till we've ceased to see
them--for as long as God may grant! Till we're really alone."

"Oh, if it's only that--!" When she had drawn from him thus then, as she
could feel, the thick breath of the definite--which was the intimate,
the immediate, the familiar, as she hadn't had them for so long--she
turned away again, she put her hand on the knob of the door. But her
hand rested at first without a grasp; she had another effort to make,
the effort of leaving him, of which everything that had just passed
between them, his presence, irresistible, overcharged with it, doubled
the difficulty. There was something--she couldn't have told what; it was
as if, shut in together, they had come too far--too far for where they
were; so that the mere act of her quitting him was like the attempt to
recover the lost and gone. She had taken in with her something that,
within the ten minutes, and especially within the last three or four,
had slipped away from her--which it was vain now, was