ubstitute? Nothing was stranger moreover, under the action of
Charlotte's presence, than the fact of a felt sincerity in her words.
She felt her sincerity absolutely sound--she gave it for all it might
mean. "Because Charlotte, dear, you know," she said, "is incomparable."
It took thirty seconds, but she was to know when these were over that
she had pronounced one of the happiest words of her life. They had
turned from the view of the street; they leaned together against the
balcony rail, with the room largely in sight from where they stood, but
with the Prince and Mrs. Verver out of range. Nothing he could try, she
immediately saw, was to keep his eyes from lighting; not even his taking
out his cigarette-case and saying before he said anything else: "May I
smoke?" She met it, for encouragement, with her "My dear!" again, and
then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be
nervous--a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to
falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all
she cared, reach the pair inside: "Father, father--Charlotte's great!"

It was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her.
"Charlotte's great."

They could close upon it--such a basis as they might immediately feel
it make; and so they stood together over it, quite gratefully, each
recording to the other's eyes that it was firm under their feet. They
had even thus a renewed wait, as for proof of it; much as if he
were letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed
companions, that this was finally just why--but just WHY! "You see," he
presently added, "how right I was. Right, I mean, to do it for you."

"Ah, rather!" she murmured with her smile. And then, as to be herself
ideally right: "I don't see what you would have done without her."

"The point was," he returned quietly, "that I didn't see what you were
to do. Yet it was a risk."

"It was a risk," said Maggie--"but I believed in it. At least for
myself!" she smiled.

"Well NOW," he smoked, "we see."

"We see."

"I know her better."

"You know her best."

"Oh, but naturally!" On which, as the warranted truth of it hung in
the air--the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present
opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted--she
found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet
known, in the vision of all he might mean. The sense of it in her
ros