was foredoomed to remarkable
salience. That would have been the case even with so natural, though so
futile, a movement as Maggie's going out to the balcony again to follow
with her eyes her father's departure. The carriage was out of sight--it
had taken her too long solemnly to reascend, and she looked awhile only
at the great grey space, on which, as on the room still more, the shadow
of dusk had fallen. Here, at first, her husband had not rejoined her; he
had come up with the boy, who, clutching his hand, abounded, as usual,
in remarks worthy of the family archives; but the two appeared then
to have proceeded to report to Miss Bogle. It meant something for the
Princess that her husband had thus got their son out of the way, not
bringing him back to his mother; but everything now, as she vaguely
moved about, struck her as meaning so much that the unheard chorus
swelled. Yet THIS above all--her just being there as she was and waiting
for him to come in, their freedom to be together there always--was the
meaning most disengaged: she stood in the cool twilight and took in, all
about her, where it lurked, her reason for what she had done. She knew
at last really why--and how she had been inspired and guided, how she
had been persistently able, how, to her soul, all the while, it had
been for the sake of this end. Here it was, then, the moment, the golden
fruit that had shone from afar; only, what were these things, in the
fact, for the hand and for the lips, when tested, when tasted--what were
they as a reward? Closer than she had ever been to the measure of her
course and the full face of her act, she had an instant of the terror
that, when there has been suspense, always precedes, on the part of the
creature to be paid, the certification of the amount. Amerigo knew it,
the amount; he still held it, and the delay in his return, making her
heart beat too fast to go on, was like a sudden blinding light on a wild
speculation. She had thrown the dice, but his hand was over her cast.

He opened the door, however, at last--he hadn't been away ten minutes;
and then, with her sight of him renewed to intensity, she seemed to have
a view of the number. His presence alone, as he paused to look at her,
somehow made it the highest, and even before he had spoken she had begun
to be paid in full. With that consciousness, in fact, an extraordinary
thing occurred; the assurance of her safety so making her terror drop
that already, within