hesitated. "I'll call you stupid if you prefer. But stupidity pushed
to a certain point IS, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality
but high intelligence?" This he was unable to tell her; which left her
more definitely to conclude. "Besides, it's all, at the worst, great
fun."

"Oh, if you simply put it at THAT--!"

His implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even
thus he couldn't catch her by it. "Oh, I don't mean," she said from the
threshold, "the fun that you mean. Good-night." In answer to which, as
he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a
grunt. He HAD apparently meant some particular kind.

V

"Well, now I must tell you, for I want to be absolutely honest." So
Charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the Park.
"I don't want to pretend, and I can't pretend a moment longer. You may
think of me what you will, but I don't care. I knew I shouldn't and I
find now how little. I came back for this. Not really for anything else.
For this," she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the Prince
had already come to a pause.

"For 'this'?" He spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were
vague to him--or were, rather, a quantity that couldn't, at the most, be
much.

It would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. "To have
one hour alone with you." It had rained heavily in the night, and though
the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the August
morning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was
cool and grey. The multitudinous green of the Park had been deepened,
and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of
odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. Charlotte had looked about
her, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for
a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart
of London, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed English type. It was as
if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it,
as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as
this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere
vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly,
an American--as indeed you had to be, blessedly, an American for all
sorts of things: so long as you hadn't, blessedly or not, to remain
in Americ