o what she could, and he was, unknown to Maggie, he must
remember, to give her his aid. He had prolonged the minute so far as
to take time to hesitate, for a reason, and then to risk bringing his
reason out. The risk was because he might hurt her--hurt her pride, if
she had that particular sort. But she might as well be hurt one way as
another; and, besides, that particular sort of pride was just what she
hadn't. So his slight resistance, while they lingered, had been just
easy enough not to be impossible.

"I hate to encourage you--and for such a purpose, after all--to spend
your money."

She had stood a stair or two below him; where, while she looked up at
him beneath the high, domed light of the hall, she rubbed with her
palm the polished mahogany of the balustrade, which was mounted on fine
ironwork, eighteenth-century English. "Because you think I must have
so little? I've enough, at any rate--enough for us to take our hour.
Enough," she had smiled, "is as good as a feast! And then," she had
said, "it isn't of course a question of anything expensive, gorged with
treasure as Maggie is; it isn't a question of competing or outshining.
What, naturally, in the way of the priceless, hasn't she got? Mine is to
be the offering of the poor--something, precisely, that--no rich person
COULD ever give her, and that, being herself too rich ever to buy it,
she would therefore never have." Charlotte had spoken as if after so
much thought. "Only, as it can't be fine, it ought to be funny--and
that's the sort of thing to hunt for. Hunting in London, besides, is
amusing in itself."

He recalled even how he had been struck with her word. "'Funny'?" "Oh,
I don't mean a comic toy--I mean some little thing with a charm. But
absolutely RIGHT, in its comparative cheapness. That's what I call
funny," she had explained. "You used," she had also added, "to help me
to get things cheap in Rome. You were splendid for beating down. I have
them all still, I needn't say--the little bargains I there owed you.
There are bargains in London in August."

"Ah, but I don't understand your English buying, and I confess I find
it dull." So much as that, while they turned to go up together, he had
objected. "I understood my poor dear Romans."

"It was they who understood you--that was your pull," she had laughed.
"Our amusement here is just that they don't understand us. We can make
it amusing. You'll see."

If he had hesitated again it was because t