of his marriage,
he had tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had
given up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he, at any rate,
had gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having, in
a manner, sold himself, for a situation nette. It had all been just
in order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his
freedom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous
as some huge precious pearl. He hadn't struggled nor snatched; he was
taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its
exquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. Here, precisely,
it was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as Mrs. Verver appeared,
afar off, in one of the smaller doorways. She came toward him in
silence, while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular
front, at Matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of
their meeting and the successions of their consciousness. It wasn't
till she had come quite close that he produced for her his "Gloucester,
Gloucester, Gloucester," and his "Look at it over there!"

She knew just where to look. "Yes--isn't it one of the best? There are
cloisters or towers or some thing." And her eyes, which, though her lips
smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance; came back to
him. "Or the tomb of some old king."

"We must see the old king; we must 'do' the cathedral," he said; "we
must know all about it. If we could but take," he exhaled, "the full
opportunity!" And then while, for all they seemed to give him, he
sounded again her eyes: "I feel the day like a great gold cup that we
must somehow drain together."

"I feel it, as you always make me feel everything, just as you do; so
that I know ten miles off how you feel! But do you remember," she asked,
"apropos of great gold cups, the beautiful one, the real one, that I
offered you so long ago and that you wouldn't have? Just before your
marriage"--she brought it back to him: "the gilded crystal bowl in the
little Bloomsbury shop."

"Oh yes!"--but it took, with a slight surprise on the 'Prince's part,
some small recollecting. "The treacherous cracked thing you wanted to
palm off on me, and the little swindling Jew who understood Italian and
who backed you up! But I feel this an occasion," he immediately added,
"and I hope you don't mean," he smiled, "that AS an occasion it's also
cracked."

They spoke, naturally, more