it seemed to express
and include for her the whole of her situation. "Then you intend not to
speak to him--?"

Maggie waited. "To 'speak'--?"

"Well, about your having it and about what you consider that it
represents."

"Oh, I don't know that I shall speak--if he doesn't. But his keeping
away from me because of that--what will that be but to speak? He
can't say or do more. It won't be for me to speak," Maggie added in
a different tone, one of the tones that had already so penetrated her
guest. "It will be for me to listen."

Mrs. Assingham turned it over. "Then it all depends on that object that
you regard, for your reasons, as evidence?"

"I think I may say that _I_ depend on it. I can't," said Maggie, "treat
it as nothing now."

Mrs. Assingham, at this, went closer to the cup on the chimney--quite
liking to feel that she did so, moreover, without going closer to her
companion's vision. She looked at the precious thing--if precious it
was--found herself in fact eyeing it as if, by her dim solicitation, to
draw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of Maggie's
knowledge. It was brave and rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow;
and, without this queer torment about it, would, thanks to her love of
plenty of yellow, figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession
really desirable. She didn't touch it, but if after a minute she turned
away from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her fear of
doing so. "Then it all depends on the bowl? I mean your future does? For
that's what it comes to, I judge."

"What it comes to," Maggie presently returned, "is what that thing has
put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning: how far they
had originally gone together. If there was so much between them before,
there can't--with all the other appearances--not be a great deal more
now." And she went on and on; she steadily made her points. "If such
things were already then between them they make all the difference for
possible doubt of what may have been between them since. If there had
been nothing before there might be explanations. But it makes to-day too
much to explain. I mean to explain away," she said.

Fanny Assingham was there to explain away--of this she was duly
conscious; for that at least had been true up to now. In the light,
however, of Maggie's demonstration the quantity, even without her taking
as yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever. Besides
wh