mind; he'll say nothing about it.
Therefore, as she's quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself,
she has no idea how much I'm really in possession. She believes," said
Maggie, "and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that I'm not
in possession of anything. And that, somehow, for my own help seems to
me immense."

"Immense, my dear!" Mrs. Assingham applausively murmured, though not
quite, even as yet, seeing all the way. "He's keeping quiet then on
purpose?"

"On purpose." Maggie's lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they
had ever looked. "He'll NEVER tell her now."

Fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little
friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic
lucidity. She stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect
commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news,
replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the
place. This importance breathed upon her comrade. "So you're all right?"

"Oh, ALL right's a good deal to say. But I seem at least to see, as I
haven't before, where I am with it."

Fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. "And you have
it from him?--your husband himself has told you?"

"'Told' me--?"

"Why, what you speak of. It isn't of an assurance received from him then
that you do speak?"

At which Maggie had continued to stare. "Dear me, no. Do you suppose
I've asked him for an assurance?"

"Ah, you haven't?" Her companion smiled. "That's what I supposed you
MIGHT mean. Then, darling, what HAVE you--?"

"Asked him for? I've asked him for nothing."

But this, in turn, made Fanny stare. "Then nothing, that evening of the
Embassy dinner, passed between you?"

"On the contrary, everything passed."

"Everything--?"

"Everything. I told him what I knew--and I told him how I knew it."

Mrs. Assingham waited. "And that was all?"

"Wasn't it quite enough?"

"Oh, love," she bridled, "that's for you to have judged!"

"Then I HAVE judged," said Maggie--"I did judge. I made sure he
understood--then I let him alone."

Mrs. Assingham wondered. "But he didn't explain--?"

"Explain? Thank God, no!" Maggie threw back her head as with horror at
the thought, then the next moment added: "And I didn't, either."

The decency of pride in it shed a cold little light--yet as from heights
at the base of which her companion rather panted. "But if he neither
denies n