or confesses--?"

"He does what's a thousand times better--he lets it alone. He does,"
Maggie went on, "as he would do; as I see now that I was sure he would.
He lets me alone."

Fanny Assingham turned it over. "Then how do you know so where, as you
say, you 'are'?"

"Why, just BY that. I put him in possession of the difference; the
difference made, about me, by the fact that I hadn't been, after
all--though with a wonderful chance, I admitted, helping me--too
stupid to have arrived at knowledge. He had to see that I'm changed for
him--quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on
with. It became a question then of his really taking in the change--and
what I now see is that he is doing so."

Fanny followed as she could. "Which he shows by letting you, as you say,
alone?"

Maggie looked at her a minute. "And by letting her."

Mrs. Assingham did what she might to embrace it--checked a little,
however, by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in
this almost too large air, to an inspiration. "Ah, but does Charlotte
let HIM?"

"Oh, that's another affair--with which I've practically nothing to do.
I dare say, however, she doesn't." And the Princess had a more distant
gaze for the image evoked by the question. "I don't in fact well see how
she CAN. But the point for me is that he understands."

"Yes," Fanny Assingham cooed, "understands--?"

"Well, what I want. I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough
for you to poke in your finger."

"A brilliant, perfect surface--to begin with at least. I see."

"The golden bowl--as it WAS to have been." And Maggie dwelt musingly on
this obscured figure. "The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl
without the crack."

For Mrs. Assingham too the image had its force, and the precious object
shone before her again, reconstituted, plausible, presentable. But
wasn't there still a piece missing? "Yet if he lets you alone and you
only let him--?"

"Mayn't our doing so, you mean, be noticed?--mayn't it give us away?
Well, we hope not--we try not--we take such care. We alone know what's
between us--we and you; and haven't you precisely been struck, since
you've been here," Maggie asked, "with our making so good a show?"

Her friend hesitated. "To your father?"

But it made her hesitate too; she wouldn't speak of her father directly.
"To everyone. To her--now that you understand."

It held poor Fanny again in wonder. "To Charl