--if that was what
he did do!--her particular demands. Even the conviction that Charlotte
was but awaiting some chance really to test her trouble upon her lover's
wife left Maggie's sense meanwhile open as to the sight of gilt wires
and bruised wings, the spacious but suspended cage, the home of eternal
unrest, of pacings, beatings, shakings, all so vain, into which
the baffled consciousness helplessly resolved itself. The
cage was the deluded condition, and Maggie, as having known
delusion--rather!--understood the nature of cages. She walked round
Charlotte's--cautiously and in a very wide circle; and when, inevitably,
they had to communicate she felt herself, comparatively, outside, on
the breast of nature, and saw her companion's face as that of a prisoner
looking through bars. So it was that through bars, bars richly gilt,
but firmly, though discreetly, planted, Charlotte finally struck her as
making a grim attempt; from which, at first, the Princess drew back as
instinctively as if the door of the cage had suddenly been opened from
within.

XXXVI

They had been alone that evening--alone as a party of six, and four of
them, after dinner, under suggestion not to be resisted, sat down
to "bridge" in the smoking-room. They had passed together to that
apartment, on rising from table, Charlotte and Mrs. Assingham alike
indulgent, always, to tobacco, and in fact practising an emulation
which, as Fanny said, would, for herself, had the Colonel not issued
an interdict based on the fear of her stealing his cigars, have stopped
only at the short pipe. Here cards had with inevitable promptness
asserted their rule, the game forming itself, as had often happened
before, of Mr. Verver with Mrs. Assingham for partner and of the Prince
with Mrs. Verver. The Colonel, who had then asked of Maggie license to
relieve his mind of a couple of letters for the earliest post out on
the morrow, was addressing himself to this task at the other end of the
room, and the Princess herself had welcomed the comparatively hushed
hour--for the bridge-players were serious and silent--much in the mood
of a tired actress who has the good fortune to be "off," while her mates
are on, almost long enough for a nap on the property sofa in the wing.
Maggie's nap, had she been able to snatch forty winks, would have been
of the spirit rather than of the sense; yet as she subsided, near a
lamp, with the last salmon-coloured Frenc