had evidently not dreamed of being followed, instinctively, with her pale stare, stiffened herself for protest. Maggie could make that out – as well as, further, however, that her second impression of her friend’s approach had an instant effect on her attitude. The Princess came nearer, gravely and in silence, but fairly paused again to give her time for whatever she would. Whatever she would, whatever she could, was what Maggie wanted – wanting above all to make it as easy for her as the case permitted. That was not what Charlotte had wanted the other night, but this never mattered – the great thing was to allow her, was fairly to produce in her, the sense of highly choosing. At first, clearly, she had been frightened; she hadn’t been pursued, it had quickly struck her, without some design on the part of her pursuer, and what mightn’t she be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the pursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose? It had sunk into Maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and Mrs Verver had felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance of pressure successfully applied had naturally till now remained with her. But her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure so dishonestly come by, for which her companion’s still countenance at the hour and afterwards had consented to serve as the deep soil, might have worked up again to the surface, might be thrown back upon her hands. Yes, it was positive that during one of these minutes the Princess had the vision of her particular alarm. ‘It’s her lie, it’s her lie that has mortally disagreed with her; she can keep down no longer her rebellion at it, and she had come to retract it, to disown it and denounce it – to give me full in my face the truth instead.’ This for a concentrated instant Maggie felt her helplessly gasp – but only to let it bring home the indignity, the pity of her state. She herself could but tentatively hover, place in view the book she carried, look as little dangerous, look as abjectly mild, as possible; remind herself really of people she had read about in stories of the wild west, people who threw up their hands on certain occasions for a sign they weren’t carrying revolvers. She could almost have smiled at last, troubled as she yet knew herself, to show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume, which was so weak a weapon, and while she continued, for consideration, to keep her distance, explained with as quenched a quaver as possible. ‘I saw you come out – saw you from my window and couldn’t bear to think you should find yourself here without the beginning of your book. This is the beginning; you’ve got the wrong volume and I’ve brought you out the right.’
She remained after she had spoken; it was like holding a parley with a possible adversary, and her intense, her exalted little smile requested formal leave. ‘May I come nearer now?’ she seemed to say – as to which however, the next minute, she saw Charlotte’s reply lose itself in a strange process, a thing of several sharp stages, which she could stand there and trace. The dread, after this space, had dropped from her face; though she still discernibly enough couldn’t believe in her having in so strange a fashion been deliberately made up to. If she had been made up to at least it was with an idea – the idea that had struck her at first as necessarily dangerous. That it wasn’t, insistently wasn’t, this shone from Maggie with a force finally not to be resisted; and on that perception, on the immense relief so constituted, everything had by the end of three minutes extraordinarily changed. Maggie had come out to her really because she knew her doomed, doomed to a separation that was like a knife in her heart; and in the very sight of her uncontrollable, her blinded physical quest of a peace not to be grasped, something of Mrs Assingham’s picture of her as thrown for a grim future beyond the great sea and the great continent had at first found fulfilment. She had got away in this fashion – burning behind her