"Well, you'll realise when I HAVE one!" she exclaimed with a
short laugh that resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a
minute before. "I wouldn't in any case have let her tell me what
would have been dreadful to me. For such wounds and shames are
dreadful: at least," she added, catching herself up, "I suppose
they are; for what, as I say, do I know of them? I don't WANT to
know!"--she spoke quite with vehemence. "There are things that
are sacred whether they're joys or pains. But one can always, for
safety, be kind," she kept on; "one feels when that's right."
She had got up with these last words; she stood there before him
with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the
long habit of their life together had not closed his sense, kept
sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the
comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of
finish, of one form of the exquisite with another--the appearance
of some slight, slim draped "antique" of Vatican or Capitoline
halls, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link,
set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern impulse and
yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps forsaken
after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality, the
perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred, absent eyes, the
smoothed, elegant, nameless head, the impersonal flit of a
creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn
relief round and round a precious vase. She had always had odd
moments of striking him, daughter of his very own though she was,
as a figure thus simplified, "generalised" in its grace, a figure
with which his human connection was fairly interrupted by some
vague analogy of turn and attitude, something shyly mythological
and nymphlike. The trick, he was not uncomplacently aware, was
mainly of his own mind; it came from his caring for precious
vases only less than for precious daughters. And what was more to
the point still, it often operated while he was quite at the same
time conscious that Maggie had been described, even in her
prettiness, as "prim"--Mrs. Rance herself had enthusiastically
used the word of her; while he remembered that when once she had
been told before him, familiarly, that she resembled a nun, she
had replied that she was delighted to hear it and would certainly
try to; while also, finally, it was present to him that,
discreetly heedless, thanks to her long association with
nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion, she brought
her hair down very straight and flat over her temples, in the
constant manner of her mother, who had not been a bit
mythological. Nymphs and nuns were certainly separate types, but
Mr. Verver, when he really amused himself, let consistency go.
The play of vision was at all events so rooted in him that he
could receive impressions of sense even while positively
thinking. He was positively thinking while Maggie stood there,
and it led for him to yet another question--which in its turn led
to others still. "Do you regard the condition as hers then that
you spoke of a minute ago?"
"The condition--?"
"Why that of having loved so intensely that she's, as you say,
'beyond everything'?"
Maggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so prompt. "Oh no.
She's beyond nothing. For she has had nothing."
"I see. You must have had things to be them. It's a kind of law
of perspective."
Maggie didn't know about the law, but she continued definite.
"She's not, for example, beyond help."
"Oh well then, she shall have all we can give her. I'll write to
her," he said, "with pleasure."
"Angel!" she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him.
True as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was
an angel with a human curiosity. "Has she told you she likes me
much?"
"Certainly she has told me--but I won't pamper you. Let it be
enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking
HER."
"Then she's indeed not beyond everything," Mr. Verver more or
less humorously observed.
"Oh it isn't, thank goodness, that she's in love with you. It's
not, as I told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear."
He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this
reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should
be corrected. "Oh, my dear, I've always thought of her as a
little girl."
"Ah, she's not a little girl," said the Princess.
"Then I'll write to her as a brilliant woman."
"It's exactly what she is."
Mr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before
retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if
they had really arranged something. They had come out together
for themselves, but it had produced something more. What it had
produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his
companion's last emphasis. "Well, she has a famous friend in you,
Princess."
Maggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. "Do you know
what I'm really thinking of?" she asked.
He wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her
freedom now to talk; and he wasn't such a fool, he presently
showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. "Why, of your finding
her at last yourself a husband."
"Good for YOU!" Maggie smiled. "But it will take," she added,
"some looking."
"Then let me look right here with you," her father said as they
walked on.