THE PRINCESS
lieving in her passionate parade. "You've thought you've known what he's worth?"
"Indeed then, my dear, I believe I have—as I believe I still do."
She had given it, Maggie, straight back, and again it hadn't missed. Charlotte for another moment only looked at her; then broke into the words—Maggie had known they would come—of which she had pressed the spring. "How I see that you loathed our marriage!"
"Do you ask me?" Maggie after an instant demanded.
Charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then more consciously flung it down again: she was in presence, visibly, of her last word. She opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. "'Ask' you? Do I need? How I see," she broke out, "that you've worked against me!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" the Princess exclaimed.
Her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare. "You haven't worked against me?"
Maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast. Then she opened her eyes to speak. "What does it matter—if I've failed?"
"You recognise then that you've failed?" asked Charlotte from the threshold.
317
