THE GOLDEN BOWL
that possibly had lost its way. That precisely was doubtless why she had learned to wait, as the weeks passed by, with a fair, or rather indeed with an excessive, imitation of resumed serenity. There had been no prompt sequel to the Prince's equivocal light, and that made for patience; yet she was none the less to have to admit after many days that the bread he had cast on the waters had come home and that she should thus be justified of her old apprehension. The consequence of this in turn was a renewed pang in presence of his remembered ingenuity. To be ingenious with her—what didn't, what mightn't that mean when she had so absolutely never at any point of contact with him put him by as much as the value of a penny to the expense of sparing, doubting, fearing her, of having in any way whatever to reckon with her? The ingenuity had been in his simply speaking of their use of Charlotte as if it were common to them in an equal degree, and his triumph on the occasion had been just in the simplicity. She couldn't—and he knew it—say what was true: "Oh you 'use' her, and I use her, if you will, yes; but we use her ever so differently and separately—not at all in the same way or degree. There's nobody we really use together but ourselves, don't you see?—by which I mean that where our interests are the same I can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve you for everything, and you can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve me. The only person either of us needs is the other of us; so why as a matter of course in such a case as this drag in Charlotte?"
She couldn't so challenge him because it would have been—and there she was paralysed—the note.
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