question of other things. I don't want," he wound up, "to be MADE to make a mistake."
"Ah, but it's too dreadful," she returned, "that you should even have to FEAR--or just nervously to dream--that you may be. What does that show, after all," she asked, "but that you do really, well within, feel a want? What does it show but that you're truly susceptible?"
"Well, it may show that"--he defended himself against nothing. "But it shows also, I think, that charming women are, in the kind of life we're leading now, numerous and formidable."
Maggie entertained for a moment the proposition; under cover of which, however, she passed quickly from the general to the particular. "Do you feel Mrs. Rance to be charming?"
"Well, I feel her to be formidable. When they cast a spell it comes to the same thing. I think she'd do anything."
"Oh well, I'd help you," the Princess said with decision, "as against HER--if that's all you require. It's too funny," she went on before he again spoke, "that Mrs. Rance should be here at all. But if you talk of the life we lead, much of it is, altogether, I'm bound to say, too funny. The thing is," Maggie developed under this impression, "that I don't think we lead, as regards other people, any life at all. We don't at any rate, it seems to me, lead half the life we might. And so it seems, I think, to Amerigo. So it seems also, I'm sure, to Fanny Assingham."
Mr. Verver-as if from due regard for these persons--considered a little. "What life would they like us to lead?"
"Oh, it's not a question, I think, on which they quite feel together. SHE thinks, dear Fanny, that we ought to be greater."
"Greater--?" He echoed it vaguely. "And Amerigo too, you say?"
"Ah yes"-her reply was prompt "but Amerigo doesn't mind. He doesn't care, I mean, what we do. It's for us, he considers, to see things exactly as we wish. Fanny herself," Maggie pursued, "thinks he's magnificent. Magnificent, I mean, for taking everything as it is, for accepting the 'social limitations' of our life, for not missing what we don't give him."
Mr. Verver attended. "Then if he doesn't miss it his magnificence is easy."
"It IS easy-that's exactly what I think.
