Book ONE Part 3 Chapter 18
[Prince, Charlotte]. The Prince appeared to confess, at this, to his interest.
“Taking, you mean, YOUR carriage?”
“I don’t know which, and it doesn’t matter. It’s not a question,” she smiled, “of a carriage the more or the less. It’s not a question even, if you come to that, of a cab. It’s so beautiful,” she said, “that it’s not a question of anything vulgar or horrid.” Which she gave him time to agree about; and though he was silent it was, rather remarkably, as if he fell in. “I went out—I wanted to. I had my idea. It seemed to me important. It has BEEN—it IS important. I know as I haven’t known before the way they feel. I couldn’t in any other way have made so sure of it.”
[Prince, Charlotte].“Ah,” he in turn protested, “don’t put it all on me! What, at any rate, when you get home,” he added, “shall you say that you’ve been doing?”
“I shall say, beautifully, that I’ve been here.”
“All day?”
“Yes—all day.
[Prince, Charlotte].“Ah,” Charlotte instantly said, “isn’t it for us, only, to do that?” She spoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty. “I think we want no one’s aid.”
She spoke indeed with a nobleness not the less effective for coming in so oddly; with a sincerity visible even through the complicated twist by which any effort to protect the father and the daughter seemed necessarily conditioned for them. It moved him, in any case, as if some spring of his own, a weaker one, had suddenly been broken by it. These things, all the while, the privilege, the duty, the opportunity, had been the substance of his own vision; they formed the note he had been keeping back to show her that he was not, in their so special situation, without a responsible view. A conception that he could name, and could act on, was something that now, at last, not to be too eminent a fool, he was required by all the graces to produce, and the luminous idea she had herself uttered would have been his expression of it. She had anticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty, nothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged. A large response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited perception all his own, in the glory of which—as it almost might be called—what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him. “They’re extraordinarily happy.”
Oh, Charlotte’s measure of it was only too full. “Beatifically.”
“That’s the great thing,” he went on; “so that it doesn’t matter, really, that one doesn’t understand. Besides, you do—enough.”
[Prince, Charlotte].“Oh, as we trust the saints in glory. Fortunately,” the Prince hastened to add, “we can.” With which, as for the full assurance and the pledge it involved, their hands instinctively found their hands. “It’s all too wonderful.”
Firmly and gravely she kept his hand. “It’s too beautiful.”
And so for a minute they stood together, as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. They were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met. “It’s sacred,” he said at last.
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