Maggie's sense accordingly in his presence was that though the bowl had been broken her reason had n't; the reason for which she had made up her mind, the reason for which she had summoned her friend, the reason for which she had addressed the place to her husband's eyes; it was all one reason, and as her intense little clutch held the matter what had happened by Fanny's act and by his apprehension of it had n't in the least happened to HER, but absolutely and directly to himself, as he must proceed to take in. There it was that her wish for time interposed--time for Amerigo's use, not for hers, since she for ever so long now, for hours and hours as they seemed, had been living with eternity; with which she would continue to live. She wanted to say to him "Take it, take it, take all you need of it; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be at any rate least distorted and disfigured. Only SEE, see that I see, and make up your mind on this new basis at your convenience. Wait--it won't be long--till you can confer again with Charlotte, for you'll do it much better then, more easily to both of us. Above all don't show me, till you've got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority." After she had squared again her little objects on the chimney she was within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its being lucid for her all the while that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he was n't (185) dressed, and that, though she herself was, she was yet in all probability so horribly red in the face and so awry in many ways with agitation, that in view of the Ambassador's company, of possible comments and constructions, she should need before her glass some restoration of appearances.
Amerigo meanwhile after all could clearly make the most of her having enjoined on him to wait--suggested it by the positive pomp of her dealings with the smashed cup; to wait, that is, till she should pronounce as Mrs.
Assingham had promised for her. This delay again certainly tested her presence of mind--though that strain was not what presently made her speak. Keep her eyes for the time from her husband's as she might, she soon found herself much more drivingly conscious of the strain on his own wit. There was even a minute, when her back was turned to him, during which she knew once more the strangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already fifty times brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the wild wing of some bird of the air who might blindly have swooped for an instant into the shaft of a well, darkening there by his momentary flutter the far-off round of sky. It was extraordinary, this quality in the taste of her wrong which made her completed sense of it seem rather to soften than to harden, and it was the more extraordinary the more she had to recognise it; for what it came to was that seeing herself finally sure, knowing everything, having the fact, in all its abomination, so utterly before her that there was nothing else to add--what it came to was that merely by being WITH him there in (186) silence she felt within her the sudden split between conviction and action. They had begun to cease on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil--but action began to hover like some lighter and larger but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground.
It would be free, it would be independent, it would go in--would n't it?--for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own. What would condemn it, so to speak, to the responsibility of freedom--this glimmered on Maggie even now--was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have on the whole question a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds. It struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all; would indeed absolutely by this circumstance be REALLY needing her for the first time in their whole connexion. No, he had used her, he had even exceedingly enjoyed her, before this; but there had been no precedent for that character of a proved necessity to him which she was rapidly taking on. The immense advantage of this particular clue moreover was that she should have now to arrange, to alter, to falsify nothing; should have to be but consistently simple and straight. She asked herself with concentration, while her back was still presented, what would be the very ideal of that method; but the next instant it had all come to her and she had turned round on him for the application. "Fanny Assingham broke it--knowing it had a crack and that it would go if she used sufficient force. (187) She thought, when I had told her, that that would be the best thing to do with it--thought so from her own point of view. That had n't been at all my idea, but she acted before I understood. I had on the contrary," she explained, "put it here in full view exactly that you might see it."