“FOR the Prince. And with the others,” she went on. “With Mr. Verver—wonderfully. But above all with Maggie. And the forms”—she had to do even THEM justice—“are two-thirds of conduct. Say he had married a woman who would have made a hash of them.”
But he jerked back. “Ah, my dear, I wouldn’t say it for the world!”
“Say,” she none the less pursued, “he had married a woman the Prince would really have cared for.”
“You mean then he doesn’t care for Charlotte—?” This was still a new view to jump to, and the Colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of the necessity of the effort. For that, while he stared, his wife allowed him time; at the end of which she simply said: “No!”
“Then what on earth are they up to?” Still, however, she only looked at him; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets, he had time, further, to risk, soothingly, another question. “Are the ‘forms’ you speak of—that are two-thirds of conduct—what will be keeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till morning?”
“Yes—absolutely. THEIR forms.”
“‘Theirs’—?”
“Maggie’s and Mr. Verver’s—those they IMPOSE on Charlotte and the Prince. Those,” she developed, “that, so perversely, as I say, have succeeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.”
He considered—but only now, at last, really to relapse into woe. “Your ‘perversity,’ my dear, is exactly what I don’t understand. The state of things existing hasn’t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night. Whatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence of what they’ve DONE. Are they mere helpless victims of fate?”
Well, Fanny at last had the courage of it, “Yes—they are. To be so abjectly innocent—that IS to be victims of fate.”