She looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for what he might have spoiled. “To marrying whom?”
“Why, some good, kind, clever, rich American.”
Again his security hung in the balance—then she was, as he felt, admirable.
“I tried everyone I came across. I did my best. I showed I had come, quite publicly, FOR that. Perhaps I showed it too much. At any rate it was no use. I had to recognise it. No one would have me.” Then she seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so disconcerting. She pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed she would cheer him up. “Existence, you know, all the same, doesn’t depend on that. I mean,” she smiled, “on having caught a husband.”
“Oh—existence!” the Prince vaguely commented. “You think I ought to argue for more than mere existence?” she asked. “I don’t see why MY existence—even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine—should be so impossible. There are things, of sorts, I should be able to have—things I should be able to be. The position of a single woman to-day is very favourable, you know.”
“Favourable to what?”
“Why, just TO existence—which may contain, after all, in one way and another, so much. It may contain, at the worst, even affections; affections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one’s friends. I’m extremely fond of Maggie, for instance—I quite adore her. How could I adore her more if I were married to one of the people you speak of?”
The Prince gave a laugh. “You might adore HIM more—!”
“Ah, but it isn’t, is it?” she asked, “a question of that.”
“My dear friend,” he returned, “it’s always a question of doing the best for one’s self one can—without injury to others.” He felt by this time that they were indeed on an excellent basis; so he went on again, as if to show frankly his sense of its firmness. “I venture therefore to repeat my hope that you’ll marry some capital fellow; and also to repeat my belief that such a marriage will be more favourable to you, as you call it, than even the spirit of the age.”