"You're the cause," her husband declared, "of the greater part of everything that's good among us." But she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: "If Mrs. Verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she'll scarcely do it—or you scarcely will—by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose."
"I see what you mean," Maggie mused.
He let her for a little to give her attention to it; after which, "Shall I just quite, of a sudden," he asked, "propose him a journey?"
Maggie hesitated, but she brought forth the fruit of reflection. "It would have the merit that Charlotte then would be with me— with me, I mean, so much more. Also that I shouldn't, by choosing such a time for going away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond, seem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. I should respond, on the contrary, very markedly—by being here alone with her for a month."
"And would you like to be here alone with her for a month?"
"I could do with it beautifully. Or we might even," she said quite gaily, "go together down to Fawns."
"You could be so very content without me?" the Prince presently inquired.
"Yes, my own dear—if you could be content for a while with father. That would keep me up. I might, for the time," she went on, "go to stay there with Charlotte; or, better still, she might come to Portland Place."
"Oho!" said the Prince with cheerful vagueness.
"I should feel, you see," she continued, "that the two of us were showing the same sort of kindness."