"Oh we're all right!" A declaration launched not only with all her discriminating emphasis, but confirmed by her rising with decision and standing there as if the object of their small excursion required accordingly no further pursuit. At this juncture, however--with the act of their crossing the bar to get, as might be, into port--there occurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat against the wind. Her father kept his place, and it was as if she had got over first and were pausing for her consort to follow. If they were all right, they were all right; yet he seemed to hesitate and wait for some word beyond. His eyes met her own suggestively, and it was only after she had contented herself with simply smiling at him, smiling ever so (265) fixedly, that he spoke, for the remaining importance of it, from the bench; where he leaned back, raising his face to her, his legs thrust but a trifle wearily and his hands grasping either side of the seat. They had beaten against the wind and she was still fresh; they had beaten against the wind and he, as at the best the more battered vessel, perhaps just vaguely drooped. But the effect of their silence was that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly alongside of her when at the end of another minute he found their word. "The only thing is that as for ever putting up again with your pretending that you're selfish--!"
At this she helped him out with it. "You won't take it from me?"
"I won't take it from you."
"Well of course you won't, for that's your way. It does n't matter and it only proves--! But it does n't matter either what it proves. I'm at this very moment," she declared, "frozen stiff with selfishness."
He faced her a while longer in the same way; it was strangely as if, by this sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid, or at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it was as if they were "in" for it, for something they had been ineffably avoiding, but the dread of which was itself in a manner a seduction, just as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion. Then she seemed to see him let himself go. "When a person's of the nature you speak of there are always other persons to suffer. But you've just been describing (266) to me what you'd take, if you had once a good chance, from your husband.".
"Oh I'm not talking about my husband!"
"Then whom ARE you talking about?"
Both the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything previously exchanged, and they were followed on Maggie's part by a momentary drop.
But she was n't to fall away, and while her companion kept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he were n't expecting her to name his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter's bliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. "I'm talking about YOU."
"Do you mean I've been your victim?"
"Of course you've been my victim. What have you done, ever done, that has n't been FOR me?"
"Many things; more than I can tell you--things you've only to think of for yourself. What do you make of all that I've done for myself?"
"'Yourself'?"--She brightened out with derision.
"What do you make of what I've done for American City?"
It took her but a moment to say. "I'm not talking of you as a public character--I'm talking of you on your personal side."
"Well, American City--if 'personalities' can do it--has given me a pretty personal side. What do you make," he went on, "of what I've done for my reputation?"
"Your reputation THERE? You've given it up to them, the awful people, for less than nothing; you've (267) given it up to them to tear to pieces, to make their horrible vulgar jokes against you with."
"Ah my dear I don't care for their horrible vulgar jokes," Adam Verver almost artlessly urged.
"Then there exactly you are!" she triumphed. "Everything that touches you, everything that surrounds you, goes on--by your splendid indifference and your incredible permission--at your expense."
Just as he had been sitting he looked at her an instant longer; then he slowly rose, while his hands stole into his pockets, and stood there before her. "Of course, my dear, YOU go on at my expense: it has never been my idea," he smiled, "that you should work for your living. I would n't have liked to see it." With which for a little again they remained face to face. "Say therefore I HAVE had the feelings of a father. How have they made me a victim?"
"Because I sacrifice you."
"But to what in the world?"