She paused as if her demonstration was complete--yet for the moment without moving; as if in fact to give it a few minutes to sink in; into the listening air, into the watching space, into the conscious hospitality of nature, so far as nature was, all Londonised, all vulgarised, with them there; or even for that matter into her own open ears rather than into the attention of her passive and prudent friend. His attention had done all that attention could do; his handsome slightly anxious, yet still more definitely "amused" face sufficiently played its part. He clutched, however, at what he could best clutch at--the fact that she let him off, definitely let him off. She let him off, it seemed, even from so much as answering; so that while he smiled back at her in return for her information he felt his lips remain closed to the successive vaguenesses of rejoinder, of objection, that rose for him from within. Charlotte herself spoke again at last--"You may want to know what I get by it. But that's my own affair." He really did n't want to know even this--or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as if he did n't; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he had taken refuge. He was glad when finally--the point she had wished to make seeming established to her satisfaction--they brought to what might pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to say. Movement and progress, after this, with more impersonal talk, were naturally a relief; so that he was n't (99) again during their excursion at a loss for the right word. The air had been, as it were, cleared; they had their errand itself to discuss, and the opportunities of London, the sense of the wonderful place, the pleasures of prowling there, the question of shops, of possibilities, of particular objects, noticed by each in previous prowls. Each professed surprise at the extent of the other's knowledge; the Prince in especial wondered at his friend's possession of her London.
He had rather prized his own possession, the guidance he could really often give a cabman; it was a whim of his own, a part of his Anglomania and congruous with that feature, which had after all so much more surface than depth.
When his companion, with the memory of other visits and other rambles, spoke of places he had n't seen and things he did n't know, he actually felt again--as half the effect--just a shade humiliated. He might even have felt a trifle annoyed--if it had n't been, on this spot, for his being even more interested. It was a fresh light on Charlotte and on her curious world-quality, of which in Rome he had had his due sense, but which clearly would show larger on the big London stage. Rome was in comparison a village, a family-party, a little old-world spinnet for the fingers of one hand.
By the time they reached the Marble Arch it was almost as if she were showing him a new side, and that in fact gave amusement a new and a firmer basis.
The right tone would be easy for putting himself in her hands. Should they disagree a little--frankly and fairly--about directions and chances, values and authenticities, the situation would be quite gloriously saved. They were none (100) the less, as happened, much of one mind on the article of their keeping clear of resorts with which Maggie would be acquainted.
Charlotte recalled it as a matter of course, named it in time as a condition--they would keep away from any place to which he had already been with Maggie.