He looked perplexed. "But if she has so absolutely failed, what then has she done?"
"She has suffered--she has done THAT." And the Princess added: "She has loved--and she has lost.'
Mr. Verver, however, still wondered. "But how many times?"
Maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. "Once is enough. Enough, that is, for one to be kind to her.
Her father listened, yet not challenging--only as (186) with a need of some basis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm.
"But has she told you nothing?"
"Ah thank goodness, no!"
He stared. "Then don't young women tell?"
"Because, you mean, it's just what they're supposed to do?" She looked at him, flushed again now; with which, after another hesitation, "Do young men tell?" she asked.
He gave a short laugh. "How do I know, my dear, what young men do?"
"Then how do I know, father, what vulgar girls do?"
"I see--I see," he quickly returned.
But she spoke the next moment as if she might, odiously, have been sharp.
"What happens at least is that where there's a great deal of pride there's a great deal of silence. I don't know, I admit, what I should do if I were lonely and sore--for what sorrow, to speak of, have I ever had in my life?
I don't know even if I'm proud--it seems to me the question has never come up for me."
"Oh I guess you're proud, Mag," her father cheerfully interposed. "I mean I guess you're proud enough."
"Well then I hope I'm humble enough too. I might at all events, for all I know, be abject under a blow. How can I tell? Do you realise, father, that I've never had the least blow?"
He gave her a long quiet look. "Who SHOULD realise if I don't?"
"Well. you'll realise when I HAVE one!" she exclaimed (187) with a short laugh that resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a minute before.
"I would n't in any case have let her tell me what would have been dreadful to me. For such wounds and shames ARE dreadful: at least," she added, catching herself up, "I suppose they are; for what, as I say, do I know of them?
I don t WANT to know!"--she spoke quite with vehemence. "There are things that are sacred--whether they're joys or pains. But one can always, for safety, be kind," she kept on; "one feels when that's right."