But the interest in Maggie--that was the point--would have achieved but little without her interest in HIM.

On what did that sentiment, unsolicited and unrecompensed, rest?
what good, again--for it was much like his question about Mr.Verver--should he ever have done her?
The Prince's notion of a recompense to women--similar in this to his notion of an appeal--was more or less to make love to them.

Now he hadn't, as he believed, made love the least little bit to Mrs.Assingham--nor did he think she had for a moment supposed it.

He liked in these days, to mark them off, the women to whom he hadn't made love: it represented-- and that was what pleased him in it--a different stage of existence from the time at which he liked to mark off the women to whom he had.

Neither, with all this, had Mrs.Assingham herself been either aggressive or resentful.