Sure," Maggie developed, "of your having, and of your having for a long time had, TWO relations with Charlotte." He stared, a little at sea, as he took it up.

"Two-- ?" Something in the tone of it gave it a sense, or an ambiguity, almost foolish--leaving Maggie to feel, as in a flash, how such a consequence, a foredoomed infelicity, partaking of the ridiculous even in one of the cleverest, might be of the very essence of the penalty of wrong-doing.
"Oh, you may have had fifty--had the same relation with her fifty times! It's of the number of KINDS of relation with her that I speak--a number that doesn't matter, really, so long as there wasn't only one kind, as father and I supposed.

One kind," she went on, "was there before us; we took that fully for granted, as you saw, and accepted it.

We never thought of there being another, kept out of our sight.

But after the evening I speak of I knew there was something else.