As his father-in-law's wife Mrs.Verver rose between them there, for the time, in august and prohibitive form; to protect her, defend her, explain about her, was, at the least, to bring her into the question--which would be by the same stroke to bring her husband.

But this was exactly the door Maggie wouldn't open to him; on all of which she was the next moment asking herself if, thus warned and embarrassed, he were not fairly writhing in his pain.

He writhed, on that hypothesis, some seconds more, for it was not till then that he had chosen between what he could do and what he couldn't.
"You're apparently drawing immense conclusions from very small matters.

Won't you perhaps feel, in fairness, that you're striking out, triumphing, or whatever I may call it, rather too easily--feel it when I perfectly admit that your smashed cup there does come back to me?
I frankly confess, now, to the occasion, and to having wished not to speak of it to you at the time.

We took two or three hours together, by arrangement; it WAS on the eve of my marriage--at the moment you say.
But that put it on the eve of yours too, my dear--which was directly the point.