Terrorism and talk: The strangeness of James's The Princess Casamassima

The prince enters the picture - quite late in Henry James's "The Princess Casamassima" - we'd met him much earlier in the novel, but only briefly, as he's estranged from the Princess and seems to want her back in his life (or in his control?), and you could kind of guess that he would play a role in the denouement, otherwise why even have her as a married Princess and not a divorcee?, and now we find him lurking outside the downscale house the Princess has rented in Paddington and spying on who comes in and goes out - and he's convinced that she's taken a working-class guy as her lover, when in fact - he sees her with Paul M., and they're on their way some kind of secret terrorist cell meeting, probably to try to get the hero, Hyacinth, out of his vow to become an assassin in service to the cause. So the Prince has it all wrong - he can't really imagine anyone acting out on their ideals, assumes everyone acts on their passions, as he does, but on another level he has it right: the Princess is on a course of self-destruction. Does he make it worse by intervening? He has one of those Jamesian discussions with Madame Grandolfi, the Princess's confidante, and she of course is an evil and meddling influence - she will betray the Princess, no doubt. As with many, all?, James novels, there's a lot of talking, even as we move closer to the dramatic conclusion, and it may turn out to be the only novel about terrorists that ends not with a bang but a whimper.