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diff --git a/old/30059.txt b/old/30059.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2d07bc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30059.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11473 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Wings of the Dove, Volume II, by Henry James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wings of the Dove, Volume II + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: September 22, 2009 [EBook #30059] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINGS OF THE DOVE, VOLUME II *** + + + + +Produced by James Adcock. Special thanks to The Internet +Archive: American Libraries, and Project Gutenberg Australia + + + + + + + + + + + +THE WINGS OF THE DOVE + +BY HENRY JAMES + + +VOLUME II + + +NEW YORK + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +1909 + + +Copyright, 1902 and 1909 by Charles Scribner's Sons + + + + + +BOOK SIXTH + + + + +THE WINGS OF THE DOVE + + + +I + + + +"I say, you know, Kate--you _did_ stay!" had been Merton Densher's +punctual remark on their adventure after they had, as it were, got out +of it; an observation which she not less promptly, on her side, let him +see that she forgave in him only because he was a man. She had to +recognise, with whatever disappointment, that it was doubtless the most +helpful he could make in this character. The fact of the adventure was +flagrant between them; they had looked at each other, on gaining the +street, as people look who have just rounded together a dangerous +corner, and there was therefore already enough unanimity sketched out +to have lighted, for her companion, anything equivocal in her action. +But the amount of light men _did_ need!--Kate could have been eloquent +at this moment about that. What, however, on his seeing more, struck +him as most distinct in her was her sense that, reunited after his +absence and having been now half the morning together, it behooved them +to face without delay the question of handling their immediate future. +That it would require some handling, that they should still have to +deal, deal in a crafty manner, with difficulties and delays, was the +great matter he had come back to, greater than any but the refreshed +consciousness of their personal need of each other. This need had had +twenty minutes, the afternoon before, to find out where it stood, and +the time was fully accounted for by the charm of the demonstration. He +had arrived at Euston at five, having wired her from Liverpool the +moment he landed, and she had quickly decided to meet him at the +station, whatever publicity might attend such an act. When he had +praised her for it on alighting from his train she had answered frankly +enough that such things should be taken at a jump. She didn't care +to-day who saw her, and she profited by it for her joy. To-morrow, +inevitably, she should have time to think and then, as inevitably, +would become a baser creature, a creature of alarms and precautions. It +was none the less for to-morrow at an early hour that she had appointed +their next meeting, keeping in mind for the present a particular +obligation to show at Lancaster Gate by six o'clock. She had given, +with imprecations, her reason--people to tea, eternally, and a promise +to Aunt Maud; but she had been liberal enough on the spot and had +suggested the National Gallery for the morning quite as with an idea +that had ripened in expectancy. They might be seen there too, but +nobody would know them; just as, for that matter, now, in the +refreshment-room to which they had adjourned, they would incur the +notice but, at the worst, of the unacquainted. They would "have +something" there for the facility it would give. Thus had it already +come up for them again that they had no place of convenience. + +He found himself on English soil with all sorts of feelings, but he +hadn't quite faced having to reckon with a certain ruefulness in regard +to that subject as one of the strongest. He was aware later on that +there were questions his impatience had shirked; whereby it actually +rather smote him, for want of preparation and assurance, that he had +nowhere to "take" his love. He had taken it thus, at Euston--and on +Kate's own suggestion--into the place where people had beer and buns, +and had ordered tea at a small table in the corner; which, no doubt, as +they were lost in the crowd, did well enough for a stop-gap. It perhaps +did as well as her simply driving with him to the door of his lodging, +which had had to figure as the sole device of his own wit. That wit, +the truth was, had broken down a little at the sharp prevision that +once at his door they would have to hang back. She would have to stop +there, wouldn't come in with him, couldn't possibly; and he shouldn't +be able to ask her, would feel he couldn't without betraying a +deficiency of what would be called, even at their advanced stage, +respect for her: that again was all that was clear except the further +fact that it was maddening. Compressed and concentrated, confined to a +single sharp pang or two, but none the less in wait for him there on +the Euston platform and lifting its head as that of a snake in the +garden, was the disconcerting sense that "respect," in their game, +seemed somehow--he scarce knew what to call it--a fifth wheel to the +coach. It was properly an inside thing, not an outside, a thing to make +love greater, not to make happiness less. They had met again for +happiness, and he distinctly felt, during his most lucid moment or two, +how he must keep watch on anything that really menaced that boon. If +Kate had consented to drive away with him and alight at his house there +would probably enough have occurred for them, at the foot of his steps, +one of those strange instants between man and woman that blow upon the +red spark, the spark of conflict, ever latent in the depths of passion. +She would have shaken her head--oh sadly, divinely--on the question of +coming in; and he, though doing all justice to her refusal, would have +yet felt his eyes reach further into her own than a possible word at +such a time could reach. This would have meant the suspicion, the dread +of the shadow, of an adverse will. Lucky therefore in the actual case +that the scant minutes took another turn and that by the half-hour she +did in spite of everything contrive to spend with him Kate showed so +well how she could deal with things that maddened. She seemed to ask +him, to beseech him, and all for his better comfort, to leave her, now +and henceforth, to treat them in her own way. + +She had still met it in naming so promptly, for their early +convenience, one of the great museums; and indeed with such happy art +that his fully seeing where she had placed him hadn't been till after +he left her. His absence from her for so many weeks had had such an +effect upon him that his demands, his desires had grown; and only the +night before, as his ship steamed, beneath summer stars, in sight of +the Irish coast, he had felt all the force of his particular necessity. +He hadn't in other words at any point doubted he was on his way to say +to her that really their mistake must end. Their mistake was to have +believed that they _could hold out_--hold out, that is, not against +Aunt Maud, but against an impatience that, prolonged and exasperated, +made a man ill. He had known more than ever, on their separating in the +court of the station, how ill a man, and even a woman, could feel from +such a cause; but he struck himself as also knowing that he had already +suffered Kate to begin finely to apply antidotes and remedies and +subtle sedatives. It had a vulgar sound--as throughout, in love, the +names of things, the verbal terms of intercourse, were, compared with +love itself, horribly vulgar; but it was as if, after all, he might +have come back to find himself "put off," though it would take him of +course a day or two to see. His letters from the States had pleased +whom it concerned, though not so much as he had meant they should; and +he should be paid according to agreement and would now take up his +money. It wasn't in truth very much to take up, so that he hadn't in +the least come back flourishing a cheque-book; that new motive for +bringing his mistress to terms he couldn't therefore pretend to +produce. The ideal certainty would have been to be able to present a +change of prospect as a warrant for the change of philosophy, and +without it he should have to make shift but with the pretext of the +lapse of time. The lapse of time--not so many weeks after all, she +might always of course say--couldn't at any rate have failed to do +something for him; and that consideration it was that had just now +tided him over, all the more that he had his vision of what it had done +personally for Kate. This had come out for him with a splendour that +almost scared him even in their small corner of the room at +Euston--almost scared him because it just seemed to blaze at him that +waiting was the game of dupes. Not yet had she been so the creature he +had originally seen; not yet had he felt so soundly safely sure. It was +all there for him, playing on his pride of possession as a hidden +master in a great dim church might play on the grandest organ. His +final sense was that a woman couldn't be like that and then ask of one +the impossible. + +She had been like that afresh on the morrow; and so for the hour they +had been able to float in the mere joy of contact--such contact as +their situation in pictured public halls permitted. This poor makeshift +for closeness confessed itself in truth, by twenty small signs of +unrest even on Kate's part, inadequate; so little could a decent +interest in the interesting place presume to remind them of its claims. +They had met there in order not to meet in the streets and not again, +with an equal want of invention and of style, at a railway-station; not +again, either, in Kensington Gardens, which, they could easily and +tacitly agree, would have had too much of the taste of their old +frustrations. The present taste, the taste that morning in the pictured +halls, had been a variation; yet Densher had at the end of a quarter of +an hour fully known what to conclude from it. This fairly consoled him +for their awkwardness, as if he had been watching it affect her. She +might be as nobly charming as she liked, and he had seen nothing to +touch her in the States; she couldn't pretend that in such conditions +as those she herself _believed_ it enough to appease him. She couldn't +pretend she believed he would believe it enough to render her a like +service. It wasn't enough for that purpose--she as good as showed him +it wasn't. That was what he could be glad, by demonstration, to have +brought her to. He would have said to her had he put it crudely and on +the spot: "_Now_ am I to understand you that you consider this sort of +thing can go on?" It would have been open to her, no doubt, to reply +that to have him with her again, to have him all kept and treasured, so +still, under her grasping hand, as she had held him in their yearning +interval, was a sort of thing that he must allow her to have no quarrel +about; but that would be a mere gesture of her grace, a mere sport of +her subtlety. She knew as well as he what they wanted; in spite of +which indeed he scarce could have said how beautifully he mightn't once +more have named it and urged it if she hadn't, at a given moment, +blurred, as it were, the accord. They had soon seated themselves for +better talk, and so they had remained a while, intimate and +superficial. The immediate things to say had been many, for they hadn't +exhausted them at Euston. They drew upon them freely now, and Kate +appeared quite to forget--which was prodigiously becoming to her--to +look about for surprises. He was to try afterwards, and try in vain, to +remember what speech or what silence of his own, what natural sign of +the eyes or accidental touch of the hand, had precipitated for her, in +the midst of this, a sudden different impulse. She had got up, with +inconsequence, as if to break the charm, though he wasn't aware of what +he had done at the moment to make the charm a danger. She had patched +it up agreeably enough the next minute by some odd remark about some +picture, to which he hadn't so much as replied; it being quite +independently of this that he had himself exclaimed on the dreadful +closeness of the rooms. He had observed that they must go out again to +breathe; and it was as if their common consciousness, while they passed +into another part, was that of persons who, infinitely engaged +together, had been startled and were trying to look natural. It was +probably while they were so occupied--as the young man subsequently +reconceived--that they had stumbled upon his little New York friend. He +thought of her for some reason as little, though she was of about +Kate's height, to which, any more than to any other felicity in his +mistress, he had never applied the diminutive. + +What was to be in the retrospect more distinct to him was the process +by which he had become aware that Kate's acquaintance with her was +greater than he had gathered. She had written of it in due course as a +new and amusing one, and he had written back that he had met over +there, and that he much liked, the young person; whereupon she had +answered that he must find out about her at home. Kate, in the event, +however, had not returned to that, and he had of course, with so many +things to find out about, been otherwise taken up. Little Miss Theale's +individual history was not stuff for his newspaper; besides which, +moreover, he was seeing but too many little Miss Theales. They even +went so far as to impose themselves as one of the groups of social +phenomena that fell into the scheme of his public letters. For this +group in especial perhaps--the irrepressible, the supereminent young +persons--his best pen was ready. Thus it was that there could come back +to him in London, an hour or two after their luncheon with the American +pair, the sense of a situation for which Kate hadn't wholly prepared +him. Possibly indeed as marked as this was his recovered perception +that preparations, of more than one kind, had been exactly what, both +yesterday and to-day, he felt her as having in hand. That appearance in +fact, if he dwelt on it, so ministered to apprehension as to require +some brushing away. He shook off the suspicion to some extent, on their +separating first from their hostesses and then from each other, by the +aid of a long and rather aimless walk. He was to go to the office +later, but he had the next two or three hours, and he gave himself as a +pretext that he had eaten much too much. After Kate had asked him to +put her into a cab--which, as an announced, a resumed policy on her +part, he found himself deprecating--he stood a while by a corner and +looked vaguely forth at his London. There was always doubtless a moment +for the absentee recaptured--_the_ moment, that of the reflux of the +first emotion--at which it was beyond disproof that one was back. His +full parenthesis was closed, and he was once more but a sentence, of a +sort, in the general text, the text that, from his momentary +street-corner, showed as a great grey page of print that somehow +managed to be crowded without being "fine." The grey, however, was more +or less the blur of a point of view not yet quite seized again; and +there would be colour enough to come out. He was back, flatly enough, +but back to possibilities and prospects, and the ground he now somewhat +sightlessly covered was the act of renewed possession. + +He walked northward without a plan, without suspicion, quite in the +direction his little New York friend, in her restless ramble, had taken +a day or two before. He reached, like Milly, the Regent's Park; and +though he moved further and faster he finally sat down, like Milly, +from the force of thought. For him too in this position, be it +added--and he might positively have occupied the same bench--various +troubled fancies folded their wings. He had no more yet said what he +really wanted than Kate herself had found time. She should hear enough +of that in a couple of days. He had practically not pressed her as to +what most concerned them; it had seemed so to concern them during these +first hours but to hold each other, spiritually speaking, close. This +at any rate was palpable, that there were at present more things rather +than fewer between them. The explanation about the two ladies would be +part of the lot, yet could wait with all the rest. They were not +meanwhile certainly what most made him roam--the missing explanations +weren't. That was what she had so often said before, and always with +the effect of suddenly breaking off: "Now please call me a good cab." +Their previous encounters, the times when they had reached in their +stroll the south side of the park, had had a way of winding up with +this special irrelevance. It was effectively what most divided them, +for he would generally, but for her reasons, have been able to jump in +with her. What did she think he wished to do to her?--it was a question +he had had occasion to put. A small matter, however, doubtless--since, +when it came to that, they didn't depend on cabs good or bad for the +sense of union: its importance was less from the particular loss than +as a kind of irritating mark of her expertness. This expertness, under +providence, had been great from the first, so far as joining him was +concerned; and he was critical only because it had been still greater, +even from the first too, in respect to leaving him. He had put the +question to her again that afternoon, on the repetition of her +appeal--had asked her once more what she supposed he wished to do. He +recalled, on his bench in the Regent's Park, the freedom of fancy, +funny and pretty, with which she had answered; recalled the moment +itself, while the usual hansom charged them, during which he felt +himself, disappointed as he was, grimacing back at the superiority of +her very "humour," in its added grace of gaiety, to the celebrated +solemn American. Their fresh appointment had been at all events by that +time made, and he should see what her choice in respect to it--a +surprise as well as a relief--would do toward really simplifying. It +meant either new help or new hindrance, though it took them at least +out of the streets. And her naming this privilege had naturally made +him ask if Mrs. Lowder knew of his return. + +"Not from me," Kate had replied. "But I shall speak to her now." And +she had argued, as with rather a quick fresh view, that it would now be +quite easy. "We've behaved for months so properly that I've margin +surely for my mention of you. You'll come to see _her_, and she'll +leave you with me; she'll show her good nature, and her lack of +betrayed fear, in that. With her, you know, you've never broken, quite +the contrary, and she likes you as much as ever. We're leaving town; it +will be the end; just now therefore it's nothing to ask. I'll ask +to-night," Kate had wound up, "and if you'll leave it to me--my +cleverness, I assure you, has grown infernal--I'll make it all right." + +He had of course thus left it to her and he was wondering more about it +now than he had wondered there in Brook Street. He repeated to himself +that if it wasn't in the line of triumph it was in the line of muddle. +This indeed, no doubt, was as a part of his wonder for still other +questions. Kate had really got off without meeting his little challenge +about the terms of their intercourse with her dear Milly. Her dear +Milly, it was sensible, _was_ somehow in the picture. Her dear Milly, +popping up in his absence, occupied--he couldn't have said quite why he +felt it--more of the foreground than one would have expected her in +advance to find clear. She took up room, and it was almost as if room +had been made for her. Kate had appeared to take for granted he would +know why it had been made; but that was just the point. It was a +foreground in which he himself, in which his connexion with Kate, +scarce enjoyed a space to turn round. But Miss Theale was perhaps at +the present juncture a possibility of the same sort as the softened, if +not the squared, Aunt Maud. It might be true of her also that if she +weren't a bore she'd be a convenience. It rolled over him of a sudden, +after he had resumed his walk, that this might easily be what Kate had +meant. The charming girl adored her--Densher had for himself made out +that--and would protect, would lend a hand, to their interviews. These +might take place, in other words, on her premises, which would remove +them still better from the streets. _That_ was an explanation which did +hang together. It was impaired a little, of a truth, by this fact that +their next encounter was rather markedly not to depend upon her. Yet +this fact in turn would be accounted for by the need of more +preliminaries. One of the things he conceivably should gain on Thursday +at Lancaster Gate would be a further view of that propriety. + + +II + +It was extraordinary enough that he should actually be finding himself, +when Thursday arrived, none so wide of the mark. Kate hadn't come all +the way to this for him, but she had come to a good deal by the end of +a quarter of an hour. What she had begun with was her surprise at her +appearing to have left him on Tuesday anything more to understand. The +parts, as he now saw, under her hand, did fall more or less together, +and it wasn't even as if she had spent the interval in twisting and +fitting them. She was bright and handsome, not fagged and worn, with +the general clearness; for it certainly stuck out enough that if the +American ladies themselves weren't to be squared, which was absurd, +they fairly imposed the necessity of trying Aunt Maud again. One +couldn't say to them, kind as she had been to them: "We'll meet, +please, whenever you'll let us, at your house; but we count on you to +help us to keep it secret." They must in other terms inevitably speak +to Aunt Maud--it would be of the last awkwardness to ask them not to: +Kate had embraced all this in her choice of speaking first. What Kate +embraced altogether was indeed wonderful to-day for Densher, though he +perhaps struck himself rather as getting it out of her piece by piece +than as receiving it in a steady light. He had always felt, however, +that the more he asked of her the more he found her prepared, as he +imaged it, to hand out. He had said to her more than once even before +his absence: "You keep the key of the cupboard, and I foresee that when +we're married you'll dole me out my sugar by lumps." She had replied +that she rejoiced in his assumption that sugar would be his diet, and +the domestic arrangement so prefigured might have seemed already to +prevail. The supply from the cupboard at this hour was doubtless, of a +truth, not altogether cloyingly sweet; but it met in a manner his +immediate requirements. If her explanations at any rate prompted +questions the questions no more exhausted them than they exhausted her +patience. And they were naturally, of the series, the simpler; as for +instance in his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do +nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think +possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms +of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some +occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me +these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so +accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And +it's one more nail, thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He +was but too glad without more ado to point the moral. "Now I hope you +see we can't work it anyhow." + +If she laughed for this--and her spirits seemed really high--it was +because of the opportunity that, at the hotel, he had most shown +himself as enjoying. "Your idea's beautiful when one remembers that you +hadn't a word except for Milly." But she was as beautifully +good-humoured. "You might of course get used to her--you _will._ You're +quite right--so long as they're with us or near us." And she put it, +lucidly, that the dear things couldn't _help_, simply as charming +friends, giving them a lift. "They'll speak to Aunt Maud, but they +won't shut their doors to us: that would be another matter. A friend +always helps--and she's a friend." She had left Mrs. Stringham by this +time out of the question; she had reduced it to Milly. "Besides, she +particularly likes us. She particularly likes _you_. I say, old boy, +make something of that." He felt her dodging the ultimatum he had just +made sharp, his definite reminder of how little, at the best, they +could work it; but there were certain of his remarks--those mostly of +the sharper penetration--that it had been quite her practice from the +first not formally, not reverently to notice. She showed the effect of +them in ways less trite. This was what happened now: he didn't think in +truth that she wasn't really minding. She took him up, none the less, +on a minor question. "You say we can't meet here, but you see it's just +what we do. What could be more lovely than this?" + +It wasn't to torment him--that again he didn't believe; but he had to +come to the house in some discomfort, so that he frowned a little at +her calling it thus a luxury. Wasn't there an element in it of coming +back into bondage? The bondage might be veiled and varnished, but he +knew in his bones how little the very highest privileges of Lancaster +Gate could ever be a sign of their freedom. They were upstairs, in one +of the smaller apartments of state, a room arranged as a boudoir, but +visibly unused--it defied familiarity--and furnished in the ugliest of +blues. He had immediately looked with interest at the closed doors, and +Kate had met his interest with the assurance that it was all right, +that Aunt Maud did them justice--so far, that was, as this particular +time was concerned; that they should be alone and have nothing to fear. +But the fresh allusion to this that he had drawn from her acted on him +now more directly, brought him closer still to the question. They +_were_ alone--it _was_ all right: he took in anew the shut doors and +the permitted privacy, the solid stillness of the great house. They +connected themselves on the spot with something made doubly vivid in +him by the whole present play of her charming strong will. What it +amounted to was that he couldn't have her--hanged if he +could!--evasive. He couldn't and he wouldn't--wouldn't have her +inconvenient and elusive. He didn't want her deeper than himself, fine +as it might be as wit or as character; he wanted to keep her where +their communications would be straight and easy and their intercourse +independent. The effect of this was to make him say in a moment: "Will +you take me just as I am?" + +She turned a little pale for the tone of truth in it--which qualified +to his sense delightfully the strength of her will; and the pleasure he +found in this was not the less for her breaking out after an instant +into a strain that stirred him more than any she had ever used with +him. "Ah do let me try myself! I assure you I see my way--so don't +spoil it: wait for me and give me time. Dear man," Kate said, "only +believe in me, and it will be beautiful." + +He hadn't come back to hear her talk of his believing in her as if he +didn't; but he had come back--and it all was upon him now--to seize her +with a sudden intensity that her manner of pleading with him had made, +as happily appeared, irresistible. He laid strong hands upon her to +say, almost in anger, "Do you love me, love me, love me?" and she +closed her eyes as with the sense that he might strike her but that she +could gratefully take it. Her surrender was her response, her response +her surrender; and, though scarce hearing what she said, he so profited +by these things that it could for the time be ever so intimately +appreciable to him that he was keeping her. The long embrace in which +they held each other was the rout of evasion, and he took from it the +certitude that what she had from him was real to her. It was stronger +than an uttered vow, and the name he was to give it in afterthought was +that she had been sublimely sincere. _That_ was all he asked--sincerity +making a basis that would bear almost anything. This settled so much, +and settled it so thoroughly, that there was nothing left to ask her to +swear to. Oaths and vows apart, now they could talk. It seemed in fact +only now that their questions were put on the table. He had taken up +more expressly at the end of five minutes her plea for her own plan, +and it was marked that the difference made by the passage just enacted +was a difference in favour of her choice of means. Means had somehow +suddenly become a detail--her province and her care; it had grown more +consistently vivid that her intelligence was one with her passion. "I +certainly don't want," he said--and he could say it with a smile of +indulgence--"to be all the while bringing it up that I don't trust you." + +"I should hope not! What do you think I want to do?" + +He had really at this to make out a little what he thought, and the +first thing that put itself in evidence was of course the oddity, after +all, of their game, to which he could but frankly allude. "We're doing, +at the best, in trying to temporise in so special a way, a thing most +people would call us fools for." But his visit passed, all the same, +without his again attempting to make "just as he was" serve. He had no +more money just as he was than he had had just as he had been, or than +he should have, probably, when it came to that, just as he always would +be; whereas she, on her side, in comparison with her state of some +months before, had measureably more to relinquish. He easily saw how +their meeting at Lancaster Gate gave more of an accent to that quantity +than their meeting at stations or in parks; and yet on the other hand +he couldn't urge this against it. If Mrs. Lowder was indifferent her +indifference added in a manner to what Kate's taking him as he was +would call on her to sacrifice. Such in fine was her art with him that +she seemed to put the question of their still waiting into quite other +terms than the terms of ugly blue, of florid Sevres, of complicated +brass, in which their boudoir expressed it. She said almost all in fact +by saying, on this article of Aunt Maud, after he had once more pressed +her, that when he should see her, as must inevitably soon happen, he +would understand. "Do you mean," he asked at this, "that there's any +_definite_ sign of her coming round? I'm not talking," he explained, +"of mere hypocrisies in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after +all, that supremely clever as we are, and as strong a team, I admit, as +there is going--remember that she can play with us quite as much as we +play with her." + +"She doesn't want to play with _me_, my dear," Kate lucidly replied; +"she doesn't want to make me suffer a bit more than she need. She cares +for me too much, and everything she does or doesn't do has a value. +_This_ has a value--her being as she has been about us to-day. I +believe she's in her room, where she's keeping strictly to herself +while you're here with me. But that isn't 'playing'--not a bit." + +"What is it then," the young man returned--"from the moment it isn't +her blessing and a cheque?" + +Kate was complete. "It's simply her absence of smallness. There is +something in her above trifles. She _generally_ trusts us; she doesn't +propose to hunt us into corners; and if we frankly ask for a +thing--why," said Kate, "she shrugs, but she lets it go. She has really +but one fault--she's indifferent, on such ground as she has taken about +us, to details. However," the girl cheerfully went on, "it isn't in +detail we fight her." + +"It seems to me," Densher brought out after a moment's thought of this, +"that it's in detail we deceive her"--a speech that, as soon as he had +uttered it, applied itself for him, as also visibly for his companion, +to the afterglow of their recent embrace. + +Any confusion attaching to this adventure, however, dropped from Kate, +whom, as he could see with sacred joy, it must take more than that to +make compunctious. "I don't say we can do it again. I mean," she +explained, "meet here." + +Densher indeed had been wondering where they could do it again. If +Lancaster Gate was so limited that issue reappeared. "I mayn't come +back at all?" + +"Certainly--to see her. It's she, really," his companion smiled, "who's +in love with you." + +But it made him--a trifle more grave--look at her a moment. "Don't make +out, you know, that every one's in love with me." + +She hesitated. "I don't say every one." + +"You said just now Miss Theale." + +"I said she liked you--yes." + +"Well, it comes to the same thing." With which, however, he pursued: +"Of course I ought to thank Mrs. Lowder in person. I mean for +_this_--as from myself." + +"Ah but, you know, not too much!" She had an ironic gaiety for the +implications of his "this," besides wishing to insist on a general +prudence. "She'll wonder what you're thanking her for!" + +Densher did justice to both considerations. "Yes, I can't very well +tell her all." + +It was perhaps because he said it so gravely that Kate was again in a +manner amused. Yet she gave out light. "You can't very well 'tell' her +anything, and that doesn't matter. Only be nice to her. Please her; +make her see how clever you are--only without letting her see that +you're trying. If you're charming to her you've nothing else to do." + +But she oversimplified too. "I can be 'charming' to her, so far as I +see, only by letting her suppose I give you up--which I'll be hanged if +I do! It _is_," he said with feeling, "a game." + +"Of course it's a game. But she'll never suppose you give me up--or I +give _you_--if you keep reminding her how you enjoy our interviews." + +"Then if she has to see us as obstinate and constant," Densher asked, +"what good does it do?" + +Kate was for a moment checked. "What good does what--?" + +"Does my pleasing her--does anything. I _can't_," he impatiently +declared, "please her." + +Kate looked at him hard again, disappointed at his want of consistency; +but it appeared to determine in her something better than a mere +complaint. "Then _I_ can! Leave it to me." With which she came to him +under the compulsion, again, that had united them shortly before, and +took hold of him in her urgency to the same tender purpose. It was her +form of entreaty renewed and repeated, which made after all, as he met +it, their great fact clear. And it somehow clarified _all_ things so to +possess each other. The effect of it was that, once more, on these +terms, he could only be generous. He had so on the spot then left +everything to her that she reverted in the course of a few moments to +one of her previous--and as positively seemed--her most precious ideas. +"You accused me just now of saying that Milly's in love with you. Well, +if you come to that, I do say it. So there you are. That's the good +she'll do us. It makes a basis for her seeing you--so that she'll help +us to go on." + +Densher stared--she was wondrous all round. "And what sort of a basis +does it make for my seeing _her?_" + +"Oh I don't mind!" Kate smiled. + +"Don't mind my leading her on?" + +She put it differently. "Don't mind her leading _you_." + +"Well, she won't--so it's nothing not to mind. But how can that +'help,'" he pursued, "with what she knows?" + +"What she knows? That needn't prevent." + +He wondered. "Prevent her loving us?" + +"Prevent her helping you. She's _like_ that," Kate Croy explained. + +It took indeed some understanding. "Making nothing of the fact that I +love another?" + +"Making everything," said Kate. "To console you." + +"But for what?" + +"For not getting your other." + +He continued to stare. "But how does she know--?" + +"That you _won't_ get her? She doesn't; but on the other hand she +doesn't know you will. Meanwhile she sees you baffled, for she knows of +Aunt Maud's stand. _That_"--Kate was lucid--"gives her the chance to be +nice to you." + +"And what does it give _me_," the young man none the less rationally +asked, "the chance to be? A brute of a humbug to her?" + +Kate so possessed her facts, as it were, that she smiled at his +violence. "You'll extraordinarily like her. She's exquisite. And there +are reasons. I mean others." + +"What others?" + +"Well, I'll tell you another time. Those I give you," the girl added, +"are enough to go on with." + +"To go on to what?" + +"Why, to seeing her again--say as soon as you can: which, moreover, on +all grounds, is no more than decent of you." + +He of course took in her reference, and he had fully in mind what had +passed between them in New York. It had been no great quantity, but it +had made distinctly at the time for his pleasure; so that anything in +the nature of an appeal in the name of it could have a slight kindling +consequence. "Oh I shall naturally call again without delay. Yes," said +Densher, "her being in love with me is nonsense; but I must, quite +independently of that, make every acknowledgement of favours received." + +It appeared practically all Kate asked. "Then you see. I shall meet you +there." + +"I don't quite see," he presently returned, "why she should wish to +receive you for it." + +"She receives me for myself--that is for _her_ self. She thinks no end +of me. That I should have to drum it into you!" + +Yet still he didn't take it. "Then I confess she's beyond me." + +Well, Kate could but leave it as she saw it. "She regards me as +already--in these few weeks--her dearest friend. It's quite separate. +We're in, she and I, ever so deep." And it was to confirm this that, as +if it had flashed upon her that he was somewhere at sea, she threw out +at last her own real light. "She doesn't of course know I care for +_you_. She thinks I care so little that it's not worth speaking of." +That he had been somewhere at sea these remarks made quickly clear, and +Kate hailed the effect with surprise. "Have you been supposing that she +does know--?" + +"About our situation? Certainly, if you're such friends as you show +me--and if you haven't otherwise represented it to her." She uttered at +this such a sound of impatience that he stood artlessly vague. "You +_have_ denied it to her?" + +She threw up her arms at his being so backward. "'Denied it'? My dear +man, we've never spoken of you." + +"Never, never?" + +"Strange as it may appear to your glory--never." + +He couldn't piece it together. "But won't Mrs. Lowder have spoken?" + +"Very probably. But of _you_. Not of me." + +This struck him as obscure. "How does she know me but as part and +parcel of you?" + +"How?" Kate triumphantly asked. "Why exactly to make nothing of it, to +have nothing to do with it, to stick consistently to her line about it. +Aunt Maud's line is to keep all reality out of our relation--that is +out of my being in danger from you--by not having so much as suspected +or heard of it. She'll get rid of it, as she believes, by ignoring it +and sinking it--if she only does so hard enough. Therefore _she_, in +her manner, 'denies' it if you will. That's how she knows you otherwise +than as part and parcel of me. She won't for a moment have allowed +either to Mrs. Stringham or to Milly that I've in any way, as they say, +distinguished you." + +"And you don't suppose," said Densher, "that they must have made it out +for themselves?" + +"No, my dear, I don't; not even," Kate declared, "after Milly's so +funnily bumping against us on Tuesday." + +"She doesn't see from _that_--?" + +"That you're, so to speak, mad about me. Yes, she sees, no doubt, that +you regard me with a complacent eye--for you show it, I think, always +too much and too crudely. But nothing beyond that. I don't show it too +much; I don't perhaps--to please you completely where others are +concerned--show it enough." + +"Can you show it or not as you like?" Densher demanded. + +It pulled her up a little, but she came out resplendent. "Not where +_you_ are concerned. Beyond seeing that you're rather gone," she went +on, "Milly only sees that I'm decently good to you." + +"Very good indeed she must think it!" + +"Very good indeed then. She easily sees me," Kate smiled, "as very good +indeed." + +The young man brooded. "But in a sense to take some explaining." + +"Then I explain." She was really fine; it came back to her essential +plea for her freedom of action and his beauty of trust. "I mean," she +added, "I _will_ explain." + +"And what will I do?" + +"Recognise the difference it must make if she thinks." But here in +truth Kate faltered. It was his silence alone that, for the moment, +took up her apparent meaning; and before he again spoke she had +returned to remembrance and prudence. They were now not to forget that, +Aunt Maud's liberality having put them on their honour, they mustn't +spoil their case by abusing it. He must leave her in time; they should +probably find it would help them. But she came back to Milly too. "Mind +you go to see her." + +Densher still, however, took up nothing of this. "Then I may come +again?" + +"For Aunt Maud--as much as you like. But we can't again," said Kate, +"play her _this trick_. I can't see you here alone." + +"Then where?" + +"Go to see Milly," she for all satisfaction repeated. + +"And what good will that do me?" + +"Try it and you'll see." + +"You mean you'll manage to be there?" Densher asked. "Say you are, how +will that give us privacy?" + +"Try it--you'll see," the girl once more returned. "We must manage as +we can." + +"That's precisely what _I_ feel. It strikes me we might manage better." +His idea of this was a thing that made him an instant hesitate; yet he +brought it out with conviction. "Why won't you come to _me?_" + +It was a question her troubled eyes seemed to tell him he was scarce +generous in expecting her definitely to answer, and by looking to him +to wait at least she appealed to something that she presently made him +feel as his pity. It was on that special shade of tenderness that he +thus found himself thrown back; and while he asked of his spirit and of +his flesh just what concession they could arrange she pressed him yet +again on the subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment. It +might have been irritating had she ever struck him as having in her +mind a stupid corner. "You'll see," she said, "the difference it will +make." + +Well, since she wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who was +stupid--the proof of which was that he would do what she liked. But he +made a last effort to understand, her allusion to the "difference" +bringing him round to it. He indeed caught at something subtle but +strong even as he spoke. "Is what you meant a moment ago that the +difference will be in her being made to believe you hate me?" + +Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of putting it, one of her +more marked shows of impatience; with which in fact she sharply closed +their discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, and she +accompanied him to the top of the stairs with an air of having so put +their possibilities before him that questions were idle and doubts +perverse. "I verily believe I _shall_ hate you if you spoil for me the +beauty of what I see!" + + +III + +He was really, notwithstanding, to hear more from her of what she saw; +and the very next occasion had for him still other surprises than that. +He received from Mrs. Lowder on the morning after his visit to Kate the +telegraphic expression of a hope that he might be free to dine with +them that evening; and his freedom affected him as fortunate even +though in some degree qualified by her missive. "Expecting American +friends whom I'm so glad to find you know!" His knowledge of American +friends was clearly an accident of which he was to taste the fruit to +the last bitterness. This apprehension, however, we hasten to add, +enjoyed for him, in the immediate event, a certain merciful shrinkage; +the immediate event being that, at Lancaster Gate, five minutes after +his due arrival, prescribed him for eight-thirty, Mrs. Stringham came +in alone. The long daylight, the postponed lamps, the habit of the +hour, made dinners late and guests still later; so that, punctual as he +was, he had found Mrs. Lowder alone, with Kate herself not yet in the +field. He had thus had with her several bewildering +moments--bewildering by reason, fairly, of their tacit invitation to +him to be supernaturally simple. This was exactly, goodness knew, what +he wanted to be; but he had never had it so largely and freely--_so_ +supernaturally simply, for that matter--imputed to him as of easy +achievement. It was a particular in which Aunt Maud appeared to offer +herself as an example, appeared to say quite agreeably: "What I want of +you, don't you see? is to be just exactly as _I_ am." The quantity of +the article required was what might especially have caused him to +stagger--he liked so, in general, the quantities in which Mrs. Lowder +dealt. He would have liked as well to ask her how feasible she supposed +it for a poor young man to resemble her at any point; but he had after +all soon enough perceived that he was doing as she wished by letting +his wonder show just a little as silly. He was conscious moreover of a +small strange dread of the results of discussion with her--strange, +truly, because it was her good nature, not her asperity, that he +feared. Asperity might have made him angry--in which there was always a +comfort; good nature, in his conditions, had a tendency to make him +ashamed--which Aunt Maud indeed, wonderfully, liking him for himself, +quite struck him as having guessed. To spare him therefore she also +avoided discussion; she kept him down by refusing to quarrel with him. +This was what she now proposed to him to enjoy, and his secret +discomfort was his sense that on the whole it was what would best suit +him. Being kept down was a bore, but his great dread, verily, was of +being ashamed, which was a thing distinct; and it mattered but little +that he was ashamed of that too. It was of the essence of his position +that in such a house as this the tables could always be turned on him. +"What do you offer, what do you offer?"--the place, however muffled in +convenience and decorum, constantly hummed for him with that thick +irony. The irony was a renewed reference to obvious bribes, and he had +already seen how little aid came to him from denouncing the bribes as +ugly in form. That was what the precious metals--they alone--could +afford to be; it was vain enough for him accordingly to try to impart a +gloss to his own comparative brummagem. The humiliation of this +impotence was precisely what Aunt Maud sought to mitigate for him by +keeping him down; and as her effort to that end had doubtless never yet +been so visible he had probably never felt so definitely placed in the +world as while he waited with her for her half-dozen other guests. She +welcomed him genially back from the States, as to his view of which her +few questions, though not coherent, were comprehensive, and he had the +amusement of seeing in her, as through a clear glass, the outbreak of a +plan and the sudden consciousness of a curiosity. She became aware of +America, under his eyes, as a possible scene for social operations; the +idea of a visit to the wonderful country had clearly but just occurred +to her, yet she was talking of it, at the end of a minute, as her +favourite dream. He didn't believe in it, but he pretended to; this +helped her as well as anything else to treat him as harmless and +blameless. She was so engaged, with the further aid of a complete +absence of allusions, when the highest effect was given her method by +the beautiful entrance of Kate. The method therefore received support +all round, for no young man could have been less formidable than the +person to the relief of whose shyness her niece ostensibly came. The +ostensible, in Kate, struck him altogether, on this occasion, as +prodigious; while scarcely less prodigious, for that matter, was his +own reading, on the spot, of the relation between his companions--a +relation lighted for him by the straight look, not exactly loving nor +lingering, yet searching and soft, that, on the part of their hostess, +the girl had to reckon with as she advanced. It took her in from head +to foot, and in doing so it told a story that made poor Densher again +the least bit sick: it marked so something with which Kate habitually +and consummately reckoned. + +That was the story--that she was always, for her beneficent dragon, +under arms; living up, every hour, but especially at festal hours, to +the "value" Mrs. Lowder had attached to her. High and fixed, this +estimate ruled on each occasion at Lancaster Gate the social scene; so +that he now recognised in it something like the artistic idea, the +plastic substance, imposed by tradition, by genius, by criticism, in +respect to a given character, on a distinguished actress. As such a +person was to dress the part, to walk, to look, to speak, in every way +to express, the part, so all this was what Kate was to do for the +character she had undertaken, under her aunt's roof, to represent. It +was made up, the character, of definite elements and touches--things +all perfectly ponderable to criticism; and the way for her to meet +criticism was evidently at the start to be sure her make-up had had the +last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual. Aunt +Maud's appreciation of that to-night was indeed managerial, and the +performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on +parade. Densher saw himself for the moment as in his purchased stall at +the play; the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor +actress in the glare of the footlights. But she _passed_, the poor +performer--he could see how she always passed; her wig, her paint, her +jewels, every mark of her expression impeccable, and her entrance +accordingly greeted with the proper round of applause. Such impressions +as we thus note for Densher come and go, it must be granted, in very +much less time than notation demands; but we may none the less make the +point that there was, still further, time among them for him to feel +almost too scared to take part in the ovation. He struck himself as +having lost, for the minute, his presence of mind--so that in any case +he only stared in silence at the older woman's technical challenge and +at the younger one's disciplined face. It was as if the drama--it thus +came to him, for the fact of a drama there was no blinking--was between +_them_, them quite preponderantly; with Merton Densher relegated to +mere spectatorship, a paying place in front, and one of the most +expensive. This was why his appreciation had turned for the instant to +fear--had just turned, as we have said, to sickness; and in spite of +the fact that the disciplined face did offer him over the footlights, +as he believed, the small gleam, fine faint but exquisite, of a special +intelligence. So might a practised performer, even when raked by +double-barrelled glasses, seem to be all in her part and yet convey a +sign to the person in the house she loved best. + +The drama, at all events, as Densher saw it, meanwhile went +on--amplified soon enough by the advent of two other guests, stray +gentlemen both, stragglers in the rout of the season, who visibly +presented themselves to Kate during the next moments as subjects for a +like impersonal treatment and sharers in a like usual mercy. At +opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the +"figure" that each, in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the +contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch company of +two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now +offered itself to Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless +and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her companion, +at the last moment, had been indisposed--positively not well enough, +and so had packed her off, insistently, with excuses, with wild +regrets. This circumstance of their charming friend's illness was the +first thing Kate took up with Densher on their being able after dinner, +without bravado, to have ten minutes "naturally," as she called +it--which wasn't what _he_ did--together; but it was already as if the +young man had, by an odd impression, throughout the meal, not been +wholly deprived of Miss Theale's participation. Mrs. Lowder had made +dear Milly the topic, and it proved, on the spot, a topic as familiar +to the enthusiastic younger as to the sagacious older man. Any +knowledge they might lack Mrs. Lowder's niece was moreover alert to +supply, while Densher himself was freely appealed to as the most +privileged, after all, of the group. Wasn't it he who had in a manner +invented the wonderful creature--through having seen her first, caught +her in her native jungle? Hadn't he more or less paved the way for her +by his prompt recognition of her rarity, by preceding her, in a +friendly spirit--as he had the "ear" of society--with a sharp +flashlight or two? + +He met, poor Densher, these enquiries as he could, listening with +interest, yet with discomfort; wincing in particular, dry journalist as +he was, to find it seemingly supposed of him that he had put his +pen--oh his "pen!"--at the service of private distinction. The ear of +society?--they were talking, or almost, as if he had publicly +paragraphed a modest young lady. They dreamt dreams, in truth, he +appeared to perceive, that fairly waked _him_ up, and he settled +himself in his place both to resist his embarrassment and to catch the +full revelation. His embarrassment came naturally from the fact that if +he could claim no credit for Miss Theale's success, so neither could he +gracefully insist on his not having been concerned with her. What +touched him most nearly was that the occasion took on somehow the air +of a commemorative banquet, a feast to celebrate a brilliant if brief +career. There was of course more said about the heroine than if she +hadn't been absent, and he found himself rather stupefied at the range +of Milly's triumph. Mrs. Lowder had wonders to tell of it; the two +wearers of the waistcoat, either with sincerity or with hypocrisy, +professed in the matter an equal expertness; and Densher at last seemed +to know himself in presence of a social "case." It was Mrs. Stringham, +obviously, whose testimony would have been most invoked hadn't she +been, as her friend's representative, rather confined to the function +of inhaling the incense; so that Kate, who treated her beautifully, +smiling at her, cheering and consoling her across the table, appeared +benevolently both to speak and to interpret for her. Kate spoke as if +she wouldn't perhaps understand _their_ way of appreciating Milly, but +would let them none the less, in justice to their good will, express it +in their coarser fashion. Densher himself wasn't unconscious in respect +to this of a certain broad brotherhood with Mrs. Stringham; wondering +indeed, while he followed the talk, how it might move American nerves. +He had only heard of them before, but in his recent tour he had caught +them in the remarkable fact, and there was now a moment or two when it +came to him that he had perhaps--and not in the way of an escape--taken +a lesson from them. They quivered, clearly, they hummed and drummed, +they leaped and bounded in Mrs. Stringham's typical organism--this lady +striking him as before all things excited, as, in the native phrase, +keyed-up, to a perception of more elements in the occasion than he was +himself able to count. She was accessible to sides of it, he imagined, +that were as yet obscure to him; for, though she unmistakeably rejoiced +and soared, he none the less saw her at moments as even more agitated +than pleasure required. It was a state of emotion in her that could +scarce represent simply an impatience to report at home. Her little dry +New England brightness--he had "sampled" all the shades of the American +complexity, if complexity it were--had its actual reasons for finding +relief most in silence; so that before the subject was changed he +perceived (with surprise at the others) that they had given her enough +of it. He had quite had enough of it himself by the time he was asked +if it were true that their friend had really not made in her own +country the mark she had chalked so large in London. It was Mrs. Lowder +herself who addressed him that enquiry; while he scarce knew if he were +the more impressed with her launching it under Mrs. Stringham's nose or +with her hope that he would allow to London the honour of discovery. +The less expansive of the white waistcoats propounded the theory that +they saw in London--for all that was said--much further than in the +States: it wouldn't be the first time, he urged, that they had taught +the Americans to appreciate (especially when it was funny) some native +product. He didn't mean that Miss Theale was funny--though she was +weird, and this was precisely her magic; but it might very well be that +New York, in having her to show, hadn't been aware of its luck. There +_were_ plenty of people who were nothing over there and yet were +awfully taken up in England; just as--to make the balance right, thank +goodness--they sometimes sent out beauties and celebrities who left the +Briton cold. The Briton's temperature in truth wasn't to be +calculated--a formulation of the matter that was not reached, however, +without producing in Mrs. Stringham a final feverish sally. She +announced that if the point of view for a proper admiration of her +young friend _had_ seemed to fail a little in New York, there was no +manner of doubt of her having carried Boston by storm. It pointed the +moral that Boston, for the finer taste, left New York nowhere; and the +good lady, as the exponent of this doctrine--which she set forth at a +certain length--made, obviously, to Densher's mind, her nearest +approach to supplying the weirdness in which Milly's absence had left +them deficient. She made it indeed effective for him by suddenly +addressing him. "You know nothing, sir--but not the least little +bit--about my friend." + +He hadn't pretended he did, but there was a purity of reproach in Mrs. +Stringham's face and tone, a purity charged apparently with solemn +meanings; so that for a little, small as had been his claim, he +couldn't but feel that she exaggerated. He wondered what she did mean, +but while doing so he defended himself. "I certainly don't know +enormously much--beyond her having been most kind to me, in New York, +as a poor bewildered and newly landed alien, and my having tremendously +appreciated it." To which he added, he scarce knew why, what had an +immediate success. "Remember, Mrs. Stringham, that you weren't then +present." + +"Ah there you are!" said Kate with much gay expression, though what it +expressed he failed at the time to make out. + +"You weren't present _then_, dearest," Mrs. Lowder richly concurred. +"You don't know," she continued with mellow gaiety, "how far things may +have gone." + +It made the little woman, he could see, really lose her head. She had +more things in that head than any of them in any other; unless perhaps +it were Kate, whom he felt as indirectly watching him during this +foolish passage, though it pleased him--and because of the +foolishness--not to meet her eyes. He met Mrs. Stringham's, which +affected him: with her he could on occasion clear it up--a sense +produced by the mute communion between them and really the beginning, +as the event was to show, of something extraordinary. It was even +already a little the effect of this communion that Mrs. Stringham +perceptibly faltered in her retort to Mrs. Lowder's joke. "Oh it's +precisely my point that Mr. Densher _can't_ have had vast +opportunities." And then she smiled at him. "I wasn't away, you know, +long." + +It made everything, in the oddest way in the world, immediately right +for him. "And I wasn't _there_ long, either." He positively saw with it +that nothing for him, so far as she was concerned, would again be +wrong. "She's beautiful, but I don't say she's easy to know." + +"Ah she's a thousand and one things!" replied the good lady, as if now +to keep well with him. + +He asked nothing better. "She was off with you to these parts before I +knew it. I myself was off too--away off to wonderful parts, where I had +endlessly more to see." + +"But you didn't forget her!" Aunt Maud interposed with almost menacing +archness. + +"No, of course I didn't forget her. One doesn't forget such charming +impressions. But I never," he lucidly maintained, "chattered to others +about her." + +"She'll thank you for that, sir," said Mrs. Stringham with a flushed +firmness. + +"Yet doesn't silence in such a case," Aunt Maud blandly enquired, "very +often quite prove the depth of the impression?" + +He would have been amused, hadn't he been slightly displeased, at all +they seemed desirous to fasten on him. "Well, the impression was as +deep as you like. But I really want Miss Theale to know," he pursued +for Mrs. Stringham, "that I don't figure by any consent of my own as an +authority about her." + +Kate came to his assistance--if assistance it was--before their friend +had had time to meet this charge. "You're right about her not being +easy to know. One _sees_ her with intensity--sees her more than one +sees almost any one; but then one discovers that that isn't knowing her +and that one may know better a person whom one doesn't 'see,' as I say, +half so much." + +The discrimination was interesting, but it brought them back to the +fact of her success; and it was at that comparatively gross +circumstance, now so fully placed before them, that Milly's anxious +companion sat and looked--looked very much as some spectator in an +old-time circus might have watched the oddity of a Christian maiden, in +the arena, mildly, caressingly, martyred. It was the nosing and +fumbling not of lions and tigers but of domestic animals let loose as +for the joke. Even the joke made Mrs. Stringham uneasy, and her mute +communion with Densher, to which we have alluded, was more and more +determined by it. He wondered afterwards if Kate had made this out; +though it was not indeed till much later on that he found himself, in +thought, dividing the things she might have been conscious of from the +things she must have missed. If she actually missed, at any rate, Mrs. +Stringham's discomfort, that but showed how her own idea held her. Her +own idea was, by insisting on the fact of the girl's prominence as a +feature of the season's end, to keep Densher in relation, for the rest +of them, both to present and to past. "It's everything that has +happened _since_ that makes you naturally a little shy about her. You +don't know what has happened since, but we do; we've seen it and +followed it; we've a little been _of_ it." The great thing for him, at +this, as Kate gave it, _was_ in fact quite irresistibly that the case +was a real one--the kind of thing that, when one's patience was shorter +than one's curiosity, one had vaguely taken for possible in London, but +in which one had never been even to this small extent concerned. The +little American's sudden social adventure, her happy and, no doubt, +harmless flourish, had probably been favoured by several accidents, but +it had been favoured above all by the simple spring-board of the scene, +by one of those common caprices of the numberless foolish flock, +gregarious movements as inscrutable as ocean-currents. The huddled herd +had drifted to her blindly--it might as blindly have drifted away. +There had been of course a signal, but the great reason was probably +the absence at the moment of a larger lion. The bigger beast would come +and the smaller would then incontinently vanish. It was at all events +characteristic, and what was of the essence of it was grist to his +scribbling mill, matter for his journalising hand. That hand already, +in intention, played over it, the "motive," as a sign of the season, a +feature of the time, of the purely expeditious and rough-and-tumble +nature of the social boom. The boom as in _itself_ required--that would +be the note; the subject of the process a comparatively minor question. +Anything was boomable enough when nothing else was more so: the author +of the "rotten" book, the beauty who was no beauty, the heiress who was +only that, the stranger who was for the most part saved from being +inconveniently strange but by being inconveniently familiar, the +American whose Americanism had been long desperately discounted, the +creature in fine as to whom spangles or spots of any sufficiently +marked and exhibited sort could be loudly enough predicated. + +So he judged at least, within his limits, and the idea that what he had +thus caught in the fact was the trick of fashion and the tone of +society went so far as to make him take up again his sense of +independence. He had supposed himself civilised; but if this was +civilisation--! One could smoke one's pipe outside when twaddle was +within. He had rather avoided, as we have remarked, Kate's eyes, but +there came a moment when he would fairly have liked to put it, across +the table, to her: "I say, light of my life, is _this_ the great +world?" There came another, it must be added--and doubtless as a result +of something that, over the cloth, did hang between them--when she +struck him as having quite answered: "Dear no--for what do you take me? +Not the least little bit: only a poor silly, though quite harmless, +imitation." What she might have passed for saying, however, was +practically merged in what she did say, for she came overtly to his +aid, very much as if guessing some of his thoughts. She enunciated, to +relieve his bewilderment, the obvious truth that you couldn't leave +London for three months at that time of the year and come back to find +your friends just where they were. As they had _of course_ been jigging +away they might well be so red in the face that you wouldn't know them. +She reconciled in fine his disclaimer about Milly with that honour of +having discovered her which it was vain for him modestly to shirk. He +_had_ unearthed her, but it was they, all of them together, who had +developed her. She was always a charmer, one of the greatest ever seen, +but she wasn't the person he had "backed." + +Densher was to feel sure afterwards that Kate had had in these +pleasantries no conscious, above all no insolent purpose of making +light of poor Susan Shepherd's property in their young friend--which +property, by such remarks, was very much pushed to the wall; but he was +also to know that Mrs. Stringham had secretly resented them, Mrs. +Stringham holding the opinion, of which he was ultimately to have a +glimpse, that all the Kate Croys in Christendom were but dust for the +feet of her Milly. That, it was true, would be what she must reveal +only when driven to her last entrenchments and well cornered in her +passion--the rare passion of friendship, the sole passion of her little +life save the one other, more imperturbably cerebral, that she +entertained for the art of Guy de Maupassant. She slipped in the +observation that her Milly was incapable of change, was just exactly, +on the contrary, the same Milly; but this made little difference in the +drift of Kate's contention. She was perfectly kind to Susie: it was as +if she positively knew her as handicapped for any disagreement by +feeling that she, Kate, had "type," and by being committed to +admiration of type. Kate had occasion subsequently--she found it +somehow--to mention to our young man Milly's having spoken to her of +this view on the good lady's part. She would like--Milly had had it +from her--to put Kate Croy in a book and see what she could so do with +her. "Chop me up fine or serve me whole"--it was a way of being got at +that Kate professed she dreaded. It would be Mrs. Stringham's, however, +she understood, because Mrs. Stringham, oddly, felt that with such +stuff as the strange English girl was made of, stuff that (in spite of +Maud Manningham, who was full of sentiment) she had never known, there +was none other to be employed. These things were of later evidence, yet +Densher might even then have felt them in the air. They were +practically in it already when Kate, waiving the question of her +friend's chemical change, wound up with the comparatively +unobjectionable proposition that he must now, having missed so much, +take them all up, on trust, further on. He met it peacefully, a little +perhaps as an example to Mrs. Stringham--"Oh as far on as you like!" +This even had its effect: Mrs. Stringham appropriated as much of it as +might be meant for herself. The nice thing about her was that she could +measure how much; so that by the time dinner was over they had really +covered ground. + + +IV + +The younger of the other men, it afterwards appeared, was most in his +element at the piano; so that they had coffee and comic songs +upstairs--the gentlemen, temporarily relinquished, submitting easily in +this interest to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. +Our especial young man sat tighter when restored to the drawing-room; +he made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, off and on, +foregather without offence. He had perhaps stronger needs in this +general respect than she; but she had better names for the scant risks +to which she consented. It was the blessing of a big house that +intervals were large and, of an August night, that windows were open; +whereby, at a given moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs +sufficiently sung, Aunt Maud could hold her little court more freshly. +Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side by side a small +sofa--a luxury formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism, +of their remarkably good conscience. "To seem not to know each +other--once you're here--would be," the girl said, "to overdo it"; and +she arranged it charmingly that they _must_ have some passage to put +Aunt Maud off the scent. She would be wondering otherwise what in the +world they found their account in. For Densher, none the less, the +profit of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor; +there were in particular at present more things in his mind than he +could bring out while watching the windows. It was true, on the other +hand, that she suddenly met most of them--and more than he could see on +the spot--by coming out for him with a reference to Milly that was not +in the key of those made at dinner. "She's not a bit right, you know. I +mean in health. Just see her to-night. I mean it looks grave. For you +she would have come, you know, if it had been at all possible." + +He took this in such patience as he could muster. "What in the world's +the matter with her?" + +But Kate continued without saying. "Unless indeed your being here has +been just a reason for her funking it." + +"What in the world's the matter with her?" Densher asked again. + +"Why just what I've told you--that she likes you so much." + +"Then why should she deny herself the joy of meeting me?" + +Kate cast about--it would take so long to explain. "And perhaps it's +true that she _is_ bad. She easily may be." + +"Quite easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. Stringham, who's visibly +preoccupied and worried." + +"Visibly enough. Yet it mayn't," said Kate, "be only for that." + +"For what then?" + +But this question too, on thinking, she neglected. "Why, if it's +anything real, doesn't that poor lady go home? She'd be anxious, and +she has done all she need to be civil." + +"I think," Densher remarked, "she has been quite beautifully civil." + +It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit harder; but she was +already, in a manner, explaining. "Her preoccupation is probably on two +different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other +makes her stay. She's commissioned to tell Milly all about you." + +"Well then," said the young man between a laugh and a sigh, "I'm glad I +felt, downstairs, a kind of 'drawing' to her. Wasn't I rather decent to +her?" + +"Awfully nice. You've instincts, you fiend. It's all," Kate declared, +"as it should be." + +"Except perhaps," he after a moment cynically suggested, "that she +isn't getting much good of me now. Will she report to Milly on _this?_" +And then as Kate seemed to wonder what "this" might be: "On our present +disregard for appearances." + +"Ah leave appearances to me!" She spoke in her high way. "I'll make +them all right. Aunt Maud, moreover," she added, "has her so engaged +that she won't notice." Densher felt, with this, that his companion had +indeed perceptive flights he couldn't hope to match--had for instance +another when she still subjoined: "And Mrs. Stringham's appearing to +respond just in order to make that impression." + +"Well," Densher dropped with some humour, "life's very interesting! I +hope it's really as much so for you as you make it for others; I mean +judging by what you make it for me. You seem to me to represent it as +thrilling for _ces dames_, and in a different way for each: Aunt Maud, +Susan Shepherd, Milly. But what _is_," he wound up, "the matter? Do you +mean she's as ill as she looks?" + +Kate's face struck him as replying at first that his derisive speech +deserved no satisfaction; then she appeared to yield to a need of her +own--the need to make the point that "as ill as she looked" was what +Milly scarce could be. If she had been as ill as she looked she could +scarce be a question with them, for her end would in that case be near. +She believed herself nevertheless--and Kate couldn't help believing her +too--seriously menaced. There was always the fact that they had been on +the point of leaving town, the two ladies, and had suddenly been pulled +up. "We bade them good-bye--or all but--Aunt Maud and I, the night +before Milly, popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a +farewell look, found you and me together. They were then to get off a +day or two later. But they've not got off--they're not getting off. +When I see them--and I saw them this morning--they have showy reasons. +They do mean to go, but they've postponed it." With which the girl +brought out: "They've postponed it for _you_." He protested so far as a +man might without fatuity, since a protest was itself credulous; but +Kate, as ever, understood herself. "You've made Milly change her mind. +She wants not to miss you--though she wants also not to show she wants +you; which is why, as I hinted a moment ago, she may consciously have +hung back to-night. She doesn't know when she may see you again--she +doesn't know she ever may. She doesn't see the future. It has opened +out before her in these last weeks as a dark confused thing." + +Densher wondered. "After the tremendous time you've all been telling me +she has had?" + +"That's it. There's a shadow across it." + +"The shadow, you consider, of some physical break-up?" + +"Some physical break-down. Nothing less. She's scared. She has so much +to lose. And she wants more." + +"Ah well," said Densher with a sudden strange sense of discomfort, +"couldn't one say to her that she can't have everything?" + +"No--for one wouldn't want to. She really," Kate went on, "has been +somebody here. Ask Aunt Maud--you may think me prejudiced," the girl +oddly smiled. "Aunt Maud will tell you--the world's before her. It has +all come since you saw her, and it's a pity you've missed it, for it +certainly would have amused you. She has really been a perfect +success--I mean of course so far as possible in the scrap of time--and +she has taken it like a perfect angel. If you can imagine an angel with +a thumping bank-account you'll have the simplest expression of the kind +of thing. Her fortune's absolutely huge; Aunt Maud has had all the +facts, or enough of them, in the last confidence, from 'Susie,' and +Susie speaks by book. Take them then, in the last confidence, from +_me_. There she is." Kate expressed above all what it most came to. +"It's open to her to make, you see, the very greatest marriage. I +assure you we're not vulgar about her. Her possibilities are quite +plain." + +Densher showed he neither disbelieved nor grudged them. "But what good +then on earth can I do her?" + +Well, she had it ready. "You can console her." + +"And for what?" + +"For all that, if she's stricken, she must see swept away. I shouldn't +care for her if she hadn't so much," Kate very simply said. And then as +it made him laugh not quite happily: "I shouldn't trouble about her if +there were one thing she did have." The girl spoke indeed with a noble +compassion. "She has nothing." + +"Not all the young dukes?" + +"Well we must see--see if anything can come of them. She at any rate +does love life. To have met a person like you," Kate further explained, +"is to have felt you become, with all the other fine things, a part of +life. Oh she has you arranged!" + +"_You_ have, it strikes me, my dear"--and he looked both detached and +rueful. "Pray what am I to do with the dukes?" + +"Oh the dukes will be disappointed!" + +"Then why shan't I be?" + +"You'll have expected less," Kate wonderfully smiled. "Besides, you +_will_ be. You'll have expected enough for that." + +"Yet it's what you want to let me in for?" + +"I want," said the girl, "to make things pleasant for her. I use, for +the purpose, what I have. You're what I have of most precious, and +you're therefore what I use most." + +He looked at her long. "I wish I could use _you_ a little more." After +which, as she continued to smile at him, "Is it a bad case of lungs?" +he asked. + +Kate showed for a little as if she wished it might be. "Not lungs, I +think. Isn't consumption, taken in time, now curable?" + +"People are, no doubt, patched up." But he wondered. "Do you mean she +has something that's past patching?" And before she could answer: "It's +really as if her appearance put her outside of such things--being, in +spite of her youth, that of a person who has been through all it's +conceivable she should be exposed to. She affects one, I should say, as +a creature saved from a shipwreck. Such a creature may surely, in these +days, on the doctrine of chances, go to sea again with confidence. She +has _had_ her wreck--she has met her adventure." + +"Oh I grant you her wreck!"--Kate was all response so far. "But do let +her have still her adventure. There are wrecks that are not adventures." + +"Well--if there be also adventures that are not wrecks!" Densher in +short was willing, but he came back to his point. "What I mean is that +she has none of the effect--on one's nerves or whatever--of an invalid." + +Kate on her side did this justice. "No--that's the beauty of her." + +"The beauty--?" + +"Yes, she's so wonderful. She won't show for that, any more than your +watch, when it's about to stop for want of being wound up, gives you +convenient notice or shows as different from usual. She won't die, she +won't live, by inches. She won't smell, as it were, of drugs. She won't +taste, as it were, of medicine. No one will know." + +"Then what," he demanded, frankly mystified now, "are we talking about? +In what extraordinary state _is_ she?" + +Kate went on as if, at this, making it out in a fashion for herself. "I +believe that if she's ill at all she's very ill. I believe that if +she's bad she's not a _little_ bad. I can't tell you why, but that's +how I see her. She'll really live or she'll really not. She'll have it +all or she'll miss it all. Now I don't think she'll have it all." + +Densher had followed this with his eyes upon her, her own having +thoughtfully wandered, and as if it were more impressive than lucid. +"You 'think' and you 'don't think,' and yet you remain all the while +without an inkling of her complaint?" + +"No, not without an inkling; but it's a matter in which I don't want +knowledge. She moreover herself doesn't want one to want it: she has, +as to what may be preying upon her, a kind of ferocity of modesty, a +kind of--I don't know what to call it--intensity of pride. And then and +then--" But with this she faltered. + +"And then what?" + +"I'm a brute about illness. I hate it. It's well for you, my dear," +Kate continued, "that you're as sound as a bell." + +"Thank you!" Densher laughed. "It's rather good then for yourself too +that you're as strong as the sea." + +She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish gladness of their +young immunities. It was all they had together, but they had it at +least without a flaw--each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the +personal virtue, love and desire of the other. Yet it was as if that +very consciousness threw them back the next moment into pity for the +poor girl who had everything else in the world, the great genial good +they, alas, didn't have, but failed on the other hand of this. "How +we're talking about her!" Kate compunctiously sighed. But there were +the facts. "From illness I keep away." + +"But you don't--since here you are, in spite of all you say, in the +midst of it." + +"Ah I'm only watching--!" + +"And putting me forward in your place? Thank you!" + +"Oh," said Kate, "I'm breaking you in. Let it give you the measure of +what I shall expect of you. One can't begin too soon." + +She drew away, as from the impression of a stir on the balcony, the +hand of which he had a minute before possessed himself; and the warning +brought him back to attention. "You haven't even an idea if it's a case +for surgery?" + +"I dare say it may be; that is that if it comes to anything it may come +to that. Of course she's in the highest hands." + +"The doctors are after her then?" + +"She's after _them_--it's the same thing. I think I'm free to say it +now--she sees Sir Luke Strett." + +It made him quickly wince. "Ah fifty thousand knives!" Then after an +instant: "One seems to guess." + +Yes, but she waved it away. "Don't guess. Only do as I tell you." + +For a moment now, in silence, he took it all in, might have had it +before him. "What you want of me then is to make up to a sick girl." + +"Ah but you admit yourself that she doesn't affect you as sick. You +understand moreover just how much--and just how little." + +"It's amazing," he presently answered, "what you think I understand." + +"Well, if you've brought me to it, my dear," she returned, "that has +been your way of breaking _me_ in. Besides which, so far as making up +to her goes, plenty of others will." + +Densher for a little, under this suggestion, might have been seeing +their young friend on a pile of cushions and in a perpetual tea-gown, +amid flowers and with drawn blinds, surrounded by the higher nobility. +"Others can follow their tastes. Besides, others are free." + +"But so are you, my dear!" + +She had spoken with impatience, and her suddenly quitting him had +sharpened it; in spite of which he kept his place, only looking up at +her. "You're prodigious!" + +"Of course I'm prodigious!"--and, as immediately happened, she gave a +further sign of it that he fairly sat watching. The door from the lobby +had, as she spoke, been thrown open for a gentleman who, immediately +finding her within his view, advanced to greet her before the +announcement of his name could reach her companion. Densher none the +less felt himself brought quickly into relation; Kate's welcome to the +visitor became almost precipitately an appeal to her friend, who slowly +rose to meet it. "I don't know whether you know Lord Mark." And then +for the other party: "Mr. Merton Densher--who has just come back from +America." + +"Oh!" said the other party while Densher said nothing--occupied as he +mainly was on the spot with weighing the sound in question. He +recognised it in a moment as less imponderable than it might have +appeared, as having indeed positive claims. It wasn't, that is, he +knew, the "Oh!" of the idiot, however great the superficial +resemblance: it was that of the clever, the accomplished man; it was +the very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive training and +experience had gone to producing it. Densher felt somehow that, as a +thing of value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of +curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an awkwardness to +which he was conscious of contributing his share; Kate failing to ask +Lord Mark to be seated, but letting him know that he would find Mrs. +Lowder, with some others, on the balcony. + +"Oh and Miss Theale I suppose?--as I seemed to hear outside, from +below, Mrs. Stringham's unmistakeable voice." + +"Yes, but Mrs. Stringham's alone. Milly's unwell," the girl explained, +"and was compelled to disappoint us." + +"Ah 'disappoint'--rather!" And, lingering a little, he kept his eyes on +Densher. "She isn't really bad, I trust?" + +Densher, after all he had heard, easily supposed him interested in +Milly; but he could imagine him also interested in the young man with +whom he had found Kate engaged and whom he yet considered without +visible intelligence. That young man concluded in a moment that he was +doing what he wanted, satisfying himself as to each. To this he was +aided by Kate, who produced a prompt: "Oh dear no; I think not. I've +just been reassuring Mr. Densher," she added--"who's as concerned as +the rest of us. I've been calming his fears." + +"Oh!" said Lord Mark again--and again it was just as good. That was for +Densher, the latter could see, or think he saw. And then for the +others: "_My_ fears would want calming. We must take great care of her. +This way?" + +She went with him a few steps, and while Densher, hanging about, gave +them frank attention, presently paused again for some further colloquy. +What passed between them their observer lost, but she was presently +with him again, Lord Mark joining the rest. Densher was by this time +quite ready for her. "It's _he_ who's your aunt's man?" + +"Oh immensely." + +"I mean for _you._" + +"That's what I mean too," Kate smiled. "There he is. Now you can judge." + +"Judge of what?" + +"Judge of him." + +"Why should I judge of him?" Densher asked. "I've nothing to do with +him." + +"Then why do you ask about him?" + +"To judge of you--which is different." + +Kate seemed for a little to look at the difference. "To take the +measure, do you mean, of my danger?" + +He hesitated; then he said: "I'm thinking, I dare say, of Miss +Theale's. How does your aunt reconcile his interest in her--?" + +"With his interest in me?" + +"With her own interest in you," Densher said while she reflected. "If +that interest--Mrs. Lowder's--takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn't he +rather to look out for the forms _he_ takes?" + +Kate seemed interested in the question, but "Oh he takes them easily," +she answered. "The beauty is that she doesn't trust him." + +"That Milly doesn't?" + +"Yes--Milly either. But I mean Aunt Maud. Not really." + +Densher gave it his wonder. "Takes him to her heart and yet thinks he +cheats?" + +"Yes," said Kate--"that's the way people are. What they think of their +enemies, goodness knows, is bad enough; but I'm still more struck with +what they think of their friends. Milly's own state of mind, however," +she went on, "is lucky. That's Aunt Maud's security, though she doesn't +yet fully recognise it--besides being Milly's own." + +"You conceive it a real escape then not to care for him?" + +She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. "You oughtn't to +make me say too much. But I'm glad I don't." + +"Don't say too much?" + +"Don't care for Lord Mark." + +"Oh!" Densher answered with a sound like his lordship's own. To which +he added: "You absolutely hold that that poor girl doesn't?" + +"Ah you know what I hold about that poor girl!" It had made her again +impatient. + +Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. "You scarcely call him, I +suppose, one of the dukes." + +"Mercy, no--far from it. He's not, compared with other possibilities, +'in' it. Milly, it's true," she said, to be exact, "has no natural +sense of social values, doesn't in the least understand our differences +or know who's who or what's what." + +"I see. That," Densher laughed, "is her reason for liking _me_." + +"Precisely. She doesn't resemble me," said Kate, "who at least know +what I lose." + +Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable interest. "And +Aunt Maud--why shouldn't _she_ know? I mean that your friend there +isn't really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value?" + +"Scarcely; save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That's +undeniably something. He's the best moreover we can get." + +"Oh, oh!" said Densher; and his doubt was not all derisive. + +"It isn't Lord Mark's grandeur," she went on without heeding this; +"because perhaps in the line of that alone--as he has no money--more +could be done. But she's not a bit sordid; she only counts with the +sordidness of others. Besides, he's grand enough, with a duke in his +family and at the other end of the string. _The_ thing's his genius." + +"And do you believe in that?" + +"In Lord Mark's genius?" Kate, as if for a more final opinion than had +yet been asked of her, took a moment to think. She balanced indeed so +that one would scarce have known what to expect; but she came out in +time with a very sufficient "Yes!" + +"Political?" + +"Universal. I don't know at least," she said, "what else to call it +when a man's able to make himself without effort, without violence, +without machinery of any sort, so intensely felt. He has somehow an +effect without his being in any traceable way a cause." + +"Ah but if the effect," said Densher with conscious superficiality, +"isn't agreeable--?" + +"Oh but it is!" + +"Not surely for every one." + +"If you mean not for you," Kate returned, "you may have reasons--and +men don't count. Women don't know if it's agreeable or not." + +"Then there you are!" + +"Yes, precisely--that takes, on his part, genius." + +Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus +promptly, easily and above all amusingly met him with, would have been +found, should it have come to an analysis, to "take." Something +suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and +overflowed--the sense of his good fortune and her variety, of the +future she promised, the interest she supplied. "All women but you are +stupid. How can I look at another? You're different and different--and +then you're different again. No marvel Aunt Maud builds on you--except +that you're so much too good for what she builds _for_. Even 'society' +won't know how good for it you are; it's too stupid, and you're beyond +it. You'd have to pull it uphill--it's you yourself who are at the top. +The women one meets--what are they but books one has already read? +You're a whole library of the unknown, the uncut." He almost moaned, he +ached, from the depth of his content. "Upon my word I've a +subscription!" + +She took it from him with her face again giving out all it had in +answer, and they remained once more confronted and united in their +essential wealth of life. "It's you who draw me out. I exist in you. +Not in others." + +It had been, however, as if the thrill of their association itself +pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp spring of fear. "See +here, you know: don't, _don't_--!" + +"Don't what?" + +"Don't fail me. It would kill me." + +She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes. "So you think +you'll kill _me_ in time to prevent it?" She smiled, but he saw her the +next instant as smiling through tears; and the instant after this she +had got, in respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come +back to another, which was one of her own; her own were so closely +connected that Densher's were at best but parenthetic. Still she had a +distance to go. "You do then see your way?" She put it to him before +they joined--as was high time--the others. And she made him understand +she meant his way with Milly. + +He had dropped a little in presence of the explanation; then she had +brought him up to a sort of recognition. He could make out by this +light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was, +undispelled since his return. "There's something you must definitely +tell me. If our friend knows that all the while--?" + +She came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though +quite to smooth it down. "All the while she and I here were growing +intimate, you and I were in unmentioned relation? If she knows that, +yes, she knows our relation must have involved your writing to me." + +"Then how could she suppose you weren't answering?" + +"She doesn't suppose it." + +"How then can she imagine you never named her?" + +"She doesn't. She knows now I did name her. I've told her everything. +She's in possession of reasons that will perfectly do." + +Still he just brooded. "She takes things from you exactly as I take +them?" + +"Exactly as you take them." + +"She's just such another victim?" + +"Just such another. You're a pair." + +"Then if anything happens," said Densher, "we can console each other?" + +"Ah something _may_ indeed happen," she returned, "if you'll only go +straight!" + +He watched the others an instant through the window. "What do you mean +by going straight?" + +"Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as I've told you before, and +you'll see. You'll have me perfectly, always, to refer to." + +"Oh rather, I hope! But if she's going away?" + +It pulled Kate up but a moment. "I'll bring her back. There you are. +You won't be able to say I haven't made it smooth for you." + +He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn't the +queerness that after another minute was uppermost. He was in a wondrous +silken web, and it was amusing. "You spoil me!" + +He wasn't sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had +caught his word as it dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her +attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and +who was now, none too soon, taking leave of her. They were followed by +Lord Mark and by the other men, but two or three things happened before +any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found +time to say to him with furtive emphasis: "You must go now!" Another +was that she next addressed herself in all frankness to Lord Mark, drew +near to him with an almost reproachful "Come and talk to _me!_"--a +challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a consciousness of +their installation together in an out-of-the-way corner, though not the +same he himself had just occupied with her. Still another was that Mrs. +Stringham, in the random intensity of her farewells, affected him as +looking at him with a small grave intimation, something into which he +afterwards read the meaning that if he had happened to desire a few +words with her after dinner he would have found her ready. This +impression was naturally light, but it just left him with the sense of +something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. It gathered perhaps +a slightly sharper shade from the mild formality of her "Good-night, +sir!" as she passed him; a matter as to which there was now nothing +more to be done, thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this +time had appraised as even more harmless than himself. This personage +had forestalled him in opening the door for her and was evidently--with +a view, Densher might have judged, to ulterior designs on +Milly--proposing to attend her to her carriage. What further occurred +was that Aunt Maud, having released her, immediately had a word for +himself. It was an imperative "Wait a minute," by which she both +detained and dismissed him; she was particular about her minute, but he +hadn't yet given her, as happened, a sign of withdrawal. + +"Return to our little friend. You'll find her really interesting." + +"If you mean Miss Theale," he said, "I shall certainly not forget her. +But you must remember that, so far as her 'interest' is concerned, I +myself discovered, I--as was said at dinner--invented her." + +"Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn't taken out the +patent. Don't, I only mean, in the press of other things, too much +neglect her." + +Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Kate's, he +asked himself quickly if it mightn't help him with her. He at any rate +could but try. "You're all looking after my manners. That's exactly, +you know, what Miss Croy has been saying to me. _She_ keeps me up--she +has had so much to say about them." + +He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his +passage with Kate that, while quite veracious, might be reassuring to +herself. But Aunt Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as +if her confidence were supplied with other props. If she saw his +intention in it she yet blinked neither with doubt nor with acceptance; +she only said imperturbably: "Yes, she'll herself do anything for her +friend; so that she but preaches what she practises." + +Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud knew how far Kate's devotion +went. He was moreover a little puzzled by this special harmony; in face +of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder had bethought herself +of the American girl as a distraction for him, and if Kate's mastery of +the subject were therefore but an appearance addressed to her aunt. +What might really _become_ in all this of the American girl was +therefore a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none +of its sharpness. However, questions could wait, and it was easy, so +far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. "It isn't a bit, all the +same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss Theale charming." + +Well, it was all she wanted. "Then don't miss a chance." + +"The only thing is," he went on, "that she's--naturally now--leaving +town and, as I take it, going abroad." + +Aunt Maud looked indeed an instant as if she herself had been dealing +with this difficulty. "She won't go," she smiled in spite of it, "till +she has seen you. Moreover, when she does go--" She paused, leaving him +uncertain. But the next minute he was still more at sea. "We shall go +too." + +He gave a smile that he himself took for slightly strange. "And what +good will that do _me?_" + +"We shall be near them somewhere, and you'll come out to us." + +"Oh!" he said a little awkwardly. + +"I'll see that you do. I mean I'll write to you." + +"Ah thank you, thank you!" Merton Densher laughed. She was indeed +putting him on his honour, and his honour winced a little at the use he +rather helplessly saw himself suffering her to believe she could make +of it. "There are all sorts of things," he vaguely remarked, "to +consider." + +"No doubt. But there's above all the great thing." + +"And pray what's that?" + +"Why the importance of your not losing the occasion of your life. I'm +treating you handsomely, I'm looking after it for you. I _can_--I can +smooth your path. She's charming, she's clever and she's good. And her +fortune's a real fortune." + +Ah there she was, Aunt Maud! The pieces fell together for him as he +felt her thus buying him off, and buying him--it would have been funny +if it hadn't been so grave--with Miss Theale's money. He ventured, +derisive, fairly to treat it as extravagant. "I'm much obliged to you +for the handsome offer--" + +"Of what doesn't belong to me?" She wasn't abashed. "I don't say it +does--but there's no reason it shouldn't to _you_. Mind you, +moreover"--she kept it up--"I'm not one who talks in the air. And you +owe me something--if you want to know why." + +Distinct he felt her pressure; he felt, given her basis, her +consistency; he even felt, to a degree that was immediately to receive +an odd confirmation, her truth. Her truth, for that matter, was that +she believed him bribeable: a belief that for his own mind as well, +while they stood there, lighted up the impossible. What then in this +light did Kate believe him? But that wasn't what he asked aloud. "Of +course I know I owe you thanks for a deal of kind treatment. Your +inviting me for instance to-night--!" + +"Yes, my inviting you to-night's a part of it. But you don't know," she +added, "how far I've gone for you." + +He felt himself red and as if his honour were colouring up; but he +laughed again as he could. "I see how far you're going." + +"I'm the most honest woman in the world, but I've nevertheless done for +you what was necessary." And then as her now quite sombre gravity only +made him stare: "To start you it _was_ necessary. From _me_ it has the +weight." He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with +surprise. "Don't you understand me? I've told the proper lie for you." +Still he only showed her his flushed strained smile; in spite of which, +speaking with force and as if he must with a minute's reflexion see +what she meant, she turned away from him. "I depend upon you now to +make me right!" + +The minute's reflexion he was of course more free to take after he had +left the house. He walked up the Bayswater Road, but he stopped short, +under the murky stars, before the modern church, in the middle of the +square that, going eastward, opened out on his left. He had had his +brief stupidity, but now he understood. She had guaranteed to Milly +Theale through Mrs. Stringham that Kate didn't care for him. She had +affirmed through the same source that the attachment was only his. He +made it out, he made it out, and he could see what she meant by its +starting him. She had described Kate as merely compassionate, so that +Milly might be compassionate too. "Proper" indeed it was, her lie--the +very properest possible and the most deeply, richly diplomatic. So +Milly was successfully deceived. + + +V + +To see her alone, the poor girl, he none the less promptly felt, was to +see her after all very much on the old basis, the basis of his three +visits in New York; the new element, when once he was again face to +face with her, not really amounting to much more than a recognition, +with a little surprise, of the positive extent of the old basis. +Everything but that, everything embarrassing fell away after he had +been present five minutes: it was in fact wonderful that their +excellent, their pleasant, their permitted and proper and harmless +American relation--the legitimacy of which he could thus scarce express +in names enough--should seem so unperturbed by other matters. They had +both since then had great adventures--such an adventure for him was his +mental annexation of her country; and it was now, for the moment, as if +the greatest of them all were this acquired consciousness of reasons +other than those that had already served. Densher had asked for her, at +her hotel, the day after Aunt Maud's dinner, with a rich, that is with +a highly troubled, preconception of the part likely to be played for +him at present, in any contact with her, by Kate's and Mrs. Lowder's so +oddly conjoined and so really superfluous attempts to make her +interesting. She had been interesting enough without them--that +appeared to-day to come back to him; and, admirable and beautiful as +was the charitable zeal of the two ladies, it might easily have nipped +in the bud the germs of a friendship inevitably limited but still +perfectly open to him. What had happily averted the need of his +breaking off, what would as happily continue to avert it, was his own +good sense and good humour, a certain spring of mind in him which +ministered, imagination aiding, to understandings and allowances and +which he had positively never felt such ground as just now to rejoice +in the possession of. Many men--he practically made the +reflexion--wouldn't have taken the matter that way, would have lost +patience, finding the appeal in question irrational, exorbitant; and, +thereby making short work with it, would have let it render any further +acquaintance with Miss Theale impossible. He had talked with Kate of +this young woman's being "sacrificed," and that would have been one +way, so far as he was concerned, to sacrifice her. Such, however, had +not been the tune to which his at first bewildered view had, since the +night before, cleared itself up. It wasn't so much that he failed of +being the kind of man who "chucked," for he knew himself as the kind of +man wise enough to mark the case in which chucking might be the minor +evil and the least cruelty. It was that he liked too much every one +concerned willingly to show himself merely impracticable. He liked +Kate, goodness knew, and he also clearly enough liked Mrs. Lowder. He +liked in particular Milly herself; and hadn't it come up for him the +evening before that he quite liked even Susan Shepherd? He had never +known himself so generally merciful. It was a footing, at all events, +whatever accounted for it, on which he should surely be rather a muff +not to manage by one turn or another to escape disobliging. Should he +find he couldn't work it there would still be time enough. The idea of +working it crystallised before him in such guise as not only to promise +much interest--fairly, in case of success, much enthusiasm; but +positively to impart to failure an appearance of barbarity. + +Arriving thus in Brook Street both with the best intentions and with a +margin consciously left for some primary awkwardness, he found his +burden, to his great relief, unexpectedly light. The awkwardness +involved in the responsibility so newly and so ingeniously traced for +him turned round on the spot to present him another face. This was +simply the face of his old impression, which he now fully +recovered--the impression that American girls, when, rare case, they +had the attraction of Milly, were clearly the easiest people in the +world. Had what had happened been that this specimen of the class was +from the first so committed to ease that nothing subsequent _could_ +ever make her difficult? That affected him now as still more probable +than on the occasion of the hour or two lately passed with her in +Kate's society. Milly Theale had recognised no complication, to +Densher's view, while bringing him, with his companion, from the +National Gallery and entertaining them at luncheon; it was therefore +scarce supposable that complications had become so soon too much for +her. His pretext for presenting himself was fortunately of the best and +simplest; the least he could decently do, given their happy +acquaintance, was to call with an enquiry after learning that she had +been prevented by illness from meeting him at dinner. And then there +was the beautiful accident of her other demonstration; he must at any +rate have given a sign as a sequel to the hospitality he had shared +with Kate. Well, he was giving one now--such as it was; he was finding +her, to begin with, accessible, and very naturally and prettily glad to +see him. He had come, after luncheon, early, though not so early but +that she might already be out if she were well enough; and she was well +enough and yet was still at home. He had an inner glimpse, with this, +of the comment Kate would have made on it; it wasn't absent from his +thought that Milly would have been at home by _her_ account because +expecting, after a talk with Mrs. Stringham, that a certain person +might turn up. He even--so pleasantly did things go--enjoyed freedom of +mind to welcome, on that supposition, a fresh sign of the beautiful +hypocrisy of women. He went so far as to enjoy believing the girl +_might_ have stayed in for him; it helped him to enjoy her behaving as +if she hadn't. She expressed, that is, exactly the right degree of +surprise; she didn't a bit overdo it: the lesson of which was, +perceptibly, that, so far as his late lights had opened the door to any +want of the natural in their meetings, he might trust her to take care +of it for him as well as for herself. She had begun this, admirably, on +his entrance, with her turning away from the table at which she had +apparently been engaged in letter-writing; it was the very possibility +of his betraying a concern for her as one of the afflicted that she had +within the first minute conjured away. She was never, never--did he +understand?--to be one of the afflicted for him; and the manner in +which he understood it, something of the answering pleasure that he +couldn't help knowing he showed, constituted, he was very soon after to +acknowledge, something like a start for intimacy. When things like that +could pass people had in truth to be equally conscious of a relation. +It soon made one, at all events, when it didn't find one made. She had +let him ask--there had been time for that, his allusion to her friend's +explanatory arrival at Lancaster Gate without her being inevitable; but +she had blown away, and quite as much with the look in her eyes as with +the smile on her lips, every ground for anxiety and every chance for +insistence. How was she?--why she was as he thus saw her and as she had +reasons of her own, nobody else's business, for desiring to appear. +Kate's account of her as too proud for pity, as fiercely shy about so +personal a secret, came back to him; so that he rejoiced he could take +a hint, especially when he wanted to. The question the girl had quickly +disposed of--"Oh it was nothing: I'm all right, thank you!"--was one he +was glad enough to be able to banish. It wasn't at all, in spite of the +appeal Kate had made to him on it, his affair; for his interest had +been invoked in the name of compassion, and the name of compassion was +exactly what he felt himself at the end of two minutes forbidden so +much as to whisper. He had been sent to see her in order to be sorry +for her, and how sorry he might be, quite privately, he was yet to make +out. Didn't that signify, however, almost not at all?--inasmuch as, +whatever his upshot, he was never to give her a glimpse of it. Thus the +ground was unexpectedly cleared; though it was not till a slightly +longer time had passed that he read clear, at first with amusement and +then with a strange shade of respect, what had most operated. +Extraordinarily, quite amazingly, he began to see that if his pity +hadn't had to yield to still other things it would have had to yield +quite definitely to her own. That was the way the case had turned +round: he had made his visit to be sorry for her, but he would repeat +it--if he did repeat it--in order that she might be sorry for him. His +situation made him, she judged--when once one liked him--a subject for +that degree of tenderness: he felt this judgement in her, and felt it +as something he should really, in decency, in dignity, in common +honesty, have very soon to reckon with. + +Odd enough was it certainly that the question originally before him, +the question placed there by Kate, should so of a sudden find itself +quite dislodged by another. This other, it was easy to see, came +straight up with the fact of her beautiful delusion and her wasted +charity; the whole thing preparing for him as pretty a case of +conscience as he could have desired, and one at the prospect of which +he was already wincing. If he was interesting it was because he was +unhappy; and if he was unhappy it was because his passion for Kate had +spent itself in vain; and if Kate was indifferent, inexorable, it was +because she had left Milly in no doubt of it. That above all was what +came up for him--how clear an impression of this attitude, how definite +an account of his own failure, Kate must have given her friend. His +immediate quarter of an hour there with the girl lighted up for him +almost luridly such an inference; it was almost as if the other party +to their remarkable understanding had been with them as they talked, +had been hovering about, had dropped in to look after her work. The +value of the work affected him as different from the moment he saw it +so expressed in poor Milly. Since it was false that he wasn't loved, so +his right was quite quenched to figure on that ground as important; and +if he didn't look out he should find himself appreciating in a way +quite at odds with straightness the good faith of Milly's benevolence. +_There_ was the place for scruples; there the need absolutely to mind +what he was about. If it wasn't proper for him to enjoy consideration +on a perfectly false footing, where was the guarantee that, if he kept +on, he mightn't soon himself pretend to the grievance in order not to +miss the sweet? Consideration--from a charming girl--was soothing on +whatever theory; and it didn't take him far to remember that he had +himself as yet done nothing deceptive. It was Kate's description of +him, his defeated state, it was none of his own; his responsibility +would begin, as he might say, only with acting it out. The sharp point +was, however, in the difference between acting and not acting: this +difference in fact it was that made the case of conscience. He saw it +with a certain alarm rise before him that everything was acting that +was not speaking the particular word. "If you like me because you think +_she_ doesn't, it isn't a bit true: she _does_ like me awfully!"--that +would have been the particular word; which there were at the same time +but too palpably such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldn't it be +virtually as indelicate to challenge her as to leave her deluded?--and +this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it +would constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate's design was something so +extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt himself shrink from the +complications involved in judging it. Not to give away the woman one +loved, but to back her up in her mistakes--once they had gone a certain +length--that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the +abjection of love. Loyalty was of course supremely prescribed in +presence of any design on her part, however roundabout, to do one +nothing but good. + +Densher had quite to steady himself not to be awestruck at the +immensity of the good his own friend must on all this evidence have +wanted to do him. Of one thing indeed meanwhile he was sure: Milly +Theale wouldn't herself precipitate his necessity of intervention. She +would absolutely never say to him: "_Is_ it so impossible she shall +ever care for you seriously?"--without which nothing could well be less +delicate than for him aggressively to set her right. Kate would be free +to do that if Kate, in some prudence, some contrition, for some better +reason in fine, should revise her plan; but he asked himself what, +failing this, _he_ could do that wouldn't be after all more gross than +doing nothing. This brought him round again to the acceptance of the +fact that the poor girl liked him. She put it, for reasons of her own, +on a simple, a beautiful ground, a ground that already supplied her +with the pretext she required. The ground was there, that is, in the +impression she had received, retained, cherished; the pretext, over and +above it, was the pretext for acting on it. That she now believed as +she did made her sure at last that she might act; so that what Densher +therefore would have struck at would be the root, in her soul, of a +pure pleasure. It positively lifted its head and flowered, this pure +pleasure, while the young man now sat with her, and there were things +she seemed to say that took the words out of his mouth. These were not +all the things she did say; they were rather what such things meant in +the light of what he knew. Her warning him for instance off the +question of how she was, the quick brave little art with which she did +that, represented to his fancy a truth she didn't utter. "I'm well for +_you_--that's all you have to do with or need trouble about: I shall +never be anything so horrid as ill for you. So there you are; worry +about me, spare me, please, as little as you can. Don't be afraid, in +short, to ignore my 'interesting' side. It isn't, you see, even now +while you sit here, that there aren't lots of others. Only do _them_ +justice and we shall get on beautifully." This was what was folded +finely up in her talk--all quite ostensibly about her impressions and +her intentions. She tried to put Densher again on his American doings, +but he wouldn't have that to-day. As he thought of the way in which, +the other afternoon, before Kate, he had sat complacently "jawing," he +accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having made--at least +apparently--more of a "set" at their entertainer than he was at all +events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her out about +London, about her vision of life there, and only too glad to treat her +as a person with whom he could easily have other topics than her aches +and pains. He spoke to her above all of the evidence offered him at +Lancaster Gate that she had come but to conquer; and when she had met +this with full and gay assent--"How could I help being the feature of +the season, the what-do-you-call-it, the theme of every tongue?"--they +fraternised freely over all that had come and gone for each since their +interrupted encounter in New York. + +At the same time, while many things in quick succession came up for +them, came up in particular for Densher, nothing perhaps was just so +sharp as the odd influence of their present conditions on their view of +their past ones. It was as if they hadn't known how "thick" they had +originally become, as if, in a manner, they had really fallen to +remembrance of more passages of intimacy than there had in fact at the +time quite been room for. They were in a relation now so complicated, +whether by what they said or by what they didn't say, that it might +have been seeking to justify its speedy growth by reaching back to one +of those fabulous periods in which prosperous states place their +beginnings. He recalled what had been said at Mrs. Lowder's about the +steps and stages, in people's careers, that absence caused one to miss, +and about the resulting frequent sense of meeting them further on; +which, with some other matters also recalled, he took occasion to +communicate to Milly. The matters he couldn't mention mingled +themselves with those he did; so that it would doubtless have been hard +to say which of the two groups now played most of a part. He was kept +face to face with this young lady by a force absolutely resident in +their situation and operating, for his nerves, with the swiftness of +the forces commonly regarded by sensitive persons as beyond their +control. The current thus determined had positively become for him, by +the time he had been ten minutes in the room, something that, but for +the absurdity of comparing the very small with the very great, he would +freely have likened to the rapids of Niagara. An uncriticised +acquaintance between a clever young man and a responsive young woman +could do nothing more, at the most, than go, and his actual experiment +went and went and went. Nothing probably so conduced to make it go as +the marked circumstance that they had spoken all the while not a word +about Kate; and this in spite of the fact that, if it were a question +for them of what had occurred in the past weeks, nothing had occurred +comparable to Kate's predominance. Densher had but the night before +appealed to her for instruction as to what he must do about her, but he +fairly winced to find how little this came to. She had foretold him of +course how little; but it was a truth that looked different when shown +him by Milly. It proved to him that the latter had in fact been dealt +with, but it produced in him the thought that Kate might perhaps again +conveniently be questioned. He would have liked to speak to her before +going further--to make sure she really meant him to succeed quite so +much. With all the difference that, as we say, came up for him, it came +up afresh, naturally, that he might make his visit brief and never +renew it; yet the strangest thing of all was that the argument against +that issue would have sprung precisely from the beautiful little +eloquence involved in Milly's avoidances. + +Precipitate these well might be, since they emphasised the fact that +she was proceeding in the sense of the assurances she had taken. Over +the latter she had visibly not hesitated, for hadn't they had the merit +of giving her a chance? Densher quite saw her, felt her take it; the +chance, neither more nor less, of help rendered him according to her +freedom. It was what Kate had left her with: "Listen to him, _I?_ +Never! So do as you like." What Milly "liked" was to do, it thus +appeared, as she was doing: our young man's glimpse of which was just +what would have been for him not less a glimpse of the peculiar +brutality of shaking her off. The choice exhaled its shy fragrance of +heroism, for it was not aided by any question of parting with Kate. She +would be charming to Kate as well as to Kate's adorer; she would incur +whatever pain could dwell for her in the sight--should she continue to +be exposed to the sight--of the adorer thrown with the adored. It +wouldn't really have taken much more to make him wonder if he hadn't +before him one of those rare cases of exaltation--food for fiction, +food for poetry--in which a man's fortune with the woman who doesn't +care for him is positively promoted by the woman who does. It was as if +Milly had said to herself: "Well, he can at least meet her in my +society, if that's anything to him; so that my line can only be to make +my society attractive." She certainly couldn't have made a different +impression if she _had_ so reasoned. All of which, none the less, +didn't prevent his soon enough saying to her, quite as if she were to +be whirled into space: "And now, then, what becomes of you? Do you +begin to rush about on visits to country-houses?" + +She disowned the idea with a headshake that, put on what face she +would, couldn't help betraying to him something of her suppressed view +of the possibility--ever, ever perhaps--of any such proceedings. They +weren't at any rate for her now. "Dear no. We go abroad for a few weeks +somewhere of high air. That has been before us for many days; we've +only been kept on by last necessities here. However, everything's done +and the wind's in our sails." + +"May you scud then happily before it! But when," he asked, "do you come +back?" + +She looked ever so vague; then as if to correct it: "Oh when the wind +turns. And what do you do with your summer?" + +"Ah I spend it in sordid toil. I drench it with mercenary ink. My work +in your country counts for play as well. You see what's thought of the +pleasure your country can give. My holiday's over." + +"I'm sorry you had to take it," said Milly, "at such a different time +from ours. If you could but have worked while we've been working--" + +"I might be playing while you play? Oh the distinction isn't so great +with me. There's a little of each for me, of work and of play, in +either. But you and Mrs. Stringham, with Miss Croy and Mrs. Lowder--you +all," he went on, "have been given up, like navvies or niggers, to real +physical toil. Your rest is something you've earned and you need. My +labour's comparatively light." + +"Very true," she smiled; "but all the same I like mine." + +"It doesn't leave you 'done'?" + +"Not a bit. I don't get tired when I'm interested. Oh I could go far." + +He bethought himself. "Then why don't you?--since you've got here, as I +learn, the whole place in your pocket." + +"Well, it's a kind of economy--I'm saving things up. I've enjoyed so +what you speak of--though your account of it's fantastic--that I'm +watching over its future, that I can't help being anxious and careful. +I want--in the interest itself of what I've had and may still have--not +to make stupid mistakes. The way not to make them is to get off again +to a distance and see the situation from there. I shall keep it fresh," +she wound up as if herself rather pleased with the ingenuity of her +statement--"I shall keep it fresh, by that prudence, for my return." + +"Ah then you _will_ return? Can you promise one that?" + +Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise; but she made as if +bargaining a little. "Isn't London rather awful in winter?" + +He had been going to ask her if she meant for the invalid; but he +checked the infelicity of this and took the enquiry as referring to +social life. "No--I like it, with one thing and another; it's less of a +mob than later on; and it would have for _us_ the merit--should you +come here then--that we should probably see more of you. So do reappear +for us--if it isn't a question of climate." + +She looked at that a little graver. "If what isn't a question--?" + +"Why the determination of your movements. You spoke just now of going +somewhere for that." + +"For better air?"--she remembered. "Oh yes, one certainly wants to get +out of London in August." + +"Rather, of course!"--he fully understood. "Though I'm glad you've hung +on long enough for me to catch you. Try us at any rate," he continued, +"once more." + +"Whom do you mean by 'us'?" she presently asked. + +It pulled him up an instant--representing, as he saw it might have +seemed, an allusion to himself as conjoined with Kate, whom he was +proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did. But the issue +was easy. "I mean all of us together, every one you'll find ready to +surround you with sympathy." + +It made her, none the less, in her odd charming way, challenge him +afresh. "Why do you say sympathy?" + +"Well, it's doubtless a pale word. What we _shall_ feel for you will be +much nearer worship." + +"As near then as you like!" With which at last Kate's name was sounded. +"The people I'd most come back for are the people you know. I'd do it +for Mrs. Lowder, who has been beautifully kind to me." + +"So she has to _me_," said Densher. "I feel," he added as she at first +answered nothing, "that, quite contrary to anything I originally +expected, I've made a good friend of her." + +"I didn't expect it either--its turning out as it has. But I did," said +Milly, "with Kate. I shall come back for her too. I'd do anything"--she +kept it up--"for Kate." + +Looking at him as with conscious clearness while she spoke, she might +for the moment have effectively laid a trap for whatever remains of the +ideal straightness in him were still able to pull themselves together +and operate. He was afterwards to say to himself that something had at +that moment hung for him by a hair. "Oh I know what one would do for +Kate!"--it had hung for him by a hair to break out with that, which he +felt he had really been kept from by an element in his consciousness +stronger still. The proof of the truth in question was precisely in his +silence; resisting the impulse to break out was what he was doing for +Kate. This at the time moreover came and went quickly enough; he was +trying the next minute but to make Milly's allusion easy for herself. +"Of course I know what friends you are--and of course I understand," he +permitted himself to add, "any amount of devotion to a person so +charming. That's the good turn then she'll do us all--I mean her +working for your return." + +"Oh you don't know," said Milly, "how much I'm really on her hands." + +He could but accept the appearance of wondering how much he might show +he knew. "Ah she's very masterful." + +"She's great. Yet I don't say she bullies me." + +"No--that's not the way. At any rate it isn't hers," he smiled. He +remembered, however, then that an undue acquaintance with Kate's ways +was just what he mustn't show; and he pursued the subject no further +than to remark with a good intention that had the further merit of +representing a truth: "I don't feel as if I knew her--really to call +know." + +"Well, if you come to that, I don't either!" she laughed. The words +gave him, as soon as they were uttered, a sense of responsibility for +his own; though during a silence that ensued for a minute he had time +to recognise that his own contained after all no element of falsity. +Strange enough therefore was it that he could go too far--if it _was_ +too far--without being false. His observation was one he would +perfectly have made to Kate herself. And before he again spoke, and +before Milly did, he took time for more still--for feeling how just +here it was that he must break short off if his mind was really made up +not to go further. It was as if he had been at a corner--and fairly put +there by his last speech; so that it depended on him whether or no to +turn it. The silence, if prolonged but an instant, might even have +given him a sense of her waiting to see what he would do. It was filled +for them the next thing by the sound, rather voluminous for the August +afternoon, of the approach, in the street below them, of heavy +carriage-wheels and of horses trained to "step." A rumble, a great +shake, a considerable effective clatter, had been apparently succeeded +by a pause at the door of the hotel, which was in turn accompanied by a +due display of diminished prancing and stamping. "You've a visitor," +Densher laughed, "and it must be at least an ambassador." + +"It's only my own carriage; it does that--isn't it wonderful?--every +day. But we find it, Mrs. Stringham and I, in the innocence of our +hearts, very amusing." She had got up, as she spoke, to assure herself +of what she said; and at the end of a few steps they were together on +the balcony and looking down at her waiting chariot, which made indeed +a brave show. "Is it very awful?" + +It was to Densher's eyes--save for its absurd heaviness--only +pleasantly pompous. "It seems to me delightfully rococo. But how do I +know? You're mistress of these things, in contact with the highest +wisdom. You occupy a position, moreover, thanks to which your +carriage--well, by this time, in the eye of London, also occupies one." +But she was going out, and he mustn't stand in her way. What had +happened the next minute was first that she had denied she was going +out, so that he might prolong his stay; and second that she had said +she would go out with pleasure if he would like to drive--that in fact +there were always things to do, that there had been a question for her +to-day of several in particular, and that this in short was why the +carriage had been ordered so early. They perceived, as she said these +things, that an enquirer had presented himself, and, coming back, they +found Milly's servant announcing the carriage and prepared to accompany +her. This appeared to have for her the effect of settling the +matter--on the basis, that is, of Densher's happy response. Densher's +happy response, however, had as yet hung fire, the process we have +described in him operating by this time with extreme intensity. The +system of not pulling up, not breaking off, had already brought him +headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actually stood; and just now +it was, with a vengeance, that he must do either one thing or the +other. He had been waiting for some moments, which probably seemed to +him longer than they were; this was because he was anxiously watching +himself wait. He couldn't keep that up for ever; and since one thing or +the other was what he must do, it was for the other that he presently +became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting it settled +itself in the manner of a bump, of considerable violence, against a +firm object in the stream. "Oh yes; I'll go with you with pleasure. +It's a charming idea." + +She gave no look to thank him--she rather looked away; she only said at +once to her servant, "In ten minutes"; and then to her visitor, as the +man went out, "We'll go somewhere--I shall like that. But I must ask of +you time--as little as possible--to get ready." She looked over the +room to provide for him, keep him there. "There are books and +things--plenty; and I dress very quickly." He caught her eyes only as +she went, on which he thought them pretty and touching. + +Why especially touching at that instant he could certainly scarce have +said; it was involved, it was lost in the sense of her wishing to +oblige him. Clearly what had occurred was her having wished it so that +she had made him simply wish, in civil acknowledgement, to oblige +_her;_ which he had now fully done by turning his corner. He was quite +round it, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and he +stood there alone. Alone he remained for three minutes more--remained +with several very living little matters to think about. One of these +was the phenomenon--typical, highly American, he would have said--of +Milly's extreme spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought +refuge--refuge from another question--in the almost exclusive +contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere; not even +to a sound generalisation about American girls. It was spontaneous for +his young friend to have asked him to drive with her alone--since she +hadn't mentioned her companion; but she struck him after all as no more +advanced in doing it than Kate, for instance, who wasn't an American +girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate _would_ have +done it, though Kate wasn't at all, in the same sense as Milly, +spontaneous. And then in addition Kate _had_ done it--or things very +like it. Furthermore he was engaged to Kate--even if his ostensibly not +being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any +rate, the relation between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate, +was a different one from any he could associate or cultivate, as to +anything, with the girl who had just left him to prepare to give +herself up to him. It had never struck him before, and he moved about +the room while he thought of it, touching none of the books placed at +his disposal. Milly was forward, as might be said, but not advanced; +whereas Kate was backward--backward still, comparatively, as an English +girl--and yet advanced in a high degree. However--though this didn't +straighten it out--Kate was of course two or three years older; which +at their time of life considerably counted. + +Thus ingeniously discriminating, Densher continued slowly to wander; +yet without keeping at bay for long the sense of having rounded his +corner. He had so rounded it that he felt himself lose even the option +of taking advantage of Milly's absence to retrace his steps. If he +might have turned tail, vulgarly speaking, five minutes before, he +couldn't turn tail now; he must simply wait there with his +consciousness charged to the brim. Quickly enough moreover that issue +was closed from without; in the course of three minutes more Miss +Theale's servant had returned. He preceded a visitor whom he had met, +obviously, at the foot of the stairs and whom, throwing open the door, +he loudly announced as Miss Croy. Kate, on following him in, stopped +short at sight of Densher--only, after an instant, as the young man saw +with free amusement, not from surprise and still less from +discomfiture. Densher immediately gave his explanation--Miss Theale had +gone to prepare to drive--on receipt of which the servant effaced +himself. + +"And you're going with her?" Kate asked. + +"Yes--with your approval; which I've taken, as you see, for granted." + +"Oh," she laughed, "my approval's complete!" She was thoroughly +consistent and handsome about it. + +"What I mean is of course," he went on--for he was sensibly affected by +her gaiety--"at your so lively instigation." + +She had looked about the room--she might have been vaguely looking for +signs of the duration, of the character of his visit, a momentary aid +in taking a decision. "Well, instigation then, as much as you like." +She treated it as pleasant, the success of her plea with him; she made +a fresh joke of this direct impression of it. "So much so as that? Do +you know I think I won't wait?" + +"Not to see her--after coming?" + +"Well, with you in the field--! I came for news of her, but she must be +all right. If she _is_--" + +But he took her straight up. "Ah how do I know?" He was moved to say +more. "It's not I who am responsible for her, my dear. It seems to me +it's you." She struck him as making light of a matter that had been +costing him sundry qualms; so that they couldn't both be quite just. +Either she was too easy or he had been too anxious. He didn't want at +all events to feel a fool for that. "I'm doing nothing--and shall not, +I assure you, do anything but what I'm told." + +Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his +words; and he had taken it from her the next moment that he really +needn't get into a state. What in the world was the matter? She asked +it, with interest, for all answer. "Isn't she better--if she's able to +see you?" + +"She assures me she's in perfect health." + +Kate's interest grew. "I knew she would." On which she added: "It won't +have been really for illness that she stayed away last night." + +"For what then?" + +"Well--for nervousness." + +"Nervousness about what?" + +"Oh you know!" She spoke with a hint of impatience, smiling however the +next moment. "I've told you that." + +He looked at her to recover in her face what she had told him; then it +was as if what he saw there prompted him to say: "What have you told +_her?_" + +She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered +where they were, liable to surprise, talking with softened voices, even +stretching their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite right +feeling. Milly's room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying +things--! For a moment, none the less, they kept it up. "Ask _her_, if +you like; you're free--she'll tell you. Act as you think best; don't +trouble about what you think I may or mayn't have told. I'm all right +with her," said Kate. "So there you are." + +"If you mean _here_ I am," he answered, "it's unmistakeable. If you +also mean that her believing in you is all I have to do with you're so +far right as that she certainly does believe in you." + +"Well then take example by her." + +"She's really doing it for you," Densher continued. "She's driving me +out for you." + +"In that case," said Kate with her soft tranquillity, "you can do it a +little for _her_. I'm not afraid," she smiled. + +He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it +and affected again, as he had already so often been, by more things in +this face and in her whole person and presence than he was, to his +relief, obliged to find words for. It wasn't, under such impressions, a +question of words. "I do nothing for any one in the world but you. But +for you I'll do anything." + +"Good, good," said Kate. "That's how I like you." + +He waited again an instant. "Then you swear to it?" + +"To 'it'? To what?" + +"Why that you do 'like' me. Since it's all for that, you know, that I'm +letting you do--well, God knows what with me." + +She gave at this, with a stare, a disheartened gesture--the sense of +which she immediately further expressed. "If you don't believe in me +then, after all, hadn't you better break off before you've gone +further?" + +"Break off with you?" + +"Break off with Milly. You might go now," she said, "and I'll stay and +explain to her why it is." + +He wondered--as if it struck him. "What would you say?" + +"Why that you find you can't stand her, and that there's nothing for me +but to bear with you as I best may." + +He considered of this. "How much do you abuse me to her?" + +"Exactly enough. As much as you see by her attitude." + +Again he thought. "It doesn't seem to me I ought to mind her attitude." + +"Well then, just as you like. I'll stay and do my best for you." + +He saw she was sincere, was really giving him a chance; and that of +itself made things clearer. The feeling of how far he had gone came +back to him not in repentance, but in this very vision of an escape; +and it Was not of what he had done, but of what Kate offered, that he +now weighed the consequence. "Won't it make her--her not finding me +here--be rather more sure there's something between us?" + +Kate thought. "Oh I don't know. It will of course greatly upset her. +But you needn't trouble about that. She won't die of it." + +"Do you mean she _will?_" Densher presently asked. + +"Don't put me questions when you don't believe what I say. You make too +many conditions." + +She spoke now with a shade of rational weariness that made the want of +pliancy, the failure to oblige her, look poor and ugly; so that what it +suddenly came back to for him was his deficiency in the things a man of +any taste, so engaged, so enlisted, would have liked to make sure of +being able to show--imagination, tact, positively even humour. The +circumstance is doubtless odd, but the truth is none the less that the +speculation uppermost with him at this juncture was: "What if I should +begin to bore this creature?" And that, within a few seconds, had +translated itself. "If you'll swear again you love me--!" + +She looked about, at door and window, as if he were asking for more +than he said. "Here? There's nothing between us here," Kate smiled. + +"Oh _isn't_ there?" Her smile itself, with this, had so settled +something for him that he had come to her pleadingly and holding out +his hands, which she immediately seized with her own as if both to +check him and to keep him. It was by keeping him thus for a minute that +she did check him; she held him long enough, while, with their eyes +deeply meeting, they waited in silence for him to recover himself and +renew his discretion. He coloured as with a return of the sense of +where they were, and that gave her precisely one of her usual +victories, which immediately took further form. By the time he had +dropped her hands he had again taken hold, as it were, of Milly's. It +was not at any rate with Milly he had broken. "I'll do all you wish," +he declared as if to acknowledge the acceptance of his condition that +he had practically, after all, drawn from her--a declaration on which +she then, recurring to her first idea, promptly acted. + +"If you _are_ as good as that I go. You'll tell her that, finding you +with her, I wouldn't wait. Say that, you know, from yourself. She'll +understand." + +She had reached the door with it--she was full of decision; but he had +before she left him one more doubt. "I don't see how she can understand +enough, you know, without understanding too much." + +"You don't need to see." + +He required then a last injunction. "I must simply go it blind?" + +"You must simply be kind to her." + +"And leave the rest to you?" + +"Leave the rest to _her_," said Kate disappearing. + +It came back then afresh to that, as it had come before. Milly, three +minutes after Kate had gone, returned in her array--her big black hat, +so little superstitiously in the fashion, her fine black garments +throughout, the swathing of her throat, which Densher vaguely took for +an infinite number of yards of priceless lace, and which, its folded +fabric kept in place by heavy rows of pearls, hung down to her feet +like the stole of a priestess. He spoke to her at once of their +friend's visit and flight. "She hadn't known she'd find me," he +said--and said at present without difficulty. He had so rounded his +corner that it wasn't a question of a word more or less. + +She took this account of the matter as quite sufficient; she glossed +over whatever might be awkward. "I'm sorry--but I of course often see +_her_." He felt the discrimination in his favour and how it justified +Kate. This was Milly's tone when the matter was left to her. Well, it +should now be wholly left. + + + + +BOOK SEVENTH + +I + +When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her +meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to +face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which the +warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again +feeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to the +quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two +women stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherd +had received their great doctor's visit, which had been clearly no +small affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, kept +in place, against communication and betrayal, as she now practically +confessed, the barrier of their invited guests. "You've been too dear. +With what I see you're full of you treated them beautifully. _Isn't_ +Kate charming when she wants to be?" + +Poor Susie's expression, contending at first, as in a high fine spasm, +with different dangers, had now quite let itself go. She had to make an +effort to reach a point in space already so remote. "Miss Croy? Oh she +was pleasant and clever. She knew," Mrs. Stringham added. "She knew." + +Milly braced herself--but conscious above all, at the moment, of a high +compassion for her mate. She made her out as struggling--struggling in +all her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, given her +nature, could only be a torment. Milly gathered from the struggle how +much there was of the pity, and how therefore it was both in her +tenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered. +Wonderful and beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadied +the girl. Ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease, with the drop +of their barrier, they were to find themselves together, she felt the +question met with a relief that was almost joy. The basis, the +inevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, to +all appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a +manner to be sorry for _her_. Mrs. Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs. +Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor girl, at +all events, on the spot, five minutes of exaltation in which she turned +the tables on her friend with a pass of the hand, a gesture of an +energy that made a wind in the air. "Kate knew," she asked, "that you +were full of Sir Luke Strett?" + +"She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice; she seemed to want +to help me through." Which the good lady had no sooner said, however, +than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She glared at Milly with +a pretended pluck. "What I mean is that she saw one had been taken up +with something. When I say she knows I should say she's a person who +guesses." And her grimace was also, on its side, heroic. "But _she_ +doesn't matter, Milly." + +The girl felt she by this time could face anything. "Nobody matters, +Susie. Nobody." Which her next words, however, rather contradicted. +"Did he take it ill that I wasn't here to see him? Wasn't it really +just what he wanted--to have it out, so much more simply, with _you_?" + +"We didn't have anything 'out,' Milly," Mrs. Stringham delicately +quavered. + +"Didn't he awfully like you," Milly went on, "and didn't he think you +the most charming person I could possibly have referred him to for an +account of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together and in fact +fall quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for you +to have me as a common ground? You're going to make, I can see, no end +of a good thing of me." + +"My own child, my own child!" Mrs. Stringham pleadingly murmured; yet +showing as she did so that she feared the effect even of deprecation. + +"Isn't he beautiful and good too himself?--altogether, whatever he may +say, a lovely acquaintance to have made? You're just the right people +for me--I see it now; and do you know what, between you, you must do?" +Then as Susie still but stared, wonderstruck and holding herself: "You +must simply see me through. Any way you choose. Make it out together. +I, on my side, will be beautiful too, and we'll be--the three of us, +with whatever others, oh as many as the case requires, any one you +like!--a sight for the gods. I'll be as easy for you as carrying a +feather." Susie took it for a moment in such silence that her young +friend almost saw her--and scarcely withheld the observation--as taking +it for "a part of the disease." This accordingly helped Milly to be, as +she judged, definite and wise. "He's at any rate awfully interesting, +isn't he?--which is so much to the good. We haven't at least--as we +might have, with the way we tumbled into it--got hold of one of the +dreary." + +"Interesting, dearest?"--Mrs. Stringham felt her feet firmer. "I don't +know if he's interesting or not; but I do know, my own," she continued +to quaver, "that he's just as much interested as you could possibly +desire." + +"Certainly--that's it. Like all the world." + +"No, my precious, not like all the world. Very much more deeply and +intelligently." + +"Ah there you are!" Milly laughed. "That's the way, Susie, I want you. +So 'buck' up, my dear. We'll have beautiful times with him. Don't +worry." + +"I'm not worrying, Milly." And poor Susie's face registered the +sublimity of her lie. + +It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her companion went to her, +met by her with an embrace in which things were said that exceeded +speech. Each held and clasped the other as if to console her for this +unnamed woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham of learning the torment of +helplessness, the woe for Milly of having _her_, at such a time, to +think of. Milly's assumption was immense, and the difficulty for her +friend was that of not being able to gainsay it without bringing it +more to the proof than tenderness and vagueness could permit. Nothing +in fact came to the proof between them but that they could thus cling +together--except indeed that, as we have indicated, the pledge of +protection and support was all the younger woman's own. "I don't ask +you," she presently said, "what he told you for yourself, nor what he +told you to tell me, nor how he took it, really, that I had left him to +you, nor what passed between you about me in any way. It wasn't to get +that out of you that I took my means to make sure of your meeting +freely--for there are things I don't want to know. I shall see him +again and again and shall know more than enough. All I do want is that +you shall see me through on _his_ basis, whatever it is; which it's +enough--for the purpose--that you yourself should know: that is with +him to show you how. I'll make it charming for you--that's what I mean; +I'll keep you up to it in such a way that half the time you won't know +you're doing it. And for that you're to rest upon me. There. It's +understood. We keep each other going, and you may absolutely feel of me +that I shan't break down. So, with the way you haven't so much as a dig +of the elbow to fear, how could you be safer?" + +"He told me I _can_ help you--of course he told me that," Susie, on her +side, eagerly contended. "Why shouldn't he, and for what else have I +come out with you? But he told me nothing dreadful--nothing, nothing, +nothing," the poor lady passionately protested. "Only that you must do +as you like and as he tells you--which _is_ just simply to do as you +like." + +"I must keep in sight of him. I must from time to time go to him. But +that's of course doing as I like. It's lucky," Milly smiled, "that I +like going to him." + +Mrs. Stringham was here in agreement; she gave a clutch at the account +of their situation that most showed it as workable. "That's what _will_ +be charming for me, and what I'm sure he really wants of me--to help +you to do as you like." + +"And also a little, won't it be," Milly laughed, "to save me from the +consequences? Of course," she added, "there must first _be_ things I +like." + +"Oh I think you'll find some," Mrs. Stringham more bravely said. "I +think there _are_ some--as for instance just this one. I mean," she +explained, "really having us so." + +Milly thought. "Just as if I wanted you comfortable about _him_, and +him the same about you? Yes--I shall get the good of it." + +Susan Shepherd appeared to wander from this into a slight confusion. +"Which of them are you talking of?" + +Milly wondered an instant--then had a light. "I'm not talking of Mr. +Densher." With which moreover she showed amusement. "Though if you can +be comfortable about Mr. Densher too so much the better." + +"Oh you meant Sir Luke Strett? Certainly he's a fine type. Do you +know," Susie continued, "whom he reminds me of? Of _our_ great man--Dr. +Buttrick of Boston." + +Milly recognised Dr. Buttrick of Boston, but she dropped him after a +tributary pause. "What do you think, now that you've seen him, of Mr. +Densher?" + +It was not till after consideration, with her eyes fixed on her +friend's, that Susie produced her answer. "I think he's very handsome." + +Milly remained smiling at her, though putting on a little the manner of +a teacher with a pupil. "Well, that will do for the first time. I +_have_ done," she went on, "what I wanted." + +"Then that's all _we_ want. You see there are plenty of things." + +Milly shook her head for the "plenty." "The best is not to know--that +includes them all. I don't--I don't know. Nothing about +anything--except that you're _with_ me. Remember that, please. There +won't be anything that, on my side, for you, I shall forget. So it's +all right." + +The effect of it by this time was fairly, as intended, to sustain +Susie, who dropped in spite of herself into the reassuring. "Most +certainly it's all right. I think you ought to understand that he sees +no reason--" + +"Why I shouldn't have a grand long life?" Milly had taken it straight +up, as to understand it and for a moment consider it. But she disposed +of it otherwise. "Oh of course I know _that_." She spoke as if her +friend's point were small. + +Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. "Well, what I mean is that he +didn't say to me anything that he hasn't said to yourself." + +"Really?--I would in his place!" She might have been disappointed, but +she had her good humour. "He tells me to _live_"--and she oddly limited +the word. + +It left Susie a little at sea. "Then what do you want more?" + +"My dear," the girl presently said, "I don't 'want,' as I assure you, +anything. Still," she added, "I _am_ living. Oh yes, I'm living." + +It put them again face to face, but it had wound Mrs. Stringham up. "So +am I then, you'll see!"--she spoke with the note of her recovery. Yet +it was her wisdom now--meaning by it as much as she did--not to say +more than that. She had risen by Milly's aid to a certain command of +what was before them; the ten minutes of their talk had in fact made +her more distinctly aware of the presence in her mind of a new idea. It +was really perhaps an old idea with a new value; it had at all events +begun during the last hour, though at first but feebly, to shine with a +special light. That was because in the morning darkness had so suddenly +descended--a sufficient shade of night to bring out the power of a +star. The dusk might be thick yet, but the sky had comparatively +cleared; and Susan Shepherd's star from this time on continued to +twinkle for her. It was for the moment, after her passage with Milly, +the one spark left in the heavens. She recognised, as she continued to +watch it, that it had really been set there by Sir Luke Strett's visit +and that the impressions immediately following had done no more than +fix it. Milly's reappearance with Mr. Densher at her heels--or, so +oddly perhaps, at Miss Croy's heels, Miss Croy being at Milly's--had +contributed to this effect, though it was only with the lapse of the +greater obscurity that Susie made that out. The obscurity had reigned +during the hour of their friends' visit, faintly clearing indeed while, +in one of the rooms, Kate Croy's remarkable advance to her intensified +the fact that Milly and the young man were conjoined in the other. If +it hadn't acquired on the spot all the intensity of which it was +capable, this was because the poor lady still sat in her primary gloom, +the gloom the great benignant doctor had practically left behind him. + +The intensity the circumstance in question _might_ wear to the informed +imagination would have been sufficiently revealed for us, no doubt--and +with other things to our purpose--in two or three of those confidential +passages with Mrs. Lowder that she now permitted herself. She hadn't +yet been so glad that she believed in her old friend; for if she hadn't +had, at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she should +certainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist of +silence; silence was gross and thick, whereas wisdom should taper, +however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gate +the morning after the colloquy just noted; and there, in Maud +Manningham's own sanctum, she gradually found relief in giving an +account of herself. An account of herself was one of the things that +she had long been in the habit of expecting herself regularly to +give--the regularity depending of course much on such tests of merit as +might, by laws beyond her control, rise in her path. She never spared +herself in short a proper sharpness of conception of how she had +behaved, and it was a statement that she for the most part found +herself able to make. What had happened at present was that nothing, as +she felt, was left of her to report to; she was all too sunk in the +inevitable and the abysmal. To give an account of herself she must give +it to somebody else, and her first instalment of it to her hostess was +that she must please let her cry. She couldn't cry, with Milly in +observation, at the hotel, which she had accordingly left for that +purpose; and the power happily came to her with the good opportunity. +She cried and cried at first--she confined herself to that; it was for +the time the best statement of her business. Mrs. Lowder moreover +intelligently took it as such, though knocking off a note or two more, +as she said, while Susie sat near her table. She could resist the +contagion of tears, but her patience did justice to her visitor's most +vivid plea for it. "I shall never be able, you know, to cry again--at +least not ever with _her;_ so I must take it out when I can. Even if +she does herself it won't be for me to give away; for what would that +be but a confession of despair? I'm not with her for that--I'm with her +to be regularly sublime. Besides, Milly won't cry herself." + +"I'm sure I hope," said Mrs. Lowder, "that she won't have occasion to." + +"She won't even if she does have occasion. She won't shed a tear. +There's something that will prevent her." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Lowder. + +"Yes, her pride," Mrs. Stringham explained in spite of her friend's +doubt, and it was with this that her communication took consistent +form. It had never been pride, Maud Manningham had hinted, that kept +_her_ from crying when other things made for it; it had only been that +these same things, at such times, made still more for business, +arrangements, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the marshalling of +servants, the taking of decisions. "I might be crying now," she said, +"if I weren't writing letters"--and this quite without harshness for +her anxious companion, to whom she allowed just the administrative +margin for difference. She had interrupted her no more than she would +have interrupted the piano-tuner. It gave poor Susie time; and when +Mrs. Lowder, to save appearances and catch the post, had, with her +addressed and stamped notes, met at the door of the room the footman +summoned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the case were +sufficiently ready for her. It took but two or three, however, given +their importance, to lay the ground for the great one--Mrs. Stringham's +interview of the day before with Sir Luke, who had wished to see her +about Milly. + +"He had wished it himself?" + +"I think he was glad of it. Clearly indeed he was. He stayed a quarter +of an hour. I could see that for _him_ it was long. He's interested," +said Mrs. Stringham. + +"Do you mean in her case?" + +"He says it _isn't_ a case." + +"What then is it?" + +"It isn't, at least," Mrs. Stringham explained, "the case she believed +it to be--thought it at any rate _might_ be--when, without my +knowledge, she went to see him. She went because there was something +she was afraid of, and he examined her thoroughly--he has made sure. +She's wrong--she hasn't what she thought." + +"And what did she think?" Mrs. Lowder demanded. + +"He didn't tell me." + +"And you didn't ask?" + +"I asked nothing," said poor Susie--"I only took what he gave me. He +gave me no more than he had to--he was beautiful," she went on. "He +_is_, thank God, interested." + +"He must have been interested in _you_, dear," Maud Manningham observed +with kindness. + +Her visitor met it with candour. "Yes, love, I think he _is_. I mean +that he sees what he can do with me." + +Mrs. Lowder took it rightly. "For _her_." + +"For her. Anything in the world he will or he must. He can use me to +the last bone, and he likes at least that. He says the great thing for +her is to be happy." + +"It's surely the great thing for every one. Why, therefore," Mrs. +Lowder handsomely asked, "should we cry so hard about it?" + +"Only," poor Susie wailed, "that it's so strange, so beyond us. I mean +if she can't be." + +"She must be." Mrs. Lowder knew no impossibles. "She _shall_ be." + +"Well--if you'll help. He thinks, you know, we _can_ help." + +Mrs. Lowder faced a moment, in her massive way, what Sir Luke Strett +thought. She sat back there, her knees apart, not unlike a picturesque +ear-ringed matron at a market-stall; while her friend, before her, +dropped their items, tossed the separate truths of the matter one by +one, into her capacious apron. "But is that all he came to you for--to +tell you she must be happy?" + +"That she must be _made_ so--that's the point. It seemed enough, as he +told me," Mrs. Stringham went on; "he makes it somehow such a grand +possible affair." + +"Ah well, if he makes it possible!" + +"I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave it to me, that is, as +_my_ part. The rest's his own." + +"And what's the rest?" Mrs. Lowder asked. + +"I don't know. _His_ business. He means to keep hold of her." + +"Then why do you say it isn't a 'case'? It must be very much of one." + +Everything in Mrs. Stringham confessed to the extent of it. "It's only +that it isn't _the_ case she herself supposed." + +"It's another?" + +"It's another." + +"Examining her for what she supposed he finds something else?" + +"Something else." + +"And what does he find?" + +"Ah," Mrs. Stringham cried, "God keep me from knowing!" + +"He didn't tell you that?" + +But poor Susie had recovered herself. "What I mean is that if it's +there I shall know in time. He's considering, but I can trust him for +it--because he does, I feel, trust me. He's considering," she repeated. + +"He's in other words not sure?" + +"Well, he's watching. I think that's what he means. She's to get away +now, but to come back to him in three months." + +"Then I think," said Maud Lowder, "that he oughtn't meanwhile to scare +us." + +It roused Susie a little, Susie being already enrolled in the great +doctor's cause. This came out at least in her glimmer of reproach. +"Does it scare us to enlist us for her happiness?" + +Mrs. Lowder was rather stiff for it. "Yes; it scares _me_. I'm always +scared--I may call it so--till I understand. What happiness is he +talking about?" + +Mrs. Stringham at this came straight. "Oh you know!" + +She had really said it so that her friend had to take it; which the +latter in fact after a moment showed herself as having done. A strange +light humour in the matter even perhaps suddenly aiding, she met it +with a certain accommodation. "Well, say one seems to see. The point +is--!" But, fairly too full now of her question, she dropped. + +"The point is will it _cure?_" + +"Precisely. Is it absolutely a remedy--the specific?" + +"Well, I should think we might know!" Mrs. Stringham delicately +declared. + +"Ah but we haven't the complaint." + +"Have you never, dearest, been in love?" Susan Shepherd enquired. + +"Yes, my child; but not by the doctor's direction." + +Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth, +which operated--and happily too--as a challenge to her visitor's +spirit. "Oh of course we don't ask his leave to fall. But it's +something to know he thinks it good for us." + +"My dear woman," Mrs. Lowder cried, "it strikes me we know it without +him. So that when _that's_ all he has to tell us--!" + +"Ah," Mrs. Stringham interposed, "it isn't 'all.' I feel Sir Luke will +have more; he won't have put me off with anything inadequate. I'm to +see him again; he as good as told me that he'll wish it. So it won't be +for nothing." + +"Then what will it be for? Do you mean he has somebody of his own to +propose? Do you mean you told him nothing?" + +Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. "I showed him I understood +him. That was all I could do. I didn't feel at liberty to be explicit; +but I felt, even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of what I +had from you night before last." + +"What I spoke to you of in the carriage when we had left her with Kate?" + +"You had _seen_, apparently, in three minutes. And now that he's here, +now that I've met him and had my impression of him, I feel," said Mrs. +Stringham, "that you've been magnificent." + +"Of course I've been magnificent. When," asked Maud Manningham, "was I +anything else? But Milly won't be, you know, if she marries Merton +Densher." + +"Oh it's always magnificent to marry the man one loves. But we're going +fast!" Mrs. Stringham woefully smiled. + +"The thing _is_ to go fast if I see the case right. What had I after +all but my instinct of that on coming back with you, night before last, +to pick up Kate? I felt what I felt--I knew in my bones the man had +returned." + +"That's just where, as I say, you're magnificent. But wait," said Mrs. +Stringham, "till you've seen him." + +"I shall see him immediately"--Mrs. Lowder took it up with decision. +"What is then," she asked, "your impression?" + +Mrs. Stringham's impression seemed lost in her doubts. "How can he ever +care for her?" + +Her companion, in her companion's heavy manner, sat on it. "By being +put in the way of it." + +"For God's sake then," Mrs. Stringham wailed, "_put_ him in the way! +You have him, one feels, in your hand." + +Maud Lowder's eyes at this rested on her friend's. "Is that your +impression of him?" + +"It's my impression, dearest, of you. You handle every one." + +Mrs. Lowder's eyes still rested, and Susan Shepherd now felt, for a +wonder, not less sincere by seeing that she pleased her. But there was +a great limitation. "I don't handle Kate." + +It suggested something that her visitor hadn't yet had from +her--something the sense of which made Mrs. Stringham gasp. "Do you +mean Kate cares for _him?_" + +That fact the lady of Lancaster Gate had up to this moment, as we know, +enshrouded, and her friend's quick question had produced a change in +her face. She blinked--then looked at the question hard; after which, +whether she had inadvertently betrayed herself or had only reached a +decision and then been affected by the quality of Mrs. Stringham's +surprise, she accepted all results. What took place in her for Susan +Shepherd was not simply that she made the best of them, but that she +suddenly saw more in them to her purpose than she could have imagined. +A certain impatience in fact marked in her this transition: she had +been keeping back, very hard, an important truth, and wouldn't have +liked to hear that she hadn't concealed it cleverly. Susie nevertheless +felt herself pass as not a little of a fool with her for not having +thought of it. What Susie indeed, however, most thought of at present, +in the quick, new light of it, was the wonder of Kate's dissimulation. +She had time for that view while she waited for an answer to her cry. +"Kate thinks she cares. But she's mistaken. And no one knows it." These +things, distinct and responsible, were Mrs. Lowder's retort. Yet they +weren't all of it. "_You_ don't know it--that must be your line. Or +rather your line must be that you deny it utterly." + +"Deny that she cares for him?" + +"Deny that she so much as thinks that she does. Positively and +absolutely. Deny that you've so much as heard of it." + +Susie faced this new duty. "To Milly, you mean--if she asks?" + +"To Milly, naturally. No one else _will_ ask." + +"Well," said Mrs. Stringham after a moment, "Milly won't." + +Mrs. Lowder wondered. "Are you sure?" + +"Yes, the more I think of it. And luckily for _me_. I lie badly." + +"_I_ lie well, thank God," Mrs. Lowder almost snorted, "when, as +sometimes will happen, there's nothing else so good. One must always do +the best. But without lies then," she went on, "perhaps we can work it +out." Her interest had risen; her friend saw her, as within some +minutes, more enrolled and inflamed--presently felt in her what had +made the difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried this at the +time but dimly; she only made out at first that Maud had found a reason +for helping her. The reason was that, strangely, she might help Maud +too, for which she now desired to profess herself ready even to lying. +What really perhaps most came out for her was that her hostess was a +little disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of this +appliance; and that in turn was to become a steadier light. The truth +about Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the delusion about the +state of her affections, which might be removed--this was apparently +the ground on which they now might more intimately meet. Mrs. Stringham +saw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's delusion--by arts, +however, in truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass. Or was it +perhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. Densher's?--success in which +indeed might entail other successes. Before that job, unfortunately, +her heart had already failed. She felt that she believed in her bones +what Milly believed, and what would now make working for Milly such a +dreadful upward tug. All this within her was confusedly present--a +cloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated self +loomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for +the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From the +oracle the sound did come--or at any rate the sense did, a sense all +accordant with the insufflation she had just seen working. "Yes," the +sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall +be helped, by its doing so, for Kate"--a view into which Mrs. Stringham +could now sufficiently enter. She found herself of a sudden, strange to +say, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate's +good as Mrs. Lowder with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herself +in short not caring what became of Kate--only convinced at bottom of +the predominance of Kate's star. Kate wasn't in danger, Kate wasn't +pathetic; Kate Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate Croy. +She saw moreover by this time that her friend was travelling even +beyond her own speed. Mrs. Lowder had already, in mind, drafted a rough +plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said: "You must +stay on a few days, and you must immediately, both of you, meet him at +dinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by an +instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, to +prepare that ground. "The poor child, when I was with her there while +you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away to me." + +"Oh I remember how you afterwards put it to me. Though it was nothing +more," Susie did herself the justice to observe, "than what I too had +quite felt." + +But Mrs. Lowder fronted her so on this that she wondered what she had +said. "I suppose I ought to be edified at what you can so beautifully +give up." + +"Give up?" Mrs. Stringham echoed. "Why, I give up nothing--I cling." + +Her hostess showed impatience, turning again with some stiffness to her +great brass-bound cylinder-desk and giving a push to an object or two +disposed there. "I give up then. You know how little such a person as +Mr. Densher was to be my idea for her. You know what I've been thinking +perfectly possible." + +"Oh you've been great"--Susie was perfectly fair. "A duke, a duchess, a +princess, a palace: you've made me believe in them too. But where we +break down is that _she_ doesn't believe in them. Luckily for her--as +it seems to be turning out--she doesn't want them. So what's one to do? +I assure you I've had many dreams. But I've only one dream now." + +Mrs. Stringham's tone in these last words gave so fully her meaning +that Mrs. Lowder could but show herself as taking it in. They sat a +moment longer confronted on it. "Her having what she does want?" + +"If it _will_ do anything for her." + +Mrs. Lowder seemed to think what it might do; but she spoke for the +instant of something else. "It does provoke me a bit, you know--for of +course I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet it +doesn't prevent the fact that we must be decent." + +"We must take her"--Mrs. Stringham carried that out--"as she is." + +"And we must take Mr. Densher as _he_ is." With which Mrs. Lowder gave +a sombre laugh. "It's a pity he isn't better!" + +"Well, if he were better," her friend rejoined, "you'd have liked him +for your niece; and in that case Milly would interfere. I mean," Susie +added, "interfere with _you_." + +"She interferes with me as it is--not that it matters now. But I saw +Kate and her--really as soon as you came to me--set up side by side. I +saw your girl--I don't mind telling--you helping my girl; and when I +say that," Mrs. Lowder continued, "you'll probably put in for yourself +that it was part of the reason of my welcome to you. So you see what I +give up. I do give it up. But when I take that line," she further set +forth, "I take it handsomely. So good-bye to it all. Good-day to Mrs. +Densher! Heavens!" she growled. + +Susie held herself a minute. "Even as Mrs. Densher my girl will be +somebody." + +"Yes, she won't be nobody. Besides," said Mrs. Lowder, "we're talking +in the air." + +Her companion sadly assented. "We're leaving everything out." + +"It's nevertheless interesting." And Mrs. Lowder had another thought. +"_He's_ not quite nobody either." It brought her back to the question +she had already put and which her friend hadn't at the time dealt with. +"What in fact do you make of him?" + +Susan Shepherd, at this, for reasons not clear even to herself, was +moved a little to caution. So she remained general. "He's charming." + +She had met Mrs. Lowder's eyes with that extreme pointedness in her own +to which people resort when they are not quite candid--a circumstance +that had its effect. "Yes; he's charming." + +The effect of the words, however, was equally marked; they almost +determined in Mrs. Stringham a return of amusement. "I thought you +didn't like him!" + +"I don't like him for Kate." + +"But you don't like him for Milly either." + +Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend also got up. "I like +him, my dear, for myself." + +"Then that's the best way of all." + +"Well, it's one way. He's not good enough for my niece, and he's not +good enough for you. One's an aunt, one's a wretch and one's a fool." + +"Oh _I'm_ not--not either," Susie declared. + +But her companion kept on. "One lives for others. _You_ do that. If I +were living for myself I shouldn't at all mind him." + +But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. "Ah if I find him charming it's +however I'm living." + +Well, it broke Mrs. Lowder down. She hung fire but an instant, giving +herself away with a laugh. "Of course he's all right in himself." + +"That's all I contend," Susie said with more reserve; and the note in +question--what Merton Densher was "in himself"--closed practically, +with some inconsequence, this first of their councils. + + +II + +It had at least made the difference for them, they could feel, of an +informed state in respect to the great doctor, whom they were now to +take as watching, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing to +himself some such process before he should make up his mind. Mrs. +Stringham understood him as considering the matter meanwhile in a +spirit that, on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had come +back to a rough notation of before retiring. She followed the course of +his reckoning. If what they had talked of _could_ happen--if Milly, +that is, could have her thoughts taken off herself--it wouldn't do any +harm and might conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happen--if, +anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves, conjoined, could +do nothing to contribute to it--they would be in no worse a box than +before. Only in this latter case the girl would have had her free range +for the summer, for the autumn; she would have done her best in the +sense enjoined on her, and, coming back at the end to her eminent man, +would--besides having more to show him--find him more ready to go on +with her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherd--as well as being +ground for a second report to her old friend--that Milly did her part +for a working view of the general case, inasmuch as she mentioned +frankly and promptly that she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir Luke +Strett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for, +his having been so easy about her behaviour. + +"You see I didn't know that--for the liberty I took--I shouldn't +afterwards get a stiff note from him." + +So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. "Oh +you'll never get a stiff note from him in your life." + +She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her young friend's question. +"Why not, as well as any one else who has played him a trick?" + +"Well, because he doesn't regard it as a trick. He could understand +your action. It's all right, you see." + +"Yes--I do see. It _is_ all right. He's easier with me than with any +one else, because that's the way to let me down. He's only making +believe, and I'm not worth hauling up." + +Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie grasped +at her only advantage. "Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett +of trifling with you?" + +She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave her--a +strange half-amused perception of what she made of it. "Well, so far as +it's trifling with me to pity me so much." + +"He doesn't pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. "He just--the same as +any one else--likes you." + +"He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as any one else." + +"Why not, if he wants to work for you?" + +Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. "Ah there +you are!" Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But +Milly let her off. "Work for me, all the same--work for me! It's of +course what I want." Then as usual she embraced her friend. "I'm not +going to be as nasty as this to _him_." + +"I'm sure I hope not!"--and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. "I've +no doubt, however, he'd take it from you! It's _you_, my dear, who are +not the same as any one else." + +Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. "No, +so that people can take anything from me." And what Mrs. Stringham did +indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any +account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between +them of an odd independence--an independence positively of action and +custom--on the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate ways +with the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what she +had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's first +encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or +was to have other encounters--private pointed personal; she favoured +every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as +if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would +be her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing of +it this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put her +visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him how +touched she had been by his good nature. That required little +explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood he +could but reply that it was all right. + +"I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got +good friends." + +"So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think," +Milly went on, "of all of them together. You're excellent for each +other. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me." + +There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her +impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her +alarms--the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too +far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not of +value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He +would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at +every point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt, +rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her, +since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea +that she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the way +in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to +do it. He wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word, +Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her +smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such +another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with +Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help +her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would +assist also to make this right. + +It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, +almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician. +What _was_ he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the +moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all +the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety? She would leave +the subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no +doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine +that the inward success of these reflexions flushed her for the minute, +to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health; +and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to the +presumption. "Every little helps, no doubt!"--he noticed +good-humouredly her harmless sally. "But, help or no help, you're +looking, you know, remarkably well." + +"Oh I thought I was," she answered; and it was as if already she saw +his line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he had +guessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. As for +what there _was_ to guess, he couldn't--if this was present to +him--have arrived at it save by his own acuteness. That acuteness was +therefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of +leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. Neither, for that +matter, would hers be--which she was even actually enjoying. She +wondered if really then there mightn't be something for her. She hadn't +been sure in coming to him that she was "better," and he hadn't used, +he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term about +her; in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for the +amiable sympathy of it, "Yes, I _must_ be," for he had this unaided +sense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided, +because who could have told him of anything? Susie, she was certain, +hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible she +could have told him the first time. Since such was his penetration, +therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept +the new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate +her on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause tenderly enough it +might produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way of +nursing. "You gave me the other day," she went on, "plenty to think +over, and I've been doing that--thinking it over--quite as you'll have +probably wished me. I think I must be pretty easy to treat," she +smiled, "since you've already done me so much good." + +The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advance +so closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed the +pleasure of really improving it. "Oh no, you're extremely difficult to +treat. I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit." + +"Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his +answer, convinced as she was that if she _had_ been difficult it would +be the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as I +like." + +"Then it's as _I_ like. But you must really, though we're having such a +decent month, get straight away." In pursuance of which, when she had +replied with promptitude that her departure--for the Tyrol and then for +Venice--was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with +alacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, for we shall meet there. I've a +dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; three +weeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person +who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers. I +heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice." + +"That's lovely then. I shall expect you there. And anything that, in +advance or in any way, I can do for you--!" + +"Oh thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, does for me. But it will be +capital to find you there." + +"I think it ought to make you feel," she said after a moment, "that I +_am_ easy to treat." + +But he shook his head again; he wouldn't have it. "You've not come to +that _yet_." + +"One has to be so bad for it?" + +"Well, I don't think I've ever come to it--to 'ease' of treatment. I +doubt if it's possible. I've not, if it is, found any one bad enough. +The ease, you see, is for _you_." + +"I see--I see." + +They had an odd friendly, but perhaps the least bit awkward pause on +it; after which Sir Luke asked: "And that clever lady--she goes with +you?" + +"Mrs. Stringham? Oh dear, yes. She'll stay with me, I hope, to the end." + +He had a cheerful blankness. "To the end of what?" + +"Well--of everything." + +"Ah then," he laughed, "you're in luck. The end of everything is far +off. This, you know, I'm hoping," said Sir Luke, "is only the +beginning." And the next question he risked might have been a part of +his hope. "Just you and she together?" + +"No, two other friends; two ladies of whom we've seen more here than of +any one and who are just the right people for us." + +He thought a moment. "You'll be four women together then?" + +"Ah," said Milly, "we're widows and orphans. But I think," she added as +if to say what she saw would reassure him, "that we shall not be +unattractive, as we move, to gentlemen. When you talk of 'life' I +suppose you mean mainly gentlemen." + +"When I talk of 'life,'" he made answer after a moment during which he +might have been appreciating her raciness--"when I talk of life I think +I mean more than anything else the beautiful show of it, in its +freshness, made by young persons of your age. So go on as you are. I +see more and more _how_ you are. You can't," he went so far as to say +for pleasantness, "better it." + +She took it from him with a great show of peace. "One of our companions +will be Miss Croy, who came with me here first. It's in _her_ that life +is splendid; and a part of that is even that she's devoted to me. But +she's above all magnificent in herself. So that if you'd like," she +freely threw out, "to see _her_--" + +"Oh I shall like to see any one who's devoted to you, for clearly it +will be jolly to be 'in' it. So that if she's to be at Venice I _shall_ +see her?" + +"We must arrange it--I shan't fail. She moreover has a friend who may +also be there"--Milly found herself going on to this. "He's likely to +come, I believe, for he always follows her." + +Sir Luke wondered. "You mean they're lovers?" + +"_He_ is," Milly smiled; "but not she. She doesn't care for him." + +Sir Luke took an interest. "What's the matter with him?" + +"Nothing but that she doesn't like him." + +Sir Luke kept it up. "Is he all right?" + +"Oh he's very nice. Indeed he's remarkably so." + +"And he's to be in Venice?" + +"So she tells me she fears. For if he is there he'll be constantly +about with her." + +"And she'll be constantly about with you?" + +"As we're great friends--yes." + +"Well then," said Sir Luke, "you won't be four women alone." + +"Oh no; I quite recognise the chance of gentlemen. But he won't," Milly +pursued in the same wondrous way, "have come, you see, for me." + +"No--I see. But can't you help him?" + +"Can't _you?_" Milly after a moment quaintly asked. Then for the joke +of it she explained. "I'm putting you, you see, in relation with my +entourage." + +It might have been for the joke of it too, by this time, that her +eminent friend fell in. "But if this gentleman _isn't_ of your +'entourage '? I mean if he's of--what do you call her?--Miss Croy's. +Unless indeed you also take an interest in him." + +"Oh certainly I take an interest in him!" + +"You think there may be then some chance for him?" + +"I like him," said Milly, "enough to hope so." + +"Then that's all right. But what, pray," Sir Luke next asked, "have I +to do with him?" + +"Nothing," said Milly, "except that if you're to be there, so may he +be. And also that we shan't in that case be simply four dreary women." + +He considered her as if at this point she a little tried his patience. +"_You're_ the least 'dreary' woman I've ever, ever seen. Ever, do you +know? There's no reason why you shouldn't have a really splendid life." + +"So every one tells me," she promptly returned. + +"The conviction--strong already when I had seen you once--is +strengthened in me by having seen your friend. There's no doubt about +it. The world's before you." + +"What did my friend tell you?" Milly asked. + +"Nothing that wouldn't have given you pleasure. We talked about +you--and freely. I don't deny that. But it shows me I don't require of +you the impossible." + +She was now on her feet. "I think I know what you require of me." + +"Nothing, for you," he went on, "_is_ impossible. So go on." He +repeated it again--wanting her so to feel that to-day he saw it. +"You're all right." + +"Well," she smiled--"keep me so." + +"Oh you'll get away from me." + +"Keep me, keep me," she simply continued with her gentle eyes on him. + +She had given him her hand for good-bye, and he thus for a moment did +keep her. Something then, while he seemed to think if there were +anything more, came back to him; though something of which there wasn't +too much to be made. "Of course if there's anything I _can_ do for your +friend: I mean the gentleman you speak of--?" He gave out in short that +he was ready. + +"Oh Mr. Densher?" It was as if she had forgotten. + +"Mr. Densher--is that his name?" + +"Yes--but his case isn't so dreadful." She had within a minute got away +from that. + +"No doubt--if _you_ take an interest." She had got away, but it was as +if he made out in her eyes--though they also had rather got away--a +reason for calling her back. "Still, if there's anything one can do--?" + +She looked at him while she thought, while she smiled. "I'm afraid +there's really nothing one can do." + + +III + +Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink into +possession; gratefully glad that the warmth of the Southern summer was +still in the high florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard cool +pavements took reflexions in their lifelong polish, and where the sun +on the stirred sea-water, flickering up through open windows, played +over the painted "subjects" in the splendid ceilings--medallions of +purple and brown, of brave old melancholy colour, medals as of old +reddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time and all +flourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great moulded +and figured concavity (a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures of +the air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller +lights, straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with +the Baedekers and photographs of Milly's party dreadfully meeting the +eye, to make of the place an apartment of state. This at last only, +though she had enjoyed the palace for three weeks, seemed to count as +effective occupation; perhaps because it was the first time she had +been alone--really to call alone--since she had left London, it +ministered to her first full and unembarrassed sense of what the great +Eugenio had done for her. The great Eugenio, recommended by grand-dukes +and Americans, had entered her service during the last hours of +all--had crossed from Paris, after multiplied _pourparlers_ with Mrs. +Stringham, to whom she had allowed more than ever a free hand, on +purpose to escort her to the Continent and encompass her there, and had +dedicated to her, from the moment of their meeting, all the treasures +of his experience. She had judged him in advance--polyglot and +universal, very dear and very deep--as probably but a swindler finished +to the finger-tips; for he was forever carrying one well-kept Italian +hand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket, +which, as she had instantly observed him to recognise, fitted it like a +glove. The remarkable thing was that these elements of their common +consciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructible link, formed +the ground of a happy relation; being by this time, strangely, +grotesquely, delightfully, what most kept up confidence between them +and what most expressed it. + +She had seen quickly enough what was happening--the usual thing again, +yet once again. Eugenio had, in an interview of five minutes, +understood her, had got hold, like all the world, of the idea not so +much of the care with which she must be taken up as of the care with +which she must be let down. All the world understood her, all the world +had got hold; but for nobody yet, she felt, would the idea have been so +close a tie or won from herself so patient a surrender. Gracefully, +respectfully, consummately enough--always with hands in position and +the look, in his thick neat white hair, smooth fat face and black +professional, almost theatrical eyes, as of some famous tenor grown too +old to make love, but with an art still to make money--did he on +occasion convey to her that she was, of all the clients of his glorious +career, the one in whom his interest was most personal and paternal. +The others had come in the way of business, but for her his sentiment +was special. Confidence rested thus on her completely believing that: +there was nothing of which she felt more sure. It passed between them +every time they conversed; he was abysmal, but this intimacy lived on +the surface. He had taken his place already for her among those who +were to see her through, and meditation ranked him, in the constant +perspective, for the final function, side by side with poor Susie--whom +she was now pitying more than ever for having to be herself so sorry +and to say so little about it. Eugenio had the general tact of a +residuary legatee--which was a character that could be definitely worn; +whereas she could see Susie, in the event of her death, in no character +at all, Susie being insistently, exclusively concerned in her mere +makeshift duration. This principle, for that matter, Milly at present, +with a renewed flare of fancy, felt she should herself have liked to +believe in. Eugenio had really done for her more than he probably +knew--he didn't after all know everything--in having, for the wind-up +of the autumn, on a weak word from her, so admirably, so perfectly +established her. Her weak word, as a general hint, had been: "At +Venice, please, if possible, no dreadful, no vulgar hotel; but, if it +can be at all managed--you know what I mean--some fine old rooms, +wholly independent, for a series of months. Plenty of them too, and the +more interesting the better: part of a palace, historic and +picturesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall be to ourselves, +with a cook, don't you know?--with servants, frescoes, tapestries, +antiquities, the thorough make-believe of a settlement." + +The proof of how he better and better understood her was in all the +place; as to his masterly acquisition of which she had from the first +asked no questions. She had shown him enough what she thought of it, +and her forbearance pleased him; with the part of the transaction that +mainly concerned her she would soon enough become acquainted, and his +connexion with such values as she would then find noted could scarce +help growing, as it were, still more residuary. Charming people, +conscious Venice-lovers, evidently, had given up their house to her, +and had fled to a distance, to other countries, to hide their blushes +alike over what they had, however briefly, alienated, and over what +they had, however durably, gained. They had preserved and consecrated, +and she now--her part of it was shameless--appropriated and enjoyed. +Palazzo Leporelli held its history still in its great lap, even like a +painted idol, a solemn puppet hung about with decorations. Hung about +with pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the ineffaceable +character, was here the presence revered and served: which brings us +back to our truth of a moment ago--the fact that, more than ever, this +October morning, awkward novice though she might be, Milly moved slowly +to and fro as the priestess of the worship. Certainly it came from the +sweet taste of solitude, caught again and cherished for the hour; +always a need of her nature, moreover, when things spoke to her with +penetration. It was mostly in stillness they spoke to her best; amid +voices she lost the sense. Voices had surrounded her for weeks, and she +had tried to listen, had cultivated them and had answered back; these +had been weeks in which there were other things they might well prevent +her from hearing. More than the prospect had at first promised or +threatened she had felt herself going on in a crowd and with a +multiplied escort; the four ladies pictured by her to Sir Luke Strett +as a phalanx comparatively closed and detached had in fact proved a +rolling snowball, condemned from day to day to cover more ground. Susan +Shepherd had compared this portion of the girl's excursion to the +Empress Catherine's famous progress across the steppes of Russia; +improvised settlements appeared at each turn of the road, villagers +waiting with addresses drawn up in the language of London. Old friends +in fine were in ambush, Mrs. Lowder's, Kate Croy's, her own; when the +addresses weren't in the language of London they were in the more +insistent idioms of American centres. The current was swollen even by +Susie's social connexions; so that there were days, at hotels, at +Dolomite picnics, on lake steamers, when she could almost repay to Aunt +Maud and Kate with interest the debt contracted by the London "success" +to which they had opened the door. + +Mrs. Lowder's success and Kate's, amid the shock of Milly's and Mrs. +Stringham's compatriots, failed but little, really, of the +concert-pitch; it had gone almost as fast as the boom, over the sea, of +the last great native novel. Those ladies were "so +different"--different, observably enough, from the ladies so appraising +them; it being throughout a case mainly of ladies, of a dozen at once +sometimes, in Milly's apartment, pointing, also at once, that moral and +many others. Milly's companions were acclaimed not only as perfectly +fascinating in themselves, the nicest people yet known to the +acclaimers, but as obvious helping hands, socially speaking, for the +eccentric young woman, evident initiators and smoothers of her path, +possible subduers of her eccentricity. Short intervals, to her own +sense, stood now for great differences, and this renewed inhalation of +her native air had somehow left her to feel that she already, that she +mainly, struck the compatriot as queer and dissociated. She moved such +a critic, it would appear, as to rather an odd suspicion, a benevolence +induced by a want of complete trust: all of which showed her in the +light of a person too plain and too ill-clothed for a thorough good +time, and yet too rich and too befriended--an intuitive cunning within +her managing this last--for a thorough bad one. The compatriots, in +short, by what she made out, approved her friends for their expert +wisdom with her; in spite of which judicial sagacity it was the +compatriots who recorded themselves as the innocent parties. She saw +things in these days that she had never seen before, and she couldn't +have said why save on a principle too terrible to name; whereby she saw +that neither Lancaster Gate was what New York took it for, nor New York +what Lancaster Gate fondly fancied it in coquetting with the plan of a +series of American visits. The plan might have been, humorously, on +Mrs. Lowder's part, for the improvement of her social position--and it +had verily in that direction lights that were perhaps but half a +century too prompt; at all of which Kate Croy assisted with the cool +controlled facility that went so well, as the others said, with her +particular kind of good looks, the kind that led you to expect the +person enjoying them _would_ dispose of disputations, speculations, +aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so +simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, +like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too +that _she_ should like to go to America; it was only that with this +young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, +on the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that made +up for their public grimaces and amid which, face to face, they wearily +put off the mask. + +These puttings-off of the mask had finally quite become the form taken +by their moments together, moments indeed not increasingly frequent and +not prolonged, thanks to the consciousness of fatigue on Milly's side +whenever, as she herself expressed it, she got out of harness. They +flourished their masks, the independent pair, as they might have +flourished Spanish fans; they smiled and sighed on removing them; but +the gesture, the smiles, the sighs, strangely enough, might have been +suspected the greatest reality in the business. Strangely enough, we +say, for the volume of effusion in general would have been found by +either on measurement to be scarce proportional to the paraphernalia of +relief. It was when they called each other's attention to their ceasing +to pretend, it was then that what they were keeping back was most in +the air. There was a difference, no doubt, and mainly to Kate's +advantage: Milly didn't quite see what her friend could keep back, was +possessed of, in fine, that would be so subject to retention; whereas +it was comparatively plain sailing for Kate that poor Milly had a +treasure to hide. This was not the treasure of a shy, an abject +affection--concealment, on that head, belonging to quite another phase +of such states; it was much rather a principle of pride relatively bold +and hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at the +lightest pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was +the truth about the girl's own conception of her validity; thus was a +wondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from the +far side of the moat she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of +the connexion of these young women show for us, such is the twilight +that gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in a +Maeterlinck play; we have positively the image, in the delicate dusk, +of the figures so associated and yet so opposed, so mutually watchful: +that of the angular pale princess, ostrich-plumed, black-robed, hung +about with amulets, reminders, relics, mainly seated, mainly still, and +that of the upright restless slow-circling lady of her court who +exchanges with her, across the black water streaked with evening +gleams, fitful questions and answers. The upright lady, with thick dark +braids down her back, drawing over the grass a more embroidered train, +makes the whole circuit, and makes it again, and the broken talk, brief +and sparingly allusive, seems more to cover than to free their sense. +This is because, when it fairly comes to not having others to consider, +they meet in an air that appears rather anxiously to wait for their +words. Such an impression as that was in fact grave, and might be +tragic; so that, plainly enough, systematically at last, they settled +to a care of what they said. + +There could be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of the +probability that if she wasn't so proud she might be pitied with more +comfort--more to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, no +sharper demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude, that +this marvellous mixture of her weakness and of her strength, her peril, +if such it were, and her option, made her, kept her, irresistibly +interesting. Kate's predicament in the matter was, after all, very much +Mrs. Stringham's own, and Susan Shepherd herself indeed, in our +Maeterlinck picture, might well have hovered in the gloaming by the +moat. It may be declared for Kate, at all events, that her sincerity +about her friend, through this time, was deep, her compassionate +imagination strong; and that these things gave her a virtue, a good +conscience, a credibility for herself, so to speak, that were later to +be precious to her. She grasped with her keen intelligence the logic of +their common duplicity, went unassisted through the same ordeal as +Milly's other hushed follower, easily saw that for the girl to be +explicit was to betray divinations, gratitudes, glimpses of the felt +contrast between her fortune and her fear--all of which would have +contradicted her systematic bravado. That was it, Kate wonderingly saw: +to recognise was to bring down the avalanche--the avalanche Milly lived +so in watch for and that might be started by the lightest of breaths; +though less possibly the breath of her own stifled plaint than that of +the vain sympathy, the mere helpless gaping inference of others. With +so many suppressions as these, therefore, between them, their +withdrawal together to unmask had to fall back, as we have hinted, on a +nominal motive--which was decently represented by a joy at the drop of +chatter. Chatter had in truth all along attended their steps, but they +took the despairing view of it on purpose to have ready, when face to +face, some view or other of something. The relief of getting out of +harness--that was the moral of their meetings; but the moral of this, +in turn, was that they couldn't so much as ask each other why harness +need be worn. Milly wore it as a general armour. + +She was out of it at present, for some reason, as she hadn't been for +weeks; she was always out of it, that is, when alone, and her +companions had never yet so much as just now affected her as dispersed +and suppressed. It was as if still again, still more tacitly and +wonderfully, Eugenio had understood her, taking it from her without a +word and just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, of the +beautiful day: "Yes, get me an hour alone; take them off--I don't care +where; absorb, amuse, detain them; drown them, kill them if you will: +so that I may just a little, all by myself, see where I am." She was +conscious of the dire impatience of it, for she gave up Susie as well +as the others to him--Susie who would have drowned her very self for +her; gave her up to a mercenary monster through whom she thus purchased +respites. Strange were the turns of life and the moods of weakness; +strange the flickers of fancy and the cheats of hope; yet lawful, all +the same--weren't they?--those experiments tried with the truth that +consisted, at the worst, but in practising on one's self. She was now +playing with the thought that Eugenio might _inclusively_ assist her: +he had brought home to her, and always by remarks that were really +quite soundless, the conception, hitherto ungrasped, of some complete +use of her wealth itself, some use of it as a counter-move to fate. It +had passed between them as preposterous that with so much money she +should just stupidly and awkwardly _want_--any more want a life, a +career, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage or a cook. It +was as if she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure of +what he was in a position, at a stretch, to undertake for her; the +thoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare with +a looseness on Sir Luke Strett's part that--at least in Palazzo +Leporelli when mornings were fine--showed as almost amateurish. Sir +Luke hadn't said to her "Pay enough money and leave the rest to +_me_"--which was distinctly what Eugenio did say. Sir Luke had appeared +indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a +different sort of cash. Those were amounts not to be named nor +reckoned, and such moreover as she wasn't sure of having at her +command. Eugenio--this was the difference--could name, could reckon, +and prices of _his_ kind were things she had never suffered to scare +her. She had been willing, goodness knew, to pay enough for anything, +for everything, and here was simply a new view of the sufficient +quantity. She amused herself--for it came to that, since Eugenio was +there to sign the receipt--with possibilities of meeting the bill. She +was more prepared than ever to pay enough, and quite as much as ever to +pay too much. What else--if such were points at which your most trusted +servant failed--was the use of being, as the dear Susies of earth +called you, a princess in a palace? + +She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, noble and peaceful +while the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain or an outer +blind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging to +it; that perhaps Eugenio could manage. She was _in_ it, as in the ark +of her deluge, and filled with such a tenderness for it that why +shouldn't this, in common mercy, be warrant enough? She would never, +never leave it--she would engage to that; would ask nothing more than +to sit tight in it and float on and on. The beauty and intensity, the +real momentary relief of this conceit, reached their climax in the +positive purpose to put the question to Eugenio on his return as she +had not yet put it; though the design, it must be added, dropped a +little when, coming back to the great saloon from which she had started +on her pensive progress, she found Lord Mark, of whose arrival in +Venice she had been unaware, and who had now--while a servant was +following her through empty rooms--been asked, in her absence, to wait. +He had waited then, Lord Mark, he was waiting--oh unmistakeably; never +before had he so much struck her as the man to do that on occasion with +patience, to do it indeed almost as with gratitude for the chance, +though at the same time with a sort of notifying firmness. The odd +thing, as she was afterwards to recall, was that her wonder for what +had brought him was not immediate, but had come at the end of five +minutes; and also, quite incoherently, that she felt almost as glad to +see him, and almost as forgiving of his interruption of her solitude, +as if he had already been in her thought or acting at her suggestion. +He was some-how, at the best, the end of a respite; one might like him +very much and yet feel that his presence tempered precious solitude +more than any other known to one: in spite of all of which, as he was +neither dear Susie, nor dear Kate, nor dear Aunt Maud, nor even, for +the least, dear Eugenio in person, the sight of him did no damage to +her sense of the dispersal of her friends. She hadn't been so +thoroughly alone with him since those moments of his showing her the +great portrait at Matcham, the moments that had exactly made the +high-water-mark of her security, the moments during which her tears +themselves, those she had been ashamed of, were the sign of her +consciously rounding her protective promontory, quitting the blue gulf +of comparative ignorance and reaching her view of the troubled sea. His +presence now referred itself to his presence then, reminding her how +kind he had been, altogether, at Matcham, and telling her, +unexpectedly, at a time when she could particularly feel it, that, for +such kindness and for the beauty of what they remembered together, she +hadn't lost him--quite the contrary. To receive him handsomely, to +receive him there, to see him interested and charmed, as well, clearly, +as delighted to have found her without some other person to spoil +it--these things were so pleasant for the first minutes that they might +have represented on her part some happy foreknowledge. She gave an +account of her companions while he on his side failed to press her +about them, even though describing his appearance, so unheralded, as +the result of an impulse obeyed on the spot. He had been shivering at +Carlsbad, belated there and blue, when taken by it; so that, knowing +where they all were, he had simply caught the first train. He explained +how he had known where they were; he had heard--what more +natural?--from their friends, Milly's and his. He mentioned this +betimes, but it was with his mention, singularly, that the girl became +conscious of her inner question about his reason. She noticed his +plural, which added to Mrs. Lowder or added to Kate; but she presently +noticed also that it didn't affect her as explaining. Aunt Maud had +written to him, Kate apparently--and this was interesting--had written +to him; but their design presumably hadn't been that he should come and +sit there as if rather relieved, so far as _they_ were concerned, at +postponements. He only said "Oh!" and again "Oh!" when she sketched +their probable morning for him, under Eugenio's care and Mrs. +Stringham's--sounding it quite as if any suggestion that he should +overtake them at the Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs would leave him +temporarily cold. This precisely it was that, after a little, operated +for Milly as an obscure but still fairly direct check to confidence. He +had known where they all were from the others, but it was not for the +others that, in his actual dispositions, he had come. That, strange to +say, was a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have shown him +more confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention so +chilled her, from the moment she found herself divining it, that, just +for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of +their remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of +her fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him and to +reasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There had been, for ten minutes, +with the directness of her welcome to him and the way this clearly +pleased him, something of the grace of amends made, even though he +couldn't know it--amends for her not having been originally sure, for +instance at that first dinner of Aunt Maud's, that he was adequately +human. That first dinner of Aunt Maud's added itself to the hour at +Matcham, added itself to other things, to consolidate, for her present +benevolence, the ease of their relation, making it suddenly delightful +that he had thus turned up. He exclaimed, as he looked about, on the +charm of the place: "What a temple to taste and an expression of the +pride of life, yet, with all that, what a jolly _home!_"--so that, for +his entertainment, she could offer to walk him about though she +mentioned that she had just been, for her own purposes, in a general +prowl, taking everything in more susceptibly than before. He embraced +her offer without a scruple and seemed to rejoice that he was to find +her susceptible. + + +IV + +She couldn't have said what it was, in the conditions, that renewed the +whole solemnity, but by the end of twenty minutes a kind of wistful +hush had fallen upon them, as before something poignant in which her +visitor also participated. That was nothing verily but the perfection +of the charm--or nothing rather but their excluded disinherited state +in the presence of it. The charm turned on them a face that was cold in +its beauty, that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke +with an ironic smile of a possible but forbidden life. It all rolled +afresh over Milly: "Oh the impossible romance--!" The romance for her, +yet once more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her time, as +in a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down, of +remaining aloft in the divine dustless air, where she would hear but +the plash of the water against stone. The great floor on which they +moved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. "Ah not +to go down--never, never to go down!" she strangely sighed to her +friend. + +"But why shouldn't you," he asked, "with that tremendous old staircase +in your court? There ought of course always to be people at top and +bottom, in Veronese costumes, to watch you do it." + +She shook her head both lightly and mournfully enough at his not +understanding. "Not even for people in Veronese costumes. I mean that +the positive beauty is that one needn't go down. I don't move in fact," +she added--"now. I've not been out, you know. I stay up. That's how you +happily found me." + +Lord Mark wondered--he was, oh yes, adequately human. "You don't go +about?" + +She looked over the place, the storey above the apartments in which she +had received him, the sala corresponding to the sala below and fronting +the great canal with its gothic arches. The casements between the +arches were open, the ledge of the balcony broad, the sweep of the +canal, so overhung, admirable, and the flutter toward them of the loose +white curtain an invitation to she scarce could have said what. But +there was no mystery after a moment; she had never felt so invited to +anything as to make that, and that only, just where she was, her +adventure. It would be--to this it kept coming back--the adventure of +not stirring. "I go about just here." + +"Do you mean," Lord Mark presently asked, "that you're really not well?" + +They were at the window, pausing, lingering, with the fine old faded +palaces opposite and the slow Adriatic tide beneath; but after a +minute, and before she answered, she had closed her eyes to what she +saw and unresistingly dropped her face into her arms, which rested on +the coping. She had fallen to her knees on the cushion of the +window-place, and she leaned there, in a long silence, with her +forehead down. She knew that her silence was itself too straight an +answer, but it was beyond her now to say that she saw her way. She +would have made the question itself impossible to others--impossible +for example to such a man as Merton Densher; and she could wonder even +on the spot what it was a sign of in her feeling for Lord Mark that +from his lips it almost tempted her to break down. This was doubtless +really because she cared for him so little; to let herself go with him +thus, suffer his touch to make her cup overflow, would be the +relief--since it was actually, for her nerves, a question of +relief--that would cost her least. If he had come to her moreover with +the intention she believed, or even if this intention had but been +determined in him by the spell of their situation, he mustn't be +mistaken about her value--for what value did she now have? It throbbed +within her as she knelt there that she had none at all; though, holding +herself, not yet speaking, she tried, even in the act, to recover what +might be possible of it. With that there came to her a light: wouldn't +her value, for the man who should marry her, be precisely in the ravage +of her disease? _She_ mightn't last, but her money would. For a man in +whom the vision of her money should be intense, in whom it should be +most of the ground for "making up" to her, any prospective failure on +her part to be long for this world might easily count as a positive +attraction. Such a man, proposing to please, persuade, secure her, +appropriate her for such a time, shorter or longer, as nature and the +doctors should allow, would make the best of her, ill, damaged, +disagreeable though she might be, for the sake of eventual benefits: +she being clearly a person of the sort esteemed likely to do the +handsome thing by a stricken and sorrowing husband. + +She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habits +her youth might form, that of seeing an interested suitor in every bush +should certainly never grow to be one of them--an attitude she had +early judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in fact +as little to do with it as possible and she scarce knew why at the +present moment she should have had to catch herself in the act of +imputing an ugly motive. It didn't sit, the ugly motive, in Lord Mark's +cool English eyes; the darker side of it at any rate showed, to her +imagination, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, simplified +itself: there was a beautiful reason--indeed there were two--why her +companion's motive shouldn't matter. One was that even should he desire +her without a penny she wouldn't marry him for the world; the other was +that she felt him, after all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and +humanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing to +be well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her as +threatened, haunted, blighted; but they were melting together for him, +making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, as he +probably called it to himself, he liked her. That was presently what +remained with her--his really doing it; and with the natural and proper +incident of being conciliated by her weakness. Would she really have +had him--she could ask herself that--disconcerted or disgusted by it? +If he could only be touched enough to do what she preferred, not to +raise, not to press any question, he might render her a much better +service than by merely enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it was +strange, but he figured to her for the moment as the one safe +sympathiser. It would have made her worse to talk to others, but she +wasn't afraid with him of how he might wince and look pale. She would +keep him, that is, her one easy relation--in the sense of easy for +himself. Their actual outlook had meanwhile such charm, what surrounded +them within and without did so much toward making appreciative +stillness as natural as at the opera, that she could consider she +hadn't made him hang on her lips when at last, instead of saying if she +were well or ill, she repeated: "I go about here. I don't get tired of +it. I never should--it suits me so. I adore the place," she went on, +"and I don't want in the least to give it up." + +"Neither should I if I had your luck. Still, with that luck, for one's +_all_--! Should you positively like to live here?" + +"I think I should like," said poor Milly after an instant, "to die +here." + +Which made him, precisely, laugh. That was what she wanted--when a +person did care: it was the pleasant human way, without depths of +darkness. "Oh it's not good enough for _that!_ That requires picking. +But can't you keep it? It is, you know, the sort of place to see you +in; you carry out the note, fill it, people it, quite by yourself, and +you might do much worse--I mean for your friends--than show yourself +here a while, three or four months, every year. But it's not my notion +for the rest of the time. One has quite other uses for you." + +"What sort of a use for me is it," she smilingly enquired, "to kill me?" + +"Do you mean we should kill you in England?" + +"Well, I've seen you and I'm afraid. You're too much for me--too many. +England bristles with questions. This is more, as you say there, my +form." + +"Oho, oho!"--he laughed again as if to humour her. "Can't you then buy +it--for a price? Depend upon it they'll treat for money. That is for +money enough." + +"I've exactly," she said, "been wondering if they won't. I think I +shall try. But if I get it I shall cling to it." They were talking +sincerely. "It will be my life--paid for as that. It will become my +great gilded shell; so that those who wish to find me must come and +hunt me up." + +"Ah then you _will_ be alive," said Lord Mark. + +"Well, not quite extinct perhaps, but shrunken, wasted, wizened; +rattling about here like the dried kernel of a nut." + +"Oh," Lord Mark returned, "we, much as you mistrust us, can do better +for you than that." + +"In the sense that you'll feel it better for me really to have it over?" + +He let her see now that she worried him, and after a look at her, of +some duration, without his glasses--which always altered the expression +of his eyes--he re-settled the nippers on his nose and went back to the +view. But the view, in turn, soon enough released him. "Do you remember +something I said to you that day at Matcham--or at least fully meant +to?" + +"Oh yes, I remember everything at Matcham. It's another life." + +"Certainly it will be--I mean the kind of thing: what I then wanted it +to represent for you. Matcham, you know," he continued, "is symbolic. I +think I tried to rub that into you a little." + +She met him with the full memory of what he had tried--not an inch, not +an ounce of which was lost to her. "What I meant is that it seems a +hundred years ago." + +"Oh for me it comes in better. Perhaps a part of what makes me remember +it," he pursued, "is that I was quite aware of what might have been +said about what I was doing. I wanted you to take it from me that I +should perhaps be able to look after you--well, rather better. Rather +better, of course, than certain other persons in particular." + +"Precisely--than Mrs. Lowder, than Miss Croy, even than Mrs. Stringham." + +"Oh Mrs. Stringham's all right!" Lord Mark promptly amended. + +It amused her even with what she had else to think of; and she could +show him at all events how little, in spite of the hundred years, she +had lost what he alluded to. The way he was with her at this moment +made in fact the other moment so vivid as almost to start again the +tears it had started at the time. "You could do so much for me, yes. I +perfectly understood you." + +"I wanted, you see," he despite this explained, "to _fix_ your +confidence. I mean, you know, in the right place." + +"Well, Lord Mark, you did--it's just exactly now, my confidence, where +you put it then. The only difference," said Milly, "is that I seem now +to have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, "I do seem to feel +you disposed to act in a way that would undermine it a little." + +He took no more notice of these last words than if she hadn't said +them, only watching her at present as with a gradual new light. "Are +you _really_ in any trouble?" + +To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making out his light was a +little a light for herself. "Don't say, don't try to say, anything +that's impossible. There are much better things you can do." + +He looked straight at it and then straight over it. "It's too monstrous +that one can't ask you as a friend what one wants so to know." + +"What is it you want to know?" She spoke, as by a sudden turn, with a +slight hardness. "Do you want to know if I'm badly ill?" + +The sound of it in truth, though from no raising of her voice, invested +the idea with a kind of terror, but a terror all for others. Lord Mark +winced and flushed--clearly couldn't help it; but he kept his attitude +together and spoke even with unwonted vivacity. "Do you imagine I can +see you suffer and not say a word?" + +"You won't see me suffer--don't be afraid. I shan't be a public +nuisance. That's why I should have liked _this:_ it's so beautiful in +itself and yet it's out of the gangway. You won't know anything about +anything," she added; and then as if to make with decision an end: "And +you _don't!_ No, not even you." He faced her through it with the +remains of his expression, and she saw him as clearly--for +_him_--bewildered; which made her wish to be sure not to have been +unkind. She would be kind once for all; that would be the end. "I'm +very badly ill." + +"And you don't do anything?" + +"I do everything. Everything's _this_," she smiled. "I'm doing it now. +One can't do more than live." + +"Ah than live in the right way, no. But is that what you do? Why +haven't you advice?" + +He had looked about at the rococo elegance as if there were fifty +things it didn't give her, so that he suggested with urgency the most +absent. But she met his remedy with a smile. "I've the best advice in +the world. I'm acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, in +talking with you thus. One can't, as I tell you, do more than live." + +"Oh live!" Lord Mark ejaculated. + +"Well, it's immense for _me_." She finally spoke as if for amusement; +now that she had uttered her truth, that he had learnt it from herself +as no one had yet done, her emotion had, by the fact, dried up. There +she was; but it was as if she would never speak again. "I shan't," she +added, "have missed everything." + +"Why should you have missed _anything?_" She felt, as he sounded this, +to what, within the minute, he had made up his mind. "You're the person +in the world for whom that's least necessary; for whom one would call +it in fact most impossible; for whom 'missing' at all will surely +require an extraordinary amount of misplaced good will. Since you +believe in advice, for God's sake take _mine_. I know what you want." + +Oh she knew he would know it. But she had brought it on herself--or +almost. Yet she spoke with kindness. "I think I want not to be too much +worried." + +"You want to be adored." It came at last straight. "Nothing would worry +you less. I mean as I shall do it. It _is_ so"--he firmly kept it up. +"You're not loved enough." + +"Enough for what, Lord Mark?" + +"Why to get the full good of it." + +Well, she didn't after all mock at him. "I see what you mean. That full +good of it which consists in finding one's self forced to love in +return." She had grasped it, but she hesitated. "Your idea is that I +might find myself forced to love _you?_" + +"Oh 'forced'--!" He was so fine and so expert, so awake to anything the +least ridiculous, and of a type with which the preaching of passion +somehow so ill consorted--he was so much all these things that he had +absolutely to take account of them himself. And he did so, in a single +intonation, beautifully. Milly liked him again, liked him for such +shades as that, liked him so that it was woeful to see him spoiling it, +and still more woeful to have to rank him among those minor charms of +existence that she gasped at moments to remember she must give up. "Is +it inconceivable to you that you might try?" + +"To be so favourably affected by you--?" + +"To believe in me. To believe in me," Lord Mark repeated. + +Again she hesitated. "To 'try' in return for your trying?" + +"Oh I shouldn't have to!" he quickly declared. The prompt neat accent, +however, his manner of disposing of her question, failed of real +expression, as he himself the next moment intelligently, helplessly, +almost comically saw--a failure pointed moreover by the laugh into +which Milly was immediately startled. As a suggestion to her of a +healing and uplifting passion it _was_ in truth deficient; it wouldn't +do as the communication of a force that should sweep them both away. +And the beauty of him was that he too, even in the act of persuasion, +of self-persuasion, could understand that, and could thereby show but +the better as fitting into the pleasant commerce of prosperity. The way +she let him see that she looked at him was a thing to shut him out, of +itself, from services of danger, a thing that made a discrimination +against him never yet made--made at least to any consciousness of his +own. Born to float in a sustaining air, this would be his first +encounter with a judgement formed in the sinister light of tragedy. The +gathering dusk of _her_ personal world presented itself to him, in her +eyes, as an element in which it was vain for him to pretend he could +find himself at home, since it was charged with depressions and with +dooms, with the chill of the losing game. Almost without her needing to +speak, and simply by the fact that there could be, in such a case, no +decent substitute for a felt intensity, he had to take it from her that +practically he was afraid--whether afraid to protest falsely enough, or +only afraid of what might be eventually disagreeable in a compromised +alliance, being a minor question. She believed she made out besides, +wonderful girl, that he had never quite expected to have to protest +about anything beyond his natural convenience--more, in fine, than his +disposition and habits, his education as well, his personal _moyens_, +in short, permitted. His predicament was therefore one he couldn't +like, and also one she willingly would have spared him hadn't he +brought it on himself. No man, she was quite aware, could enjoy thus +having it from her that he wasn't good for what she would have called +her reality. It wouldn't have taken much more to enable her positively +to make out in him that he was virtually capable of hinting--had his +innermost feeling spoken--at the propriety rather, in his interest, of +some cutting down, some dressing up, of the offensive real. He would +meet that halfway, but the real must also meet _him_. Milly's sense of +it for herself, which was so conspicuously, so financially supported, +couldn't, or wouldn't, so accommodate him, and the perception of that +fairly showed in his face after a moment like the smart of a blow. It +had marked the one minute during which he could again be touching to +her. By the time he had tried once more, after all, to insist, he had +quite ceased to be so. + +By this time she had turned from their window to make a diversion, had +walked him through other rooms, appealing again to the inner charm of +the place, going even so far for that purpose as to point afresh her +independent moral, to repeat that if one only had such a house for +one's own and loved it and cherished it enough, it would pay one back +in kind, would close one in from harm. He quite grasped for the quarter +of an hour the perch she held out to him--grasped it with one hand, +that is, while she felt him attached to his own clue with the other; he +was by no means either so sore or so stupid, to do him all justice, as +not to be able to behave more or less as if nothing had happened. It +was one of his merits, to which she did justice too, that both his +native and his acquired notion of behaviour rested on the general +assumption that nothing--nothing to make a deadly difference for +him--ever _could_ happen. It was, socially, a working view like +another, and it saw them easily enough through the greater part of the +rest of their adventure. Downstairs again, however, with the limit of +his stay in sight, the sign of his smarting, when all was said, +reappeared for her--breaking out moreover, with an effect of +strangeness, in another quite possibly sincere allusion to her state of +health. He might for that matter have been seeing what he could do in +the way of making it a grievance that she should snub him for a +charity, on his own part, exquisitely roused. "It's true, you know, all +the same, and I don't care a straw for your trying to freeze one up." +He seemed to show her, poor man, bravely, how little he cared. +"Everybody knows affection often makes things out when indifference +doesn't notice. And that's why I know that _I_ notice." + +"Are you sure you've got it right?" the girl smiled. "I thought rather +that affection was supposed to be blind." + +"Blind to faults, not to beauties," Lord Mark promptly returned. + +"And are my extremely private worries, my entirely domestic +complications, which I'm ashamed to have given you a glimpse of--are +they beauties?" + +"Yes, for those who care for you--as every one does. Everything about +you is a beauty. Besides which I don't believe," he declared, "in the +seriousness of what you tell me. It's too absurd you should have _any_ +trouble about which something can't be done. If you can't get the right +thing, who can, in all the world, I should like to know? You're the +first young woman of your time. I mean what I say." He looked, to do +him justice, quite as if he did; not ardent, but clear--simply so +competent, in such a position, to compare, that his quiet assertion had +the force not so much perhaps of a tribute as of a warrant. "We're all +in love with you. I'll put it that way, dropping any claim of my own, +if you can bear it better. I speak as one of the lot. You weren't born +simply to torment us--you were born to make us happy. Therefore you +must listen to us." + +She shook her head with her slowness, but this time with all her +mildness. "No, I mustn't listen to you--that's just what I mustn't do. +The reason is, please, that it simply kills me. I must be as attached +to you as you will, since you give that lovely account of yourselves. I +give you in return the fullest possible belief of what it would be--" +And she pulled up a little. "I give and give and give--there you are; +stick to me as close as you like and see if I don't. Only I can't +listen or receive or accept--I can't _agree_. I can't make a bargain. I +can't really. You must believe that from me. It's all I've wanted to +say to you, and why should it spoil anything?" + +He let her question fall--though clearly, it might have seemed, +because, for reasons or for none, there was so much that _was_ spoiled. +"You want somebody of your own." He came back, whether in good faith or +in bad, to that; and it made her repeat her headshake. He kept it up as +if his faith were of the best. "You want somebody, you want somebody." + +She was to wonder afterwards if she hadn't been at this juncture on the +point of saying something emphatic and vulgar--"Well, I don't at all +events want _you!_" What somehow happened, nevertheless, the pity of it +being greater than the irritation--the sadness, to her vivid sense, of +his being so painfully astray, wandering in a desert in which there was +nothing to nourish him--was that his error amounted to positive +wrongdoing. She was moreover so acquainted with quite another sphere of +usefulness for him that her having suffered him to insist almost +convicted her of indelicacy. Why hadn't she stopped him off with her +first impression of his purpose? She could do so now only by the +allusion she had been wishing not to make. "Do you know I don't think +you're doing very right?--and as a thing quite apart, I mean, from my +listening to you. That's not right either--except that I'm _not_ +listening. You oughtn't to have come to Venice to see _me_--and in fact +you've not come, and you mustn't behave as if you had. You've much +older friends than I, and ever so much better. Really, if you've come +at all, you can only have come--properly, and if I may say so +honourably--for the best friend, as I believe her to be, that you have +in the world." + +When once she had said it he took it, oddly enough, as if he had been +more or less expecting it. Still, he looked at her very hard, and they +had a moment of this during which neither pronounced a name, each +apparently determined that the other should. It was Milly's fine +coercion, in the event, that was the stronger. "Miss Croy?" Lord Mark +asked. + +It might have been difficult to make out that she smiled. "Mrs. +Lowder." He did make out something, and then fairly coloured for its +attestation of his comparative simplicity. "I call _her_ on the whole +the best. I can't imagine a man's having a better." + +Still with his eyes on her he turned it over. "Do you want me to marry +Mrs. Lowder?" + +At which it seemed to her that it was he who was almost vulgar! But she +wouldn't in any way have that. "You know, Lord Mark, what I mean. One +isn't in the least turning you out into the cold world. There's no cold +world for you at all, I think," she went on; "nothing but a very warm +and watchful and expectant world that's waiting for you at any moment +you choose to take it up." + +He never budged, but they were standing on the polished concrete and he +had within a few minutes possessed himself again of his hat. "Do you +want me to marry Kate Croy?" + +"Mrs. Lowder wants it--I do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and she +understands moreover that you know she does." + +Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn't obscure +to her, on her side, that it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman. +"It's ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what's +the use of my tackling Miss Croy?" + +Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. "Because she's +the handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, and +because if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as it +is." It was a luxury of response. + +"Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can't further +the case of _all._" + +"Ah," she went on, "I know about 'people.' If the case of one's bad, +the case of another's good. I don't see what you have to fear from any +one else," she said, "save through your being foolish, this way, about +_me_." + +So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of +what she didn't see. "Is it your idea--since we're talking of these +things in these ways--that the young lady you describe in such +superlative terms is to be had for the asking?" + +"Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. But don't be humble." She +was almost gay. + +It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. "But don't +you really _know?_" + +As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence she could +pretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. "I 'know' yes, that +a particular person's very much in love with her." + +"Then you must know by the same token that she's very much in love with +a particular person." + +"Ah I beg your pardon!"--and Milly quite flushed at having so crude a +blunder imputed to her. "You're wholly mistaken." + +"It's not true?" + +"It's not true." + +His stare became a smile. "Are you very, very sure?" + +"As sure as one can be"--and Milly's manner could match it--"when one +has every assurance. I speak on the best authority." + +He hesitated. "Mrs. Lowder's?" + +"No. I don't call Mrs. Lowder's the best." + +"Oh I thought you were just now saying," he laughed, "that everything +about her's so good." + +"Good for you"--she was perfectly clear. "For you," she went on, "let +her authority be the best. She doesn't believe what you mention, and +you must know yourself how little she makes of it. So you can take it +from her. _I_ take it--" But Milly, with the positive tremor of her +emphasis, pulled up. + +"You take it from Kate?" + +"From Kate herself." + +"That she's thinking of no one at all?" + +"Of no one at all." Then, with her intensity, she went on. "She has +given me her word for it." + +"Oh!" said Lord Mark. To which he next added: "And what do you call her +word?" + +It made Milly, on her side, stare--though perhaps partly but with the +instinct of gaining time for the consciousness that she was already a +little further "in" than she had designed. "Why, Lord Mark, what should +_you_ call her word?" + +"Ah I'm not obliged to say. I've not asked her. You apparently have." + +Well, it threw her on her defence--a defence that she felt, however, +especially as of Kate. "We're very intimate," she said in a moment; "so +that, without prying into each other's affairs, she naturally tells me +things." + +Lord Mark smiled as at a lame conclusion. "You mean then she made you +of her own movement the declaration you quote?" + +Milly thought again, though with hindrance rather than help in her +sense of the way their eyes now met--met as for their each seeing in +the other more than either said. What she most felt that she herself +saw was the strange disposition on her companion's part to disparage +Kate's veracity. She could be only concerned to "stand up" for that. + +"I mean what I say: that when she spoke of her having no private +interest--" + +"She took her oath to you?" Lord Mark interrupted. + +Milly didn't quite see why he should so catechise her; but she met it +again for Kate. "She left me in no doubt whatever of her being free." + +At this Lord Mark did look at her, though he continued to smile. "And +thereby in no doubt of _your_ being too?" It was as if as soon as he +had said it, however, he felt it as something of a mistake, and she +couldn't herself have told by what queer glare at him she had instantly +signified that. He at any rate gave her glare no time to act further; +he fell back on the spot, and with a light enough movement, within his +rights. "That's all very well, but why in the world, dear lady, should +she be swearing to you?" + +She had to take this "dear lady" as applying to herself; which +disconcerted her when he might now so gracefully have used it for the +aspersed Kate. Once more it came to her that she must claim her own +part of the aspersion. "Because, as I've told you, we're such +tremendous friends." + +"Oh," said Lord Mark, who for the moment looked as if that might have +stood rather for an absence of such rigours. He was going, however, as +if he had in a manner, at the last, got more or less what he wanted. +Milly felt, while he addressed his next few words to leave-taking, that +she had given rather more than she intended or than she should be able, +when once more getting herself into hand, theoretically to defend. +Strange enough in fact that he had had from her, about herself--and, +under the searching spell of the place, infinitely straight--what no +one else had had: neither Kate, nor Aunt Maud, nor Merton Densher, nor +Susan Shepherd. He had made her within a minute, in particular, she was +aware, lose her presence of mind, and she now wished he would take +himself off, so that she might either recover it or bear the loss +better in solitude. If he paused, however, she almost at the same time +saw, it was because of his watching the approach, from the end of the +sala, of one of the gondoliers, who, whatever excursions were appointed +for the party with the attendance of the others, always, as the most +decorative, most sashed and starched, remained at the palace on the +theory that she might whimsically want him--which she never, in her +caged freedom, had yet done. Brown Pasquale, slipping in white shoes +over the marble and suggesting to her perpetually charmed vision she +could scarce say what, either a mild Hindoo, too noiseless almost for +her nerves, or simply a barefooted seaman on the deck of a +ship--Pasquale offered to sight a small salver, which he obsequiously +held out to her with its burden of a visiting-card. Lord Mark--and as +if also for admiration of him--delayed his departure to let her receive +it; on which she read it with the instant effect of another blow to her +presence of mind. This precarious quantity was indeed now so gone that +even for dealing with Pasquale she had to do her best to conceal its +disappearance. The effort was made, none the less, by the time she had +asked if the gentleman were below and had taken in the fact that he had +come up. He had followed the gondolier and was waiting at the top of +the staircase. + +"I'll see him with pleasure." To which she added for her companion, +while Pasquale went off: "Mr. Merton Densher." + +"Oh!" said Lord Mark--in a manner that, making it resound through the +great cool hall, might have carried it even to Densher's ear as a +judgement of his identity heard and noted once before + + + + +BOOK EIGHTH + + + +I + +Densher became aware, afresh, that he disliked his hotel--and all the +more promptly that he had had occasion of old to make the same +discrimination. The establishment, choked at that season with the +polyglot herd, cockneys of all climes, mainly German, mainly American, +mainly English, it appeared as the corresponding sensitive nerve was +touched, sounded loud and not sweet, sounded anything and everything +but Italian, but Venetian. The Venetian was all a dialect, he knew; yet +it was pure Attic beside some of the dialects at the bustling inn. It +made, "abroad," both for his pleasure and his pain that he had to feel +at almost any point how he had been through every thing before. He had +been three or four times, in Venice, during other visits, through this +pleasant irritation of paddling away--away from the concert of false +notes in the vulgarised hall, away from the amiable American families +and overfed German porters. He had in each case made terms for a +lodging more private and not more costly, and he recalled with +tenderness these shabby but friendly asylums, the windows of which he +should easily know again in passing on canal or through campo. The +shabbiest now failed of an appeal to him, but he found himself at the +end of forty-eight hours forming views in respect to a small +independent _quartiere_, far down the Grand Canal, which he had once +occupied for a month with a sense of pomp and circumstance and yet also +with a growth of initiation into the homelier Venetian mysteries. The +humour of those days came back to him for an hour, and what further +befell in this interval, to be brief, was that, emerging on a traghetto +in sight of the recognised house, he made out on the green shutters of +his old, of his young windows the strips of white pasted paper that +figure in Venice as an invitation to tenants. This was in the course of +his very first walk apart, a walk replete with impressions to which he +responded with force. He had been almost without cessation, since his +arrival, at Palazzo Leporelli, where, as happened, a turn of bad +weather on the second day had kept the whole party continuously at +home. The episode had passed for him like a series of hours in a +museum, though without the fatigue of that; and it had also resembled +something that he was still, with a stirred imagination, to find a name +for. He might have been looking for the name while he gave himself up, +subsequently, to the ramble--he saw that even after years he couldn't +lose his way--crowned with his stare across the water at the little +white papers. + +He was to dine at the palace in an hour or two, and he had lunched +there, at an early luncheon, that morning. He had then been out with +the three ladies, the three being Mrs. Lowder, Mrs. Stringham and Kate, +and had kept afloat with them, under a sufficient Venetian spell, until +Aunt Maud had directed him to leave them and return to Miss Theale. Of +two circumstances connected with this disposition of his person he was +even now not unmindful; the first being that the lady of Lancaster Gate +had addressed him with high publicity and as if expressing equally the +sense of her companions, who had not spoken, but who might have been +taken--yes, Susan Shepherd quite equally with Kate--for inscrutable +parties to her plan. What he could as little contrive to forget was +that he had, before the two others, as it struck him--that was to say +especially before Kate--done exactly as he was bidden; gathered himself +up without a protest and retraced his way to the palace. Present with +him still was the question of whether he looked a fool for it, of +whether the awkwardness he felt as the gondola rocked with the business +of his leaving it--they could but make, in submission, for a +landing-place that was none of the best--had furnished his friends with +such entertainment as was to cause them, behind his back, to exchange +intelligent smiles. He had found Milly Theale twenty minutes later +alone, and he had sat with her till the others returned to tea. The +strange part of this was that it had been very easy, extraordinarily +easy. He knew it for strange only when he was away from her, because +when he was away from her he was in contact with particular things that +made it so. At the time, in her presence, it was as simple as sitting +with his sister might have been, and not, if the point were urged, very +much more thrilling. He continued to see her as he had first seen +her--that remained ineffaceably behind. Mrs. Lowder, Susan Shepherd, +his own Kate, might, each in proportion, see her as a princess, as an +angel, as a star, but for himself, luckily, she hadn't as yet +complications to any point of discomfort: the princess, the angel, the +star, were muffled over, ever so lightly and brightly, with the little +American girl who had been kind to him in New York and to whom +certainly--though without making too much of it for either of them--he +was perfectly willing to be kind in return. She appreciated his coming +in on purpose, but there was nothing in that--from the moment she was +always at home--that they couldn't easily keep up. The only note the +least bit high that had even yet sounded between them was this +admission on her part that she found it best to remain within. She +wouldn't let him call it keeping quiet, for she insisted that her +palace--with all its romance and art and history--had set up round her +a whirlwind of suggestion that never dropped for an hour. It wasn't +therefore, within such walls, confinement, it was the freedom of all +the centuries: in respect to which Densher granted good-humouredly that +they were then blown together, she and he, as much as she liked, +through space. + +Kate had found on the present occasion a moment to say to him that he +suggested a clever cousin calling on a cousin afflicted, and bored for +his pains; and though he denied on the spot the "bored" he could so far +see it as an impression he might make that he wondered if the same +image wouldn't have occurred to Milly. As soon as Kate appeared again +the difference came up--the oddity, as he then instantly felt it, of +his having sunk so deep. It was sinking because it was all doing what +Kate had conceived for him; it wasn't in the least doing--and that had +been his notion of his life--anything he himself had conceived. The +difference, accordingly, renewed, sharp, sore, was the irritant under +which he had quitted the palace and under which he was to make the best +of the business of again dining there. He said to himself that he must +make the best of everything; that was in his mind, at the traghetto, +even while, with his preoccupation about changing quarters, he studied, +across the canal, the look of his former abode. It had done for the +past, would it do for the present? would it play in any manner into the +general necessity of which he was conscious? That necessity of making +the best was the instinct--as he indeed himself knew--of a man somehow +aware that if he let go at one place he should let go everywhere. If he +took off his hand, the hand that at least helped to hold it together, +the whole queer fabric that built him in would fall away in a minute +and admit the light. It was really a matter of nerves; it was exactly +because he was nervous that he _could_ go straight; yet if that +condition should increase he must surely go wild. He was walking in +short on a high ridge, steep down on either side, where the +proprieties--once he could face at all remaining there--reduced +themselves to his keeping his head. It was Kate who had so perched him, +and there came up for him at moments, as he found himself planting one +foot exactly before another, a sensible sharpness of irony as to her +management of him. It wasn't that she had put him in danger--to be in +real danger with her would have had another quality. There glowed for +him in fact a kind of rage at what he wasn't having; an exasperation, a +resentment, begotten truly by the very impatience of desire, in respect +to his postponed and relegated, his so extremely manipulated state. It +was beautifully done of her, but what was the real meaning of it unless +that he was perpetually bent to her will? His idea from the first, from +the very first of his knowing her, had been to be, as the French called +it, _bon prince_ with her, mindful of the good humour and generosity, +the contempt, in the matter of confidence, for small outlays and small +savings, that belonged to the man who wasn't generally afraid. There +were things enough, goodness knew--for it was the moral of his +plight--that he couldn't afford; but what had had a charm for him if +not the notion of living handsomely, to make up for it, in another way? +of not at all events reading the romance of his existence in a cheap +edition. All he had originally felt in her came back to him, was indeed +actually as present as ever--how he had admired and envied what he +called to himself her pure talent for life, as distinguished from his +own, a poor weak thing of the occasion, amateurishly patched up; only +it irritated him the more that this was exactly what was now, ever so +characteristically, standing out in her. + +It was thanks to her pure talent for life, verily, that he was just +where he was and that he was above all just _how_ he was. The proof of +a decent reaction in him against so much passivity was, with no great +richness, that he at least knew--knew, that is, how he was, and how +little he liked it as a thing accepted in mere helplessness. He was, +for the moment, wistful--that above all described it; that was so large +a part of the force that, as the autumn afternoon closed in, kept him, +on his traghetto, positively throbbing with his question. His question +connected itself, even while he stood, with his special smothered +soreness, his sense almost of shame; and the soreness and the shame +were less as he let himself, with the help of the conditions about him, +regard it as serious. It was born, for that matter, partly of the +conditions, those conditions that Kate had so almost insolently braved, +had been willing, without a pang, to see him ridiculously--ridiculously +so far as just complacently--exposed to. How little it _could_ be +complacently he was to feel with the last thoroughness before he had +moved from his point of vantage. His question, as we have called it, +was the interesting question of whether he had really no will left. How +could he know--that was the point--without putting the matter to the +test? It had been right to be _bon prince,_ and the joy, something of +the pride, of having lived, in spirit, handsomely, was even now +compatible with the impulse to look into their account; but he held his +breath a little as it came home to him with supreme sharpness that, +whereas he had done absolutely everything that Kate had wanted, she had +done nothing whatever that he had. So it was in fine that his idea of +the test by which he must try that possibility kept referring itself, +in the warm early dusk, the approach of the Southern +night--"conditions" these, such as we just spoke of--to the glimmer, +more and more ghostly as the light failed, of the little white papers +on his old green shutters. By the time he looked at his watch he had +been for a quarter of an hour at this post of observation and +reflexion; but by the time he walked away again he had found his answer +to the idea that had grown so importunate. Since a proof of his will +was wanted it was indeed very exactly in wait for him--it lurked there +on the other side of the Canal. A ferryman at the little pier had from +time to time accosted him; but it was a part of the play of his +nervousness to turn his back on that facility. He would go over, but he +walked, very quickly, round and round, crossing finally by the Rialto. +The rooms, in the event, were unoccupied; the ancient padrona was there +with her smile all a radiance but her recognition all a fable; the +ancient rickety objects too, refined in their shabbiness, amiable in +their decay, as to which, on his side, demonstrations were tenderly +veracious; so that before he took his way again he had arranged to come +in on the morrow. + +He was amusing about it that evening at dinner--in spite of an odd +first impulse, which at the palace quite melted away, to treat it +merely as matter for his own satisfaction. This need, this propriety, +he had taken for granted even up to the moment of suddenly perceiving, +in the course of talk, that the incident would minister to innocent +gaiety. Such was quite its effect, with the aid of his picture--an +evocation of the quaint, of the humblest rococo, of a Venetian interior +in the true old note. He made the point for his hostess that her own +high chambers, though they were a thousand grand things, weren't really +this; made it in fact with such success that she presently declared it +his plain duty to invite her on some near day to tea. She had expressed +as yet--he could feel it as felt among them all--no such clear wish to +go anywhere, not even to make an effort for a parish feast, or an +autumn sunset, nor to descend her staircase for Titian or Gianbellini. +It was constantly Densher's view that, as between himself and Kate, +things were understood without saying, so that he could catch in her, +as she but too freely could in him, innumerable signs of it, the whole +soft breath of consciousness meeting and promoting consciousness. This +view was so far justified to-night as that Milly's offer to him of her +company was to his sense taken up by Kate in spite of her doing nothing +to show it. It fell in so perfectly with what she had desired and +foretold that she was--and this was what most struck him--sufficiently +gratified and blinded by it not to know, from the false quality of his +response, from his tone and his very look, which for an instant +instinctively sought her own, that he had answered inevitably, almost +shamelessly, in a mere time-gaining sense. It gave him on the spot, her +failure of perception, almost a beginning of the advantage he had been +planning for--that is at least if she too were not darkly dishonest. +She might, he was not unaware, have made out, from some deep part of +her, the bearing, in respect to herself, of the little fact he had +announced; for she was after all capable of that, capable of guessing +and yet of simultaneously hiding her guess. It wound him up a turn or +two further, none the less, to impute to her now a weakness of vision +by which he could himself feel the stronger. Whatever apprehension of +his motive in shifting his abode might have brushed her with its wings, +she at all events certainly didn't guess that he was giving their +friend a hollow promise. That was what she had herself imposed on him; +there had been in the prospect from the first a definite particular +point at which hollowness, to call it by its least compromising name, +would have to begin. Therefore its hour had now charmingly sounded. +Whatever in life he had recovered his old rooms for, he had not +recovered them to receive Milly Theale: which made no more difference +in his expression of happy readiness than if he had been--just what he +was trying not to be--fully hardened and fully base. So rapid in fact +was the rhythm of his inward drama that the quick vision of +impossibility produced in him by his hostess's direct and unexpected +appeal had the effect, slightly sinister, of positively scaring him. It +gave him a measure of the intensity, the reality of his now mature +motive. It prompted in him certainly no quarrel with these things, but +it made them as vivid as if they already flushed with success. It was +before the flush of success that his heart beat almost to dread. The +dread was but the dread of the happiness to be compassed; only that was +in itself a symptom. That a visit from Milly should, in this projection +of necessities, strike him as of the last incongruity, quite as a +hateful idea, and above all as spoiling, should one put it grossly, his +game--the adoption of such a view might of course have an identity with +one of those numerous ways of being a fool that seemed so to abound for +him. It would remain none the less the way to which he should be in +advance most reconciled. His mature motive, as to which he allowed +himself no grain of illusion, had thus in an hour taken imaginative +possession of the place: that precisely was how he saw it seated there, +already unpacked and settled, for Milly's innocence, for Milly's +beauty, no matter how short a time, to be housed with. There were +things she would never recognise, never feel, never catch in the air; +but this made no difference in the fact that her brushing against them +would do nobody any good. The discrimination and the scruple were for +_him_. So he felt all the parts of the case together, while Kate showed +admirably as feeling none of them. Of course, however--when hadn't it +to be his last word?--Kate was always sublime. + +That came up in all connexions during the rest of these first days; +came up in especial under pressure of the fact that each time our +plighted pair snatched, in its passage, at the good fortune of half an +hour together, they were doomed--though Densher felt it as all by _his_ +act--to spend a part of the rare occasion in wonder at their luck and +in study of its queer character. This was the case after he might be +supposed to have got, in a manner, used to it; it was the case after +the girl--ready always, as we say, with the last word--had given him +the benefit of her righting of every wrong appearance, a support +familiar to him now in reference to other phases. It was still the case +after he possibly might, with a little imagination, as she freely +insisted, have made out, by the visible working of the crisis, what +idea on Mrs. Lowder's part had determined it. Such as the idea was--and +that it suited Kate's own book she openly professed--he had only to see +how things were turning out to feel it strikingly justified. Densher's +reply to all this vividness was that of course Aunt Maud's intervention +hadn't been occult, even for _his_ vividness, from the moment she had +written him, with characteristic concentration, that if he should see +his way to come to Venice for a fortnight she should engage he would +find it no blunder. It took Aunt Maud really to do such things in such +ways; just as it took him, he was ready to confess, to do such others +as he must now strike them all--didn't he?--as committed to. Mrs. +Lowder's admonition had been of course a direct reference to what she +had said to him at Lancaster Gate before his departure the night Milly +had failed them through illness; only it had at least matched that +remarkable outbreak in respect to the quantity of good nature it +attributed to him. The young man's discussions of his situation--which +were confined to Kate; he had none with Aunt Maud herself--suffered a +little, it may be divined, by the sense that he couldn't put everything +off, as he privately expressed it, on other people. His ears, in +solitude, were apt to burn with the reflexion that Mrs. Lowder had +simply tested him, seen him as he was and made out what could be done +with him. She had had but to whistle for him and he had come. If she +had taken for granted his good nature she was as justified as Kate +declared. This awkwardness of his conscience, both in respect to his +general plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits, +to be a mode of life like another--certainly better than some, and +particularly in respect to such confusion as might reign about what he +had really come for--this inward ache was not wholly dispelled by the +style, charming as that was, of Kate's poetic versions. Even the high +wonder and delight of Kate couldn't set him right with himself when +there was something quite distinct from these things that kept him +wrong. + +In default of being right with himself he had meanwhile, for one thing, +the interest of seeing--and quite for the first time in his +life--whether, on a given occasion, that might be quite so necessary to +happiness as was commonly assumed and as he had up to this moment never +doubted. He was engaged distinctly in an adventure--he who had never +thought himself cut out for them, and it fairly helped him that he was +able at moments to say to himself that he mustn't fall below it. At his +hotel, alone, by night, or in the course of the few late strolls he was +finding time to take through dusky labyrinthine alleys and empty +_campi_, overhung with mouldering palaces, where he paused in disgust +at his want of ease and where the sound of a rare footstep on the +enclosed pavement was like that of a retarded dancer in a banquet-hall +deserted--during these interludes he entertained cold views, even to +the point, at moments, on the principle that the shortest follies are +the best, of thinking of immediate departure as not only possible but +as indicated. He had however only to cross again the threshold of +Palazzo Leporelli to see all the elements of the business compose, as +painters called it, differently. It began to strike him then that +departure wouldn't curtail, but would signally coarsen his folly, and +that above all, as he hadn't really "begun" anything, had only +submitted, consented, but too generously indulged and condoned the +beginnings of others, he had no call to treat himself with +superstitious rigour. The single thing that was clear in complications +was that, whatever happened, one was to behave as a gentleman--to which +was added indeed the perhaps slightly less shining truth that +complications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study of +the question of how a gentleman would behave. This question, I hasten +to add, was not in the last resort Densher's greatest worry. Three +women were looking to him at once, and, though such a predicament could +never be, from the point of view of facility, quite the ideal, it yet +had, thank goodness, its immediate workable law. The law was not to be +a brute--in return for amiabilities. He hadn't come all the way out +from England to be a brute. He hadn't thought of what it might give him +to have a fortnight, however handicapped, with Kate in Venice, to be a +brute. He hadn't treated Mrs. Lowder as if in responding to her +suggestion he had understood her--he hadn't done that either to be a +brute. And what he had prepared least of all for such an anti-climax +was the prompt and inevitable, the achieved surrender--_as_ a +gentleman, oh that indubitably!--to the unexpected impression made by +poor pale exquisite Milly as the mistress of a grand old palace and the +dispenser of an hospitality more irresistible, thanks to all the +conditions, than any ever known to him. + +This spectacle had for him an eloquence, an authority, a felicity--he +scarce knew by what strange name to call it--for which he said to +himself that he had not consciously bargained. Her welcome, her +frankness, sweetness, sadness, brightness, her disconcerting poetry, as +he made shift at moments to call it, helped as it was by the beauty of +her whole setting and by the perception at the same time, on the +observer's part, that this element gained from her, in a manner, for +effect and harmony, as much as it gave--her whole attitude had, to his +imagination, meanings that hung about it, waiting upon her, hovering, +dropping and quavering forth again, like vague faint snatches, mere +ghosts of sound, of old-fashioned melancholy music. It was positively +well for him, he had his times of reflecting, that he couldn't put it +off on Kate and Mrs. Lowder, as a gentleman so conspicuously wouldn't, +that--well, that he had been rather taken in by not having known in +advance! There had been now five days of it all without his risking +even to Kate alone any hint of what he ought to have known and of what +in particular therefore had taken him in. The truth was doubtless that +really, when it came to any free handling and naming of things, they +were living together, the five of them, in an air in which an ugly +effect of "blurting out" might easily be produced. He came back with +his friend on each occasion to the blest miracle of renewed +propinquity, which had a double virtue in that favouring air. He +breathed on it as if he could scarcely believe it, yet the time had +passed, in spite of this privilege, without his quite committing +himself, for her ear, to any such comment on Milly's high style and +state as would have corresponded with the amount of recognition it had +produced in him. Behind everything for him was his renewed remembrance, +which had fairly become a habit, that he had been the first to know +her. This was what they had all insisted on, in her absence, that day +at Mrs. Lowder's; and this was in especial what had made him feel its +influence on his immediately paying her a second visit. Its influence +had been all there, been in the high-hung, rumbling carriage with them, +from the moment she took him to drive, covering them in together as if +it had been a rug of softest silk. It had worked as a clear connexion +with something lodged in the past, something already their own. He had +more than once recalled how he had said to himself even at that moment, +at some point in the drive, that he was not _there_, not just as he was +in so doing it, through Kate and Kate's idea, but through Milly and +Milly's own, and through himself and _his_ own, unmistakeably--as well +as through the little facts, whatever they had amounted to, of his time +in New York. + + +II + +There was at last, with everything that made for it, an occasion when +he got from Kate, on what she now spoke of as his eternal refrain, an +answer of which he was to measure afterwards the precipitating effect. +His eternal refrain was the way he came back to the riddle of Mrs. +Lowder's view of her profit--a view so hard to reconcile with the +chances she gave them to meet. Impatiently, at this, the girl denied +the chances, wanting to know from him, with a fine irony that smote him +rather straight, whether he felt their opportunities as anything so +grand. He looked at her deep in the eyes when she had sounded this +note; it was the least he could let her off with for having made him +visibly flush. For some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped out +of her tone, which became sweet and sincere. "'Meet,' my dear man," she +expressively echoed; "does it strike you that we get, after all, so +very much out of our meetings?" + +"On the contrary--they're starvation diet. All I mean is--and it's all +I've meant from the day I came--that we at least get more than Aunt +Maud." + +"Ah but you see," Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maud +gets." + +"Exactly so--and it's what I don't understand that keeps me so +fascinated with the question. _She_ gives me no light; she's +prodigious. She takes everything as of a natural--!" + +"She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my +reflexions about you. There's every appearance for her," Kate went on, +"that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible; that +what she had thought more likely than not to happen is happening. The +very essence of her, as you surely by this time have made out for +yourself, is that when she adopts a view she--well, to her own sense, +really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view any +other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that. I've +often thought success comes to her"--Kate continued to study the +phenomenon--"by the spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not to +prove the right one. One has seen it so again and again, in the face of +everything, become the right one." + +Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the largest response. +"Ah my dear child, if you can explain I of course needn't not +'understand.' I'm condemned to that," he on his side presently +explained, "only when understanding fails." He took a moment; then he +pursued: "Does she think she terrorises _us?_" To which he added while, +without immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does she +believe anything so stiff as that you've really changed about me?" He +knew now that he was probing the girl deep--something told him so; but +that was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that you +dislike me?" + +To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong. "You could yourself +easily put it there!" + +He wondered. "By telling her so?" + +"No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask that +of you." + +"Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little--!" + +There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist +the impulse to take up. "I'm perfectly justified in what I've asked," +she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes +again intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You're +not a bit unhappy." + +"Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly. + +"It doesn't practically show--which is enough for Aunt Maud. You're +wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want to +know whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectly +that I see it coming." With which, by a quick transition, as if she had +settled the case, she asked him the hour. + +"Oh only twelve-ten"--he had looked at his watch. "We've taken but +thirteen minutes; we've time yet." + +"Then we must walk. We must go toward them." + +Densher, from where they had been standing, measured the long reach of +the Square. "They're still in their shop. They're safe for half an +hour." + +"That shows then, that shows!" said Kate. + +This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco, +always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber +of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the +middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse +after leaving the great mosque-like church. It rose now, domed and +pinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast +empty space, enclosed by its arcades, to which at that hour movement +and traffic were mostly confined. Venice was at breakfast, the Venice +of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for the +parties of importunate pigeons picking up the crumbs of perpetual +feasts, their prospect was clear and they could see their companions +hadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorged +by the lace-shop, in one of the _loggie_, where, shortly before, they +had left them for a look-in--the expression was artfully Densher's--at +Saint Mark's. Their morning had happened to take such a turn as brought +this chance to the surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, hadn't +been an overstatement of their general opportunity. The worst that +could be said of their general opportunity was that it was essentially +in presence--in presence of every one; every one consisting at this +juncture, in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly. +But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could become +special was furnished precisely by this view of the compatibility of +their comfort with a certain amount of lingering. The others had +assented to their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the least +the others could do. What had really helped them this morning was the +fact that, on his turning up, as he always called it, at the palace, +Milly had not, as before, been able to present herself. Custom and use +had hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day after +day--eight days had been now so conveniently marked--their friends, +Milly's and his, conveniently dispersed and left him to sit with her +till luncheon. Such was the perfect operation of the scheme on which he +had been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly there +was that amount of justification for Kate's vision of success. He +_had_, for Mrs. Lowder--he couldn't help it while sitting there--the +air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate +sufficiently deep to be alarming. He had failed their young hostess +each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day that +she hadn't been well enough to see him. + +That had made a mark, all round; the mark was in the way in which, +gathered in the room of state, with the place, from the right time, all +bright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent, +they--the rest of them--simply looked at each other. It was +lurid--lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately--that they +had uttered no common regrets. It was strange for our young man above +all that, if the poor girl was indisposed to _that_ degree, the hush of +gravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort, should be the +most the case--that of the guests--could permit itself. The hush, for +that matter, continued after the party of four had gone down to the +gondola and taken their places in it. Milly had sent them word that she +hoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and this indeed had +produced a second remarkable look, a look as of their knowing, one +quite as well as the other, what such a message meant as provision for +the alternative beguilement of Densher. She wished not to have spoiled +his morning, and he had therefore, in civility, to take it as +pleasantly patched up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs. +Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their friend better than any +of them. She knew her so well that she knew herself as acting in +exquisite compliance with conditions comparatively obscure, +approximately awful to them, by not thinking it necessary to stay at +home. She had corrected that element of the perfunctory which was the +slight fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had invented a +preference for Mrs. Lowder and herself; she had remembered the fond +dreams of the visitation of lace that had hitherto always been brushed +away by accidents, and it had come up as well for her that Kate had, +the day before, spoken of the part played by fatality in her own +failure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher's +sense of Susan Shepherd's conscious intervention had by this time a +corner of his mind all to itself; something that had begun for them at +Lancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action, +ineffably discreet, had at all events a way of affecting him as for the +most part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own interest. +They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were too +many persons, at least three, and too many things, between them; but +meanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. He +scarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour when +it would be a service to do so, that she had all the while understood +him. He even had a presentiment of a juncture at which the +understanding of every one else would fail and this deep little +person's alone survive. + +Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, that +hung about our young friends; these had been the small accidents and +quiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in some +sort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they +stayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had so +notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than +any equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness from +earshot, with solitude and security. It was as if, being in possession, +they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence +of that, each had an apprehension of what the other wanted to say. It +was most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated on +their lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for their +ears was the flutter of the doves, begot in the heart of each a fear. +There might have been a betrayal of that in the way Densher broke the +silence resting on her last words. "What did you mean just now that I +can do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if you will, +I don't see, from the moment I can't lie to her, what else there is but +lying." + +Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome and +sincere to her about Milly--whom you honestly like so much. That +wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You +don't, you know, say much about her." + +And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know, +speak of her at all." + +"And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?" Then as the girl, +for answer, only seemed to bethink herself, "You must have +extraordinary conversations!" he exclaimed. + +Yes, she had bethought herself. "We have extraordinary conversations." + +His look, while their eyes met, marked him as disposed to hear more +about them; but there was something in her own, apparently, that +defeated the opportunity. He questioned her in a moment on a different +matter, which had been in his mind a week, yet in respect to which he +had had no chance so good as this. "Do you happen to know then, as such +wonderful things pass between you, what she makes of the incident, the +other day, of Lord Mark's so very superficial visit?--his having spent +here, as I gather, but the two or three hours necessary for seeing our +friend and yet taken no time at all, since he went off by the same +night's train, for seeing any one else. What can she make of his not +having waited to see _you_, or to see herself--with all he owes her?" + +"Oh of course," said Kate, "she understands. He came to make Milly his +offer of marriage--he came for nothing but that. As Milly wholly +declined it his business was for the time at an end. He couldn't quite +on the spot turn round to make up to _us_." + +Kate had looked surprised that, as a matter of taste on such an +adventurer's part, Densher shouldn't see it. But Densher was lost in +another thought. "Do you mean that when, turning up myself, I found him +leaving her, that was what had been taking place between them?" + +"Didn't you make it out, my dear?" Kate enquired. + +"What sort of a blundering weathercock then _is_ he?" the young man +went on in his wonder. + +"Oh don't make too little of him!" Kate smiled. "Do you pretend that +Milly didn't tell you?" + +"How great an ass he had made of himself?" + +Kate continued to smile. "You _are_ in love with her, you know." + +He gave her another long look. "Why, since she has refused him, should +my opinion of Lord Mark show it? I'm not obliged, however, to think +well of him for such treatment of the other persons I've mentioned, and +I feel I don't understand from you why Mrs. Lowder should." + +"She doesn't--but she doesn't care," Kate explained. "You know +perfectly the terms on which lots of London people live together even +when they're supposed to live very well. He's not committed to us--he +was having his try. Mayn't an unsatisfied man," she asked, "always have +his try?" + +"And come back afterwards, with confidence in a welcome, to the victim +of his inconstancy?" + +Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought of as a victim. "Oh but +he has _had_ his try at _me_. So it's all right." + +"Through your also having, you mean, refused him?" + +She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wondered +if pure historic truth were to suffer a slight strain. But she dropped +on the right side. "I haven't let it come to that. I've been too +discouraging. Aunt Maud," she went on--now as lucid as +ever--"considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge from him in respect +to me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him. +As the case stands that makes no difference." + +Densher laughed out. "It isn't _his_ merit that he has failed." + +"It's still his merit, my dear, that he's Lord Mark. He's just what he +was, and what he knew he was. It's not for me either to reflect on him +after I've so treated him." + +"Oh," said Densher impatiently, "you've treated him beautifully." + +"I'm glad," she smiled, "that you can still be jealous." But before he +could take it up she had more to say. "I don't see why it need puzzle +you that Milly's so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud more than anything +else can displease her. What does she see but that Milly herself +recognises her situation with you as too precious to be spoiled? Such a +recognition as that can't but seem to her to involve in some degree +your own recognition. Out of which she therefore gets it that the more +you have for Milly the less you have for me." + +There were moments again--we know that from the first they had been +numerous--when he felt with a strange mixed passion the mastery of her +mere way of putting things. There was something in it that bent him at +once to conviction and to reaction. And this effect, however it be +named, now broke into his tone. "Oh if she began to know what I have +for you--!" + +It wasn't ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may +really consider she doesn't. So successful have we been." + +"Well," he presently said, "I take from you what you give me, and I +suppose that, to be consistent--to stand on my feet where I do stand at +all--I ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems to +me, more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. It +seems to me more than anything else what you expect of me. It never +seems to me somehow what I may expect of _you_. There's so much you +_don't_ give me." + +She appeared to wonder. "And pray what is it I don't--?" + +"I give you proof," said Densher. "You give me none." + +"What then do you call proof?" she after a moment ventured to ask. + +"Your doing something for me." + +She considered with surprise. "Am I not doing _this_ for you? Do you +call this nothing?" + +"Nothing at all." + +"Ah I risk, my dear, everything for it." + +They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. "I +thought you exactly contend that, with your aunt so bamboozled, you +risk nothing!" + +It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that he +had seen her at a loss. He judged the next instant moreover that she +didn't like it--either the being so or the being seen, for she soon +spoke with an impatience that showed her as wounded; an appearance that +produced in himself, he no less quickly felt, a sharp pang of +indulgence. "What then do you wish me to risk?" + +The appeal from danger touched him, but all to make him, as he would +have said, worse. "What I wish is to be loved. How can I feel at this +rate that I _am_?" Oh she understood him, for all she might so bravely +disguise it, and that made him feel straighter than if she hadn't. +Deep, always, was his sense of life with her--deep as it had been from +the moment of those signs of life that in the dusky London of two +winters ago they had originally exchanged. He had never taken her for +unguarded, ignorant, weak; and if he put to her a claim for some +intenser faith between them this was because he believed it could reach +her and she could meet it. "I can go on perhaps," he said, "with help. +But I can't go on without." + +She looked away from him now, and it showed him how she understood. "We +ought to be there--I mean when they come out." + +"They _won't_ come out--not yet. And I don't care if they do." To which +he straightway added, as if to deal with the charge of selfishness that +his words, sounding for himself, struck him as enabling her to make: +"Why not have done with it all and face the music as we are?" It broke +from him in perfect sincerity. "Good God, if you'd only _take_ me!" + +It brought her eyes round to him again, and he could see how, after +all, somewhere deep within, she felt his rebellion more sweet than +bitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold her +an instant. "We've gone too far," she none the less pulled herself +together to reply. "Do you want to kill her?" + +He had an hesitation that wasn't all candid. "Kill, you mean, Aunt +Maud?" + +"You know whom I mean. We've told too many lies." + +Oh at this his head went up. "I, my dear, have told none!" + +He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he had +naturally, none the less, to take the look it made her give him. "Thank +you very much." + +Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had already +risen to his lips. "Rather than lay myself open to the least appearance +of it I'll go this very night." + +"Then go," said Kate Croy. + +He knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that what +was in the air for him, and disconcertingly, was not the violence, but +much rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her. They +walked on together, and it was for a minute as if their difference had +become of a sudden, in all truth, a split--as if the basis of his +departure had been settled. Then, incoherently and still more suddenly, +recklessly moreover, since they now might easily, from under the +arcades, be observed, he passed his hand into her arm with a force that +produced for them another pause. "I'll tell any lie you want, any your +idea requires, if you'll only come to me." + +"Come to you?" + +"Come to me." + +"How? Where?" + +She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his uncertainty, a wonder in +her being so equal to him. "To my rooms, which are perfectly possible, +and in taking which, the other day, I had you, as you must have felt, +in view. We can arrange it--with two grains of courage. People in our +case always arrange it." She listened as for the good information, and +there was support for him--since it was a question of his going step by +step--in the way she took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He had +in truth not expected of her that particular vulgarity, but the absence +of it only added the thrill of a deeper reason to his sense of +possibilities. For the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely to +_see_ her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for him in all the +light of the day and of his admirable merciless meaning. Her mere +listening in fact made him even understand himself as he hadn't yet +done. Idea for idea, his own was thus already, and in the germ, +beautiful. "There's nothing for me possible but to feel that I'm not a +fool. It's all I have to say, but you must know what it means. _With_ +you I can do it--I'll go as far as you demand or as you will yourself. +Without you--I'll be hanged! And I must be sure." + +She listened so well that she was really listening after he had ceased +to speak. He had kept his grasp of her, drawing her close, and though +they had again, for the time, stopped walking, his talk--for others at +a distance--might have been, in the matchless place, that of any +impressed tourist to any slightly more detached companion. On +possessing himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that they faced +afresh to Saint Mark's, over the great presence of which his eyes moved +while she twiddled her parasol. She now, however, made a motion that +confronted them finally with the opposite end. Then only she +spoke--"Please take your hand out of my arm." He understood at once: +she had made out in the shade of the gallery the issue of the others +from their place of purchase. So they went to them side by side, and it +was all right. The others had seen them as well and waited for them, +complacent enough, under one of the arches. They themselves too--he +argued that Kate would argue--looked perfectly ready, decently patient, +properly accommodating. They themselves suggested nothing worse--always +by Kate's system--than a pair of the children of a supercivilised age +making the best of an awkwardness. They didn't nevertheless hurry--that +would overdo it; so he had time to feel, as it were, what he felt. He +felt, ever so distinctly--it was with this he faced Mrs. Lowder--that +he was already in a sense possessed of what he wanted. There was more +to come--everything; he had by no means, with his companion, had it all +out. Yet what he was possessed of was real--the fact that she hadn't +thrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Of +this he had had so sore a fear that its being dispelled was in itself +of the nature of bliss. The danger had dropped--it was behind him there +in the great sunny space. So far she was good for what he wanted. + + +III + +She was good enough, as it proved, for him to put to her that evening, +and with further ground for it, the next sharpest question that had +been on his lips in the morning--which his other preoccupation had +then, to his consciousness, crowded out. His opportunity was again +made, as befell, by his learning from Mrs. Stringham, on arriving, as +usual, with the close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail them +again at dinner, but would to all appearance be able to come down +later. He had found Susan Shepherd alone in the great saloon, where +even more candles than their friend's large common allowance--she grew +daily more splendid; they were all struck with it and chaffed her about +it--lighted up the pervasive mystery of Style. He had thus five minutes +with the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and Kate appeared--minutes +illumined indeed to a longer reach than by the number of Milly's +candles. + +"_May_ she come down--ought she if she isn't really up to it?" + +He had asked that in the wonderment always stirred in him by +glimpses--rare as were these--of the inner truth about the girl. There +was of course a question of health--it was in the air, it was in the +ground he trod, in the food he tasted, in the sounds he heard, it was +everywhere. But it was everywhere with the effect of a request to +him--to his very delicacy, to the common discretion of others as well +as his own--that no allusion to it should be made. There had +practically been none, that morning, on her explained +non-appearance--the absence of it, as we know, quite monstrous and +awkward; and this passage with Mrs. Stringham offered him his first +licence to open his eyes. He had gladly enough held them closed; all +the more that his doing so performed for his own spirit a useful +function. If he positively wanted not to be brought up with his nose +against Milly's facts, what better proof could he have that his conduct +was marked by straightness? It was perhaps pathetic for her, and for +himself was perhaps even ridiculous; but he hadn't even the amount of +curiosity that he would have had about an ordinary friend. He might +have shaken himself at moments to try, for a sort of dry decency, to +have it; but that too, it appeared, wouldn't come. In what therefore +was the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feelings--it being so +established that he had none at all. They were all for Kate, without a +feather's weight to spare. He was acting for Kate--not, by the +deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not +interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he +cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't +have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to +represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at +the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling +his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse--it was as if she had +wished to give him that; and it was as if, for himself, on current +terms, he could oblige her by accepting it. She not only permitted, she +fairly invited him to open his eyes. "I'm so glad you're here." It was +no answer to his question, but it had for the moment to serve. And the +rest was fully to come. + +He smiled at her and presently found himself, as a kind of consequence +of communion with her, talking her own language. "It's a very wonderful +experience." + +"Well"--and her raised face shone up at him--"that's all I want you to +feel about it. If I weren't afraid," she added, "there are things I +should like to say to you." + +"And what are you afraid of, please?" he encouragingly asked. + +"Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Besides, I don't, you know, +seem to have the chance. You're always, you know, _with_ her." + +He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his fixed smile; which +was the more fixed as he felt in these last words an exact description +of his course. It was an odd thing to have come to, but he was always +with her. "Ah," he none the less smiled, "I'm not with her now." + +"No--and I'm so glad, since I get this from it. She's ever so much +better." + +"Better? Then she _has_ been worse?" + +Mrs. Stringham waited. "She has been marvellous--that's what she has +been. She _is_ marvellous. But she's really better." + +"Oh then if she's really better--!" But he checked himself, wanting +only to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to the +point of mystification. "We shall miss her the more at dinner." + +Susan Shepherd, however, was all there for him. "She's keeping herself. +You'll see. You'll not really need to miss anything. There's to be a +little party." + +"Ah I do see--by this aggravated grandeur." + +"Well, it _is_ lovely, isn't it? I want the whole thing. She's lodged +for the first time as she ought, from her type, to be; and doing it--I +mean bringing out all the glory of the place--makes her really happy. +It's a Veronese picture, as near as can be--with me as the inevitable +dwarf, the small blackamoor, put into a corner of the foreground for +effect. If I only had a hawk or a hound or something of that sort I +should do the scene more honour. The old housekeeper, the woman in +charge here, has a big red cockatoo that I might borrow and perch on my +thumb for the evening." These explanations and sundry others Mrs. +Stringham gave, though not all with the result of making him feel that +the picture closed him in. What part was there for _him_, with his +attitude that lacked the highest style, in a composition in which +everything else would have it? "They won't, however, be at dinner, the +few people she expects--they come round afterwards from their +respective hotels; and Sir Luke Strett and his niece, the principal +ones, will have arrived from London but an hour or two ago. It's for +_him_ she has wanted to do something--to let it begin at once. We shall +see more of him, because she likes him; and I'm so glad--she'll be glad +too--that _you're_ to see him." The good lady, in connexion with it, +was urgent, was almost unnaturally bright. "So I greatly hope--!" But +her hope fairly lost itself in the wide light of her cheer. + +He considered a little this appearance, while she let him, he thought, +into still more knowledge than she uttered. "What is it you hope?" + +"Well, that you'll stay on." + +"Do you mean after dinner?" She meant, he seemed to feel, so much that +he could scarce tell where it ended or began. + +"Oh that, of course. Why we're to have music--beautiful instruments and +songs; and not Tasso declaimed as in the guide-books either. She has +arranged it--or at least I have. That is Eugenio has. Besides, you're +in the picture." + +"Oh--I!" said Densher almost with the gravity of a real protest. + +"You'll be the grand young man who surpasses the others and holds up +his head and the wine-cup. What we hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "is +that you'll be faithful to us--that you've not come for a mere foolish +few days." + +Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, without +comfort, he was conscious, at this touch, in the artificial repose he +had in his anxiety about them but half-managed to induce. The way +smooth ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese +pictures, talked to plain embarrassed working-men, engaged in an +unprecedented sacrifice of time and of the opportunity for modest +acquisition! The things they took for granted and the general misery of +explaining! He couldn't tell them how he had tried to work, how it was +partly what he had moved into rooms for, only to find himself, almost +for the first time in his life, stricken and sterile; because that +would give them a false view of the source of his restlessness, if not +of the degree of it. It would operate, indirectly perhaps, but +infallibly, to add to that weight as of expected performance which +these very moments with Mrs. Stringham caused more and more to settle +on his heart. He had incurred it, the expectation of performance; the +thing was done, and there was no use talking; again, again the cold +breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best he +floundered. "I'm afraid you won't understand when I say I've very +tiresome things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The +pinch, the pressure in London." + +But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and the +pressure and showed how they had been her own very element. "Oh the +daily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No one +knows better than I how they haunt one in the flight of the precious +deceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have given up? I've +given up all to follow _her_. I wish you could feel as I do. And can't +you," she asked, "write about Venice?" + +He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did; +and he smiled for her kindly. "Do _you_ write about Venice?" + +"No; but I would--oh wouldn't I?--if I hadn't so completely given up. +She's, you know, my princess, and to one's princess--" + +"One makes the whole sacrifice?" + +"Precisely. There you are!" + +It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many places +at once. "I quite understand that she's yours. Only you see she's not +mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had the +moral certainty she wouldn't repeat it and least of all to Mrs. Lowder, +who would find in it a disturbing implication. This was part of what he +liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave +him a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in +itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent +and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could +see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it all +was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Kate +wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, in so different a +way and from a motive so different, even though scarce less deep. Then +Mrs. Lowder wanted, by so odd an evolution of her exuberance, exactly +what each of the others did; and he was between them all, he was in the +midst. Such perceptions made occasions--well, occasions for fairly +wondering if it mightn't be best just to consent, luxuriously, to _be_ +the ass the whole thing involved. Trying not to be and yet keeping in +it was of the two things the more asinine. He was glad there was no +male witness; it was a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked a +man to see him. He only had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir Luke +Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in London had spoken of +Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such a +distance, just announced to him, required some accounting for. He had a +vision of great London surgeons--if this one was a surgeon--as incisive +all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the +ironic attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do was +not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was a +train, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. Lord +Mark had caught him twice in the fact--the fact of his absurd posture; +and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to mind +Lord Mark. + +His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm +her discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Of +course she's not. You must do something first." + +Densher gave it his thought. "Wouldn't it be rather _she_ who must?" + +It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "I +see. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her cheer was for the time in +eclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as in the +wonder of what Milly could do. "And yet she has wanted to be kind." + +It made him on the spot feel a brute. "Of course she has. No one could +be more charming. She has treated me as if _I_ were somebody. Call her +my hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with you +altogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do see +that it's quite court life." + +She promptly showed how this was almost all she wanted of him. "That's +all I mean, if you understand it of such a court as never was: one of +the courts of heaven, the court of a reigning seraph, a sort of a +vice-queen of an angel. That will do perfectly." + +"Oh well then I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, you +know," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay." + +"Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beauty +here; it's why she's the great and only princess. With her, at her +court," said Mrs. Stringham, "it does pay." Then as if she had quite +settled it for him: "You'll see for yourself." + +He waited a moment, but said nothing to discourage her. "I think you +were right just now. One must do something first." + +"Well, you've done something." + +"No--I don't see that. I can do more." + +Oh well, she seemed to say, if he would have it so! "You can do +everything, you know." + +"Everything" was rather too much for him to take up gravely, and he +modestly let it alone, speaking the next moment, to avert fatuity, of a +different but a related matter. "Why has she sent for Sir Luke Strett +if, as you tell me, she's so much better?" + +"She hasn't sent. He has come of himself," Mrs. Stringham explained. +"He has wanted to come." + +"Isn't that rather worse then--if it means he mayn't be easy?" + +"He was coming, from the first, for his holiday. She has known that +these several weeks." After which Mrs. Stringham added: "You can _make_ +him easy." + +"_I_ can?" he candidly wondered. It was truly the circle of petticoats. +"What have I to do with it for a man like that?" + +"How do you know," said his friend, "what he's like? He's not like any +one you've ever seen. He's a great beneficent being." + +"Ah then he can do without me. I've no call, as an outsider, to meddle." + +"Tell him, all the same," Mrs. Stringham urged, "what you think." + +"What I think of Miss Theale?" Densher stared. It was, as they said, a +large order. But he found the right note. "It's none of his business." + +It did seem a moment for Mrs. Stringham too the right note. She fixed +him at least with an expression still bright, but searching, that +showed almost to excess what she saw in it; though what this might be +he was not to make out till afterwards. "Say _that_ to him then. +Anything will do for him as a means of getting at you." + +"And why should he get at me?" + +"Give him a chance to. Let him talk to you. Then you'll see." + +All of which, on Mrs. Stringham's part, sharpened his sense of +immersion in an element rather more strangely than agreeably warm--a +sense that was moreover, during the next two or three hours, to be fed +to satiety by several other impressions. Milly came down after dinner, +half a dozen friends--objects of interest mainly, it appeared, to the +ladies of Lancaster Gate--having by that time arrived; and with this +call on her attention, the further call of her musicians ushered by +Eugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and the supreme +opportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came last +of all, he felt her diffuse in wide warm waves the spell of a general, +a beatific mildness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for +some than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that he +seemed to stand in it up to his neck. He moved about in it and it made +no plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it, and they were all +together, for that matter, like fishes in a crystal pool. The effect of +the place, the beauty of the scene, had probably much to do with it; +the golden grace of the high rooms, chambers of art in themselves, took +care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people bland +without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham +had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during +the day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and +differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, +let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow +into relation with something that made them more finely genial; so that +if the Veronese picture of which he had talked with Mrs. Stringham was +not quite constituted, the comparative prose of the previous hours, the +traces of insensibility qualified by "beating down," were at last +almost nobly disowned. There was perhaps something for him in the +accident of his seeing her for the first time in white, but she hadn't +yet had occasion--circulating with a clearness intensified--to strike +him as so happily pervasive. She was different, younger, fairer, with +the colour of her braided hair more than ever a not altogether lucky +challenge to attention; yet he was loth wholly to explain it by her +having quitted this once, for some obscure yet doubtless charming +reason, her almost monastic, her hitherto inveterate black. Much as the +change did for the value of her presence, she had never yet, when all +was said, made it for _him_; and he was not to fail of the further +amusement of judging her determined in the matter by Sir Luke Strett's +visit. If he could in this connexion have felt jealous of Sir Luke +Strett, whose strong face and type, less assimilated by the scene +perhaps than any others, he was anon to study from the other side of +the saloon, that would doubtless have been most amusing of all. But he +couldn't be invidious, even to profit by so high a tide; he felt +himself too much "in" it, as he might have said: a moment's reflexion +put him more in than any one. The way Milly neglected him for other +cares while Kate and Mrs. Lowder, without so much as the attenuation of +a joke, introduced him to English ladies--that was itself a proof; for +nothing really of so close a communion had up to this time passed +between them as the single bright look and the three gay words (all +ostensibly of the last lightness) with which her confessed +consciousness brushed by him. + +She was acquitting herself to-night as hostess, he could see, under +some supreme idea, an inspiration which was half her nerves and half an +inevitable harmony; but what he especially recognised was the character +that had already several times broken out in her and that she so oddly +appeared able, by choice or by instinctive affinity, to keep down or to +display. She was the American girl as he had originally found +her--found her at certain moments, it was true, in New York, more than +at certain others; she was the American girl as, still more than then, +he had seen her on the day of her meeting him in London and in Kate's +company. It affected him as a large though queer social resource in +her--such as a man, for instance, to his diminution, would never in the +world be able to command; and he wouldn't have known whether to see it +in an extension or a contraction of "personality," taking it as he did +most directly for a confounding extension of surface. Clearly too it +was the right thing this evening all round: that came out for him in a +word from Kate as she approached him to wreak on him a second +introduction. He had under cover of the music melted away from the lady +toward whom she had first pushed him; and there was something in her to +affect him as telling evasively a tale of their talk in the Piazza. To +what did she want to coerce him as a form of penalty for what he had +done to her there? It was thus in contact uppermost for him that he had +done something; not only caused her perfect intelligence to act in his +interest, but left her unable to get away, by any mere private effort, +from his inattackable logic. With him thus in presence, and near +him--and it had been as unmistakeable through dinner--there was no +getting away for her at all, there was less of it than ever: so she +could only either deal with the question straight, either frankly yield +or ineffectually struggle or insincerely argue, or else merely express +herself by following up the advantage she did possess. It was part of +that advantage for the hour--a brief fallacious makeweight to his +pressure--that there were plenty of things left in which he must feel +her will. They only told him, these indications, how much she was, in +such close quarters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again that +her very aspect, as great a variation in its way as Milly's own, gave +him back the sense of his action. It had never yet in life been granted +him to know, almost materially to taste, as he could do in these +minutes, the state of what was vulgarly called conquest. He had lived +long enough to have been on occasion "liked," but it had never begun to +be allowed him to be liked to any such tune in any such quarter. It was +a liking greater than Milly's--or it would be: he felt it in him to +answer for that. So at all events he read the case while he noted that +Kate was somehow--for Kate--wanting in lustre. As a striking young +presence she was practically superseded; of the mildness that Milly +diffused she had assimilated all her share; she might fairly have been +dressed to-night in the little black frock, superficially +indistinguishable, that Milly had laid aside. This represented, he +perceived, the opposite pole from such an effect as that of her +wonderful entrance, under her aunt's eyes--he had never forgotten +it--the day of their younger friend's failure at Lancaster Gate. She +was, in her accepted effacement--it was actually her acceptance that +made the beauty and repaired the damage--under her aunt's eyes now; but +whose eyes were not effectually preoccupied? It struck him none the +less certainly that almost the first thing she said to him showed an +exquisite attempt to appear if not unconvinced at least self-possessed. + +"Don't you think her good enough _now?_" Almost heedless of the danger +of overt freedoms, she eyed Milly from where they stood, noted her in +renewed talk, over her further wishes, with the members of her little +orchestra, who had approached her with demonstrations of deference +enlivened by native humours--things quite in the line of old Venetian +comedy. The girl's idea of music had been happy--a real solvent of +shyness, yet not drastic; thanks to the intermissions, discretions, a +general habit of mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the good +manners of its interpreters, representatives though these might be but +of the order in which taste was natural and melody rank. It was easy at +all events to answer Kate. "Ah my dear, you know how good I think her!" + +"But she's _too_ nice," Kate returned with appreciation. "Everything +suits her so--especially her pearls. They go so with her old lace. I'll +trouble you really to look at them." Densher, though aware he had seen +them before, had perhaps not "really" looked at them, and had thus not +done justice to the embodied poetry--his mind, for Milly's aspects, +kept coming back to that--which owed them part of its style. Kate's +face, as she considered them, struck him: the long, priceless chain, +wound twice round the neck, hung, heavy and pure, down the front of the +wearer's breast--so far down that Milly's trick, evidently unconscious, +of holding and vaguely fingering and entwining a part of it, conduced +presumably to convenience. "She's a dove," Kate went on, "and one +somehow doesn't think of doves as bejewelled. Yet they suit her down to +the ground." + +"Yes--down to the ground is the word." Densher saw now how they suited +her, but was perhaps still more aware of something intense in his +companion's feeling about them. Milly was indeed a dove; this was the +figure, though it most applied to her spirit. Yet he knew in a moment +that Kate was just now, for reasons hidden from him, exceptionally +under the impression of that element of wealth in her which was a +power, which was a great power, and which was dove-like only so far as +one remembered that doves have wings and wondrous flights, have them as +well as tender tints and soft sounds. It even came to him dimly that +such wings could in a given case--_had_, truly, in the case with which +he was concerned--spread themselves for protection. Hadn't they, for +that matter, lately taken an inordinate reach, and weren't Kate and +Mrs. Lowder, weren't Susan Shepherd and he, wasn't he in particular, +nestling under them to a great increase of immediate ease? All this was +a brighter blur in the general light, out of which he heard Kate +presently going on. + +"Pearls have such a magic that they suit every one." + +"They would uncommonly suit you," he frankly returned. + +"Oh yes, I see myself!" + +As she saw herself, suddenly, he saw her--she would have been splendid; +and with it he felt more what she was thinking of. Milly's royal +ornament had--under pressure now not wholly occult--taken on the +character of a symbol of differences, differences of which the vision +was actually in Kate's face. It might have been in her face too that, +well as she certainly would look in pearls, pearls were exactly what +Merton Densher would never be able to give her. Wasn't _that_ the great +difference that Milly to-night symbolised? She unconsciously +represented to Kate, and Kate took it in at every pore, that there was +nobody with whom she had less in common than a remarkably handsome girl +married to a man unable to make her on any such lines as that the least +little present. Of these absurdities, however, it was not till +afterwards that Densher thought. He could think now, to any purpose, +only of what Mrs. Stringham had said to him before dinner. He could but +come back to his friend's question of a minute ago. "She's certainly +good enough, as you call it, in the sense that I'm assured she's +better. Mrs. Stringham, an hour or two since, was in great feather to +me about it. She evidently believes her better." + +"Well, if they choose to call it so--!" + +"And what do _you_ call it--as against them?" + +"I don't call it anything to any one but you. I'm not 'against' them!" +Kate added as with just a fresh breath of impatience for all he had to +be taught. + +"That's what I'm talking about," he said. "What do you call it to me?" + +It made her wait a little. "She isn't better. She's worse. But that has +nothing to do with it." + +"Nothing to do?" He wondered. + +But she was clear. "Nothing to do with us. Except of course that we're +doing our best for her. We're making her want to live." And Kate again +watched her. "To-night she does want to live." She spoke with a +kindness that had the strange property of striking him as +inconsequent--so much, and doubtless so unjustly, had all her clearness +been an implication of the hard. "It's wonderful. It's beautiful." + +"It's beautiful indeed." + +He hated somehow the helplessness of his own note; but she had given it +no heed. "She's doing it for _him_"--and she nodded in the direction of +Milly's medical visitor. "She wants to be for him at her best. But she +can't deceive him." + +Densher had been looking too; which made him say in a moment: "And do +you think _you_ can? I mean, if he's to be with us here, about your +sentiments. If Aunt Maud's so thick with him--!" + +Aunt Maud now occupied in fact a place at his side and was visibly +doing her best to entertain him, though this failed to prevent such a +direction of his own eyes--determined, in the way such things happen, +precisely by the attention of the others--as Densher became aware of +and as Kate promptly marked. "He's looking at _you_. He wants to speak +to you." + +"So Mrs. Stringham," the young man laughed, "advised me he would." + +"Then let him. Be right with him. I don't need," Kate went on in answer +to the previous question, "to deceive him. Aunt Maud, if it's +necessary, will do that. I mean that, knowing nothing about me, he can +see me only as she sees me. She sees me now so well. He has nothing to +do with me." + +"Except to reprobate you," Densher suggested. + +"For not caring for _you?_ Perfectly. As a brilliant young man driven +by it into your relation with Milly--as all _that_ I leave you to him." + +"Well," said Densher sincerely enough, "I think I can thank you for +leaving me to some one easier perhaps with me than yourself." + +She had been looking about again meanwhile, the lady having changed her +place, for the friend of Mrs. Lowder's to whom she had spoken of +introducing him. "All the more reason why I should commit you then to +Lady Wells." + +"Oh but wait." It was not only that he distinguished Lady Wells from +afar, that she inspired him with no eagerness, and that, somewhere at +the back of his head, he was fairly aware of the question, in germ, of +whether this was the kind of person he should be involved with when +they were married. It was furthermore that the consciousness of +something he had not got from Kate in the morning, and that logically +much concerned him, had been made more keen by these very moments--to +say nothing of the consciousness that, with their general smallness of +opportunity, he must squeeze each stray instant hard. If Aunt Maud, +over there with Sir Luke, noted him as a little "attentive," that might +pass for a futile demonstration on the part of a gentleman who had to +confess to having, not very gracefully, changed his mind. Besides, just +now, he didn't care for Aunt Maud except in so far as he was +immediately to show. "How can Mrs. Lowder think me disposed of with any +finality, if I'm disposed of only to a girl who's dying? If you're +right about that, about the state of the case, you're wrong about Mrs. +Lowder's being squared. If Milly, as you say," he lucidly pursued, +"can't deceive a great surgeon, or whatever, the great surgeon won't +deceive other people--not those, that is, who are closely concerned. He +won't at any rate deceive Mrs. Stringham, who's Milly's greatest +friend; and it will be very odd if Mrs. Stringham deceives Aunt Maud, +who's her own." + +Kate showed him at this the cold glow of an idea that really was worth +his having kept her for. "Why will it be odd? I marvel at your seeing +your way so little." + +Mere curiosity even, about his companion, had now for him its quick, +its slightly quaking intensities. He had compared her once, we know, to +a "new book," an uncut volume of the highest, the rarest quality; and +his emotion (to justify that) was again and again like the thrill of +turning the page. "Well, you know how deeply I marvel at the way _you_ +see it!" + +"It doesn't in the least follow," Kate went on, "that anything in the +nature of what you call deception on Mrs. Stringham's part will be what +you call odd. Why shouldn't she hide the truth?" + +"From Mrs. Lowder?" Densher stared. "Why should she?" + +"To please you." + +"And how in the world can it please me?" + +Kate turned her head away as if really at last almost tired of his +density. But she looked at him again as she spoke. "Well then to please +Milly." And before he could question: "Don't you feel by this time that +there's nothing Susan Shepherd won't do for you?" + +He had verily after an instant to take it in, so sharply it +corresponded with the good lady's recent reception of him. It was +queerer than anything again, the way they all came together round him. +But that was an old story, and Kate's multiplied lights led him on and +on. It was with a reserve, however, that he confessed this. "She's ever +so kind. Only her view of the right thing may not be the same as yours." + +"How can it be anything different if it's the view of serving you?" + +Densher for an instant, but only for an instant, hung fire. "Oh the +difficulty is that I don't, upon my honour, even yet quite make out how +yours does serve me." + +"It helps you--put it then," said Kate very simply--"to serve _me_. It +gains you time." + +"Time for what?" + +"For everything!" She spoke at first, once more, with impatience; then +as usual she qualified. "For anything that may happen." + +Densher had a smile, but he felt it himself as strained. "You're +cryptic, love!" + +It made her keep her eyes on him, and he could thus see that, by one of +those incalculable motions in her without which she wouldn't have been +a quarter so interesting, they half-filled with tears from some source +he had too roughly touched. "I'm taking a trouble for you I never +dreamed I should take for any human creature." + +Oh it went home, making him flush for it; yet he soon enough felt his +reply on his lips. "Well, isn't my whole insistence to you now that I +can conjure trouble away?" And he let it, his insistence, come out +again; it had so constantly had, all the week, but its step or two to +make. "There _need_ be none whatever between us. There need be nothing +but our sense of each other." + +It had only the effect at first that her eyes grew dry while she took +up again one of the so numerous links in her close chain. "You can tell +her anything you like, anything whatever." + +"Mrs. Stringham? I _have_ nothing to tell her." + +"You can tell her about _us_. I mean," she wonderfully pursued, "that +you do still like me." + +It was indeed so wonderful that it amused him. "Only not that you still +like me." + +She let his amusement pass. "I'm absolutely certain she wouldn't repeat +it." + +"I see. To Aunt Maud." + +"You don't quite see. Neither to Aunt Maud nor to any one else." Kate +then, he saw, was always seeing Milly much more, after all, than he +was; and she showed it again as she went on. "_There_, accordingly, is +your time." + +She did at last make him think, and it was fairly as if light broke, +though not quite all at once. "You must let me say I _do_ see. Time for +something in particular that I understand you regard as possible. Time +too that, I further understand, is time for you as well." + +"Time indeed for me as well." And encouraged visibly by his glow of +concentration, she looked at him as through the air she had painfully +made clear. Yet she was still on her guard. "Don't think, however, I'll +do all the work for you. If you want things named you must name them." + +He had quite, within the minute, been turning names over; and there was +only one, which at last stared at him there dreadful, that properly +fitted. "Since she's to die I'm to marry her?" + +It struck him even at the moment as fine in her that she met it with no +wincing nor mincing. She might for the grace of silence, for favour to +their conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. But her lips +bravely moved. "To marry her." + +"So that when her death has taken place I shall in the natural course +have money?" + +It was before him enough now, and he had nothing more to ask; he had +only to turn, on the spot, considerably cold with the thought that all +along--to his stupidity, his timidity--it had been, it had been only, +what she meant. Now that he was in possession moreover she couldn't +forbear, strangely enough, to pronounce the words she hadn't +pronounced: they broke through her controlled and colourless voice as +if she should be ashamed, to the very end, to have flinched. "You'll in +the natural course have money. We shall in the natural course be free." + +"Oh, oh, oh!" Densher softly murmured. + +"Yes, yes, yes." But she broke off. "Come to Lady Wells." + +He never budged--there was too much else. "I'm to propose it +then--marriage--on the spot?" + +There was no ironic sound he needed to give it; the more simply he +spoke the more he seemed ironic. But she remained consummately proof. +"Oh I can't go into that with you, and from the moment you don't wash +your hands of me I don't think you ought to ask me. You must act as you +like and as you can." + +He thought again. "I'm far--as I sufficiently showed you this +morning--from washing my hands of you." + +"Then," said Kate, "it's all right." + +"All right?" His eagerness flamed. "You'll come?" + +But he had had to see in a moment that it wasn't what she meant. +"You'll have a free hand, a clear field, a chance--well, quite ideal." + +"Your descriptions"--her "ideal" was such a touch!--"are prodigious. +And what I don't make out is how, caring for me, you can like it." + +"I don't like it, but I'm a person, thank goodness, who can do what I +don't like." + +It wasn't till afterwards that, going back to it, he was to read into +this speech a kind of heroic ring, a note of character that belittled +his own incapacity for action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time the +greatness of knowing so well what one wanted. At the time too, +moreover, he next reflected that he after all knew what _he_ did. But +something else on his lips was uppermost. "What I don't make out then +is how you can even bear it." + +"Well, when you know me better you'll find out how much I can bear." +And she went on before he could take up, as it were, her too many +implications. That it was left to him to know her, spiritually, +"better" after his long sacrifice to knowledge--this for instance was a +truth he hadn't been ready to receive so full in the face. She had +mystified him enough, heaven knew, but that was rather by his own +generosity than by hers. And what, with it, did she seem to suggest she +might incur at his hands? In spite of these questions she was carrying +him on. "All you'll have to do will be to stay." + +"And proceed to my business under your eyes?" + +"Oh dear no--we shall go." + +"'Go?'" he wondered. "Go when, go where?" + +"In a day or two--straight home. Aunt Maud wishes it now." + +It gave him all he could take in to think of. "Then what becomes of +Miss Theale?" + +"What I tell you. She stays on, and you stay with her." + +He stared. "All alone?" + +She had a smile that was apparently for his tone. "You're old +enough--with plenty of Mrs. Stringham." + +Nothing might have been so odd for him now, could he have measured it, +as his being able to feel, quite while he drew from her these +successive cues, that he was essentially "seeing what she would +say"--an instinct compatible for him therefore with that absence of a +need to know her better to which she had a moment before done +injustice. If it hadn't been appearing to him in gleams that she would +somewhere break down, he probably couldn't have gone on. Still, as she +wasn't breaking down there was nothing for him but to continue. "Is +your going Mrs. Lowder's idea?" + +"Very much indeed. Of course again you see what it does for us. And I +don't," she added, "refer only to our going, but to Aunt Maud's view of +the general propriety of it." + +"I see again, as you say," Densher said after a moment. "It makes +everything fit." + +"Everything." + +The word, for a little, held the air, and he might have seemed the +while to be looking, by no means dimly now, at all it stood for. But he +had in fact been looking at something else. "You leave her here then to +die?" + +"Ah she believes she won't die. Not if you stay. I mean," Kate +explained, "Aunt Maud believes." + +"And that's all that's necessary?" + +Still indeed she didn't break down. "Didn't we long ago agree that what +she believes is the principal thing for us?" + +He recalled it, under her eyes, but it came as from long ago. "Oh yes. +I can't deny it." Then he added: "So that if I stay--" + +"It won't"--she was prompt--"be our fault." + +"If Mrs. Lowder still, you mean, suspects us?" + +"If she still suspects us. But she won't." + +Kate gave it an emphasis that might have appeared to leave him nothing +more; and he might in fact well have found nothing if he hadn't +presently found: "But what if she doesn't accept me?" + +It produced in her a look of weariness that made the patience of her +tone the next moment touch him. "You can but try." + +"Naturally I can but try. Only, you see, one has to try a little hard +to propose to a dying girl." + +"She isn't for you as if she's dying." It had determined in Kate the +flash of _justesse_ he could perhaps most, on consideration, have +admired, since her retort touched the truth. There before him was the +fact of how Milly to-night impressed him, and his companion, with her +eyes in his own and pursuing his impression to the depths of them, +literally now perched on the fact in triumph. She turned her head to +where their friend was again in range, and it made him turn his, so +that they watched a minute in concert. Milly, from the other side, +happened at the moment to notice them, and she sent across toward them +in response all the candour of her smile, the lustre of her pearls, the +value of her life, the essence of her wealth. It brought them together +again with faces made fairly grave by the reality she put into their +plan. Kate herself grew a little pale for it, and they had for a time +only a silence. The music, however, gay and vociferous, had broken out +afresh and protected more than interrupted them. When Densher at last +spoke it was under cover. + +"I might stay, you know, without trying." + +"Oh to stay _is_ to try." + +"To have for herself, you mean, the appearance of it?" + +"I don't see how you can have the appearance more." + +Densher waited. "You think it then possible she may _offer_ marriage?" + +"I can't think--if you really want to know--what she may _not_ offer!" + +"In the manner of princesses, who do such things?" + +"In any manner you like. So be prepared." + +Well, he looked as if he almost were. "It will be for me then to +accept. But that's the way it must come." + +Kate's silence, so far, let it pass; but she presently said: "You'll, +on your honour, stay then?" + +His answer made her wait, but when it came it was distinct. "Without +you, you mean?" + +"Without us." + +"And you yourselves go at latest--?" + +"Not later than Thursday." + +It made three days. "Well," he said, "I'll stay, on my honour, if +you'll come to me. On your honour." + +Again, as before, this made her momentarily rigid, with a rigour out of +which, at a loss, she vaguely cast about her. Her rigour was more to +him, nevertheless, than all her readiness; for her readiness was the +woman herself, and this other thing a mask, a stop-gap and a "dodge." +She cast about, however, as happened, and not for the instant in vain. +Her eyes, turned over the room, caught at a pretext. "Lady Wells is +tired of waiting: she's coming--see--to _us_." + +Densher saw in fact, but there was a distance for their visitor to +cross, and he still had time. "If you decline to understand me I wholly +decline to understand you. I'll do nothing." + +"Nothing?" It was as if she tried for the minute to plead. + +"I'll do nothing. I'll go off before you. I'll go to-morrow." + +He was to have afterwards the sense of her having then, as the phrase +was--and for vulgar triumphs too--seen he meant it. She looked again at +Lady Wells, who was nearer, but she quickly came back. "And if I do +understand?" + +"I'll do everything." + +She found anew a pretext in her approaching friend: he was fairly +playing with her pride. He had never, he then knew, tasted, in all his +relation with her, of anything so sharp--too sharp for mere +sweetness--as the vividness with which he saw himself master in the +conflict. "Well, I understand." + +"On your honour?" + +"On my honour." + +"You'll come?" + +"I'll come." + + + + +BOOK NINTH + + + +I + +It was after they had gone that he truly felt the difference, which was +most to be felt moreover in his faded old rooms. He had recovered from +the first a part of his attachment to this scene of contemplation, +within sight, as it was, of the Rialto bridge, on the hither side of +that arch of associations and the left going up the Canal; he had seen +it in a particular light, to which, more and more, his mind and his +hands adjusted it; but the interest the place now wore for him had +risen at a bound, becoming a force that, on the spot, completely +engaged and absorbed him, and relief from which--if relief was the +name--he could find only by getting away and out of reach. What had +come to pass within his walls lingered there as an obsession +importunate to all his senses; it lived again, as a cluster of pleasant +memories, at every hour and in every object; it made everything but +itself irrelevant and tasteless. It remained, in a word, a conscious +watchful presence, active on its own side, for ever to be reckoned +with, in face of which the effort at detachment was scarcely less +futile than frivolous. Kate had come to him; it was only once--and this +not from any failure of their need, but from such impossibilities, for +bravery alike and for subtlety, as there was at the last no blinking; +yet she had come, that once, to stay, as people called it; and what +survived of her, what reminded and insisted, was something he couldn't +have banished if he had wished. Luckily he didn't wish, even though +there might be for a man almost a shade of the awful in so unqualified +a consequence of his act. It had simply _worked_, his idea, the idea he +had made her accept; and all erect before him, really covering the +ground as far as he could see, was the fact of the gained success that +this represented. It was, otherwise, but the fact of the idea as +directly applied, as converted from a luminous conception into an +historic truth. He had known it before but as desired and urged, as +convincingly insisted on for the help it would render; so that at +present, _with_ the help rendered, it seemed to acknowledge its office +and to set up, for memory and faith, an insistence of its own. He had +in fine judged his friend's pledge in advance as an inestimable value, +and what he must now know his case for was that of a possession of the +value to the full. Wasn't it perhaps even rather the value that +possessed _him_, kept him thinking of it and waiting on it, turning +round and round it and making sure of it again from this side and that? + +It played for him--certainly in this prime afterglow--the part of a +treasure kept at home in safety and sanctity, something he was sure of +finding in its place when, with each return, he worked his heavy old +key in the lock. The door had but to open for him to be with it again +and for it to be all there; so intensely there that, as we say, no +other act was possible to him than the renewed act, almost the +hallucination, of intimacy. Wherever he looked or sat or stood, to +whatever aspect he gave for the instant the advantage, it was in view +as nothing of the moment, nothing begotten of time or of chance could +be, or ever would; it was in view as, when the curtain has risen, the +play on the stage is in view, night after night, for the fiddlers. He +remained thus, in his own theatre, in his single person, perpetual +orchestra to the ordered drama, the confirmed "run"; playing low and +slow, moreover, in the regular way, for the situations of most +importance. No other visitor was to come to him; he met, he bumped +occasionally, in the Piazza or in his walks, against claimants to +acquaintance, remembered or forgotten, at present mostly effusive, +sometimes even inquisitive; but he gave no address and encouraged no +approach; he couldn't for his life, he felt, have opened his door to a +third person. Such a person would have interrupted him, would have +profaned his secret or perhaps have guessed it; would at any rate have +broken the spell of what he conceived himself--in the absence of +anything "to show"--to be inwardly doing. He was giving himself +up--that was quite enough--to the general feeling of his renewed +engagement to fidelity. The force of the engagement, the quantity of +the article to be supplied, the special solidity of the contract, the +way, above all, as a service for which the price named by him had been +magnificently paid, his equivalent office was to take effect--such +items might well fill his consciousness when there was nothing from +outside to interfere. Never was a consciousness more rounded and +fastened down over what filled it; which is precisely what we have +spoken of as, in its degree, the oppression of success, the somewhat +chilled state--tending to the solitary--of supreme recognition. If it +was slightly awful to feel so justified, this was by the loss of the +warmth of the element of mystery. The lucid reigned instead of it, and +it was into the lucid that he sat and stared. He shook himself out of +it a dozen times a day, tried to break by his own act his constant +still communion. It wasn't still communion she had meant to bequeath +him; it was the very different business of that kind of fidelity of +which the other name was careful action. + +Nothing, he perfectly knew, was less like careful action than the +immersion he enjoyed at home. The actual grand queerness was that to be +faithful to Kate he had positively to take his eyes, his arms, his lips +straight off her--he had to let her alone. He had to remember it was +time to go to the palace--which in truth was a mercy, since the check +was not less effectual than imperative. What it came to, fortunately, +as yet, was that when he closed the door behind him for an absence he +always shut her in. Shut her out--it came to that rather, when once he +had got a little away; and before he reached the palace, much more +after hearing at his heels the bang of the greater _portone_, he felt +free enough not to know his position as oppressively false. As Kate was +_all_ in his poor rooms, and not a ghost of her left for the grander, +it was only on reflexion that the falseness came out; so long as he +left it to the mercy of beneficent chance it offered him no face and +made of him no claim that he couldn't meet without aggravation of his +inward sense. This aggravation had been his original horror; yet +what--in Milly's presence, each day--was horror doing with him but +virtually letting him off? He shouldn't perhaps get off to the end; +there was time enough still for the possibility of shame to pounce. +Still, however, he did constantly a little more what he liked best, and +that kept him for the time more safe. What he liked best was, in any +case, to know why things were as he felt them; and he knew it pretty +well, in this case, ten days after the retreat of his other friends. He +then fairly perceived that--even putting their purity of motive at its +highest--it was neither Kate nor he who made his strange relation to +Milly, who made her own, so far as it might be, innocent; it was +neither of them who practically purged it--if practically purged it +was. Milly herself did everything--so far at least as he was +concerned--Milly herself, and Milly's house, and Milly's hospitality, +and Milly's manner, and Milly's character, and, perhaps still more than +anything else, Milly's imagination, Mrs. Stringham and Sir Luke indeed +a little aiding: whereby he knew the blessing of a fair pretext to ask +himself what more he had to do. Something incalculable wrought for +them--for him and Kate; something outside, beyond, above themselves, +and doubtless ever so much better than they: which wasn't a reason, +however--its being so much better--for them not to profit by it. Not to +profit by it, so far as profit could be reckoned, would have been to go +directly against it; and the spirit of generosity at present engendered +in Densher could have felt no greater pang than by his having to go +directly against Milly. + +To go _with_ her was the thing, so far as she could herself go; which, +from the moment her tenure of her loved palace stretched on, was +possible but by his remaining near her. This remaining was of course on +the face of it the most "marked" of demonstrations--which was exactly +why Kate had required it; it was so marked that on the very evening of +the day it had taken effect Milly herself hadn't been able not to reach +out to him, with an exquisite awkwardness, for some account of it. It +was as if she had wanted from him some name that, now they were to be +almost alone together, they could, for their further ease, know it and +call it by--it being, after all, almost rudimentary that his presence, +of which the absence of the others made quite a different thing, +couldn't but have for himself some definite basis. She only wondered +about the basis it would have for himself, and how he would describe +it; that would quite do for her--it even would have done for her, he +could see, had he produced some reason merely trivial, had he said he +was waiting for money or clothes, for letters or for orders from Fleet +Street, without which, as she might have heard, newspaper men never +took a step. He hadn't in the event quite sunk to that; but he had none +the less had there with her, that night, on Mrs. Stringham's leaving +them alone--Mrs. Stringham proved really prodigious--his acquaintance +with a shade of awkwardness darker than any Milly could know. He had +supposed himself beforehand, on the question of what he was doing or +pretending, in possession of some tone that would serve; but there were +three minutes of his feeling incapable of promptness quite in the same +degree in which a gentleman whose pocket has been picked feels +incapable of purchase. It even didn't help him, oddly, that he was sure +Kate would in some way have spoken for him--or rather not so much in +some way as in one very particular way. He hadn't asked her, at the +last, what she might, in the connexion, have said; nothing would have +induced him to put such a question after she had been to see him: his +lips were so sealed by that passage, his spirit in fact so hushed, in +respect to any charge upon her freedom. There was something he could +only therefore read back into the probabilities, and when he left the +palace an hour afterwards it was with a sense of having breathed there, +in the very air, the truth he had been guessing. + +Just this perception it was, however, that had made him for the time +ugly to himself in his awkwardness. It was horrible, with this +creature, to _be_ awkward; it was odious to be seeking excuses for the +relation that involved it. Any relation that involved it was by the +very fact as much discredited as a dish would be at dinner if one had +to take medicine as a sauce. What Kate would have said in one of the +young women's last talks was that--if Milly absolutely must have the +truth about it--Mr. Densher was staying because she had really seen no +way but to require it of him. If he stayed he didn't follow her--or +didn't appear to her aunt to be doing so; and when she kept him from +following her Mrs. Lowder couldn't pretend, in scenes, the renewal of +which at this time of day was painful, that she after all didn't snub +him as she might. She did nothing in fact _but_ snub him--wouldn't that +have been part of the story?--only Aunt Maud's suspicions were of the +sort that had repeatedly to be dealt with. He had been, by the same +token, reasonable enough--as he now, for that matter, well might; he +had consented to oblige them, aunt and niece, by giving the plainest +sign possible that he could exist away from London. To exist away from +London was to exist away from Kate Croy--which was a gain, much +appreciated, to the latter's comfort. There was a minute, at this hour, +out of Densher's three, during which he knew the terror of Milly's +uttering some such allusion to their friend's explanation as he must +meet with words that wouldn't destroy it. To destroy it was to destroy +everything, to destroy probably Kate herself, to destroy in particular +by a breach of faith still uglier than anything else the beauty of +their own last passage. He had given her his word of honour that if she +would come to him he would act absolutely in her sense, and he had done +so with a full enough vision of what her sense implied. What it implied +for one thing was that to-night in the great saloon, noble in its +half-lighted beauty, and straight in the white face of his young +hostess, divine in her trust, or at any rate inscrutable in her +mercy--what it implied was that he should lie with his lips. The single +thing, of all things, that could save him from it would be Milly's +letting him off after having thus scared him. What made her mercy +inscrutable was that if she had already more than once saved him it was +yet apparently without knowing how nearly he was lost. + +These were transcendent motions, not the less blest for being obscure; +whereby yet once more he was to feel the pressure lighten. He was kept +on his feet in short by the felicity of her not presenting him with +Kate's version as aversion to adopt. He couldn't stand up to lie--he +felt as if he should have to go down on his knees. As it was he just +sat there shaking a little for nervousness the leg he had crossed over +the other. She was sorry for his suffered snub, but he had nothing more +to subscribe to, to perjure himself about, than the three or four +inanities he had, on his own side, feebly prepared for the crisis. He +scrambled a little higher than the reference to money and clothes, +letters and directions from his manager; but he brought out the beauty +of the chance for him--there before him like a temptress painted by +Titian--to do a little quiet writing. He was vivid for a moment on the +difficulty of writing quietly in London; and he was precipitate, almost +explosive, on his idea, long cherished, of a book. + +The explosion lighted her face. "You'll do your book here?" + +"I hope to begin it." + +"It's something you haven't begun?" + +"Well, only just." + +"And since you came?" + +She was so full of interest that he shouldn't perhaps after all be too +easily let off. "I tried to think a few days ago that I had broken +ground." + +Scarcely anything, it was indeed clear, could have let him in deeper. +"I'm afraid we've made an awful mess of your time." + +"Of course you have. But what I'm hanging on for now is precisely to +repair that ravage." + +"Then you mustn't mind me, you know." + +"You'll see," he tried to say with ease, "how little I shall mind +anything." + +"You'll want"--Milly had thrown herself into it--"the best part of your +days." + +He thought a moment: he did what he could to wreathe it in smiles. "Oh +I shall make shift with the worst part. The best will be for _you_." +And he wished Kate could hear him. It didn't help him moreover that he +visibly, even pathetically, imaged to her by such touches his quest for +comfort against discipline. He was to bury Kate's so signal snub, and +also the hard law she had now laid on him, under a high intellectual +effort. This at least was his crucifixion--that Milly was so +interested. She was so interested that she presently asked him if he +found his rooms propitious, while he felt that in just decently +answering her he put on a brazen mask. He should need it quite +particularly were she to express again her imagination of coming to tea +with him--an extremity that he saw he was not to be spared. "We depend +on you, Susie and I, you know, not to forget we're coming"--the +extremity was but to face that remainder, yet it demanded all his tact. +Facing their visit itself--to that, no matter what he might have to do, +he would never consent, as we know, to be pushed; and this even though +it might be exactly such a demonstration as would figure for him at the +top of Kate's list of his proprieties. He could wonder freely enough, +deep within, if Kate's view of that especial propriety had not been +modified by a subsequent occurrence; but his deciding that it was quite +likely not to have been had no effect on his own preference for tact. +It pleased him to think of "tact" as his present prop in doubt; that +glossed his predicament over, for it was of application among the +sensitive and the kind. He wasn't inhuman, in fine, so long as it would +serve. It had to serve now, accordingly, to help him not to sweeten +Milly's hopes. He didn't want to be rude to them, but he still less +wanted them to flower again in the particular connexion; so that, +casting about him in his anxiety for a middle way to meet her, he put +his foot, with unhappy effect, just in the wrong place. "Will it be +safe for you to break into your custom of not leaving the house?" + +"'Safe'--?" She had for twenty seconds an exquisite pale glare. Oh but +he didn't need it, by that time, to wince; he had winced for himself as +soon as he had made his mistake. He had done what, so unforgettably, +she had asked him in London not to do; he had touched, all alone with +her here, the supersensitive nerve of which she had warned him. He had +not, since the occasion in London, touched it again till now; but he +saw himself freshly warned that it was able to bear still less. So for +the moment he knew as little what to do as he had ever known it in his +life. He couldn't emphasise that he thought of her as dying, yet he +couldn't pretend he thought of her as indifferent to precautions. +Meanwhile too she had narrowed his choice. "You suppose me so awfully +bad?" + +He turned, in his pain, within himself; but by the time the colour had +mounted to the roots of his hair he had found what he wanted. "I'll +believe whatever you tell me." + +"Well then, I'm splendid." + +"Oh I don't need you to tell me that." + +"I mean I'm capable of life." + +"I've never doubted it." + +"I mean," she went on, "that I want so to live--!" + +"Well?" he asked while she paused with the intensity of it. + +"Well, that I know I _can_." + +"Whatever you do?" He shrank from solemnity about it. + +"Whatever I do. If I want to." + +"If you want to do it?" + +"If I want to live. I _can_," Milly repeated. + +He had clumsily brought it on himself, but he hesitated with all the +pity of it. "Ah then that I believe." + +"I will, I will," she declared; yet with the weight of it somehow +turned for him to mere light and sound. + +He felt himself smiling through a mist. "You simply must!" + +It brought her straight again to the fact. "Well then, if you say it, +why mayn't we pay you our visit?" + +"Will it help you to live?" + +"Every little helps," she laughed; "and it's very little for me, in +general, to stay at home. Only I shan't want to miss it--!" + +"Yes?"--she had dropped again. + +"Well, on the day you give us a chance." + +It was amazing what so brief an exchange had at this point done with +him. His great scruple suddenly broke, giving way to something +inordinately strange, something of a nature to become clear to him only +when he had left her. "You can come," he said, "when you like." + +What had taken place for him, however--the drop, almost with violence, +of everything but a sense of her own reality--apparently showed in his +face or his manner, and even so vividly that she could take it for +something else. "I see how you feel--that I'm an awful bore about it +and that, sooner than have any such upset, you'll go. So it's no +matter." + +"No matter? Oh!"--he quite protested now. + +"If it drives you away to escape us. We want you not to go." + +It was beautiful how she spoke for Mrs. Stringham. Whatever it was, at +any rate, he shook his head. "I won't go." + +"Then I won't go!" she brightly declared. + +"You mean you won't come to me?" + +"No--never now. It's over. But it's all right. I mean, apart from +that," she went on, "that I won't do anything I oughtn't or that I'm +not forced to." + +"Oh who can ever force you?" he asked with his hand-to-mouth way, at +all times, of speaking for her encouragement. "You're the least +coercible of creatures." + +"Because, you think, I'm so free?" + +"The freest person probably now in the world. You've got everything." + +"Well," she smiled, "call it so. I don't complain." + +On which again, in spite of himself, it let him in. "No I know you +don't complain." + +As soon as he had said it he had himself heard the pity in it. His +telling her she had "everything" was extravagant kind humour, whereas +his knowing so tenderly that she didn't complain was terrible kind +gravity. Milly felt, he could see, the difference; he might as well +have praised her outright for looking death in the face. This was the +way she just looked _him_ again, and it was of no attenuation that she +took him up more gently than ever. "It isn't a merit--when one sees +one's way." + +"To peace and plenty? Well, I dare say not." + +"I mean to keeping what one has." + +"Oh that's success. If what one has is good," Densher said at random, +"it's enough to try for." + +"Well, it's my limit. I'm not trying for more." To which then she added +with a change: "And now about your book." + +"My book--?" He had got in a moment so far from it. + +"The one you're now to understand that nothing will induce either Susie +or me to run the risk of spoiling." + +He cast about, but he made up his mind. "I'm not doing a book." + +"Not what you said?" she asked in a wonder. "You're not writing?" + +He already felt relieved. "I don't know, upon my honour, what I'm +doing." + +It made her visibly grave; so that, disconcerted in another way, he was +afraid of what she would see in it. She saw in fact exactly what he +feared, but again his honour, as he called it, was saved even while she +didn't know she had threatened it. Taking his words for a betrayal of +the sense that he, on his side, _might_ complain, what she clearly +wanted was to urge on him some such patience as he should be perhaps +able to arrive at with her indirect help. Still more clearly, however, +she wanted to be sure of how far she might venture; and he could see +her make out in a moment that she had a sort of test. + +"Then if it's not for your book--?" + +"What _am_ I staying for?" + +"I mean with your London work--with all you have to do. Isn't it rather +empty for you?" + +"Empty for me?" He remembered how Kate had held that she might propose +marriage, and he wondered if this were the way she would naturally +begin it. It would leave him, such an incident, he already felt, at a +loss, and the note of his finest anxiety might have been in the +vagueness of his reply. "Oh well--!" + +"I ask too many questions?" She settled it for herself before he could +protest. "You stay because you've got to." + +He grasped at it. "I stay because I've got to." And he couldn't have +said when he had uttered it if it were loyal to Kate or disloyal. It +gave her, in a manner, away; it showed the tip of the ear of her plan. +Yet Milly took it, he perceived, but as a plain statement of his truth. +He was waiting for what Kate would have told her of--the permission +from Lancaster Gate to come any nearer. To remain friends with either +niece or aunt he mustn't stir without it. All this Densher read in the +girl's sense of the spirit of his reply; so that it made him feel he +was lying, and he had to think of something to correct that. What he +thought of was, in an instant, "Isn't it enough, whatever may be one's +other complications, to stay after all for _you?_" + +"Oh you must judge." + +He was by this time on his feet to take leave, and was also at last too +restless. The speech in question at least wasn't disloyal to Kate; that +was the very tone of their bargain. So was it, by being loyal, another +kind of lie, the lie of the uncandid profession of a motive. He was +staying so little "for" Milly that he was staying positively against +her. He didn't, none the less, know, and at last, thank goodness, +didn't care. The only thing he could say might make it either better or +worse. "Well then, so long as I don't go, you must think of me all _as_ +judging!" + + +II + +He didn't go home, on leaving her--he didn't want to; he walked +instead, through his narrow ways and his _campi_ with gothic arches, to +a small and comparatively sequestered cafe where he had already more +than once found refreshment and comparative repose, together with +solutions that consisted mainly and pleasantly of further indecisions. +It was a literal fact that those awaiting him there to-night, while he +leaned back on his velvet bench with his head against a florid mirror +and his eyes not looking further than the fumes of his tobacco, might +have been regarded by him as a little less limp than usual. This wasn't +because, before getting to his feet again, there was a step he had seen +his way to; it was simply because the acceptance of his position took +sharper effect from his sense of what he had just had to deal with. +When half an hour before, at the palace, he had turned about to Milly +on the question of the impossibility so inwardly felt, turned about on +the spot and under her eyes, he had acted, by the sudden force of his +seeing much further, seeing how little, how not at all, impossibilities +mattered. It wasn't a case for pedantry; when people were at _her_ pass +everything was allowed. And her pass was now, as by the sharp click of +a spring, just completely his own--to the extent, as he felt, of her +deep dependence on him. Anything he should do or shouldn't would have +close reference to her life, which was thus absolutely in his +hands--and ought never to have reference to anything else. It was on +the cards for him that he might kill her--that was the way he read the +cards as he sat in his customary corner. The fear in this thought made +him let everything go, kept him there actually, all motionless, for +three hours on end. He renewed his consumption and smoked more +cigarettes than he had ever done in the time. What had come out for him +had come out, with this first intensity, as a terror; so that action +itself, of any sort, the right as well as the wrong--if the difference +even survived--had heard in it a vivid "Hush!" the injunction to keep +from that moment intensely still. He thought in fact while his vigil +lasted of several different ways for his doing so, and the hour might +have served him as a lesson in going on tiptoe. + +What he finally took home, when he ventured to leave the place, was the +perceived truth that he might on any other system go straight to +destruction. Destruction was represented for him by the idea of his +really bringing to a point, on Milly's side, anything whatever. Nothing +so "brought," he easily argued, but _must_ be in one way or another a +catastrophe. He was mixed up in her fate, or her fate, if that should +be better, was mixed up in _him_, so that a single false motion might +either way snap the coil. They helped him, it was true, these +considerations, to a degree of eventual peace, for what they luminously +amounted to was that he was to do nothing, and that fell in after all +with the burden laid on him by Kate. He was only not to budge without +the girl's leave--not, oddly enough at the last, to move without it, +whether further or nearer, any more than without Kate's. It was to this +his wisdom reduced itself--to the need again simply to be kind. That +was the same as being still--as studying to create the minimum of +vibration. He felt himself as he smoked shut up to a room on the wall +of which something precious was too precariously hung. A false step +would bring it down, and it must hang as long as possible. He was aware +when he walked away again that even Fleet Street wouldn't at this +juncture successfully touch him. His manager might wire that he was +wanted, but he could easily be deaf to his manager. His money for the +idle life might be none too much; happily, however, Venice was cheap, +and it was moreover the queer fact that Milly in a manner supported +him. The greatest of his expenses really was to walk to the palace to +dinner. He didn't want, in short, to give that up, and he should +probably be able, he felt, to stay his breath and his hand. He should +be able to be still enough through everything. + +He tried that for three weeks, with the sense after a little of not +having failed. There had to be a delicate art in it, for he wasn't +trying--quite the contrary--to be either distant or dull. That would +not have been being "nice," which in its own form was the real law. +That too might just have produced the vibration he desired to avert; so +that he best kept everything in place by not hesitating or fearing, as +it were, to let himself go--go in the direction, that is to say, of +staying. It depended on where he went; which was what he meant by +taking care. When one went on tiptoe one could turn off for retreat +without betraying the manoeuvre. Perfect tact--the necessity for which +he had from the first, as we know, happily recognised--was to keep all +intercourse in the key of the absolutely settled. It was settled thus +for instance that they were indissoluble good friends, and settled as +well that her being the American girl was, just in time and for the +relation they found themselves concerned in, a boon inappreciable. If, +at least, as the days went on, she was to fall short of her prerogative +of the great national, the great maidenly ease, if she didn't +diviningly and responsively desire and labour to record herself as +possessed of it, this wouldn't have been for want of Densher's keeping +her, with his idea, well up to it--wouldn't have been in fine for want +of his encouragement and reminder. He didn't perhaps in so many words +speak to her of the quantity itself as of the thing she was least to +intermit; but he talked of it, freely, in what he flattered himself was +an impersonal way, and this held it there before her--since he was +careful also to talk pleasantly. It was at once their idea, when all +was said, and the most marked of their conveniences. The type was so +elastic that it could be stretched to almost anything; and yet, not +stretched, it kept down, remained normal, remained properly within +bounds. And he _had_ meanwhile, thank goodness, without being too much +disconcerted, the sense, for the girl's part of the business, of the +queerest conscious compliance, of her doing very much what he wanted, +even though without her quite seeing why. She fairly touched this once +in saying: "Oh yes, you like us to be as we are because it's a kind of +facilitation to you that we don't quite measure: I think one would have +to be English to measure it!"--and that too, strangely enough, without +prejudice to her good nature. She might have been conceived as +doing--that is of being--what he liked in order perhaps only to judge +where it would take them. They really as it went on _saw_ each other at +the game; she knowing he tried to keep her in tune with his conception, +and he knowing she thus knew it. Add that he again knew she knew, and +yet that nothing was spoiled by it, and we get a fair impression of the +line they found most completely workable. The strangest fact of all for +us must be that the success he himself thus promoted was precisely what +figured to his gratitude as the something above and beyond him, above +and beyond Kate, that made for daily decency. There would scarce have +been felicity--certainly too little of the right lubricant--had not the +national character so invoked been, not less inscrutably than entirely, +in Milly's chords. It made up her unity and was the one thing he could +unlimitedly take for granted. + +He did so then, daily, for twenty days, without deepened fear of the +undue vibration that was keeping him watchful. He knew in his +nervousness that he was living at best from day to day and from hand to +mouth; yet he had succeeded, he believed, in avoiding a mistake. All +women had alternatives, and Milly's would doubtless be shaky too; but +the national character was firm in her, whether as all of her, +practically, by this time, or but as a part; the national character +that, in a woman still so young, made of the air breathed a virtual +non-conductor. It wasn't till a certain occasion when the twenty days +had passed that, going to the palace at tea-time, he was met by the +information that the signorina padrona was not "receiving." The +announcement met him, in the court, on the lips of one of the +gondoliers, met him, he thought, with such a conscious eye as the +knowledge of his freedoms of access, hitherto conspicuously shown, +could scarce fail to beget. Densher had not been at Palazzo Leporelli +among the mere receivable, but had taken his place once for all among +the involved and included, so that on being so flagrantly braved he +recognised after a moment the propriety of a further appeal. Neither of +the two ladies, it appeared, received, and yet Pasquale was not +prepared to say that either was _poco bene_. He was yet not prepared to +say that either was anything, and he would have been blank, Densher +mentally noted, if the term could ever apply to members of a race in +whom vacancy was but a nest of darknesses--not a vain surface, but a +place of withdrawal in which something obscure, something always +ominous, indistinguishably lived. He felt afresh indeed at this hour +the force of the veto laid within the palace on any mention, any +cognition, of the liabilities of its mistress. The state of her health +was never confessed to there as a reason. How much it might deeply be +taken for one was another matter; of which he grew fully aware on +carrying his question further. This appeal was to his friend Eugenio, +whom he immediately sent for, with whom, for three rich minutes, +protected from the weather, he was confronted in the gallery that led +from the water-steps to the court, and whom he always called, in +meditation, his friend; seeing it was so elegantly presumable he would +have put an end to him if he could. That produced a relation which +required a name of its own, an intimacy of consciousness in truth for +each--an intimacy of eye, of ear, of general sensibility, of everything +but tongue. It had been, in other words, for the five weeks, far from +occult to our young man that Eugenio took a view of him not less finely +formal than essentially vulgar, but which at the same time he couldn't +himself raise an eyebrow to prevent. It was all in the air now again; +it was as much between them as ever while Eugenio waited on him in the +court. + +The weather, from early morning, had turned to storm, the first +sea-storm of the autumn, and Densher had almost invidiously brought him +down the outer staircase--the massive ascent, the great feature of the +court, to Milly's _piano nobile_. This was to pay him--it was the one +chance--for all imputations; the imputation in particular that, clever, +_tanto bello_ and not rich, the young man from London was--by the +obvious way--pressing Miss Theale's fortune hard. It was to pay him for +the further ineffable intimation that a gentleman must take the young +lady's most devoted servant (interested scarcely less in the high +attraction) for a strangely casual appendage if he counted in such a +connexion on impunity and prosperity. These interpretations were odious +to Densher for the simple reason that they might have been so true of +the attitude of an inferior man, and three things alone, accordingly, +had kept him from righting himself. One of these was that his critic +sought expression only in an impersonality, a positive inhumanity, of +politeness; the second was that refinements of expression in a friend's +servant were not a thing a visitor could take action on; and the third +was the fact that the particular attribution of motive did him after +all no wrong. It was his own fault if the vulgar view, the view that +might have been taken of an inferior man, happened so incorrigibly to +fit him. He apparently wasn't so different from inferior men as that +came to. If therefore, in fine, Eugenio figured to him as "my friend" +because he was conscious of his seeing so much of him, what he made him +see on the same lines in the course of their present interview was ever +so much more. Densher felt that he marked himself, no doubt, as +insisting, by dissatisfaction with the gondolier's answer, on the +pursuit taken for granted in him; and yet felt it only in the +augmented, the exalted distance that was by this time established +between them. Eugenio had of course reflected that a word to Miss +Theale from such a pair of lips would cost him his place; but he could +also bethink himself that, so long as the word never came--and it was, +on the basis he had arranged, impossible--he enjoyed the imagination of +mounting guard. He had never so mounted guard, Densher could see, as +during these minutes in the damp _loggia_ where the storm-gusts were +strong; and there came in fact for our young man, as a result of his +presence, a sudden sharp sense that everything had turned to the +dismal. Something had happened--he didn't know what; and it wasn't +Eugenio who would tell him. What Eugenio told him was that he thought +the ladies--as if their liability had been equal--were a "leetle" +fatigued, just a "leetle leetle," and without any cause named for it. +It was one of the signs of what Densher felt in him that, by a +profundity, a true deviltry of resource, he always met the latter's +Italian with English and his English with Italian. He now, as usual, +slightly smiled at him in the process--but ever so slightly this time, +his manner also being attuned, our young man made out, to the thing, +whatever it was, that constituted the rupture of peace. + +This manner, while they stood a long minute facing each other over all +they didn't say, played a part as well in the sudden jar to Densher's +protected state. It was a Venice all of evil that had broken out for +them alike, so that they were together in their anxiety, if they really +could have met on it; a Venice of cold lashing rain from a low black +sky, of wicked wind raging through narrow passes, of general arrest and +interruption, with the people engaged in all the water-life huddled, +stranded and wageless, bored and cynical, under archways and bridges. +Our young man's mute exchange with his friend contained meanwhile such +a depth of reference that, had the pressure been but slightly +prolonged, they might have reached a point at which they were equally +weak. Each had verily something in mind that would have made a hash of +mutual suspicion and in presence of which, as a possibility, they were +more united than disjoined. But it was to have been a moment for +Densher that nothing could ease off--not even the formal propriety with +which his interlocutor finally attended him to the _portone_ and bowed +upon his retreat. Nothing had passed about his coming back, and the air +had made itself felt as a non-conductor of messages. Densher knew of +course, as he took his way again, that Eugenio's invitation to return +was not what he missed; yet he knew at the same time that what had +happened to him was part of his punishment. Out in the square beyond +the _fondamenta_ that gave access to the land-gate of the palace, out +where the wind was higher, he fairly, with the thought of it, pulled +his umbrella closer down. It couldn't be, his consciousness, unseen +enough by others--the base predicament of having, by a concatenation, +just to _take_ such things: such things as the fact that one very acute +person in the world, whom he couldn't dispose of as an interested +scoundrel, enjoyed an opinion of him that there was no attacking, no +disproving, no (what was worst of all) even noticing. One had come to a +queer pass when a servant's opinion so mattered. Eugenio's would have +mattered even if, as founded on a low vision of appearances, it had +been quite wrong. It was the more disagreeable accordingly that the +vision of appearances was quite right, and yet was scarcely less low. + +Such as it was, at any rate, Densher shook it off with the more +impatience that he was independently restless. He had to walk in spite +of weather, and he took his course, through crooked ways, to the +Piazza, where he should have the shelter of the galleries. Here, in the +high arcade, half Venice was crowded close, while, on the Molo, at the +limit of the expanse, the old columns of the Saint Theodore and of the +Lion were the frame of a door wide open to the storm. It was odd for +him, as he moved, that it should have made such a difference--if the +difference wasn't only that the palace had for the first time failed of +a welcome. There was more, but it came from that; that gave the harsh +note and broke the spell. The wet and the cold were now to reckon with, +and it was to Densher precisely as if he had seen the obliteration, at +a stroke, of the margin on a faith in which they were all living. The +margin had been his name for it--for the thing that, though it had held +out, could bear no shock. The shock, in some form, had come, and he +wondered about it while, threading his way among loungers as vague as +himself, he dropped his eyes sightlessly on the rubbish in shops. There +were stretches of the gallery paved with squares of red marble, greasy +now with the salt spray; and the whole place, in its huge elegance, the +grace of its conception and the beauty of its detail, was more than +ever like a great drawing-room, the drawing-room of Europe, profaned +and bewildered by some reverse of fortune. He brushed shoulders with +brown men whose hats askew, and the loose sleeves of whose pendent +jackets, made them resemble melancholy maskers. The tables and chairs +that overflowed from the cafes were gathered, still with a pretence of +service, into the arcade, and here and there a spectacled German, with +his coat-collar up, partook publicly of food and philosophy. These were +impressions for Densher too, but he had made the whole circuit thrice +before he stopped short, in front of Florian's, with the force of his +sharpest. His eye had caught a face within the cafe--he had spotted an +acquaintance behind the glass. The person he had thus paused long +enough to look at twice was seated, well within range, at a small table +on which a tumbler, half-emptied and evidently neglected, still +remained; and though he had on his knee, as he leaned back, a copy of a +French newspaper--the heading of the _Figaro_ was visible--he stared +straight before him at the little opposite rococo wall. Densher had him +for a minute in profile, had him for a time during which his identity +produced, however quickly, all the effect of establishing +connexions--connexions startling and direct; and then, as if it were +the one thing more needed, seized the look, determined by a turn of the +head, that might have been a prompt result of the sense of being +noticed. This wider view showed him _all_ Lord Mark--Lord Mark as +encountered, several weeks before, the day of the first visit of each +to Palazzo Leporelli. For it had been all Lord Mark that was going out, +on that occasion, as he came in--he had felt it, in the hall, at the +time; and he was accordingly the less at a loss to recognise in a few +seconds, as renewed meeting brought it to the surface, the same +potential quantity. + +It was a matter, the whole passage--it could only be--but of a few +seconds; for as he might neither stand there to stare nor on the other +hand make any advance from it, he had presently resumed his walk, this +time to another pace. It had been for all the world, during his pause, +as if he had caught his answer to the riddle of the day. Lord Mark had +simply faced him--as he had faced _him_, not placed by him, not at +first--as one of the damp shuffling crowd. Recognition, though hanging +fire, had then clearly come; yet no light of salutation had been struck +from these certainties. Acquaintance between them was scant enough for +neither to take it up. That neither had done so was not, however, what +now mattered, but that the gentleman at Florian's should be in the +place at all. He couldn't have been in it long; Densher, as inevitably +a haunter of the great meeting-ground, would in that case have seen him +before. He paid short visits; he was on the wing; the question for him +even as he sat there was of his train or of his boat. He had come back +for something--as a sequel to his earlier visit; and whatever he had +come back for it had had time to be done. He might have arrived but +last night or that morning; he had already made the difference. It was +a great thing for Densher to get this answer. He held it close, he +hugged it, quite leaned on it as he continued to circulate. It kept him +going and going--it made him no less restless. But it explained--and +that was much, for with explanations he might somehow deal. The vice in +the air, otherwise, was too much like the breath of fate. The weather +had changed, the rain was ugly, the wind wicked, the sea impossible, +_because_ of Lord Mark. It was because of him, _a fortiori_, that the +palace was closed. Densher went round again twice; he found the visitor +each time as he had found him first. Once, that is, he was staring +before him; the next time he was looking over his _Figaro_, which he +had opened out. Densher didn't again stop, but left him apparently +unconscious of his passage--on another repetition of which Lord Mark +had disappeared. He had spent but the day; he would be off that night; +he had now gone to his hotel for arrangements. These things were as +plain to Densher as if he had had them in words. The obscure had +cleared for him--if cleared it was; there was something he didn't see, +the great thing; but he saw so round it and so close to it that this +was almost as good. He had been looking at a man who had done what he +had come for, and for whom, as done, it temporarily sufficed. The man +had come again to see Milly, and Milly had received him. His visit +would have taken place just before or just after luncheon, and it was +the reason why he himself had found her door shut. + +He said to himself that evening, he still said even on the morrow, that +he only wanted a reason, and that with this perception of one he could +now mind, as he called it, his business. His business, he had settled, +as we know, was to keep thoroughly still; and he asked himself why it +should prevent this that he could feel, in connexion with the crisis, +so remarkably blameless. He gave the appearances before him all the +benefit of being critical, so that if blame were to accrue he shouldn't +feel he had dodged it. But it wasn't a bit he who, that day, had +touched her, and if she was upset it wasn't a bit his act. The ability +so to think about it amounted for Densher during several hours to a +kind of exhilaration. The exhilaration was heightened fairly, besides, +by the visible conditions--sharp, striking, ugly to him--of Lord Mark's +return. His constant view of it, for all the next hours, of which there +were many, was as a demonstration on the face of it sinister even to +his own actual ignorance. He didn't need, for seeing it as evil, seeing +it as, to a certainty, in a high degree "nasty," to know more about it +than he had so easily and so wonderfully picked up. You couldn't drop +on the poor girl that way without, by the fact, being brutal. Such a +visit was a descent, an invasion, an aggression, constituting precisely +one or other of the stupid shocks he himself had so decently sought to +spare her. Densher had indeed drifted by the next morning to the +reflexion--which he positively, with occasion, might have brought +straight out--that the only delicate and honourable way of treating a +person in such a state was to treat her as _he_, Merton Densher, did. +With time, actually--for the impression but deepened--this sense of the +contrast, to the advantage of Merton Densher, became a sense of relief, +and that in turn a sense of escape. It was for all the world--and he +drew a long breath on it--as if a special danger for him had passed. +Lord Mark had, without in the least intending such a service, got it +straight out of the way. It was _he_, the brute, who had stumbled into +just the wrong inspiration and who had therefore produced, for the very +person he had wished to hurt, an impunity that was comparative +innocence, that was almost like purification. The person he had wished +to hurt could only be the person so unaccountably hanging about. To +keep still meanwhile was, for this person, more comprehensively, to +keep it all up; and to keep it all up was, if that seemed on +consideration best, not, for the day or two, to go back to the palace. + +The day or two passed--stretched to three days; and with the effect, +extraordinarily, that Densher felt himself in the course of them washed +but the more clean. Some sign would come if his return should have the +better effect; and he was at all events, in absence, without the +particular scruple. It wouldn't have been meant for him by either of +the women that he was to come back but to face Eugenio. That was +impossible--the being again denied; for it made him practically +answerable, and answerable was what he wasn't. There was no neglect +either in absence, inasmuch as, from the moment he didn't get in, the +one message he could send up would be some hope on the score of health. +Since accordingly that sort of expression was definitely forbidden him +he had only to wait--which he was actually helped to do by his feeling +with the lapse of each day more and more wound up to it. The days in +themselves were anything but sweet; the wind and the weather lasted, +the fireless cold hinted at worse; the broken charm of the world about +was broken into smaller pieces. He walked up and down his rooms and +listened to the wind--listened also to tinkles of bells and watched for +some servant of the palace. He might get a note, but the note never +came; there were hours when he stayed at home not to miss it. When he +wasn't at home he was in circulation again as he had been at the hour +of his seeing Lord Mark. He strolled about the Square with the herd of +refugees; he raked the approaches and the cafes on the chance the +brute, as he now regularly imaged him, _might_ be still there. He could +only be there, he knew, to be received afresh; and that--one had but to +think of it--would be indeed stiff. He had gone, however--it was +proved; though Densher's care for the question either way only added to +what was most acrid in the taste of his present ordeal. It all came +round to what he was doing for Milly--spending days that neither relief +nor escape could purge of a smack of the abject. What was it but abject +for a man of his parts to be reduced to such pastimes? What was it but +sordid for him, shuffling about in the rain, to have to peep into shops +and to consider possible meetings? What was it but odious to find +himself wondering what, as between him and another man, a possible +meeting would produce? There recurred moments when in spite of +everything he felt no straighter than another man. And yet even on the +third day, when still nothing had come, he more than ever knew that he +wouldn't have budged for the world. + +He thought of the two women, in their silence, at last--he at all +events thought of Milly--as probably, for her reasons, now intensely +wishing him to go. The cold breath of her reasons was, with everything +else, in the air; but he didn't care for them any more than for her +wish itself, and he would stay in spite of her, stay in spite of odium, +stay in spite perhaps of some final experience that would be, for the +pain of it, all but unbearable. That would be his one way, purified +though he was, to mark his virtue beyond any mistake. It would be +accepting the disagreeable, and the disagreeable would be a proof; a +proof of his not having stayed for the thing--the agreeable, as it +were--that Kate had named. The thing Kate had named was not to have +been the odium of staying in spite of hints. It was part of the odium +as actual too that Kate was, for her comfort, just now well aloof. +These were the first hours since her flight in which his sense of what +she had done for him on the eve of that event was to incur a +qualification. It was strange, it was perhaps base, to be thinking such +things so soon; but one of the intimations of his solitude was that she +had provided for herself. She was out of it all, by her act, as much as +he was in it; and this difference grew, positively, as his own +intensity increased. She had said in their last sharp snatch of +talk--sharp though thickly muffled, and with every word in it final and +deep, unlike even the deepest words they had ever yet spoken: "Letters? +Never--_now_. Think of it. Impossible." So that as he had sufficiently +caught her sense--into which he read, all the same, a strange +inconsequence--they had practically wrapped their understanding in the +breach of their correspondence. He had moreover, on losing her, done +justice to her law of silence; for there was doubtless a finer delicacy +in his not writing to her than in his writing as he must have written +had he spoken of themselves. That would have been a turbid strain, and +her idea had been to be noble; which, in a degree, was a manner. Only +it left her, for the pinch, comparatively at ease. And it left _him_, +in the conditions, peculiarly alone. He was alone, that is, till, on +the afternoon of his third day, in gathering dusk and renewed rain, +with his shabby rooms looking doubtless, in their confirmed dreariness, +for the mere eyes of others, at their worst, the grinning padrona threw +open the door and introduced Mrs. Stringham. That made at a bound a +difference, especially when he saw that his visitor was weighted. It +appeared part of her weight that she was in a wet waterproof, that she +allowed her umbrella to be taken from her by the good woman without +consciousness or care, and that her face, under her veil, richly rosy +with the driving wind, was--and the veil too--as splashed as if the +rain were her tears. + + +III + +They came to it almost immediately; he was to wonder afterwards at the +fewness of their steps. "She has turned her face to the wall." + +"You mean she's worse?" + +The poor lady stood there as she had stopped; Densher had, in the +instant flare of his eagerness, his curiosity, all responsive at sight +of her, waved away, on the spot, the padrona, who had offered to +relieve her of her mackintosh. She looked vaguely about through her wet +veil, intensely alive now to the step she had taken and wishing it not +to have been in the dark, but clearly, as yet, seeing nothing. "I don't +know _how_ she is--and it's why I've come to you." + +"I'm glad enough you've come," he said, "and it's quite--you make me +feel--as if I had been wretchedly waiting for you." + +She showed him again her blurred eyes--she had caught at his word. +"Have you been wretched?" + +Now, however, on his lips, the word expired. It would have sounded for +him like a complaint, and before something he already made out in his +visitor he knew his own trouble as small. Hers, under her damp +draperies, which shamed his lack of a fire, was great, and he felt she +had brought it all with her. He answered that he had been patient and +above all that he had been still. "As still as a mouse--you'll have +seen it for yourself. Stiller, for three days together, than I've ever +been in my life. It has seemed to me the only thing." + +This qualification of it as a policy or a remedy was straightway for +his friend, he saw, a light that her own light could answer. "It has +been best. I've wondered for you. But it has been best," she said again. + +"Yet it has done no good?" + +"I don't know. I've been afraid you were gone." Then as he gave a +headshake which, though slow, was deeply mature: "You _won't_ go?" + +"Is to 'go,'" he asked, "to be still?" + +"Oh I mean if you'll stay for me." + +"I'll do anything for you. Isn't it for you alone now I can?" + +She thought of it, and he could see even more of the relief she was +taking from him. His presence, his face, his voice, the old rooms +themselves, so meagre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been to +him--these things counted for her, now she had them, as the help she +had been wanting: so that she still only stood there taking them all +in. With it however popped up characteristically a throb of her +conscience. What she thus tasted was almost a personal joy. It told +Densher of the three days she on her side had spent. "Well, anything +you do for me--_is_ for her too. Only, only--!" + +"Only nothing now matters?" + +She looked at him a minute as if he were the fact itself that he +expressed. "Then you know?" + +"Is she dying?" he asked for all answer. + +Mrs. Stringham waited--her face seemed to sound him. Then her own reply +was strange. "She hasn't so much as named you. We haven't spoken." + +"Not for three days?" + +"No more," she simply went on, "than if it were all over. Not even by +the faintest allusion." + +"Oh," said Densher with more light, "you mean you haven't spoken about +_me?_" + +"About what else? No more than if you were dead." + +"Well," he answered after a moment, "I _am_ dead." + +"Then I am," said Susan Shepherd with a drop of her arms on her +waterproof. + +It was a tone that, for the minute, imposed itself in its dry despair; +it represented, in the bleak place, which had no life of its own, none +but the life Kate had left--the sense of which, for that matter, by +mystic channels, might fairly be reaching the visitor--the very +impotence of their extinction. And Densher had nothing to oppose it +withal, nothing but again: "Is she dying?" + +It made her, however, as if these were crudities, almost material +pangs, only say as before: "Then you know?" + +"Yes," he at last returned, "I know. But the marvel to me is that _you_ +do. I've no right in fact to imagine or to assume that you do." + +"You may," said Susan Shepherd, "all the same. I know." + +"Everything?" + +Her eyes, through her veil, kept pressing him. "No--not everything. +That's why I've come." + +"That I shall really tell you?" With which, as she hesitated and it +affected him, he brought out in a groan a doubting "Oh, oh!" It turned +him from her to the place itself, which was a part of what was in him, +was the abode, the worn shrine more than ever, of the fact in +possession, the fact, now a thick association, for which he had hired +it. _That_ was not for telling, but Susan Shepherd was, none the less, +so decidedly wonderful that the sense of it might really have begun, by +an effect already operating, to be a part of her knowledge. He saw, and +it stirred him, that she hadn't come to judge him; had come rather, so +far as she might dare, to pity. This showed him her own +abasement--that, at any rate, of grief; and made him feel with a rush +of friendliness that he liked to be with her. The rush had quickened +when she met his groan with an attenuation. + +"We shall at all events--if that's anything--be together." + +It was his own good impulse in herself. "It's what I've ventured to +feel. It's much." She replied in effect, silently, that it was whatever +he liked; on which, so far as he had been afraid for anything, he knew +his fear had dropped. The comfort was huge, for it gave back to him +something precious, over which, in the effort of recovery, his own hand +had too imperfectly closed. Kate, he remembered, had said to him, with +her sole and single boldness--and also on grounds he hadn't then +measured--that Mrs. Stringham was a person who _wouldn't_, at a pinch, +in a stretch of confidence, wince. It was but another of the cases in +which Kate was always showing. "You don't think then very horridly of +me?" + +And her answer was the more valuable that it came without nervous +effusion--quite as if she understood what he might conceivably have +believed. She turned over in fact what she thought, and that was what +helped him. "Oh you've been extraordinary!" + +It made him aware the next moment of how they had been planted there. +She took off her cloak with his aid, though when she had also, +accepting a seat, removed her veil, he recognised in her personal +ravage that the words she had just uttered to him were the one flower +she had to throw. They were all her consolation for him, and the +consolation even still depended on the event. She sat with him at any +rate in the grey clearance, as sad as a winter dawn, made by their +meeting. The image she again evoked for him loomed in it but the +larger. "She has turned her face to the wall." + +He saw with the last vividness, and it was as if, in their silences, +they were simply so leaving what he saw. "She doesn't speak at all? I +don't mean not of me." + +"Of nothing--of no one." And she went on, Susan Shepherd, giving it out +as she had had to take it. "She doesn't _want_ to die. Think of her +age. Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. Think of all she is. +Think of all she _has_. She lies there stiffening herself and clinging +to it all. So I thank God--!" the poor lady wound up with a wan +inconsequence. + +He wondered. "You thank God--?" + +"That she's so quiet." + +He continued to wonder. "_Is_ she so quiet?" + +"She's more than quiet. She's grim. It's what she has never been. So +you see--all these days. I can't tell you--but it's better so. It would +kill me if she _were_ to tell me." + +"To tell you?" He was still at a loss. + +"How she feels. How she clings. How she doesn't want it." + +"How she doesn't want to die? Of course she doesn't want it." He had a +long pause, and they might have been thinking together of what they +could even now do to prevent it. This, however, was not what he brought +out. Milly's "grimness" and the great hushed palace were present to +him; present with the little woman before him as she must have been +waiting there and listening. "Only, what harm have _you_ done her?" + +Mrs. Stringham looked about in her darkness. "I don't know. I come and +talk of her here with you." + +It made him again hesitate. "Does she utterly hate me?" + +"I don't know. How _can_ I? No one ever will." + +"She'll never tell?" + +"She'll never tell." + +Once more he thought. "She must be magnificent." + +"She _is_ magnificent." + +His friend, after all, helped him, and he turned it, so far as he +could, all over. "Would she see me again?" + +It made his companion stare. "Should you like to see her?" + +"You mean as you describe her?" He felt her surprise, and it took him +some time. "No." + +"Ah then!" Mrs. Stringham sighed. + +"But if she could bear it I'd do anything." + +She had for the moment her vision of this, but it collapsed. "I don't +see what you can do." + +"I don't either. But _she_ might." + +Mrs. Stringham continued to think. "It's too late." + +"Too late for her to see--?" + +"Too late." + +The very decision of her despair--it was after all so lucid--kindled in +him a heat. "But the doctor, all the while--?" + +"Tacchini? Oh he's kind. He comes. He's proud of having been approved +and coached by a great London man. He hardly in fact goes away; so that +I scarce know what becomes of his other patients. He thinks her, justly +enough, a great personage; he treats her like royalty; he's waiting on +events. But she has barely consented to see him, and, though she has +told him, generously--for she _thinks_ of me, dear creature--that he +may come, that he may stay, for my sake, he spends most of his time +only hovering at her door, prowling through the rooms, trying to +entertain me, in that ghastly saloon, with the gossip of Venice, and +meeting me, in doorways, in the sala, on the staircase, with an +agreeable intolerable smile. We don't," said Susan Shepherd, "talk of +her." + +"By her request?" + +"Absolutely. I don't do what she doesn't wish. We talk of the price of +provisions." + +"By her request too?" + +"Absolutely. She named it to me as a subject when she said, the first +time, that if it would be any comfort to me he might stay as much as we +liked." + +Densher took it all in. "But he isn't any comfort to you!" + +"None whatever. That, however," she added, "isn't his fault. Nothing's +any comfort." + +"Certainly," Densher observed, "as I but too horribly feel, _I'm_ not." + +"No. But I didn't come for that." + +"You came for _me_." + +"Well then call it that." But she looked at him a moment with eyes +filled full, and something came up in her the next instant from deeper +still. "I came at bottom of course--" + +"You came at bottom of course for our friend herself. But if it's, as +you say, too late for me to do anything?" + +She continued to look at him, and with an irritation, which he saw grow +in her, from the truth itself. "So I did say. But, with you here"--and +she turned her vision again strangely about her--"with you here, and +with everything, I feel we mustn't abandon her." + +"God forbid we should abandon her." + +"Then you _won't?_" His tone had made her flush again. + +"How do you mean I 'won't,' if she abandons _me?_ What can I do if she +won't see me?" + +"But you said just now you wouldn't like it." + +"I said I shouldn't like it in the light of what you tell me. I +shouldn't like it only to see her as you make me. I should like it if I +could help her. But even then," Densher pursued without faith, "she +would have to want it first herself. And there," he continued to make +out, "is the devil of it. She _won't_ want it herself. She _can't!_" + +He had got up in his impatience of it, and she watched him while he +helplessly moved. "There's one thing you can do. There's only that, and +even for that there are difficulties. But there _is_ that." He stood +before her with his hands in his pockets, and he had soon enough, from +her eyes, seen what was coming. She paused as if waiting for his leave +to utter it, and as he only let her wait they heard in the silence, on +the Canal, the renewed downpour of rain. She had at last to speak, but, +as if still with her fear, she only half-spoke. "I think you really +know yourself what it is." + +He did know what it was, and with it even, as she said--rather!--there +were difficulties. He turned away on them, on everything, for a moment; +he moved to the other window and looked at the sheeted channel, wider, +like a river, where the houses opposite, blurred and belittled, stood +at twice their distance. Mrs. Stringham said nothing, was as mute in +fact, for the minute, as if she had "had" him, and he was the first +again to speak. When he did so, however, it was not in straight answer +to her last remark--he only started from that. He said, as he came back +to her, "Let me, you know, _see_--one must understand," almost as if he +had for the time accepted it. And what he wished to understand was +where, on the essence of the question, was the voice of Sir Luke +Strett. If they talked of not giving her up shouldn't _he_ be the one +least of all to do it? "Aren't we, at the worst, in the dark without +him?" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Stringham, "it's he who has kept me going. I wired the +first night, and he answered like an angel. He'll come like one. Only +he can't arrive, at the nearest, till Thursday afternoon." + +"Well then that's something." + +She considered. "Something--yes. She likes him." + +"Rather! I can see it still, the face with which, when he was here in +October--that night when she was in white, when she had people there +and those musicians--she committed him to my care. It was beautiful for +both of us--she put us in relation. She asked me, for the time, to take +him about; I did so, and we quite hit it off. That proved," Densher +said with a quick sad smile, "that she liked him." + +"He liked _you_," Susan Shepherd presently risked. + +"Ah I know nothing about that." + +"You ought to then. He went with you to galleries and churches; you +saved his time for him, showed him the choicest things, and you perhaps +will remember telling me myself that if he hadn't been a great surgeon +he might really have been a great judge. I mean of the beautiful." + +"Well," the young man admitted, "that's what he is--in having judged +_her_. He hasn't," he went on, "judged her for nothing. His interest in +her--which we must make the most of--can only be supremely beneficent." + +He still roamed, while he spoke, with his hands in his pockets, and she +saw him, on this, as her eyes sufficiently betrayed, trying to keep his +distance from the recognition he had a few moments before partly +confessed to. "I'm glad," she dropped, "you like him!" + +There was something for him in the sound of it. "Well, I do no more, +dear lady, than you do yourself. Surely _you_ like him. Surely, when he +was here, we all liked him." + +"Yes, but I seem to feel I know what he thinks. And I should think, +with all the time you spent with him, you'd know it," she said, +"yourself." + +Densher stopped short, though at first without a word. "We never spoke +of her. Neither of us mentioned her, even to sound her name, and +nothing whatever in connexion with her passed between us." + +Mrs. Stringham stared up at him, surprised at this picture. But she had +plainly an idea that after an instant resisted it. "That was his +professional propriety." + +"Precisely. But it was also my sense of that virtue in him, and it was +something more besides." And he spoke with sudden intensity. "I +couldn't _talk_ to him about her!" + +"Oh!" said Susan Shepherd. + +"I can't talk to any one about her." + +"Except to _me_," his friend continued. + +"Except to you." The ghost of her smile, a gleam of significance, had +waited on her words, and it kept him, for honesty, looking at her. For +honesty too--that is for his own words--he had quickly coloured: he was +sinking so, at a stroke, the burden of his discourse with Kate. His +visitor, for the minute, while their eyes met, might have been watching +him hold it down. And he _had_ to hold it down--the effort of which, +precisely, made him red. He couldn't let it come up; at least not yet. +She might make what she would of it. He attempted to repeat his +statement, but he really modified it. "Sir Luke, at all events, had +nothing to tell me, and I had nothing to tell him. Make-believe talk +was impossible for us, and--" + +"And _real_"--she had taken him right up with a huge emphasis--"was +more impossible still." No doubt--he didn't deny it; and she had +straightway drawn her conclusion. "Then that proves what I say--that +there were immensities between you. Otherwise you'd have chattered." + +"I dare say," Densher granted, "we were both thinking of her." + +"You were neither of you thinking of any one else. That's why you kept +together." + +Well, that too, if she desired, he took from her; but he came straight +back to what he had originally said. "I haven't a notion, all the same, +of what he thinks." She faced him, visibly, with the question into +which he had already observed that her special shade of earnestness was +perpetually flowering, right and left--"Are you _very_ sure?"--and he +could only note her apparent difference from himself. "You, I judge, +believe that he thinks she's gone." + +She took it, but she bore up. "It doesn't matter what I believe." + +"Well, we shall see"--and he felt almost basely superficial. More and +more, for the last five minutes, had he known she had brought something +with her, and never in respect to anything had he had such a wish to +postpone. He would have liked to put everything off till Thursday; he +was sorry it was now Tuesday; he wondered if he were afraid. Yet it +wasn't of Sir Luke, who was coming; nor of Milly, who was dying; nor of +Mrs. Stringham, who was sitting there. It wasn't, strange to say, of +Kate either, for Kate's presence affected him suddenly as having +swooned or trembled away. Susan Shepherd's, thus prolonged, had cast on +it some influence under which it had ceased to act. She was as absent +to his sensibility as she had constantly been, since her departure, +absent, as an echo or a reference, from the palace; and it was the +first time, among the objects now surrounding him, that his sensibility +so noted her. He knew soon enough that it was of himself he was afraid, +and that even, if he didn't take care, he should infallibly be more so. +"Meanwhile," he added for his companion, "it has been everything for me +to see you." She slowly rose at the words, which might almost have +conveyed to her the hint of his taking care. She stood there as if she +had in fact seen him abruptly moved to dismiss her. But the abruptness +would have been in this case so marked as fairly to offer ground for +insistence to her imagination of his state. It would take her moreover, +she clearly showed him she was thinking, but a minute or two to insist. +Besides, she had already said it. "Will you do it if _he_ asks you? I +mean if Sir Luke himself puts it to you. And will you give him"--oh she +was earnest now!--"the opportunity to put it to you?" + +"The opportunity to put what?" + +"That if you deny it to her, that may still do something." + +Densher felt himself--as had already once befallen him in the quarter +of an hour--turn red to the top of his forehead. Turning red had, +however, for him, as a sign of shame, been, so to speak, discounted: +his consciousness of it at the present moment was rather as a sign of +his fear. It showed him sharply enough of what he was afraid. "If I +deny what to her?" + +Hesitation, on the demand, revived in her, for hadn't he all along been +letting her see that he knew? "Why, what Lord Mark told her." + +"And what did Lord Mark tell her?" + +Mrs. Stringham had a look of bewilderment--of seeing him as suddenly +perverse. "I've been judging that you yourself know." And it was she +who now blushed deep. + +It quickened his pity for her, but he was beset too by other things. +"Then _you_ know--" + +"Of his dreadful visit?" She stared. "Why it's what has done it." + +"Yes--I understand that. But you also know--" + +He had faltered again, but all she knew she now wanted to say. "I'm +speaking," she said soothingly, "of what he told her. It's _that_ that +I've taken you as knowing." + +"Oh!" he sounded in spite of himself. + +It appeared to have for her, he saw the next moment, the quality of +relief, as if he had supposed her thinking of something else. +Thereupon, straightway, that lightened it. "Oh you thought I've known +it for _true!_" + +Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw that he had betrayed +himself. Not, however, that it mattered, as he immediately saw still +better. There it was now, all of it at last, and this at least there +was no postponing. They were left with her idea--the one she was +wishing to make him recognise. He had expressed ten minutes before his +need to understand, and she was acting after all but on that. Only what +he was to understand was no small matter; it might be larger even than +as yet appeared. + +He took again one of his turns, not meeting what she had last said; he +mooned a minute, as he would have called it, at a window; and of course +she could see that she had driven him to the wall. She did clearly, +without delay, see it; on which her sense of having "caught" him became +as promptly a scruple, which she spoke as if not to press. "What I mean +is that he told her you've been all the while engaged to Miss Croy." + +He gave a jerk round; it was almost--to hear it--the touch of a lash; +and he said--idiotically, as he afterwards knew--the first thing that +came into his head. "All _what_ while?" + +"Oh it's not I who say it." She spoke in gentleness. "I only repeat to +you what he told her." + +Densher, from whom an impatience had escaped, had already caught +himself up. "Pardon my brutality. Of course I know what you're talking +about. I saw him, toward the evening," he further explained, "in the +Piazza; only just saw him--through the glass at Florian's--without any +words. In fact I scarcely know him--there wouldn't have been occasion. +It was but once, moreover--he must have gone that night. But I knew he +wouldn't have come for nothing, and I turned it over--what he would +have come for." + +Oh so had Mrs. Stringham. "He came for exasperation." + +Densher approved. "He came to let her know that he knows better than +she for whom it was she had a couple of months before, in her fool's +paradise, refused him." + +"How you _do_ know!"--and Mrs. Stringham almost smiled. + +"I know that--but I don't know the good it does him." + +"The good, he thinks, if he has patience--not too much--may be to come. +He doesn't know what he has done to her. Only _we_, you see, do that." + +He saw, but he wondered. "She kept from him--what she felt?" + +"She was able--I'm sure of it--not to show anything. He dealt her his +blow, and she took it without a sign." Mrs. Stringham, it was plain, +spoke by book, and it brought into play again her appreciation of what +she related. "She's magnificent." + +Densher again gravely assented. "Magnificent!" + +"And _he_," she went on, "is an idiot of idiots." + +"An idiot of idiots." For a moment, on it all, on the stupid doom in +it, they looked at each other. "Yet he's thought so awfully clever." + +"So awfully--it's Maud Lowder's own view. And he was nice, in London," +said Mrs. Stringham, "to _me_. One could almost pity him--he has had +such a good conscience." + +"That's exactly the inevitable ass." + +"Yes, but it wasn't--I could see from the only few things she first +told me--that he meant _her_ the least harm. He intended none whatever." + +"That's always the ass at his worst," Densher returned. "He only of +course meant harm to me." + +"And good to himself--he thought that would come. He had been unable to +swallow," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "what had happened on his other +visit. He had been then too sharply humiliated." + +"Oh I saw that." + +"Yes, and he also saw you. He saw you received, as it were, while he +was turned away." + +"Perfectly," Densher said--"I've filled it out. And also that he has +known meanwhile for _what_ I was then received. For a stay of all these +weeks. He had had it to think of." + +"Precisely--it was more than he could bear. But he has it," said Mrs. +Stringham, "to think of still." + +"Only, after all," asked Densher, who himself somehow, at this point, +was having more to think of even than he had yet had--"only, after all, +how has he happened to know? That is, to know enough." + +"What do you call enough?" Mrs. Stringham enquired. + +"He can only have acted--it would have been his sole safety--from full +knowledge." + +He had gone on without heeding her question; but, face to face as they +were, something had none the less passed between them. It was this +that, after an instant, made her again interrogative. "What do you mean +by full knowledge?" + +Densher met it indirectly. "Where has he been since October?" + +"I think he has been back to England. He came in fact, I've reason to +believe, straight from there." + +"Straight to do this job? All the way for his half-hour?" + +"Well, to try again--with the help perhaps of a new fact. To make +himself possibly right with her--a different attempt from the other. He +had at any rate something to tell her, and he didn't know his +opportunity would reduce itself to half an hour. Or perhaps indeed half +an hour would be just what was most effective. It _has_ been!" said +Susan Shepherd. + +Her companion took it in, understanding but too well; yet as she +lighted the matter for him more, really, than his own courage had quite +dared--putting the absent dots on several i's--he saw new questions +swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and +they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was +at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of late from Mrs. Lowder." + +"Oh yes, two or three times. She depends naturally upon news of Milly." + +He hesitated. "And does she depend, naturally, upon news of _me?_" + +His friend matched for an instant his deliberation. + +"I've given her none that hasn't been decently good. This will have +been the first." + +"'This'?" Densher was thinking. + +"Lord Mark's having been here, and her being as she is." + +He thought a moment longer. "What has Mrs. Lowder written about him? +Has she written that he has been with them?" + +"She has mentioned him but once--it was in her letter before the last. +Then she said something." + +"And what did she say?" + +Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. "Well it was in reference to +Miss Croy. That she thought Kate was thinking of him. Or perhaps I +should say rather that he was thinking of _her_--only it seemed this +time to have struck Maud that he was seeing the way more open to him." + +Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but he presently raised +them to speak, and there was that in his face which proved him aware of +a queerness in his question. "Does she mean he has been encouraged to +_propose_ to her niece?" + +"I don't know what she means." + +"Of course not"--he recovered himself; "and I oughtn't to seem to +trouble you to piece together what I can't piece myself. Only I +'guess,'" he added, "I _can_ piece it." + +She spoke a little timidly, but she risked it. "I dare say I can piece +it too." + +It was one of the things in her--and his conscious face took it from +her as such--that from the moment of her coming in had seemed to mark +for him, as to what concerned him, the long jump of her perception. +They had parted four days earlier with many things, between them, deep +down. But these things were now on their troubled surface, and it +wasn't he who had brought them so quickly up. Women were wonderful--at +least this one was. But so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so, +most of all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what he had been +feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all _such_ +petticoats! It was just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that, +in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with his +putting to his visitor a question that quite passed over her remark. +"Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to our friend?" + +"Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, "_her_ friend also. But not a single word +that I know of." + +He had taken it for certain she hadn't--the thing being after all but a +shade more strange than his having himself, with Milly, never for six +weeks mentioned the young lady in question. It was for that matter but +a shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of +which, and however inconsequently, he blushed anew for Kate's silence. +He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he +could get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been +judging. "How did he manage to get _at_ her? She had only--with what +had passed between them before--to say she couldn't see him." + +"Oh she was disposed to kindness. She was easier," the good lady +explained with a slight embarrassment, "than at the other time." + +"Easier?" + +"She was off her guard. There was a difference." + +"Yes. But exactly not _the_ difference." + +"Exactly not the difference of her having to be harsh. Perfectly. She +could afford to be the opposite." With which, as he said nothing, she +just impatiently completed her sense. "She had had _you_ here for six +weeks." + +"Oh!" Densher softly groaned. + +"Besides, I think he must have written her first--written I mean in a +tone to smooth his way. That it would be a kindness to himself. Then on +the spot--" + +"On the spot," Densher broke in, "he unmasked? The horrid little beast!" + +It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, though quickening, as for +hope, the intensity of her look at him. "Oh he went off without an +alarm." + +"And he must have gone off also without a hope." + +"Ah that, certainly." + +"Then it _was_ mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the +bargain," the young man asked--"didn't he, weeks before, see her, judge +her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a +few months to live?" + +Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and +it gave more force to what she then remarkably added. "He has doubtless +been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been aware." + +"He has wanted her, you mean, just _because_--?" + +"Just because," said Susan Shepherd. + +"The hound!" Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a +hot face, as soon as he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in +his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once more +taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion. +"Shall we have lights--a lamp or the candles?" + +"Not for me." + +"Nothing?" + +"Not for me." + +He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a +thought. "He _will_ have proposed to Miss Croy. That's what has +happened." + +Her reserve continued. "It's you who must judge." + +"Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done so too--only _she_, poor +lady, wrong. Miss Croy's refusal of him will have struck him"--Densher +continued to make it out--"as a phenomenon requiring a reason." + +"And you've been clear to him _as_ the reason?" + +"Not too clear--since I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact +to make his descent on Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has +believed," said Densher bravely, "that I may have been a reason at +Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same time have been up to something in +Venice." + +Mrs. Stringham took her courage from his own. "'Up to' something? Up to +what?" + +"God knows. To some 'game,' as they say. To some deviltry. To some +duplicity." + +"Which of course," Mrs. Stringham observed, "is a monstrous +supposition." Her companion, after a stiff minute--sensibly long for +each--fell away from her again, and then added to it another minute, +which he spent once more looking out with his hands in his pockets. +This was no answer, he perfectly knew, to what she had dropped, and it +even seemed to state for his own ears that no answer was possible. She +left him to himself, and he was glad she had declined, for their +further colloquy, the advantage of lights. These would have been an +advantage mainly to herself. Yet she got her benefit too even from the +absence of them. It came out in her very tone when at last she +addressed him--so differently, for confidence--in words she had already +used. "If Sir Luke himself asks it of you as something you can do for +_him_, will you deny to Milly herself what she has been made so +dreadfully to believe?" + +Oh how he knew he hung back! But at last he said: "You're absolutely +certain then that she does believe it?" + +"Certain?" She appealed to their whole situation. "Judge!" + +He took his time again to judge. "Do _you_ believe it?" + +He was conscious that his own appeal pressed her hard; it eased him a +little that her answer must be a pain to her discretion. She answered +none the less, and he was truly the harder pressed. "What I believe +will inevitably depend more or less on your action. You can perfectly +settle it--if you care. I promise to believe you down to the ground if, +to save her life, you consent to a denial." + +"But a denial, when it comes to that--confound the whole thing, don't +you see!--of exactly what?" + +It was as if he were hoping she would narrow; but in fact she enlarged. +"Of everything." + +Everything had never even yet seemed to him so incalculably much. "Oh!" +he simply moaned into the gloom. + + +IV + +The near Thursday, coming nearer and bringing Sir Luke Strett, brought +also blessedly an abatement of other rigours. The weather changed, the +stubborn storm yielded, and the autumn sunshine, baffled for many days, +but now hot and almost vindictive, came into its own again and, with an +almost audible paean, a suffusion of bright sound that was one with the +bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed and plashed and +called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the +scattered pinks, yellows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of +vivid stuffs, a laying-down of fine carpets. Densher rejoiced in this +on the occasion of his going to the station to meet the great doctor. +He went after consideration, which, as he was constantly aware, was at +present his imposed, his only, way of doing anything. That was where +the event had landed him--where no event in his life had landed him +before. He had thought, no doubt, from the day he was born, much more +than he had acted; except indeed that he remembered thoughts--a few of +them--which at the moment of their coming to him had thrilled him +almost like adventures. But anything like his actual state he had not, +as to the prohibition of impulse, accident, range--the prohibition in +other words of freedom--hitherto known. The great oddity was that if he +had felt his arrival, so few weeks back, especially as an adventure, +nothing could now less resemble one than the fact of his staying. It +would be an adventure to break away, to depart, to go back, above all, +to London, and tell Kate Croy he had done so; but there was something +of the merely, the almost meanly, obliged and involved sort in his +going on as he was. That was the effect in particular of Mrs. +Stringham's visit, which had left him as with such a taste in his mouth +of what he couldn't do. It had made this quantity clear to him, and yet +had deprived him of the sense, the other sense, of what, for a refuge, +he possibly _could_. + +It was but a small make-believe of freedom, he knew, to go to the +station for Sir Luke. Nothing equally free, at all events, had he yet +turned over so long. What then was his odious position but that again +and again he was afraid? He stiffened himself under this consciousness +as if it had been a tax levied by a tyrant. He hadn't at any time +proposed to himself to live long enough for fear to preponderate in his +life. Such was simply the advantage it had actually got of him. He was +afraid for instance that an advance to his distinguished friend might +prove for him somehow a pledge or a committal. He was afraid of it as a +current that would draw him too far; yet he thought with an equal +aversion of being shabby, being poor, through fear. What finally +prevailed with him was the reflexion that, whatever might happen, the +great man had, after that occasion at the palace, their young woman's +brief sacrifice to society--and the hour of Mrs. Stringham's appeal had +brought it well to the surface--shown him marked benevolence. Mrs. +Stringham's comments on the relation in which Milly had placed them +made him--it was unmistakeable--feel things he perhaps hadn't felt. It +was in the spirit of seeking a chance to feel again adequately whatever +it was he had missed--it was, no doubt, in that spirit, so far as it +went a stroke for freedom, that Densher, arriving betimes, paced the +platform before the train came in. Only, after it had come and he had +presented himself at the door of Sir Luke's compartment with everything +that followed--only, as the situation developed, the sense of an +anti-climax to so many intensities deprived his apprehensions and +hesitations even of the scant dignity they might claim. He could scarce +have said if the visitor's manner less showed the remembrance that +might have suggested expectation, or made shorter work of surprise in +presence of the fact. + +Sir Luke had clean forgotten--so Densher read--the rather remarkable +young man he had formerly gone about with, though he picked him up +again, on the spot, with one large quiet look. The young man felt +himself so picked, and the thing immediately affected him as the proof +of a splendid economy. Opposed to all the waste with which he was now +connected the exhibition was of a nature quite nobly to admonish him. +The eminent pilgrim, in the train, all the way, had used the hours as +he needed, thinking not a moment in advance of what finally awaited +him. An exquisite case awaited him--of which, in this queer way, the +remarkable young man was an outlying part; but the single motion of his +face, the motion into which Densher, from the platform, lightly stirred +its stillness, was his first renewed cognition. If, however, he had +suppressed the matter by leaving Victoria he would at once suppress +now, in turn, whatever else suited. The perception of this became as a +symbol of the whole pitch, so far as one might one's self be concerned, +of his visit. One saw, our friend further meditated, everything that, +in contact, he appeared to accept--if only, for much, not to trouble to +sink it: what one missed was the inward use he made of it. Densher +began wondering, at the great water-steps outside, what use he would +make of the anomaly of their having there to separate. Eugenio had been +on the platform, in the respectful rear, and the gondola from the +palace, under his direction, bestirred itself, with its attaching +mixture of alacrity and dignity, on their coming out of the station +together. Densher didn't at all mind now that, he himself of necessity +refusing a seat on the deep black cushions beside the guest of the +palace, he had Milly's three emissaries for spectators; and this +susceptibility, he also knew, it was something to have left behind. All +he did was to smile down vaguely from the steps--they could see him, +the donkeys, as shut out as they would. "I don't," he said with a sad +headshake, "go there now." + +"Oh!" Sir Luke Strett returned, and made no more of it; so that the +thing was splendid, Densher fairly thought, as an inscrutability quite +inevitable and unconscious. His friend appeared not even to make of it +that he supposed it might be for respect to the crisis. He didn't +moreover afterwards make much more of anything--after the classic +craft, that is, obeying in the main Pasquale's inimitable stroke from +the poop, had performed the manoeuvre by which it presented, receding, +a back, so to speak, rendered positively graceful by the high black +hump of its _felze_. Densher watched the gondola out of sight--he heard +Pasquale's cry, borne to him across the water, for the sharp firm +swerve into a side-canal, a short cut to the palace. He had no gondola +of his own; it was his habit never to take one; and he humbly--as in +Venice it _is_ humble--walked away, though not without having for some +time longer stood as if fixed where the guest of the palace had left +him. It was strange enough, but he found himself as never yet, and as +he couldn't have reckoned, in presence of the truth that was the truest +about Milly. He couldn't have reckoned on the force of the difference +instantly made--for it was all in the air as he heard Pasquale's cry +and saw the boat disappear--by the mere visibility, on the spot, of the +personage summoned to her aid. He hadn't only never been near the facts +of her condition--which counted so as a blessing for him; he hadn't +only, with all the world, hovered outside an impenetrable ring fence, +within which there reigned a kind of expensive vagueness made up of +smiles and silences and beautiful fictions and priceless arrangements, +all strained to breaking; but he had also, with every one else, as he +now felt, actively fostered suppressions which were in the direct +interest of every one's good manner, every one's pity, every one's +really quite generous ideal. It was a conspiracy of silence, as the +_cliche_ went, to which no one had made an exception, the great smudge +of mortality across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, finding +in no quarter a surface of spirit or of speech that consented to +reflect it. "The mere aesthetic instinct of mankind--!" our young man +had more than once, in the connexion, said to himself; letting the rest +of the proposition drop, but touching again thus sufficiently on the +outrage even to taste involved in one's having to _see_. So then it had +been--a general conscious fool's paradise, from which the specified had +been chased like a dangerous animal. What therefore had at present +befallen was that the specified, standing all the while at the gate, +had now crossed the threshold as in Sir Luke Strett's person and quite +on such a scale as to fill out the whole precinct. Densher's nerves, +absolutely his heart-beats too, had measured the change before he on +this occasion moved away. + +The facts of physical suffering, of incurable pain, of the chance +grimly narrowed, had been made, at a stroke, intense, and this was to +be the way he was now to feel them. The clearance of the air, in short, +making vision not only possible but inevitable, the one thing left to +be thankful for was the breadth of Sir Luke's shoulders, which, should +one be able to keep in line with them, might in some degree interpose. +It was, however, far from plain to Densher for the first day or two +that he was again to see his distinguished friend at all. That he +couldn't, on any basis actually serving, return to the palace--this was +as solid to him, every whit, as the other feature of his case, the fact +of the publicity attaching to his proscription through his not having +taken himself off. He had been seen often enough in the Leporelli +gondola. As, accordingly, he was not on any presumption destined to +meet Sir Luke about the town, where the latter would have neither time +nor taste to lounge, nothing more would occur between them unless the +great man should surprisingly wait upon him. His doing that, Densher +further reflected, wouldn't even simply depend on Mrs. Stringham's +having decided to--as they might say--turn him on. It would depend as +well--for there would be practically some difference to her--on her +actually attempting it; and it would depend above all on what Sir Luke +would make of such an overture. Densher had for that matter his own +view of the amount, to say nothing of the particular sort, of response +it might expect from him. He had his own view of the ability of such a +personage even to understand such an appeal. To what extent could he be +prepared, and what importance in fine could he attach? Densher asked +himself these questions, in truth, to put his own position at the +worst. He should miss the great man completely unless the great man +should come to see him, and the great man could only come to see him +for a purpose unsupposable. Therefore he wouldn't come at all, and +consequently there was nothing to hope. + +It wasn't in the least that Densher invoked this violence to all +probability; but it pressed on him that there were few possible +diversions he could afford now to miss. Nothing in his predicament was +so odd as that, incontestably afraid of himself, he was not afraid of +Sir Luke. He had an impression, which he clung to, based on a previous +taste of the visitor's company, that _he_ would somehow let him off. +The truth about Milly perched on his shoulders and sounded in his +tread, became by the fact of his presence the name and the form, for +the time, of everything in the place; but it didn't, for the +difference, sit in his face, the face so squarely and easily turned to +Densher at the earlier season. His presence on the first occasion, not +as the result of a summons, but as a friendly whim of his own, had had +quite another value; and though our young man could scarce regard that +value as recoverable he yet reached out in imagination to a renewal of +the old contact. He didn't propose, as he privately and forcibly +phrased the matter, to be a hog; but there was something he after all +did want for himself. It was something--this stuck to him--that Sir +Luke would have had for him if it hadn't been impossible. These were +his worst days, the two or three; those on which even the sense of the +tension at the palace didn't much help him not to feel that his destiny +made but light of him. He had never been, as he judged it, so down. In +mean conditions, without books, without society, almost without money, +he had nothing to do but to wait. His main support really was his +original idea, which didn't leave him, of waiting for the deepest depth +his predicament could sink him to. Fate would invent, if he but gave it +time, some refinement of the horrible. It was just inventing meanwhile +this suppression of Sir Luke. When the third day came without a sign he +knew what to think. He had given Mrs. Stringham during her call on him +no such answer as would have armed her faith, and the ultimatum she had +described as ready for him when _he_ should be ready was therefore--if +on no other ground than her want of this power to answer for him--not +to be presented. The presentation, heaven knew, was not what he desired. + +That was not, either, we hasten to declare--as Densher then soon enough +saw--the idea with which Sir Luke finally stood before him again. For +stand before him again he finally did; just when our friend had +gloomily embraced the belief that the limit of his power to absent +himself from London obligations would have been reached. Four or five +days, exclusive of journeys, represented the largest supposable +sacrifice--to a head not crowned--on the part of one of the highest +medical lights in the world; so that really when the personage in +question, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in the +doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision that for the instant cut +like a knife. It spoke, the fact, and in a single dreadful word, of the +magnitude--he shrank from calling it anything else--of Milly's case. +The great man had not gone then, and an immense surrender to her +immense need was so expressed in it that some effect, some help, some +hope, were flagrantly part of the expression. It was for Densher, with +his reaction from disappointment, as if he were conscious of ten things +at once--the foremost being that just conceivably, since Sir Luke _was_ +still there, she had been saved. Close upon its heels, however, and +quite as sharply, came the sense that the crisis--plainly even now to +be prolonged for him--was to have none of that sound simplicity. Not +only had his visitor not dropped in to gossip about Milly, he hadn't +dropped in to mention her at all; he had dropped in fairly to show that +during the brief remainder of his stay, the end of which was now in +sight, as little as possible of that was to be looked for. The +demonstration, such as it was, was in the key of their previous +acquaintance, and it was their previous acquaintance that had made him +come. He was not to stop longer than the Saturday next at hand, but +there were things of interest he should like to see again meanwhile. It +was for these things of interest, for Venice and the opportunity of +Venice, for a prowl or two, as he called it, and a turn about, that he +had looked his young man up--producing on the latter's part, as soon as +the case had, with the lapse of a further twenty-four hours, so defined +itself, the most incongruous, yet most beneficent revulsion. Nothing +could in fact have been more monstrous on the surface--and Densher was +well aware of it--than the relief he found during this short period in +the tacit drop of all reference to the palace, in neither hearing news +nor asking for it. That was what had come out for him, on his visitor's +entrance, even in the very seconds of suspense that were connecting the +fact also directly and intensely with Milly's state. He had come to say +he had saved her--he had come, as from Mrs. Stringham, to say how she +might _be_ saved--he had come, in spite of Mrs. Stringham, to say she +was lost: the distinct throbs of hope, of fear, simultaneous for all +their distinctness, merged their identity in a bound of the heart just +as immediate and which remained after they had passed. It simply did +wonders for him--this was the truth--that Sir Luke was, as he would +have said, quiet. + +The result of it was the oddest consciousness as of a blest calm after +a storm. He had been trying for weeks, as we know, to keep +superlatively still, and trying it largely in solitude and silence; but +he looked back on it now as on the heat of fever. The real, the right +stillness was this particular form of society. They walked together and +they talked, looked up pictures again and recovered impressions--Sir +Luke knew just what he wanted; haunted a little the dealers in old +wares; sat down at Florian's for rest and mild drinks; blessed above +all the grand weather, a bath of warm air, a pageant of autumn light. +Once or twice while they rested the great man closed his eyes--keeping +them so for some minutes while his companion, the more easily watching +his face for it, made private reflexions on the subject of lost sleep. +He had been up at night with her--he in person, for hours; but this was +all he showed of it and was apparently to remain his nearest approach +to an allusion. The extraordinary thing was that Densher could take it +in perfectly as evidence, could turn cold at the image looking out of +it; and yet that he could at the same time not intermit a throb of his +response to accepted liberation. The liberation was an experience that +held its own, and he continued to know why, in spite of his deserts, in +spite of his folly, in spite of everything, he had so fondly hoped for +it. He had hoped for it, had sat in his room there waiting for it, +because he had thus divined in it, should it come, some power to let +him off. He was _being_ let off; dealt with in the only way that didn't +aggravate his responsibility. The beauty was also that this wasn't on +system or on any basis of intimate knowledge; it was just by being a +man of the world and by knowing life, by feeling the real, that Sir +Luke did him good. There had been in all the case too many women. A +man's sense of it, another man's, changed the air; and he wondered what +man, had he chosen, would have been more to his purpose than this one. +He was large and easy--that was the benediction; he knew what mattered +and what didn't; he distinguished between the essence and the shell, +the just grounds and the unjust for fussing. One was thus--if one were +concerned with him or exposed to him at all--in his hands for whatever +he should do, and not much less affected by his mercy than one might +have been by his rigour. The grand thing--it did come to that--was the +way he carried off, as one might fairly call it, the business of making +odd things natural. Nothing, if they hadn't taken it so, could have +exceeded the unexplained oddity, between them, of Densher's now +complete detachment from the poor ladies at the palace; nothing could +have exceeded the no less marked anomaly of the great man's own +abstentions of speech. He made, as he had done when they met at the +station, nothing whatever of anything; and the effect of it, Densher +would have said, was a relation with him quite resembling that of +doctor and patient. One took the cue from him as one might have taken a +dose--except that the cue was pleasant in the taking. + +That was why one could leave it to his tacit discretion, why for the +three or four days Densher again and again did so leave it; merely +wondering a little, at the most, on the eve of Saturday, the announced +term of the episode. Waiting once more on this latter occasion, the +Saturday morning, for Sir Luke's reappearance at the station, our +friend had to recognise the drop of his own borrowed ease, the result, +naturally enough, of the prospect of losing a support. The difficulty +was that, on such lines as had served them, the support was Sir Luke's +personal presence. Would he go without leaving some substitute for +that?--and without breaking, either, his silence in respect to his +errand? Densher was in still deeper ignorance than at the hour of his +call, and what was truly prodigious at so supreme a moment was that--as +had immediately to appear--no gleam of light on what he had been living +with for a week found its way out of him. What he had been doing was +proof of a huge interest as well as of a huge fee; yet when the +Leporelli gondola again, and somewhat tardily, approached, his +companion, watching from the water-steps, studied his fine closed face +as much as ever in vain. It was like a lesson, from the highest +authority, on the subject of the relevant, so that its blankness +affected Densher of a sudden almost as a cruelty, feeling it quite +awfully compatible, as he did, with Milly's having ceased to exist. And +the suspense continued after they had passed together, as time was +short, directly into the station, where Eugenio, in the field early, +was mounting guard over the compartment he had secured. The strain, +though probably lasting, at the carriage-door, but a couple of minutes, +prolonged itself so for our poor gentleman's nerves that he +involuntarily directed a long look at Eugenio, who met it, however, as +only Eugenio could. Sir Luke's attention was given for the time to the +right bestowal of his numerous effects, about which he was particular, +and Densher fairly found himself, so far as silence could go, +questioning the representative of the palace. It didn't humiliate him +now; it didn't humiliate him even to feel that that personage exactly +knew how little he satisfied him. Eugenio resembled to that extent Sir +Luke--to the extent of the extraordinary things with which his facial +habit was compatible. By the time, however, that Densher had taken from +it all its possessor intended Sir Luke was free and with a hand out for +farewell. He offered the hand at first without speech; only on meeting +his eyes could our young man see that they had never yet so completely +looked at him. It was never, with Sir Luke, that they looked harder at +one time than at another; but they looked longer, and this, even a +shade of it, might mean on his part everything. It meant, Densher for +ten seconds believed, that Milly Theale was dead; so that the word at +last spoken made him start. + +"I shall come back." + +"Then she's better?" + +"I shall come back within the month," Sir Luke repeated without heeding +the question. He had dropped Densher's hand, but he held him otherwise +still. "I bring you a message from Miss Theale," he said as if they +hadn't spoken of her. "I'm commissioned to ask you from her to go and +see her." + +Densher's rebound from his supposition had a violence that his stare +betrayed. "She asks me?" + +Sir Luke had got into the carriage, the door of which the guard had +closed; but he spoke again as he stood at the window, bending a little +but not leaning out. "She told me she'd like it, and I promised that, +as I expected to find you here, I'd let you know." + +Densher, on the platform, took it from him, but what he took brought +the blood into his face quite as what he had had to take from Mrs. +Stringham. And he was also bewildered. "Then she can receive--?" + +"She can receive you." + +"And you're coming back--?" + +"Oh because I must. She's not to move. She's to stay. I come to her." + +"I see, I see," said Densher, who indeed did see--saw the sense of his +friend's words and saw beyond it as well. What Mrs. Stringham had +announced, and what he had yet expected not to have to face, _had_ then +come. Sir Luke had kept it for the last, but there it was, and the +colourless compact form it was now taking--the tone of one man of the +world to another, who, after what had happened, would understand--was +but the characteristic manner of his appeal. Densher was to understand +remarkably much; and the great thing certainly was to show that he did. +"I'm particularly obliged, I'll go to-day." He brought that out, but in +his pause, while they continued to look at each other, the train had +slowly creaked into motion. There was time but for one more word, and +the young man chose it, out of twenty, with intense concentration. +"Then she's better?" + +Sir Luke's face was wonderful. "Yes, she's better." And he kept it at +the window while the train receded, holding him with it still. It was +to be his nearest approach to the utter reference they had hitherto so +successfully avoided. If it stood for everything; never had a face had +to stand for more. So Densher, held after the train had gone, sharply +reflected; so he reflected, asking himself into what abyss it pushed +him, even while conscious of retreating under the maintained +observation of Eugenio. + + + + +BOOK TENTH + + + +I + +"Then it has been--what do you say? a whole fortnight?--without your +making a sign?" + +Kate put that to him distinctly, in the December dusk of Lancaster Gate +and on the matter of the time he had been back; but he saw with it +straightway that she was as admirably true as ever to her +instinct--which was a system as well--of not admitting the possibility +between them of small resentments, of trifles to trip up their general +trust. That by itself, the renewed beauty of it, would at this fresh +sight of her have stirred him to his depths if something else, +something no less vivid but quite separate, hadn't stirred him still +more. It was in seeing her that he felt what their interruption had +been, and that they met across it even as persons whose adventures, on +either side, in time and space, of the nature of perils and exiles, had +had a peculiar strangeness. He wondered if he were as different for her +as she herself had immediately appeared: which was but his way indeed +of taking in, with his thrill, that--even going by the mere first +look--she had never been so handsome. That fact bloomed for him, in the +firelight and lamplight that glowed their welcome through the London +fog, as the flower of her difference; just as her difference +itself--part of which was her striking him as older in a degree for +which no mere couple of months could account--was the fruit of their +intimate relation. If she was different it was because they had chosen +together that she should be, and she might now, as a proof of their +wisdom, their success, of the reality of what had happened--of what in +fact, for the spirit of each, was still happening--been showing it to +him for pride. His having returned and yet kept, for numbered days, so +still, had been, he was quite aware, the first point he should have to +tackle; with which consciousness indeed he had made a clean breast of +it in finally addressing Mrs. Lowder a note that had led to his present +visit. He had written to Aunt Maud as the finer way; and it would +doubtless have been to be noted that he needed no effort not to write +to Kate. Venice was three weeks behind him--he had come up slowly; but +it was still as if even in London he must conform to her law. That was +exactly how he was able, with his faith in her steadiness, to appeal to +her feeling for the situation and explain his stretched delicacy. He +had come to tell her everything, so far as occasion would serve them; +and if nothing was more distinct than that his slow journey, his waits, +his delay to reopen communication had kept pace with this resolve, so +the inconsequence was doubtless at bottom but one of the elements of +intensity. He was gathering everything up, everything he should tell +her. That took time, and the proof was that, as he felt on the spot, he +couldn't have brought it all with him before this afternoon. He _had_ +brought it, to the last syllable, and, out of the quantity it wouldn't +be hard--as he in fact found--to produce, for Kate's understanding, his +first reason. + +"A fortnight, yes--it was a fortnight Friday; but I've only been +keeping in, you see, with our wonderful system." He was so easily +justified as that this of itself plainly enough prevented her saying +she didn't see. Their wonderful system was accordingly still vivid for +her; and such a gage of its equal vividness for himself was precisely +what she must have asked. He hadn't even to dot his i's beyond the +remark that on the very face of it, she would remember, their wonderful +system attached no premium to rapidities of transition. "I couldn't +quite--don't you know?--take my rebound with a rush; and I suppose I've +been instinctively hanging off to minimise, for you as well as for +myself, the appearances of rushing. There's a sort of fitness. But I +knew you'd understand." It was presently as if she really understood so +well that she almost appealed from his insistence--yet looking at him +too, he was not unconscious, as if this mastery of fitnesses was a +strong sign for her of what she had done to him. He might have struck +her as expert for contingencies in the very degree of her having in +Venice struck _him_ as expert. He smiled over his plea for a renewal +with stages and steps, a thing shaded, as they might say, and +graduated; though--finely as she must respond--she met the smile but as +she had met his entrance five minutes before. Her soft gravity at that +moment--which was yet not solemnity, but the look of a consciousness +charged with life to the brim and wishing not to overflow--had not +qualified her welcome; what had done this being much more the presence +in the room, for a couple of minutes, of the footman who had introduced +him and who had been interrupted in preparing the tea-table. + +Mrs. Lowder's reply to Densher's note had been to appoint the tea-hour, +five o'clock on Sunday, for his seeing them. Kate had thereafter wired +him, without a signature, "Come on Sunday _before_ tea--about a quarter +of an hour, which will help us"; and he had arrived therefore +scrupulously at twenty minutes to five. Kate was alone in the room and +hadn't delayed to tell him that Aunt Maud, as she had happily gathered, +was to be, for the interval--not long but precious--engaged with an old +servant, retired and pensioned, who had been paying her a visit and who +was within the hour to depart again for the suburbs. They were to have +the scrap of time, after the withdrawal of the footman, to themselves, +and there was a moment when, in spite of their wonderful system, in +spite of the proscription of rushes and the propriety of shades, it +proclaimed itself indeed precious. And all without prejudice--that was +what kept it noble--to Kate's high sobriety and her beautiful +self-command. If he had his discretion she had her perfect manner, +which was _her_ decorum. Mrs. Stringham, he had, to finish with the +question of his delay, furthermore observed, Mrs. Stringham would have +written to Mrs. Lowder of his having quitted the place; so that it +wasn't as if he were hoping to cheat them. They'd know he was no longer +there. + +"Yes, we've known it." + +"And you continue to hear?" + +"From Mrs. Stringham? Certainly. By which I mean Aunt Maud does." + +"Then you've recent news?" + +Her face showed a wonder. "Up to within a day or two I believe. But +haven't _you?_" + +"No--I've heard nothing." And it was now that he felt how much he had +to tell her. "I don't get letters. But I've been sure Mrs. Lowder +does." With which he added: "Then of course you know." He waited as if +she would show what she knew; but she only showed in silence the dawn +of a surprise that she couldn't control. There was nothing but for him +to ask what he wanted. "Is Miss Theale alive?" + +Kate's look at this was large. "Don't you _know?_" + +"How should I, my dear--in the absence of everything?" And he himself +stared as for light. "She's dead?" Then as with her eyes on him she +slowly shook her head he uttered a strange "Not yet?" + +It came out in Kate's face that there were several questions on her +lips, but the one she presently put was: "Is it very terrible?" + +"The manner of her so consciously and helplessly dying?" He had to +think a moment. "Well, yes--since you ask me: very terrible to _me_--so +far as, before I came away, I had any sight of it. But I don't think," +he went on, "that--though I'll try--I _can_ quite tell you what it was, +what it is, for me. That's why I probably just sounded to you," he +explained, "as if I hoped it might be over." + +She gave him her quietest attention, but he by this time saw that, so +far as telling her all was concerned, she would be divided between the +wish and the reluctance to hear it; between the curiosity that, not +unnaturally, would consume her and the opposing scruple of a respect +for misfortune. The more she studied him too--and he had never so felt +her closely attached to his face--the more the choice of an attitude +would become impossible to her. There would simply be a feeling +uppermost, and the feeling wouldn't be eagerness. This perception grew +in him fast, and he even, with his imagination, had for a moment the +quick forecast of her possibly breaking out at him, should he go too +far, with a wonderful: "What horrors are you telling me?" It would have +the sound--wouldn't it be open to him fairly to bring that out +himself?--of a repudiation, for pity and almost for shame, of +everything that in Venice had passed between them. Not that she would +confess to any return upon herself; not that she would let compunction +or horror give her away; but it was in the air for him--yes--that she +wouldn't want details, that she positively wouldn't take them, and +that, if he would generously understand it from her, she would prefer +to keep him down. Nothing, however, was more definite for him than that +at the same time he must remain down but so far as it suited him. +Something rose strong within him against his not being free with her. +She had been free enough about it all, three months before, with _him_. +That was what she was at present only in the sense of treating him +handsomely. "I can believe," she said with perfect consideration, "how +dreadful for you much of it must have been." + +He didn't however take this up; there were things about which he wished +first to be clear. "There's no other possibility, by what you now know? +I mean for her life." And he had just to insist--she would say as +little as she could. "She _is_ dying?" + +"She's dying." + +It was strange to him, in the matter of Milly, that Lancaster Gate +could make him any surer; yet what in the world, in the matter of +Milly, wasn't strange? Nothing was so much so as his own behaviour--his +present as well as his past. He could but do as he must. "Has Sir Luke +Strett," he asked, "gone back to her?" + +"I believe he's there now." + +"Then," said Densher, "it's the end." + +She took it in silence for whatever he deemed it to be; but she spoke +otherwise after a minute. "You won't know, unless you've perhaps seen +him yourself, that Aunt Maud has been to him." + +"Oh!" Densher exclaimed, with nothing to add to it. + +"For real news," Kate herself after an instant added. + +"She hasn't thought Mrs. Stringham's real?" + +"It's perhaps only I who haven't. It was on Aunt Maud's trying again +three days ago to see him that she heard at his house of his having +gone. He had started I believe some days before." + +"And won't then by this time be back?" + +Kate shook her head. "She sent yesterday to know." + +"He won't leave her then"--Densher had turned it over--"while she +lives. He'll stay to the end. He's magnificent." + +"I think _she_ is," said Kate. + +It had made them again look at each other long; and what it drew from +him rather oddly was: "Oh you don't know!" + +"Well, she's after all my friend." + +It was somehow, with her handsome demur, the answer he had least +expected of her; and it fanned with its breath, for a brief instant, +his old sense of her variety. "I see. You would have been sure of it. +You _were_ sure of it." + +"Of course I was sure of it." + +And a pause again, with this, fell upon them; which Densher, however, +presently broke. "If you don't think Mrs. Stringham's news 'real' what +do you think of Lord Mark's?" + +She didn't think anything. "Lord Mark's?" + +"You haven't seen him?" + +"Not since he saw her." + +"You've known then of his seeing her?" + +"Certainly. From Mrs. Stringham." + +"And have you known," Densher went on, "the rest?" + +Kate wondered. "What rest?" + +"Why everything. It was his visit that she couldn't stand--it was what +then took place that simply killed her." + +"Oh!" Kate seriously breathed. But she had turned pale, and he saw +that, whatever her degree of ignorance of these connexions, it wasn't +put on. "Mrs. Stringham hasn't said _that_." + +He observed none the less that she didn't ask what had then taken +place; and he went on with his contribution to her knowledge. "The way +it affected her was that it made her give up. She has given up beyond +all power to care again, and that's why she's dying." + +"Oh!" Kate once more slowly sighed, but with a vagueness that made him +pursue. + +"One can see now that she was living by will--which was very much what +you originally told me of her." + +"I remember. That was it." + +"Well then her will, at a given moment, broke down, and the collapse +was determined by that fellow's dastardly stroke. He told her, the +scoundrel, that you and I are secretly engaged." + +Kate gave a quick glare. "But he doesn't know it!" + +"That doesn't matter. _She_ did by the time he had left her. Besides," +Densher added, "he does know it. When," he continued, "did you last see +him?" + +But she was lost now in the picture before her. "_That_ was what made +her worse?" + +He watched her take it in--it so added to her sombre beauty. Then he +spoke as Mrs. Stringham had spoken. "She turned her face to the wall." + +"Poor Milly!" said Kate. + +Slight as it was, her beauty somehow gave it style; so that he +continued consistently: "She learned it, you see, too soon--since of +course one's idea had been that she might never even learn it at all. +And she _had_ felt sure--through everything we had done--of there not +being between us, so far at least as you were concerned, anything she +need regard as a warning." + +She took another moment for thought. "It wasn't through anything _you_ +did--whatever that may have been--that she gained her certainty. It was +by the conviction she got from me." + +"Oh it's very handsome," Densher said, "for you to take your share!" + +"Do you suppose," Kate asked, "that I think of denying it?" + +Her look and her tone made him for the instant regret his comment, +which indeed had been the first that rose to his lips as an effect +absolutely of what they would have called between them her +straightness. Her straightness, visibly, was all his own loyalty could +ask. Still, that was comparatively beside the mark. "Of course I don't +suppose anything but that we're together in our recognitions, our +responsibilities--whatever we choose to call them. It isn't a question +for us of apportioning shares or distinguishing invidiously among such +impressions as it was our idea to give." + +"It wasn't _your_ idea to give impressions," said Kate. + +He met this with a smile that he himself felt, in its strained +character, as queer. "Don't go into that!" + +It was perhaps not as going into it that she had another idea--an idea +born, she showed, of the vision he had just evoked. "Wouldn't it have +been possible then to deny the truth of the information? I mean of Lord +Mark's." + +Densher wondered. "Possible for whom?" + +"Why for you." + +"To tell her he lied?" + +"To tell her he's mistaken." + +Densher stared--he was stupefied; the "possible" thus glanced at by +Kate being exactly the alternative he had had to face in Venice and to +put utterly away from him. Nothing was stranger than such a difference +in their view of it. "And to lie myself, you mean, to do it? We _are_, +my dear child," he said, "I suppose, still engaged." + +"Of course we're still engaged. But to save her life--!" + +He took in for a little the way she talked of it. Of course, it was to +be remembered, she had always simplified, and it brought back his sense +of the degree in which, to her energy as compared with his own, many +things were easy; the very sense that so often before had moved him to +admiration. "Well, if you must know--and I want you to be clear about +it--I didn't even seriously think of a denial to her face. The question +of it--_as_ possibly saving her--was put to me definitely enough; but +to turn it over was only to dismiss it. Besides," he added, "it +wouldn't have done any good." + +"You mean she would have had no faith in your correction?" She had +spoken with a promptitude that affected him of a sudden as almost glib; +but he himself paused with the overweight of all he meant, and she +meanwhile went on. "Did you try?" + +"I hadn't even a chance." + +Kate maintained her wonderful manner, the manner of at once having it +all before her and yet keeping it all at its distance. "She wouldn't +see you?" + +"Not after your friend had been with her." + +She hesitated. "Couldn't you write?" + +It made him also think, but with a difference. "She had turned her face +to the wall." + +This again for a moment hushed her, and they were both too grave now +for parenthetic pity. But her interest came out for at least the +minimum of light. "She refused even to let you speak to her?" + +"My dear girl," Densher returned, "she was miserably, prohibitively +ill." + +"Well, that was what she had been before." + +"And it didn't prevent? No," Densher admitted, "it didn't; and I don't +pretend that she's not magnificent." + +"She's prodigious," said Kate Croy. + +He looked at her a moment. "So are you, my dear. But that's how it is," +he wound up; "and there we are." + +His idea had been in advance that she would perhaps sound him much more +deeply, asking him above all two or three specific things. He had +fairly fancied her even wanting to know and trying to find out how far, +as the odious phrase was, he and Milly had gone, and how near, by the +same token, they had come. He had asked himself if he were prepared to +hear her do that, and had had to take for answer that he was prepared +of course for everything. Wasn't he prepared for her ascertaining if +her two or three prophecies had found time to be made true? He had +fairly believed himself ready to say whether or no the overture on +Milly's part promised according to the boldest of them had taken place. +But what was in fact blessedly coming to him was that so far as such +things were concerned his readiness wouldn't be taxed. Kate's pressure +on the question of what had taken place remained so admirably general +that even her present enquiry kept itself free of sharpness. "So then +that after Lord Mark's interference you never again met?" + +It was what he had been all the while coming to. "No; we met once--so +far as it could be called a meeting. I had stayed--I didn't come away." + +"That," said Kate, "was no more than decent." + +"Precisely"--he felt himself wonderful; "and I wanted to be no less. +She sent for me, I went to her, and that night I left Venice." + +His companion waited. "Wouldn't _that_ then have been your chance?" + +"To refute Lord Mark's story? No, not even if before her there I had +wanted to. What did it signify either? She was dying." + +"Well," Kate in a manner persisted, "why not just _because_ she was +dying?" She had however all her discretion. "But of course I know that +seeing her you could judge." + +"Of course seeing her I could judge. And I did see her! If I had denied +you moreover," Densher said with his eyes on her, "I'd have stuck to +it." + +She took for a moment the intention of his face. "You mean that to +convince her you'd have insisted or somehow proved--?" + +"I mean that to convince _you_ I'd have insisted or somehow proved--!" + +Kate looked for her moment at a loss. "To convince 'me'?" + +"I wouldn't have made my denial, in such conditions, only to take it +back afterwards." + +With this quickly light came for her, and with it also her colour +flamed. "Oh you'd have broken with me to make your denial a truth? +You'd have 'chucked' me"--she embraced it perfectly--"to save your +conscience?" + +"I couldn't have done anything else," said Merton Densher. "So you see +how right I was not to commit myself, and how little I could dream of +it. If it ever again appears to you that I _might_ have done so, +remember what I say." + +Kate again considered, but not with the effect at once to which he +pointed. "You've fallen in love with her." + +"Well then say so--with a dying woman. Why need you mind and what does +it matter?" + +It came from him, the question, straight out of the intensity of +relation and the face-to-face necessity into which, from the first, +from his entering the room, they had found themselves thrown; but it +gave them their most extraordinary moment. "Wait till she is dead! Mrs. +Stringham," Kate added, "is to telegraph." After which, in a tone still +different, "For what then," she asked, "did Milly send for you?" + +"It was what I tried to make out before I went. I must tell you +moreover that I had no doubt of its really being to give me, as you +say, a chance. She believed, I suppose, that I _might_ deny; and what, +to my own mind, was before me in going to her was the certainty that +she'd put me to my test. She wanted from my own lips--so I saw it--the +truth. But I was with her for twenty minutes, and she never asked me +for it." + +"She never wanted the truth"--Kate had a high headshake. "She wanted +_you_. She would have taken from you what you could give her and been +glad of it, even if she had known it false. You might have lied to her +from pity, and she have seen you and felt you lie, and yet--since it +was all for tenderness--she would have thanked you and blessed you and +clung to you but the more. For that was your strength, my dear +man--that she loves you with passion." + +"Oh my 'strength'!" Densher coldly murmured. + +"Otherwise, since she had sent for you, what was it to ask of you?" And +then--quite without irony--as he waited a moment to say: "Was it just +once more to look at you?" + +"She had nothing to ask of me--nothing, that is, but not to stay any +longer. She did to that extent want to see me. She had supposed at +first--after he had been with her--that I had seen the propriety of +taking myself off. Then since I hadn't--seeing my propriety as I did in +another way--she found, days later, that I was still there. This," said +Densher, "affected her." + +"Of course it affected her." + +Again she struck him, for all her dignity, as glib. "If it was somehow +for _her_ I was still staying, she wished that to end, she wished me to +know how little there was need of it. And as a manner of farewell she +wished herself to tell me so." + +"And she did tell you so?" + +"Face-to-face, yes. Personally, as she desired." + +"And as _you_ of course did." + +"No, Kate," he returned with all their mutual consideration; "not as I +did. I hadn't desired it in the least." + +"You only went to oblige her?" + +"To oblige her. And of course also to oblige you." + +"Oh for myself certainly I'm glad." + +"'Glad'?"--he echoed vaguely the way it rang out. + +"I mean you did quite the right thing. You did it especially in having +stayed. But that was all?" Kate went on. "That you mustn't wait?" + +"That was really all--and in perfect kindness." + +"Ah kindness naturally: from the moment she asked of you such a--well, +such an effort. That you mustn't wait--that was the point," Kate +added--"to see her die." + +"That was the point, my dear," Densher said. + +"And it took twenty minutes to make it?" + +He thought a little. "I didn't time it to a second. I paid her the +visit--just like another." + +"Like another person?" + +"Like another visit." + +"Oh!" said Kate. Which had apparently the effect of slightly arresting +his speech--an arrest she took advantage of to continue; making with it +indeed her nearest approach to an enquiry of the kind against which he +had braced himself. "Did she receive you--in her condition--in her +room?" + +"Not she," said Merton Densher. "She received me just as usual: in that +glorious great _salone_, in the dress she always wears, from her +inveterate corner of her sofa." And his face for the moment conveyed +the scene, just as hers equally embraced it. "Do you remember what you +originally said to me of her?" + +"Ah I've said so many things." + +"That she wouldn't smell of drugs, that she wouldn't taste of medicine. +Well, she didn't." + +"So that it was really almost happy?" + +It took him a long time to answer, occupied as he partly was in feeling +how nobody but Kate could have invested such a question with the tone +that was perfectly right. She meanwhile, however, patiently waited. "I +don't think I can attempt to say now what it was. Some day--perhaps. +For it would be worth it for us." + +"Some day--certainly." She seemed to record the promise. Yet she spoke +again abruptly. "She'll recover." + +"Well," said Densher, "you'll see." + +She had the air an instant of trying to. "Did she show anything of her +feeling? I mean," Kate explained, "of her feeling of having been +misled." + +She didn't press hard, surely; but he had just mentioned that he would +have rather to glide. "She showed nothing but her beauty and her +strength." + +"Then," his companion asked, "what's the use of her strength?" + +He seemed to look about for a use he could name; but he had soon given +it up. "She must die, my dear, in her own extraordinary way." + +"Naturally. But I don't see then what proof you have that she was ever +alienated." + +"I have the proof that she refused for days and days to see me." + +"But she was ill." + +"That hadn't prevented her--as you yourself a moment ago said--during +the previous time. If it had been only illness it would have made no +difference with her." + +"She would still have received you?" + +"She would still have received me." + +"Oh well," said Kate, "if you know--!" + +"Of course I know. I know moreover as well from Mrs. Stringham." + +"And what does Mrs. Stringham know?" + +"Everything." + +She looked at him longer. "Everything?" + +"Everything." + +"Because you've told her?" + +"Because she has seen for herself. I've told her nothing. She's a +person who does see." + +Kate thought. "That's by her liking you too. She as well is prodigious. +You see what interest in a man does. It does it all round. So you +needn't be afraid." + +"I'm not afraid," said Densher. + +Kate moved from her place then, looking at the clock, which marked +five. She gave her attention to the tea-table, where Aunt Maud's huge +silver kettle, which had been exposed to its lamp and which she had not +soon enough noticed, was hissing too hard. "Well, it's all most +wonderful!" she exclaimed as she rather too profusely--a sign her +friend noticed--ladled tea into the pot. He watched her a moment at +this occupation, coming nearer the table while she put in the steaming +water. "You'll have some?" + +He hesitated. "Hadn't we better wait--?" + +"For Aunt Maud?" She saw what he meant--the deprecation, by their old +law, of betrayals of the intimate note. "Oh you needn't mind now. We've +done it!" + +"Humbugged her?" + +"Squared her. You've pleased her." + +Densher mechanically accepted his tea. He was thinking of something +else, and his thought in a moment came out. "What a brute then I must +be!" + +"A brute--?" + +"To have pleased so many people." + +"Ah," said Kate with a gleam of gaiety, "you've done it to please +_me_." But she was already, with her gleam, reverting a little. "What I +don't understand is--won't you have any sugar?" + +"Yes, please." + +"What I don't understand," she went on when she had helped him, "is +what it was that had occurred to bring her round again. If she gave you +up for days and days, what brought her back to you?" + +She asked the question with her own cup in her hand, but it found him +ready enough in spite of his sense of the ironic oddity of their going +into it over the tea-table. "It was Sir Luke Strett who brought her +back. His visit, his presence there did it." + +"He brought her back then to life." + +"Well, to what I saw." + +"And by interceding for you?" + +"I don't think he interceded. I don't indeed know what he did." + +Kate wondered. "Didn't he tell you?" + +"I didn't ask him. I met him again, but we practically didn't speak of +her." + +Kate stared. "Then how do you know?" + +"I see. I feel. I was with him again as I had been before--" + +"Oh and you pleased him too? That was it?" + +"He understood," said Densher. + +"But understood what?" + +He waited a moment. "That I had meant awfully well." + +"Ah, and made _her_ understand? I see," she went on as he said nothing. +"But how did he convince her?" + +Densher put down his cup and turned away. "You must ask Sir Luke." + +He stood looking at the fire and there was a time without sound. "The +great thing," Kate then resumed, "is that she's satisfied. Which," she +continued, looking across at him, "is what I've worked for." + +"Satisfied to die in the flower of her youth?" + +"Well, at peace with you." + +"Oh 'peace'!" he murmured with his eyes on the fire. + +"The peace of having loved." + +He raised his eyes to her. "Is _that_ peace?" + +"Of having _been_ loved," she went on. "That is. Of having," she wound +up, "realised her passion. She wanted nothing more. She has had _all_ +she wanted." + +Lucid and always grave, she gave this out with a beautiful authority +that he could for the time meet with no words. He could only again look +at her, though with the sense in so doing that he made her more than he +intended take his silence for assent. Quite indeed as if she did so +take it she quitted the table and came to the fire. "You may think it +hideous that I should now, that I should _yet_"--she made a point of +the word--"pretend to draw conclusions. But we've not failed." + +"Oh!" he only again murmured. + +She was once more close to him, close as she had been the day she came +to him in Venice, the quickly returning memory of which intensified and +enriched the fact. He could practically deny in such conditions nothing +that she said, and what she said was, with it, visibly, a fruit of that +knowledge. "We've succeeded." She spoke with her eyes deep in his own. +"She won't have loved you for nothing." It made him wince, but she +insisted. "And you won't have loved _me_." + + +II + +He was to remain for several days under the deep impression of this +inclusive passage, so luckily prolonged from moment to moment, but +interrupted at its climax, as may be said, by the entrance of Aunt +Maud, who found them standing together near the fire. The bearings of +the colloquy, however, sharp as they were, were less sharp to his +intelligence, strangely enough, than those of a talk with Mrs. Lowder +alone for which she soon gave him--or for which perhaps rather Kate +gave him--full occasion. What had happened on her at last joining them +was to conduce, he could immediately see, to her desiring to have him +to herself. Kate and he, no doubt, at the opening of the door, had +fallen apart with a certain suddenness, so that she had turned her hard +fine eyes from one to the other; but the effect of this lost itself, to +his mind, the next minute, in the effect of his companion's rare +alertness. She instantly spoke to her aunt of what had first been +uppermost for herself, inviting her thereby intimately to join them, +and doing it the more happily also, no doubt, because the fact she +resentfully named gave her ample support. "Had you quite understood, my +dear, that it's full three weeks--?" And she effaced herself as if to +leave Mrs. Lowder to deal from her own point of view with this +extravagance. Densher of course straightway noted that his cue for the +protection of Kate was to make, no less, all of it he could; and their +tracks, as he might have said, were fairly covered by the time their +hostess had taken afresh, on his renewed admission, the measure of his +scant eagerness. Kate had moved away as if no great showing were needed +for her personal situation to be seen as delicate. She had been +entertaining their visitor on her aunt's behalf--a visitor she had been +at one time suspected of favouring too much and who had now come back +to them as the stricken suitor of another person. It wasn't that the +fate of the other person, her exquisite friend, didn't, in its tragic +turn, also concern herself: it was only that her acceptance of Mr. +Densher as a source of information could scarcely help having an +awkwardness. She invented the awkwardness under Densher's eyes, and he +marvelled on his side at the instant creation. It served her as the +fine cloud that hangs about a goddess in an epic, and the young man was +but vaguely to know at what point of the rest of his visit she had, for +consideration, melted into it and out of sight. + +He was taken up promptly with another matter--the truth of the +remarkable difference, neither more nor less, that the events of Venice +had introduced into his relation with Aunt Maud and that these weeks of +their separation had caused quite richly to ripen for him. She had not +sat down to her tea-table before he felt himself on terms with her that +were absolutely new, nor could she press on him a second cup without +her seeming herself, and quite wittingly, so to define and establish +them. She regretted, but she quite understood, that what was taking +place had obliged him to hang off; they had--after hearing of him from +poor Susan as gone--been hoping for an early sight of him; they would +have been interested, naturally, in his arriving straight from the +scene. Yet she needed no reminder that the scene precisely--by which +she meant the tragedy that had so detained and absorbed him, the +memory, the shadow, the sorrow of it--was what marked him for +unsociability. She thus presented him to himself, as it were, in the +guise in which she had now adopted him, and it was the element of truth +in the character that he found himself, for his own part, adopting. She +treated him as blighted and ravaged, as frustrate and already bereft; +and for him to feel that this opened for him a new chapter of frankness +with her he scarce had also to perceive how it smoothed his approaches +to Kate. It made the latter accessible as she hadn't yet begun to be; +it set up for him at Lancaster Gate an association positively hostile +to any other legend. It was quickly vivid to him that, were he minded, +he could "work" this association: he had but to use the house freely +for his prescribed attitude and he need hardly ever be out of it. +Stranger than anything moreover was to be the way that by the end of a +week he stood convicted to his own sense of a surrender to Mrs. +Lowder's view. He had somehow met it at a point that had brought him +on--brought him on a distance that he couldn't again retrace. He had +private hours of wondering what had become of his sincerity; he had +others of simply reflecting that he had it all in use. His only want of +candour was Aunt Maud's wealth of sentiment. She was hugely +sentimental, and the worst he did was to take it from her. He wasn't so +himself--everything was too real; but it was none the less not false +that he _had_ been through a mill. + +It was in particular not false for instance that when she had said to +him, on the Sunday, almost cosily, from her sofa behind the tea, "I +want you not to doubt, you poor dear, that I'm _with_ you to the end!" +his meeting her halfway had been the only course open to him. She was +with him to the end--or she might be--in a way Kate wasn't; and even if +it literally made her society meanwhile more soothing he must just +brush away the question of why it shouldn't. Was he professing to her +in any degree the possession of an aftersense that wasn't real? How in +the world _could_ he, when his aftersense, day by day, was his greatest +reality? Such only was at bottom what there was between them, and two +or three times over it made the hour pass. These were occasions--two +and a scrap--on which he had come and gone without mention of Kate. Now +that almost as never yet he had licence to ask for her, the queer turn +of their affair made it a false note. It was another queer turn that +when he talked with Aunt Maud about Milly nothing else seemed to come +up. He called upon her almost avowedly for that purpose, and it was the +queerest turn of all that the state of his nerves should require it. He +liked her better; he was really behaving, he had occasion to say to +himself, as if he liked her best. The thing was absolutely that she met +_him_ halfway. Nothing could have been broader than her vision, than +her loquacity, than her sympathy. It appeared to gratify, to satisfy +her to see him as he was; that too had its effect. It was all of course +the last thing that could have seemed on the cards, a change by which +he was completely _free_ with this lady; and it wouldn't indeed have +come about if--for another monstrosity--he hadn't ceased to be free +with Kate. Thus it was that on the third time in especial of being +alone with her he found himself uttering to the elder woman what had +been impossible of utterance to the younger. Mrs. Lowder gave him in +fact, on the ground of what he must keep from her, but one uneasy +moment. That was when, on the first Sunday, after Kate had suppressed +herself, she referred to her regret that he mightn't have stayed to the +end. He found his reason difficult to give her, but she came after all +to his help. + +"You simply couldn't stand it?" + +"I simply couldn't stand it. Besides you see--!" But he paused. + +"Besides what?" He had been going to say more--then he saw dangers; +luckily however she had again assisted him. "Besides--oh I know!--men +haven't, in many relations, the courage of women." + +"They haven't the courage of women." + +"Kate or I would have stayed," she declared--"if we hadn't come away +for the special reason that you so frankly appreciated." + +Densher had said nothing about his appreciation: hadn't his behaviour +since the hour itself sufficiently shown it? But he presently said--he +couldn't help going so far: "I don't doubt, certainly, that Miss Croy +would have stayed." And he saw again into the bargain what a marvel was +Susan Shepherd. She did nothing but protect him--she had done nothing +but keep it up. In copious communication with the friend of her youth +she had yet, it was plain, favoured this lady with nothing that +compromised him. Milly's act of renouncement she had described but as a +change for the worse; she had mentioned Lord Mark's descent, as even +without her it might be known, so that she mustn't appear to conceal +it; but she had suppressed explanations and connexions, and indeed, for +all he knew, blessed Puritan soul, had invented commendable fictions. +Thus it was absolutely that he was at his ease. Thus it was that, +shaking for ever, in the unrest that didn't drop, his crossed leg, he +leaned back in deep yellow satin chairs and took such comfort as came. +She asked, it was true, Aunt Maud, questions that Kate hadn't; but this +was just the difference, that from her he positively liked them. He had +taken with himself on leaving Venice the resolution to regard Milly as +already dead to him--that being for his spirit the only thinkable way +to pass the time of waiting. He had left her because it was what suited +her, and it wasn't for him to go, as they said in America, behind this; +which imposed on him but the sharper need to arrange himself with his +interval. Suspense was the ugliest ache to him, and he would have +nothing to do with it; the last thing he wished was to be unconscious +of her--what he wished to ignore was her own consciousness, tortured, +for all he knew, crucified by its pain. Knowingly to hang about in +London while the pain went on--what would that do but make his days +impossible? His scheme was accordingly to convince himself--and by some +art about which he was vague--that the sense of waiting had passed. +"What in fact," he restlessly reflected, "have I any further to do with +it? Let me assume the thing actually over--as it at any moment may +be--and I become good again for something at least to somebody. I'm +good, as it is, for nothing to anybody, least of all to _her_." He +consequently tried, so far as shutting his eyes and stalking grimly +about was a trial; but his plan was carried out, it may well be +guessed, neither with marked success nor with marked consistency. The +days, whether lapsing or lingering, were a stiff reality; the +suppression of anxiety was a thin idea; the taste of life itself was +the taste of suspense. That he _was_ waiting was in short at the bottom +of everything; and it required no great sifting presently to feel that +if he took so much more, as he called it, to Mrs. Lowder this was just +for that reason. + +She helped him to hold out, all the while that she was subtle +enough--and he could see her divine it as what he wanted--not to insist +on the actuality of their tension. His nearest approach to success was +thus in being good for something to Aunt Maud, in default of any one +better; her company eased his nerves even while they pretended together +that they had seen their tragedy out. They spoke of the dying girl in +the past tense; they said no worse of her than that she had _been_ +stupendous. On the other hand, however--and this was what wasn't for +Densher pure peace--they insisted enough that stupendous was the word. +It was the thing, this recognition, that kept him most quiet; he came +to it with her repeatedly; talking about it against time and, in +particular, we have noted, speaking of his supreme personal impression +as he hadn't spoken to Kate. It was almost as if she herself enjoyed +the perfection of the pathos; she sat there before the scene, as he +couldn't help giving it out to her, very much as a stout citizen's wife +might have sat, during a play that made people cry, in the pit or the +family-circle. What most deeply stirred her was the way the poor girl +must have wanted to live. + +"Ah yes indeed--she did, she did: why in pity shouldn't she, with +everything to fill her world? The mere _money_ of her, the darling, if +it isn't too disgusting at such a time to mention that--!" + +Aunt Maud mentioned it--and Densher quite understood--but as fairly +giving poetry to the life Milly clung to: a view of the "might have +been" before which the good lady was hushed anew to tears. She had had +her own vision of these possibilities, and her own social use for them, +and since Milly's spirit had been after all so at one with her about +them, what was the cruelty of the event but a cruelty, of a sort, to +herself? That came out when he named, as _the_ horrible thing to know, +the fact of their young friend's unapproachable terror of the end, keep +it down though she would; coming out therefore often, since in so +naming it he found the strangest of reliefs. He allowed it all its +vividness, as if on the principle of his not at least spiritually +shirking. Milly had held with passion to her dream of a future, and she +was separated from it, not shrieking indeed, but grimly, awfully +silent, as one might imagine some noble young victim of the scaffold, +in the French Revolution, separated at the prison-door from some object +clutched for resistance. Densher, in a cold moment, so pictured the +case for Mrs. Lowder, but no moment cold enough had yet come to make +him so picture it to Kate. And it was the front so presented that had +been, in Milly, heroic; presented with the highest heroism, Aunt Maud +by this time knew, on the occasion of his taking leave of her. He had +let her know, absolutely for the girl's glory, how he had been received +on that occasion: with a positive effect--since she was indeed so +perfectly the princess that Mrs. Stringham always called her--of +princely state. + +Before the fire in the great room that was all arabesques and cherubs, +all gaiety and gilt, and that was warm at that hour too with a wealth +of autumn sun, the state in question had been maintained and the +situation--well, Densher said for the convenience of exquisite London +gossip, sublime. The gossip--for it came to as much at Lancaster +Gate--wasn't the less exquisite for his use of the silver veil, nor on +the other hand was the veil, so touched, too much drawn aside. He +himself for that matter took in the scene again at moments as from the +page of a book. He saw a young man far off and in a relation +inconceivable, saw him hushed, passive, staying his breath, but half +understanding, yet dimly conscious of something immense and holding +himself painfully together not to lose it. The young man at these +moments so seen was too distant and too strange for the right identity; +and yet, outside, afterwards, it was his own face Densher had known. He +had known then at the same time what the young man had been conscious +of, and he was to measure after that, day by day, how little he had +lost. At present there with Mrs. Lowder he knew he had gathered +all--that passed between them mutely as in the intervals of their +associated gaze they exchanged looks of intelligence. This was as far +as association could go, but it was far enough when she knew the +essence. The essence was that something had happened to him too +beautiful and too sacred to describe. He had been, to his recovered +sense, forgiven, dedicated, blessed; but this he couldn't coherently +express. It would have required an explanation--fatal to Mrs. Lowder's +faith in him--of the nature of Milly's wrong. So, as to the wonderful +scene, they just stood at the door. They had the sense of the presence +within--they felt the charged stillness; after which, their association +deepened by it, they turned together away. + +That itself indeed, for our restless friend, became by the end of a +week the very principle of reaction: so that he woke up one morning +with such a sense of having played a part as he needed self-respect to +gainsay. He hadn't in the least stated at Lancaster Gate that, as a +haunted man--a man haunted with a memory--he was harmless; but the +degree to which Mrs. Lowder accepted, admired and explained his new +aspect laid upon him practically the weight of a declaration. What he +hadn't in the least stated her own manner was perpetually stating; it +was as haunted and harmless that she was constantly putting him down. +There offered itself however to his purpose such an element as plain +honesty, and he had embraced, by the time he dressed, his proper +corrective. They were on the edge of Christmas, but Christmas this year +was, as in the London of so many other years, disconcertingly mild; the +still air was soft, the thick light was grey, the great town looked +empty, and in the Park, where the grass was green, where the sheep +browsed, where the birds multitudinously twittered, the straight walks +lent themselves to slowness and the dim vistas to privacy. He held it +fast this morning till he had got out, his sacrifice to honour, and +then went with it to the nearest post-office and fixed it fast in a +telegram; thinking of it moreover as a sacrifice only because he had, +for reasons, felt it as an effort. Its character of effort it would owe +to Kate's expected resistance, not less probable than on the occasion +of past appeals; which was precisely why he--perhaps innocently--made +his telegram persuasive. It had, as a recall of tender hours, to be, +for the young woman at the counter, a trifle cryptic; but there was a +good deal of it in one way and another, representing as it did a rich +impulse and costing him a couple of shillings. There was also a moment +later on, that day, when, in the Park, as he measured watchfully one of +their old alleys, he might have been supposed by a cynical critic to be +reckoning his chance of getting his money back. He was waiting--but he +had waited of old; Lancaster Gate as a danger was practically at +hand--but she had risked that danger before. Besides it was smaller +now, with the queer turn of their affair; in spite of which indeed he +was graver as he lingered and looked out. + +Kate came at last by the way he had thought least likely, came as if +she had started from the Marble Arch; but her advent was response--that +was the great matter; response marked in her face and agreeable to him, +even after Aunt Maud's responses, as nothing had been since his return +to London. She had not, it was true, answered his wire, and he had +begun to fear, as she was late, that with the instinct of what he might +be again intending to press upon her she had decided--though not with +ease--to deprive him of his chance. He would have of course, she knew, +other chances, but she perhaps saw the present as offering her special +danger. This, in fact, Densher could himself feel, was exactly why he +had so prepared it, and he had rejoiced, even while he waited, in all +that the conditions had to say to him of their simpler and better time. +The shortest day of the year though it might be, it was, in the same +place, by a whim of the weather, almost as much to their purpose as the +days of sunny afternoons when they had taken their first trysts. This +and that tree, within sight, on the grass, stretched bare boughs over +the couple of chairs in which they had sat of old and in which--for +they really could sit down again--they might recover the clearness of +their prime. It was to all intents however this very reference that +showed itself in Kate's face as, with her swift motion, she came toward +him. It helped him, her swift motion, when it finally brought her +nearer; helped him, for that matter, at first, if only by showing him +afresh how terribly well she looked. It had been all along, he +certainly remembered, a phenomenon of no rarity that he had felt her, +at particular moments, handsomer than ever before; one of these for +instance being still present to him as her entrance, under her aunt's +eyes, at Lancaster Gate, the day of his dinner there after his return +from America; and another her aspect on the same spot two Sundays +ago--the light in which she struck the eyes he had brought back from +Venice. In the course of a minute or two now he got, as he had got it +the other times, his apprehension of the special stamp of the fortune +of the moment. + +Whatever it had been determined by as the different hours recurred to +him, it took on at present a prompt connexion with an effect produced +for him in truth more than once during the past week, only now much +intensified. This effect he had already noted and named: it was that of +the attitude assumed by his friend in the presence of the degree of +response on his part to Mrs. Lowder's welcome which she couldn't +possibly have failed to notice. She _had_ noticed it, and she had +beautifully shown him so; wearing in its honour the finest shade of +studied serenity, a shade almost of gaiety over the workings of time. +Everything of course was relative, with the shadow they were living +under; but her condonation of the way in which he now, for confidence, +distinguished Aunt Maud had almost the note of cheer. She had so by her +own air consecrated the distinction, invidious in respect to herself +though it might be; and nothing, really, more than this demonstration, +could have given him had he still wanted it the measure of her +superiority. It was doubtless for that matter this superiority alone +that on the winter noon gave smooth decision to her step and charming +courage to her eyes--a courage that deepened in them when he had +presently got to what he did want. He had delayed after she had joined +him not much more than long enough for him to say to her, drawing her +hand into his arm and turning off where they had turned of old, that he +wouldn't pretend he hadn't lately had moments of not quite believing he +should ever again be so happy. She answered, passing over the reasons, +whatever they had been, of his doubt, that her own belief was in high +happiness for them if they would only have patience; though nothing at +the same time could be dearer than his idea for their walk. It was only +make-believe of course, with what had taken place for them, that they +couldn't meet at home; she spoke of their opportunities as suffering at +no point. He had at any rate soon let her know that he wished the +present one to suffer at none, and in a quiet spot, beneath a great +wintry tree, he let his entreaty come sharp. + +"We've played our dreadful game and we've lost. We owe it to ourselves, +we owe it to our feeling _for_ ourselves and for each other, not to +wait another day. Our marriage will--fundamentally, somehow, don't you +see?--right everything that's wrong, and I can't express to you my +impatience. We've only to announce it--and it takes off the weight." + +"To 'announce' it?" Kate asked. She spoke as if not understanding, +though she had listened to him without confusion. + +"To accomplish it then--to-morrow if you will; _do_ it and announce it +as done. That's the least part of it--after it nothing will matter. We +shall be so right," he said, "that we shall be strong; we shall only +wonder at our past fear. It will seem an ugly madness. It will seem a +bad dream." + +She looked at him without flinching--with the look she had brought at +his call; but he felt now the strange chill of her brightness. "My dear +man, what has happened to you?" + +"Well, that I can bear it no longer. _That's_ simply what has happened. +Something has snapped, has broken in me, and here I am. It's _as_ I am +that you must have me." + +He saw her try for a time to appear to consider it; but he saw her also +not consider it. Yet he saw her, felt her, further--he heard her, with +her clear voice--try to be intensely kind with him. "I don't see, you +know, what has changed." She had a large strange smile. "We've been +going on together so well, and you suddenly desert me?" + +It made him helplessly gaze. "You call it so 'well'? You've touches, +upon my soul--!" + +"I call it perfect--from my original point of view. I'm just where I +was; and you must give me some better reason than you do, my dear, for +_your_ not being. It seems to me," she continued, "that we're only +right as to what has been between us so long as we do wait. I don't +think we wish to have behaved like fools." He took in while she talked +her imperturbable consistency; which it was quietly, queerly hopeless +to see her stand there and breathe into their mild remembering air. He +had brought her there to be moved, and she was only immoveable--which +was not moreover, either, because she didn't understand. She understood +everything, and things he refused to; and she had reasons, deep down, +the sense of which nearly sickened him. She had too again most of all +her strange significant smile. "Of course if it's that you really +_know_ something--?" It was quite conceivable and possible to her, he +could see, that he did. But he didn't even know what she meant, and he +only looked at her in gloom. His gloom however didn't upset her. "You +do, I believe, only you've a delicacy about saying it. Your delicacy to +me, my dear, is a scruple too much. I should have no delicacy in +hearing it, so that if you can _tell_ me you know--" + +"Well?" he asked as she still kept what depended on it. + +"Why then I'll do what you want. We needn't, I grant you, in that case +wait; and I can see what you mean by thinking it nicer of us not to. I +don't even ask you," she continued, "for a proof. I'm content with your +moral certainty." + +By this time it had come over him--it had the force of a rush. The +point she made was clear, as clear as that the blood, while he +recognised it, mantled in his face. "I know nothing whatever." + +"You've not an idea?" + +"I've not an idea." + +"I'd consent," she said--"I'd announce it to-morrow, to-day, I'd go +home this moment and announce it to Aunt Maud, for an idea: I mean an +idea straight _from_ you, I mean as your own, given me in good faith. +There, my dear!"--and she smiled again. "I call that really meeting +you." + +If it _was_ then what she called it, it disposed of his appeal, and he +could but stand there with his wasted passion--for it was in high +passion that he had from the morning acted--in his face. She made it +all out, bent upon her--the idea he didn't have, and the idea he had, +and his failure of insistence when it brought up _that_ challenge, and +his sense of her personal presence, and his horror, almost, of her +lucidity. They made in him a mixture that might have been rage, but +that was turning quickly to mere cold thought, thought which led to +something else and was like a new dim dawn. It affected her then, and +she had one of the impulses, in all sincerity, that had before this, +between them, saved their position. When she had come nearer to him, +when, putting her hand upon him, she made him sink with her, as she +leaned to him, into their old pair of chairs, she prevented +irresistibly, she forestalled, the waste of his passion. She had an +advantage with his passion now. + + +III + +He had said to her in the Park when challenged on it that nothing had +"happened" to him as a cause for the demand he there made of +her--happened he meant since the account he had given, after his +return, of his recent experience. But in the course of a few days--they +had brought him to Christmas morning--he was conscious enough, in +preparing again to seek her out, of a difference on that score. +Something had in this case happened to him, and, after his taking the +night to think of it he felt that what it most, if not absolutely +first, involved was his immediately again putting himself in relation +with her. The fact itself had met him there--in his own small +quarters--on Christmas Eve, and had not then indeed at once affected +him as implying that consequence. So far as he on the spot and for the +next hours took its measure--a process that made his night mercilessly +wakeful--the consequences possibly implied were numerous to +distraction. His spirit dealt with them, in the darkness, as the slow +hours passed; his intelligence and his imagination, his soul and his +sense, had never on the whole been so intensely engaged. It was his +difficulty for the moment that he was face to face with alternatives, +and that it was scarce even a question of turning from one to the +other. They were not in a perspective in which they might be compared +and considered; they were, by a strange effect, as close as a pair of +monsters of whom he might have felt on either cheek the hot breath and +the huge eyes. He saw them at once and but by looking straight before +him; he wouldn't for that matter, in his cold apprehension, have turned +his head by an inch. So it was that his agitation was still--was not, +for the slow hours a matter of restless motion. He lay long, after the +event, on the sofa where, extinguishing at a touch the white light of +convenience that he hated, he had thrown himself without undressing. He +stared at the buried day and wore out the time; with the arrival of the +Christmas dawn moreover, late and grey, he felt himself somehow +determined. The common wisdom had had its say to him--that safety in +doubt was _not_ action; and perhaps what most helped him was this very +commonness. In his case there was nothing of _that_--in no case in his +life had there ever been less: which association, from one thing to +another, now worked for him as a choice. He acted, after his bath and +his breakfast, in the sense of that marked element of the rare which he +felt to be the sign of his crisis. And that is why, dressed with more +state than usual and quite as if for church, he went out into the soft +Christmas day. + +Action, for him, on coming to the point, it appeared, carried with it a +certain complexity. We should have known, walking by his side, that his +final prime decision hadn't been to call at the door of Sir Luke +Strett, and yet that this step, though subordinate, was none the less +urgent. His prime decision was for another matter, to which impatience, +once he was on the way, had now added itself; but he remained +sufficiently aware that he must compromise with the perhaps excessive +earliness. This, and the ferment set up within him, were together a +reason for not driving; to say nothing of the absence of cabs in the +dusky festal desert. Sir Luke's great square was not near, but he +walked the Distance without seeing a hansom. He had his interval thus +to turn over his view--the view to which what had happened the night +before had not sharply reduced itself; but the complexity just +mentioned was to be offered within the next few minutes another item to +assimilate. Before Sir Luke's house, when he reached it, a brougham was +drawn up--at the sight of which his heart had a lift that brought him +for the instant to a stand. This pause wasn't long, but it was long +enough to flash upon him a revelation in the light of which he caught +his breath. The carriage, so possibly at such an hour and on such a day +Sir Luke's own, had struck him as a sign that the great doctor was +back. This would prove something else, in turn, still more intensely, +and it was in the act of the double apprehension that Densher felt +himself turn pale. His mind rebounded for the moment like a projectile +that has suddenly been met by another: he stared at the strange truth +that what he wanted _more_ than to see Kate Croy was to see the witness +who had just arrived from Venice. He wanted positively to be in his +presence and to hear his voice--which was the spasm of his +consciousness that produced the flash. Fortunately for him, on the +spot, there supervened something in which the flash went out. He became +aware within this minute that the coachman on the box of the brougham +had a face known to him, whereas he had never seen before, to his +knowledge, the great doctor's carriage. The carriage, as he came +nearer, was simply Mrs. Lowder's; the face on the box was just the face +that, in coming and going at Lancaster Gate, he would vaguely have +noticed, outside, in attendance. With this the rest came: the lady of +Lancaster Gate had, on a prompting not wholly remote from his own, +presented herself for news; and news, in the house, she was clearly +getting, since her brougham had stayed. Sir Luke _was_ then back--only +Mrs. Lowder was with him. + +It was under the influence of this last reflexion that Densher again +delayed; and it was while he delayed that something else occurred to +him. It was all round, visibly--given his own new contribution--a case +of pressure; and in a case of pressure Kate, for quicker knowledge, +might have come out with her aunt. The possibility that in this event +she might be sitting in the carriage--the thing most likely--had had +the effect, before he could check it, of bringing him within range of +the window. It wasn't there he had wished to see her; yet if she _was_ +there he couldn't pretend not to. What he had however the next moment +made out was that if some one was there it wasn't Kate Croy. It was, +with a sensible shock for him, the person who had last offered him a +conscious face from behind the clear plate of a cafe in Venice. The +great glass at Florian's was a medium less obscure, even with the +window down, than the air of the London Christmas; yet at present also, +none the less, between the two men, an exchange of recognitions could +occur. Densher felt his own look a gaping arrest--which, he disgustedly +remembered, his back as quickly turned, appeared to repeat itself as +his special privilege. He mounted the steps of the house and touched +the bell with a keen consciousness of being habitually looked at by +Kate's friend from positions of almost insolent vantage. He forgot for +the time the moment when, in Venice, at the palace, the encouraged +young man had in a manner assisted at the departure of the +disconcerted, since Lord Mark was not looking disconcerted now any more +than he had looked from his bench at his cafe. Densher was thinking +that _he_ seemed to show as vagrant while another was ensconced. He was +thinking of the other as--in spite of the difference of situation--more +ensconced than ever; he was thinking of him above all as the friend of +the person with whom his recognition had, the minute previous, +associated him. The man was seated in the very place in which, beside +Mrs. Lowder's, he had looked to find Kate, and that was a sufficient +identity. Meanwhile at any rate the door of the house had opened and +Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was something at least that _she_ +wasn't Kate. She was herself, on the spot, in all her affluence; with +presence of mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in the +brougham, didn't matter and to prevent Sir Luke's butler, by a firm +word thrown over her shoulder, from standing there to listen to her +passage with the gentleman who had rung. "_I'll_ tell Mr. Densher; you +needn't wait!" And the passage, promptly and richly, took place on the +steps. + +"He arrives, travelling straight, to-morrow early. I couldn't not come +to learn." + +"No more," said Densher simply, "could I. On my way," he added, "to +Lancaster Gate." + +"Sweet of you." She beamed on him dimly, and he saw her face was +attuned. It made him, with what she had just before said, know all, and +he took the thing in while he met the air of portentous, of almost +functional, sympathy that had settled itself as her medium with him and +that yet had now a fresh glow. "So you _have_ had your message?" + +He knew so well what she meant, and so equally with it what he "_had_ +had" no less than what he hadn't, that, with but the smallest +hesitation, he strained the point. "Yes--my message." + +"Our dear dove then, as Kate calls her, has folded her wonderful wings." + +"Yes--folded them." + +It rather racked him, but he tried to receive it as she intended, and +she evidently took his formal assent for self-control. "Unless it's +more true," she accordingly added, "that she has spread them the wider." + +He again but formally assented, though, strangely enough, the words +fitted a figure deep in his own imagination. "Rather, yes--spread them +the wider." + +"For a flight, I trust, to some happiness greater--!" + +"Exactly. Greater," Densher broke in; but now with a look, he feared, +that did a little warn her off. + +"You were certainly," she went on with more reserve, "entitled to +direct news. Ours came late last night: I'm not sure otherwise I +shouldn't have gone to you. But you're coming," she asked, "to _me?_" + +He had had a minute by this time to think further, and the window of +the brougham was still within range. Her rich "me," reaching him +moreover through the mild damp, had the effect of a thump on his chest. +"Squared," Aunt Maud? She was indeed squared, and the extent of it just +now perversely enough took away his breath. His look from where they +stood embraced the aperture at which the person sitting in the carriage +might have shown, and he saw his interlocutress, on her side, +understand the question in it, which he moreover then uttered. "Shall +you be alone?" It was, as an immediate instinctive parley with the +image of his condition that now flourished in her, almost hypocritical. +It sounded as if he wished to come and overflow to her, yet this was +exactly what he didn't. The need to overflow had suddenly--since the +night before--dried up in him, and he had never been aware of a deeper +reserve. + +But she had meanwhile largely responded. "Completely alone. I should +otherwise never have dreamed; feeling, dear friend, but too much!" +Failing on her lips what she felt came out for him in the offered hand +with which she had the next moment condolingly pressed his own. "Dear +friend, dear friend!"--she was deeply "with" him, and she wished to be +still more so: which was what made her immediately continue. "Or +wouldn't you this evening, for the sad Christmas it makes us, dine with +me _tete-a-tete?_" + +It put the thing off, the question of a talk with her--making the +difference, to his relief, of several hours; but it also rather +mystified him. This however didn't diminish his need of caution. "Shall +you mind if I don't tell you at once?" + +"Not in the least--leave it open: it shall be as you may feel, and you +needn't even send me word. I only _will_ mention that to-day, of all +days, I shall otherwise sit there alone." + +Now at least he could ask. "Without Miss Croy?" + +"Without Miss Croy. Miss Croy," said Mrs. Lowder, "is spending her +Christmas in the bosom of her more immediate family." + +He was afraid, even while he spoke, of what his face might show. "You +mean she has left you?" + +Aunt Maud's own face for that matter met the enquiry with a +consciousness in which he saw a reflexion of events. He was made sure +by it, even at the moment and as he had never been before, that since +he had known these two women no confessed nor commented tension, no +crisis of the cruder sort would really have taken form between them: +which was precisely a high proof of how Kate had steered her boat. The +situation exposed in Mrs. Lowder's present expression lighted up by +contrast that superficial smoothness; which afterwards, with his time +to think of it, was to put before him again the art, the particular +gift, in the girl, now so placed and classed, so intimately familiar +for him, as her talent for life. The peace, within a day or two--since +his seeing her last--had clearly been broken; differences, deep down, +kept there by a diplomacy on Kate's part as deep, had been shaken to +the surface by some exceptional jar; with which, in addition, he felt +Lord Mark's odd attendance at such an hour and season vaguely +associated. The talent for life indeed, it at the same time struck him, +would probably have shown equally in the breach, or whatever had +occurred; Aunt Maud having suffered, he judged, a strain rather than a +stroke. Of these quick thoughts, at all events, that lady was already +abreast. "She went yesterday morning--and not with my approval, I don't +mind telling you--to her sister: Mrs. Condrip, if you know who I mean, +who lives somewhere in Chelsea. My other niece and her affairs--that I +should have to say such things to-day!--are a constant worry; so that +Kate, in consequence--well, of events!--has simply been called in. My +own idea, I'm bound to say, was that with _such_ events she need have, +in her situation, next to nothing to do." + +"But she differed with you?" + +"She differed with me. And when Kate differs with you--!" + +"Oh I can imagine." He had reached the point in the scale of hypocrisy +at which he could ask himself why a little more or less should signify. +Besides, with the intention he had had he _must_ know. Kate's move, if +he didn't know, might simply disconcert him; and of being disconcerted +his horror was by this time fairly superstitious. "I hope you don't +allude to events at all calamitous." + +"No--only horrid and vulgar." + +"Oh!" said Merton Densher. + +Mrs. Lowder's soreness, it was still not obscure, had discovered in +free speech to him a momentary balm. "They've the misfortune to have, I +suppose you know, a dreadful horrible father." + +"Oh!" said Densher again. + +"He's too bad almost to name, but he has come upon Marian, and Marian +has shrieked for help." + +Densher wondered at this with intensity; and his curiosity compromised +for an instant with his discretion. "Come upon her--for money?" + +"Oh for that of course always. But, at _this_ blessed season, for +refuge, for safety: for God knows what. He's _there_, the brute. And +Kate's with them. And that," Mrs. Lowder wound up, going down the +steps, "is her Christmas." + +She had stopped again at the bottom while he thought of an answer. +"Yours then is after all rather better." + +"It's at least more decent." And her hand once more came out. "But why +do I talk of _our_ troubles? Come if you can." + +He showed a faint smile. "Thanks. If I can." + +"And now--I dare say--you'll go to church?" + +She had asked it, with her good intention, rather in the air and by way +of sketching for him, in the line of support, something a little more +to the purpose than what she had been giving him. He felt it as +finishing off their intensities of expression that he found himself to +all appearance receiving her hint as happy. "Why yes--I think I will": +after which, as the door of the brougham, at her approach, had opened +from within, he was free to turn his back. He heard the door, behind +him, sharply close again and the vehicle move off in another direction +than his own. + +He had in fact for the time no direction; in spite of which indeed he +was at the end of ten minutes aware of having walked straight to the +south. That, he afterwards recognised, was, very sufficiently, because +there had formed itself in his mind, even while Aunt Maud finally +talked, an instant recognition of his necessary course. Nothing was +open to him but to follow Kate, nor was anything more marked than the +influence of the step she had taken on the emotion itself that +possessed him. Her complications, which had fairly, with everything +else, an awful sound--what were they, a thousand times over, but his +own? His present business was to see that they didn't escape an hour +longer taking their proper place in his life. He accordingly would have +held his course hadn't it suddenly come over him that he had just lied +to Mrs. Lowder--a term it perversely eased him to keep using--even more +than was necessary. To what church was he going, to what church, in +such a state of his nerves, _could_ he go?--he pulled up short again, +as he had pulled up in sight of Mrs. Lowder's carriage, to ask it. And +yet the desire queerly stirred in him not to have wasted his word. He +was just then however by a happy chance in the Brompton Road, and he +bethought himself with a sudden light that the Oratory was at hand. He +had but to turn the other way and he should find himself soon before +it. At the door then, in a few minutes, his idea was really--as it +struck him--consecrated: he was, pushing in, on the edge of a splendid +service--the flocking crowd told of it--which glittered and resounded, +from distant depths, in the blaze of altar-lights and the swell of +organ and choir. It didn't match his own day, but it was much less of a +discord than some other things actual and possible. The Oratory in +short, to make him right, would do. + + +IV + +The difference was thus that the dusk of afternoon--dusk thick from an +early hour--had gathered when he knocked at Mrs. Condrip's door. He had +gone from the church to his club, wishing not to present himself in +Chelsea at luncheon-time and also remembering that he must attempt +independently to make a meal. This, in the event, he but imperfectly +achieved: he dropped into a chair in the great dim void of the club +library, with nobody, up or down, to be seen, and there after a while, +closing his eyes, recovered an hour of the sleep he had lost during the +night. Before doing this indeed he had written--it was the first thing +he did--a short note, which, in the Christmas desolation of the place, +he had managed only with difficulty and doubt to commit to a messenger. +He wished it carried by hand, and he was obliged, rather blindly, to +trust the hand, as the messenger, for some reason, was unable to return +with a gage of delivery. When at four o'clock he was face to face with +Kate in Mrs. Condrip's small drawing-room he found to his relief that +his notification had reached her. She was expectant and to that extent +prepared; which simplified a little--if a little, at the present pass, +counted. Her conditions were vaguely vivid to him from the moment of +his coming in, and vivid partly by their difference, a difference sharp +and suggestive, from those in which he had hitherto constantly seen +her. He had seen her but in places comparatively great; in her aunt's +pompous house, under the high trees of Kensington and the storied +ceilings of Venice. He had seen her, in Venice, on a great occasion, as +the centre itself of the splendid Piazza: he had seen her there, on a +still greater one, in his own poor rooms, which yet had consorted with +her, having state and ancientry even in their poorness; but Mrs. +Condrip's interior, even by this best view of it and though not +flagrantly mean, showed itself as a setting almost grotesquely inapt. +Pale, grave and charming, she affected him at once as a distinguished +stranger--a stranger to the little Chelsea street--who was making the +best of a queer episode and a place of exile. The extraordinary thing +was that at the end of three minutes he felt himself less appointedly a +stranger in it than she. + +A part of the queerness--this was to come to him in glimpses--sprang +from the air as of a general large misfit imposed on the narrow room by +the scale and mass of its furniture. The objects, the ornaments were, +for the sisters, clearly relics and survivals of what would, in the +case of Mrs. Condrip at least, have been called better days. The +curtains that overdraped the windows, the sofas and tables that stayed +circulation, the chimney-ornaments that reached to the ceiling and the +florid chandelier that almost dropped to the floor, were so many +mementoes of earlier homes and so many links with their unhappy mother. +Whatever might have been in itself the quality of these elements +Densher could feel the effect proceeding from them, as they lumpishly +blocked out the decline of the dim day, to be ugly almost to the point +of the sinister. They failed to accommodate or to compromise; they +asserted their differences without tact and without taste. It was truly +having a sense of Kate's own quality thus promptly to see them in +reference to it. But that Densher had this sense was no new thing to +him, nor did he in strictness need, for the hour, to be reminded of it. +He only knew, by one of the tricks his imagination so constantly played +him, that he was, so far as her present tension went, very specially +sorry for her--which was not the view that had determined his start in +the morning; yet also that he himself would have taken it all, as he +might say, less hard. _He_ could have lived in such a place; but it +wasn't given to those of his complexion, so to speak, to be exiled +anywhere. It was by their comparative grossness that they could somehow +make shift. His natural, his inevitable, his ultimate home--left, that +is, to itself--wasn't at all unlikely to be as queer and impossible as +what was just round them, though doubtless in less ample masses. As he +took in moreover how Kate wouldn't have been in the least the creature +she was if what was just round them hadn't mismatched her, hadn't made +for her a medium involving compunction in the spectator, so, by the +same stroke, that became the very fact of her relation with her +companions there, such a fact as filled him at once, oddly, both with +assurance and with suspense. If he himself, on this brief vision, felt +her as alien and as ever so unwittingly ironic, how must they not feel +her and how above all must she not feel them? + +Densher could ask himself that even after she had presently lighted the +tall candles on the mantel-shelf. This was all their illumination but +the fire, and she had proceeded to it with a quiet dryness that yet +left play, visibly, to her implication between them, in their trouble +and failing anything better, of the presumably genial Christmas hearth. +So far as the genial went this had in strictness, given their +conditions, to be all their geniality. He had told her in his note +nothing but that he must promptly see her and that he hoped she might +be able to make it possible; but he understood from the first look at +her that his promptitude was already having for her its principal +reference. "I was prevented this morning, in the few minutes," he +explained, "asking Mrs. Lowder if she had let you know, though I rather +gathered she had; and it's what I've been in fact since then assuming. +It was because I was so struck at the moment with your having, as she +did tell me, so suddenly come here." + +"Yes, it was sudden enough." Very neat and fine in the contracted +firelight, with her hands in her lap, Kate considered what he had said. +He had spoken immediately of what had happened at Sir Luke Strett's +door. "She has let me know nothing. But that doesn't matter--if it's +what _you_ mean." + +"It's part of what I mean," Densher said; but what he went on with, +after a pause during which she waited, was apparently not the rest of +that. "She had had her telegram from Mrs. Stringham; late last night. +But to me the poor lady hasn't wired. The event," he added, "will have +taken place yesterday, and Sir Luke, starting immediately, one can see, +and travelling straight, will get back to-morrow morning. So that Mrs. +Stringham, I judge, is left to face in some solitude the situation +bequeathed to her. But of course," he wound up, "Sir Luke couldn't +stay." + +Her look at him might have had in it a vague betrayal of the sense that +he was gaining time. "Was your telegram from Sir Luke?" + +"No--I've had no telegram." + +She wondered. "But not a letter--?" + +"Not from Mrs. Stringham--no." He failed again however to develop +this--for which her forbearance from another question gave him +occasion. From whom then had he heard? He might at last, confronted +with her, really have been gaining time; and as if to show that she +respected this impulse she made her enquiry different. "Should you like +to go out to her--to Mrs. Stringham?" + +About that at least he was clear. "Not at all. She's alone, but she's +very capable and very courageous. Besides--!" He had been going on, but +he dropped. + +"Besides," she said, "there's Eugenio? Yes, of course one remembers +Eugenio." + +She had uttered the words as definitely to show them for not untender; +and he showed equally every reason to assent. "One remembers him +indeed, and with every ground for it. He'll be of the highest value to +her--he's capable of anything. What I was going to say," he went on, +"is that some of their people from America must quickly arrive." + +On this, as happened, Kate was able at once to satisfy him. "Mr. +Someone-or-other, the person principally in charge of Milly's +affairs--her first trustee, I suppose--had just got there at Mrs. +Stringham's last writing." + +"Ah that then was after your aunt last spoke to me--I mean the last +time before this morning. I'm relieved to hear it. So," he said, +"they'll do." + +"Oh they'll do." And it came from each still as if it wasn't what each +was most thinking of. Kate presently got however a step nearer to that. +"But if you had been wired to by nobody what then this morning had +taken you to Sir Luke?" + +"Oh something else--which I'll presently tell you. It's what made me +instantly need to see you; it's what I've come to speak to you of. But +in a minute. I feel too many things," he went on, "at seeing you in +this place." He got up as he spoke; she herself remained perfectly +still. His movement had been to the fire, and, leaning a little, with +his back to it, to look down on her from where he stood, he confined +himself to his point. "Is it anything very bad that has brought you?" + +He had now in any case said enough to justify her wish for more; so +that, passing this matter by, she pressed her own challenge. "Do you +mean, if I may ask, that _she_, dying--?" Her face, wondering, pressed +it more than her words. + +"Certainly you may ask," he after a moment said. "What has come to me +is what, as I say, I came expressly to tell you. I don't mind letting +you know," he went on, "that my decision to do this took for me last +night and this morning a great deal of thinking of. But here I am." And +he indulged in a smile that couldn't, he was well aware, but strike her +as mechanical. + +She went straighter with him, she seemed to show, than he really went +with her. "You didn't want to come?" + +"It would have been simple, my dear"--and he continued to smile--"if it +had been, one way or the other, only a question of 'wanting.' It took, +I admit it, the idea of what I had best do, all sorts of difficult and +portentous forms. It came up for me really--well, not at all for my +happiness." + +This word apparently puzzled her--she studied him in the light of it. +"You look upset--you've certainly been tormented. You're not well." + +"Oh--well enough!" + +But she continued without heeding. "You hate what you're doing." + +"My dear girl, you simplify"--and he was now serious enough. "It isn't +so simple even as that." + +She had the air of thinking what it then might be. "I of course can't, +with no clue, know what it is." She remained none the less patient and +still. "If at such a moment she could write you one's inevitably quite +at sea. One doesn't, with the best will in the world, understand." And +then as Densher had a pause which might have stood for all the involved +explanation that, to his discouragement, loomed before him: "You +_haven't_ decided what to do." + +She had said it very gently, almost sweetly, and he didn't instantly +say otherwise. But he said so after a look at her. "Oh yes--I have. +Only with this sight of you here and what I seem to see in it for +you--!" And his eyes, as at suggestions that pressed, turned from one +part of the room to another. + +"Horrible place, isn't it?" said Kate. + +It brought him straight back to his enquiry. "Is it for anything awful +you've had to come?" + +"Oh that will take as long to tell you as anything _you_ may have. +Don't mind," she continued, "the 'sight of me here,' nor +whatever--which is more than I yet know myself--may be 'in it' for me. +And kindly consider too that, after all, if you're in trouble I can a +little wish to help you. Perhaps I can absolutely even do it." + +"My dear child, it's just because of the sense of your wish--! I +suppose I'm in trouble--I suppose that's it." He said this with so odd +a suddenness of simplicity that she could only stare for it--which he +as promptly saw. So he turned off as he could his vagueness. "And yet I +oughtn't to be." Which sounded indeed vaguer still. + +She waited a moment. "Is it, as you say for my own business, anything +very awful?" + +"Well," he slowly replied, "you'll tell me if you find it so. I mean if +you find my idea--" + +He was so slow that she took him up. "Awful?" A sound of +impatience--the form of a laugh--at last escaped her. "I can't find it +anything at all till I know what you're talking about." + +It brought him then more to the point, though it did so at first but by +making him, on the hearthrug before her, with his hands in his pockets, +turn awhile to and fro. There rose in him even with this movement a +recall of another time--the hour in Venice, the hour of gloom and +storm, when Susan Shepherd had sat in his quarters there very much as +Kate was sitting now, and he had wondered, in pain even as now, what he +might say and mightn't. Yet the present occasion after all was somehow +the easier. He tried at any rate to attach that feeling to it while he +stopped before his companion. "The communication I speak of can't +possibly belong--so far as its date is concerned--to these last days. +The postmark, which is legible, does; but it isn't thinkable, for +anything else, that she wrote--!" He dropped, looking at her as if +she'd understand. + +It was easy to understand. "On her deathbed?" But Kate took an +instant's thought. "Aren't we agreed that there was never any one in +the world like her?" + +"Yes." And looking over her head he spoke clearly enough. "There was +never any one in the world like her." + +Kate, from her chair, always without a movement, raised her eyes to the +unconscious reach of his own. Then when the latter again dropped to her +she added a question. "And won't it further depend a little on what the +communication is?" + +"A little perhaps--but not much. It's a communication," said Densher. + +"Do you mean a letter?" + +"Yes, a letter. Addressed to me in her hand--in hers unmistakeably." + +Kate thought. "Do you know her hand very well?" + +"Oh perfectly." + +It was as if his tone for this prompted--with a slight strangeness--her +next demand. "Have you had many letters from her?" + +"No. Only three notes." He spoke looking straight at her. "And very, +very short ones." + +"Ah," said Kate, "the number doesn't matter. Three lines would be +enough if you're sure you remember." + +"I'm sure I remember. Besides," Densher continued, "I've seen her hand +in other ways. I seem to recall how you once, before she went to +Venice, showed me one of her notes precisely _for_ that. And then she +once copied me something." + +"Oh," said Kate almost with a smile, "I don't ask you for the detail of +your reasons. One good one's enough." To which however she added as if +precisely not to speak with impatience or with anything like irony: +"And the writing has its usual look?" + +Densher answered as if even to better that description of it. "It's +beautiful." + +"Yes--it _was_ beautiful. Well," Kate, to defer to him still, further +remarked, "it's not news to us now that she was stupendous. Anything's +possible." + +"Yes, anything's possible"--he appeared oddly to catch at it. "That's +what I say to myself. It's what I've been believing you," he a trifle +vaguely explained, "still more certain to feel." + +She waited for him to say more, but he only, with his hands in his +pockets, turned again away, going this time to the single window of the +room, where in the absence of lamplight the blind hadn't been drawn. He +looked out into the lamplit fog, lost himself in the small sordid +London street--for sordid, with his other association, he felt it--as +he had lost himself, with Mrs. Stringham's eyes on him, in the vista of +the Grand Canal. It was present then to his recording consciousness +that when he had last been driven to such an attitude the very depth of +his resistance to the opportunity to give Kate away was what had so +driven him. His waiting companion had on that occasion waited for him +to say he _would_; and what he had meantime glowered forth at was the +inanity of such a hope. Kate's attention, on her side, during these +minutes, rested on the back and shoulders he thus familiarly +presented--rested as with a view of their expression, a reference to +things unimparted, links still missing and that she must ever miss, try +to make them out as she would. The result of her tension was that she +again took him up. "You received--what you spoke of--last night?" + +It made him turn round. "Coming in from Fleet Street--earlier by an +hour than usual--I found it with some other letters on my table. But my +eyes went straight to it, in an extraordinary way, from the door. I +recognised it, knew what it was, without touching it." + +"One can understand." She listened with respect. His tone however was +so singular that she presently added: "You speak as if all this while +you _hadn't_ touched it." + +"Oh yes, I've touched it. I feel as if, ever since, I'd been touching +nothing else. I quite firmly," he pursued as if to be plainer, "took +hold of it." + +"Then where is it?" + +"Oh I have it here." + +"And you've brought it to show me?" + +"I've brought it to show you." + +So he said with a distinctness that had, among his other oddities, +almost a sound of cheer, yet making no movement that matched his words. +She could accordingly but offer again her expectant face, while his +own, to her impatience, seemed perversely to fill with another thought. +"But now that you've done so you feel you don't want to." + +"I want to immensely," he said. "Only you tell me nothing." + +She smiled at him, with this, finally, as if he were an unreasonable +child. "It seems to me I tell you quite as much as you tell me. You +haven't yet even told me how it is that such explanations as you +require don't come from your document itself." Then as he answered +nothing she had a flash. "You mean you haven't read it?" + +"I haven't read it." + +She stared. "Then how am I to help you with it?" + +Again leaving her while she never budged he paced five strides, and +again he was before her. "By telling me _this_. It's something, you +know, that you wouldn't tell me the other day." + +She was vague. "The other day?" + +"The first time after my return--the Sunday I came to you. What's he +doing," Densher went on, "at that hour of the morning with her? What +does his having been with her there mean?" + +"Of whom are you talking?" + +"Of that man--Lord Mark of course. What does it represent?" + +"Oh with Aunt Maud?" + +"Yes, my dear--and with you. It comes more or less to the same thing; +and it's what you didn't tell me the other day when I put you the +question." + +Kate tried to remember the other day. "You asked me nothing about any +hour." + +"I asked you when it was you last saw him--previous, I mean, to his +second descent at Venice. You wouldn't say, and as we were talking of a +matter comparatively more important I let it pass. But the fact +remains, you know, my dear, that you haven't told me." + +Two things in this speech appeared to have reached Kate more distinctly +than the others. "I 'wouldn't say'?--and you 'let it pass'?" She looked +just coldly blank. "You really speak as if I were keeping something +back." + +"Well, you see," Densher persisted, "you're not even telling me now. +All I want to know," he nevertheless explained, "is whether there was a +connexion between that proceeding on his part, which was +practically--oh beyond all doubt!--the shock precipitating for her what +has now happened, and anything that had occurred with him previously +for yourself. How in the world did he know we're engaged?" + + +V + +Kate slowly rose; it was, since she had lighted the candles and sat +down, the first movement she had made. "Are you trying to fix it on me +that I must have told him?" + +She spoke not so much in resentment as in pale dismay--which he showed +he immediately took in. "My dear child, I'm not trying to 'fix' +anything; but I'm extremely tormented and I seem not to understand. +What has the brute to do with us anyway?" + +"What has he indeed?" Kate asked. + +She shook her head as if in recovery, within the minute, of some mild +allowance for his unreason. There was in it--and for his reason +really--one of those half-inconsequent sweetnesses by which she had +often before made, over some point of difference, her own terms with +him. Practically she was making them now, and essentially he was +knowing it; yet inevitably, all the same, he was accepting it. She +stood there close to him, with something in her patience that suggested +her having supposed, when he spoke more appealingly, that he was going +to kiss her. He hadn't been, it appeared; but his continued appeal was +none the less the quieter. "What's he doing, from ten o'clock on +Christmas morning, with Mrs. Lowder?" + +Kate looked surprised. "Didn't she tell you he's staying there?" + +"At Lancaster Gate?" Densher's surprise met it. "'Staying'?--since +when?" + +"Since day before yesterday. He was there before I came away." And then +she explained--confessing it in fact anomalous. "It's an accident--like +Aunt Maud's having herself remained in town for Christmas, but it isn't +after all so monstrous. _We_ stayed--and, with my having come here, +she's sorry now--because we neither of us, waiting from day to day for +the news you brought, seemed to want to be with a lot of people." + +"You stayed for thinking of--Venice?" + +"Of course we did. For what else? And even a little," Kate wonderfully +added--"it's true at least of Aunt Maud--for thinking of you." + +He appreciated. "I see. Nice of you every way. But whom," he enquired, +"has Lord Mark stayed for thinking of?" + +"His being in London, I believe, is a very commonplace matter. He has +some rooms which he has had suddenly some rather advantageous chance to +let--such as, with his confessed, his decidedly proclaimed want of +money, he hasn't had it in him, in spite of everything, not to jump at." + +Densher's attention was entire. "In spite of everything? In spite of +what?" + +"Well, I don't know. In spite, say, of his being scarcely supposed to +do that sort of thing." + +"To try to get money?" + +"To try at any rate in little thrifty ways. Apparently however he has +had for some reason to do what he can. He turned at a couple of days' +notice out of his place, making it over to his tenant; and Aunt Maud, +who's deeply in his confidence about all such matters, said: 'Come then +to Lancaster Gate--to sleep at least--till, like all the world, you go +to the country.' He was to have gone to the country--I think to +Matcham--yesterday afternoon: Aunt Maud, that is, told me he was." + +Kate had been somehow, for her companion, through this statement, +beautifully, quite soothingly, suggestive. "Told you, you mean, so that +you needn't leave the house?" + +"Yes--so far as she had taken it into her head that his being there was +part of my reason." + +"And _was_ it part of your reason?" + +"A little if you like. Yet there's plenty here--as I knew there would +be--without it. So that," she said candidly, "doesn't matter. I'm glad +I am here: even if for all the good I do--!" She implied however that +that didn't matter either. "He didn't, as you tell me, get off then to +Matcham; though he may possibly, if it is possible, be going this +afternoon. But what strikes me as most probable--and it's really, I'm +bound to say, quite amiable of him--is that he has declined to leave +Aunt Maud, as I've been so ready to do, to spend her Christmas alone. +If moreover he has given up Matcham for her it's a _procede_ that won't +please her less. It's small wonder therefore that she insists, on a +dull day, in driving him about. I don't pretend to know," she wound up, +"what may happen between them; but that's all I see in it." + +"You see in everything, and you always did," Densher returned, +"something that, while I'm with you at least, I always take from you as +the truth itself." + +She looked at him as if consciously and even carefully extracting the +sting of his reservation; then she spoke with a quiet gravity that +seemed to show how fine she found it. "Thank you." It had for him, like +everything else, its effect. They were still closely face to face, and, +yielding to the impulse to which he hadn't yielded just before, he laid +his hands on her shoulders, held her hard a minute and shook her a +little, far from untenderly, as if in expression of more mingled +things, all difficult, than he could speak. Then bending his head he +applied his lips to her cheek. He fell, after this, away for an +instant, resuming his unrest, while she kept the position in which, all +passive and as a statue, she had taken his demonstration. It didn't +prevent her, however, from offering him, as if what she had had was +enough for the moment, a further indulgence. She made a quiet lucid +connexion and as she made it sat down again. "I've been trying to place +exactly, as to its date, something that did happen to me while you were +in Venice. I mean a talk with him. He spoke to me--spoke out." + +"Ah there you are!" said Densher who had wheeled round. + +"Well, if I'm 'there,' as you so gracefully call it, by having refused +to meet him as he wanted--as he pressed--I plead guilty to being so. +Would you have liked me," she went on, "to give him an answer that +would have kept him from going?" + +It made him a little awkwardly think. "Did you know he was going?" + +"Never for a moment; but I'm afraid that--even if it doesn't fit your +strange suppositions--I should have given him just the same answer if I +had known. If it's a matter I haven't, since your return, thrust upon +you, that's simply because it's not a matter in the memory of which I +find a particular joy. I hope that if I've satisfied you about it," she +continued, "it's not too much to ask of you to let it rest." + +"Certainly," said Densher kindly, "I'll let it rest." But the next +moment he pursued: "He saw something. He guessed." + +"If you mean," she presently returned, "that he was unfortunately the +one person we hadn't deceived, I can't contradict you." + +"No--of course not. But _why_," Densher still risked, "was he +unfortunately the one person--? He's not really a bit intelligent." + +"Intelligent enough apparently to have seen a mystery, a riddle, in +anything so unnatural as--all things considered and when it came to the +point--my attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and on his +conviction he acted." + +Densher seemed for a little to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it +were a blot on the face of nature. "Do you mean because you had +appeared to him to have encouraged him?" + +"Of course I had been decent to him. Otherwise where _were_ we?" + +"'Where'--?" + +"You and I. What I appeared to him, however, hadn't mattered. What +mattered was how I appeared to Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remember +that he has had all along his impression of _you_. You can't help it," +she said, "but you're after all--well, yourself." + +"As much myself as you please. But when I took myself to Venice and +kept myself there--what," Densher asked, "did he make of that?" + +"Your being in Venice and liking to be--which is never on any one's +part a monstrosity--was explicable for him in other ways. He was quite +capable moreover of seeing it as dissimulation." + +"In spite of Mrs. Lowder?" + +"No," said Kate, "not in spite of Mrs. Lowder now. Aunt Maud, before +what you call his second descent, hadn't convinced him--all the more +that my refusal of him didn't help. But he came back convinced." And +then as her companion still showed a face at a loss: "I mean after he +had seen Milly, spoken to her and left her. Milly convinced him." + +"Milly?" Densher again but vaguely echoed. + +"That you were sincere. That it was _her_ you loved." It came to him +from her in such a way that he instantly, once more, turned, found +himself yet again at his window. "Aunt Maud, on his return here," she +meanwhile continued, "had it from him. And that's why you're now so +well with Aunt Maud." + +He only for a minute looked out in silence--after which he came away. +"And why _you_ are." It was almost, in its extremely affirmative effect +between them, the note of recrimination; or it would have been perhaps +rather if it hadn't been so much more the note of truth. It was sharp +because it was true, but its truth appeared to impose it as an argument +so conclusive as to permit on neither side a sequel. That made, while +they faced each other over it without speech, the gravity of +everything. It was as if there were almost danger, which the wrong word +might start. Densher accordingly at last acted to better purpose: he +drew, standing there before her, a pocket-book from the breast of his +waistcoat and he drew from the pocket-book a folded letter to which her +eyes attached themselves. He restored then the receptacle to its place +and, with a movement not the less odd for being visibly instinctive and +unconscious, carried the hand containing his letter behind him. What he +thus finally spoke of was a different matter. "Did I understand from +Mrs. Lowder that your father's in the house?" + +If it never had taken her long in such excursions to meet him it was +not to take her so now. "In the house, yes. But we needn't fear his +interruption"--she spoke as if he had thought of that. "He's in bed." + +"Do you mean with illness?" + +She sadly shook her head. "Father's never ill. He's a marvel. He's +only--endless." + +Densher thought. "Can I in any way help you with him?" + +"Yes." She perfectly, wearily, almost serenely, had it all. "By our +making your visit as little of an affair as possible for him--and for +Marian too." + +"I see. They hate so your seeing me. Yet I couldn't--could I?--not have +come." + +"No, you couldn't not have come." + +"But I can only, on the other hand, go as soon as possible?" + +Quickly it almost upset her. "Ah don't, to-day, put ugly words into my +mouth. I've enough of my trouble without it." + +"I know--I know!" He spoke in instant pleading. "It's all only that I'm +as troubled _for_ you. When did he come?" + +"Three days ago--after he hadn't been near her for more than a year, +after he had apparently, and not regrettably, ceased to remember her +existence; and in a state which made it impossible not to take him in." + +Densher hesitated. "Do you mean in such want--?" + +"No, not of food, of necessary things--not even, so far as his +appearance went, of money. He looked as wonderful as ever. But he +was--well, in terror." + +"In terror of what?" + +"I don't know. Of somebody--of something. He wants, he says, to be +quiet. But his quietness is awful." + +She suffered, but he couldn't not question. "What does he do?" + +It made Kate herself hesitate. "He cries." + +Again for a moment he hung fire, but he risked it. "What _has_ he done?" + +It made her slowly rise, and they were once more fully face to face. +Her eyes held his own and she was paler than she had been. "If you love +me--now--don't ask me about father." + +He waited again a moment. "I love you. It's because I love you that I'm +here. It's because I love you that I've brought you this." And he drew +from behind him the letter that had remained in his hand. + +But her eyes only--though he held it out--met the offer. "Why you've +not broken the seal!" + +"If I had broken the seal--exactly--I should know what's within. It's +for _you_ to break the seal that I bring it." + +She looked--still not touching the thing--inordinately grave. "To break +the seal of something to you from _her?_" + +"Ah precisely because it's from her. I'll abide by whatever you think +of it." + +"I don't understand," said Kate. "What do you yourself think?" And then +as he didn't answer: "It seems to me _I_ think you know. You have your +instinct. You don't need to read. It's the proof." + +Densher faced her words as if they had been an accusation, an +accusation for which he was prepared and which there was but one way to +face. "I have indeed my instinct. It came to me, while I worried it +out, last night. It came to me as an effect of the hour." He held up +his letter and seemed now to insist more than to confess. "This thing +had been timed." + +"For Christmas Eve?" + +"For Christmas Eve." + +Kate had suddenly a strange smile. "The season of gifts!" After which, +as he said nothing, she went on: "And had been written, you mean, while +she could write, and kept to _be_ so timed?" + +Only meeting her eyes while he thought, he again didn't reply. "What do +_you_ mean by the proof?" + +"Why of the beauty with which you've been loved. But I won't," she +said, "break your seal." + +"You positively decline?" + +"Positively. Never." To which she added oddly: "I know without." + +He had another pause. "And what is it you know?" + +"That she announces to you she has made you rich." + +His pause this time was longer. "Left me her fortune?" + +"Not all of it, no doubt, for it's immense. But money to a large +amount. I don't care," Kate went on, "to know how much." And her +strange smile recurred. "I trust her." + +"Did she tell you?" Densher asked. + +"Never!" Kate visibly flushed at the thought. "That wouldn't, on my +part, have been playing fair with her. And I did," she added, "play +fair." + +Densher, who had believed her--he couldn't help it--continued, holding +his letter, to face her. He was much quieter now, as if his torment had +somehow passed. "You played fair with me, Kate; and that's why--since +we talk of proofs--I want to give _you_ one. I've wanted to let you +see--and in preference even to myself--something I feel as sacred." + +She frowned a little. "I don't understand." + +"I've asked myself for a tribute, for a sacrifice by which I can +peculiarly recognise--" + +"Peculiarly recognise what?" she demanded as he dropped. + +"The admirable nature of your own sacrifice. You were capable in Venice +of an act of splendid generosity." + +"And the privilege you offer me with that document is my reward?" + +He made a movement. "It's all I can do as a symbol of my attitude." + +She looked at him long. "Your attitude, my dear, is that you're afraid +of yourself. You've had to take yourself in hand. You've had to do +yourself violence." + +"So it is then you meet me?" + +She bent her eyes hard a moment to the letter, from which her hand +still stayed itself. "You absolutely _desire_ me to take it?" + +"I absolutely desire you to take it." + +"To do what I like with it?" + +"Short of course of making known its terms. It must remain--pardon my +making the point--between you and me." + +She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke it. "Trust me." +Taking from him the sacred script she held it a little while her eyes +again rested on those fine characters of Milly's that they had shortly +before discussed. "To hold it," she brought out, "is to know." + +"Oh I _know!_" said Merton Densher. + +"Well then if we both do--!" She had already turned to the fire, nearer +to which she had moved, and with a quick gesture had jerked the thing +into the flame. He started--but only half--as to undo her action: his +arrest was as prompt as the latter had been decisive. He only watched, +with her, the paper burn; after which their eyes again met. "You'll +have it all," Kate said, "from New York." + +It was after he had in fact, two months later, heard from New York that +she paid him a visit one morning at his own quarters--coming not as she +had come in Venice, under his extreme solicitation, but as a need +recognised in the first instance by herself, even though also as the +prompt result of a missive delivered to her. This had consisted of a +note from Densher accompanying a letter, "just to hand," addressed him +by an eminent American legal firm, a firm of whose high character he +had become conscious while in New York as of a thing in the air itself, +and whose head and front, the principal executor of Milly Theale's +copious will, had been duly identified at Lancaster Gate as the +gentleman hurrying out, by the straight southern course, before the +girl's death, to the support of Mrs. Stringham. Densher's act on +receipt of the document in question--an act as to which and to the +bearings of which his resolve had had time to mature--constituted in +strictness, singularly enough, the first reference to Milly, or to what +Milly might or might not have done, that had passed between our pair +since they had stood together watching the destruction, in the little +vulgar grate at Chelsea, of the undisclosed work of her hand. They had +at the time, and in due deference now, on his part, to Kate's mention +of her responsibility for his call, immediately separated, and when +they met again the subject was made present to them--at all events till +some flare of new light--only by the intensity with which it mutely +expressed its absence. They were not moreover in these weeks to meet +often, in spite of the fact that this had, during January and a part of +February, actually become for them a comparatively easy matter. Kate's +stay at Mrs. Condrip's prolonged itself under allowances from her aunt +which would have been a mystery to Densher had he not been admitted, at +Lancaster Gate, really in spite of himself, to the esoteric view of +them. "It's her idea," Mrs. Lowder had there said to him as if she +really despised ideas--which she didn't; "and I've taken up with my +own, which is to give her her head till she has had enough of it. She +_has_ had enough of it, she had that soon enough; but as she's as proud +as the deuce she'll come back when she has found some reason--having +nothing in common with her disgust--of which she can make a show. She +calls it her holiday, which she's spending in her own way--the holiday +to which, once a year or so, as she says, the very maids in the +scullery have a right. So we're taking it on that basis. But we shall +not soon, I think, take another of the same sort. Besides, she's quite +decent; she comes often--whenever I make her a sign; and she has been +good, on the whole, this year or two, so that, to be decent myself, I +don't complain. She has really been, poor dear, very much what one +hoped; though I needn't, you know," Aunt Maud wound up, "tell _you_, +after all, you clever creature, what that was." + +It had been partly in truth to keep down the opportunity for this that +Densher's appearances under the good lady's roof markedly, after +Christmas, interspaced themselves. The phase of his situation that on +his return from Venice had made them for a short time almost frequent +was at present quite obscured, and with it the impulse that had then +acted. Another phase had taken its place, which he would have been +painfully at a loss as yet to name or otherwise set on its feet, but of +which the steadily rising tide left Mrs. Lowder, for his desire, quite +high and dry. There had been a moment when it seemed possible that Mrs. +Stringham, returning to America under convoy, would pause in London on +her way and be housed with her old friend; in which case he was +prepared for some apparent zeal of attendance. But this danger +passed--he had felt it a danger, and the person in the world whom he +would just now have most valued seeing on his own terms sailed away +westward from Genoa. He thereby only wrote to her, having broken, in +this respect, after Milly's death, the silence as to the sense of +which, before that event, their agreement had been so deep. She had +answered him from Venice twice, and had had time to answer him twice +again from New York. The last letter of her four had come by the same +post as the document he sent on to Kate, but he hadn't gone into the +question of also enclosing that. His correspondence with Milly's +companion was somehow already presenting itself to him as a feature--as +a factor, he would have said in his newspaper--of the time whatever it +might be, long or short, in store for him; but one of his acutest +current thoughts was apt to be devoted to his not having yet mentioned +it to Kate. She had put him no question, no "Don't you ever hear?"--so +that he hadn't been brought to the point. This he described to himself +as a mercy, for he liked his secret. It was as a secret that, in the +same personal privacy, he described his transatlantic commerce, scarce +even wincing while he recognised it as the one connexion in which he +wasn't straight. He had in fact for this connexion a vivid mental +image--he saw it as a small emergent rock in the waste of waters, the +bottomless grey expanse of straightness. The fact that he had on +several recent occasions taken with Kate an out-of-the-way walk that +was each time to define itself as more remarkable for what they didn't +say than for what they did--this fact failed somehow to mitigate for +him a strange consciousness of exposure. There was something deep +within him that he had absolutely shown to no one--to the companion of +these walks in particular not a bit more than he could help; but he was +none the less haunted, under its shadow, with a dire apprehension of +publicity. It was as if he had invoked that ugliness in some stupid +good faith; and it was queer enough that on his emergent rock, clinging +to it and to Susan Shepherd, he should figure himself as hidden from +view. That represented no doubt his belief in her power, or in her +delicate disposition to protect him. Only Kate at all events knew--what +Kate did know, and she was also the last person interested to tell it; +in spite of which it was as if his _act_, so deeply associated with her +and never to be recalled nor recovered, was abroad on the winds of the +world. His honesty, as he viewed it with Kate, was the very element of +that menace: to the degree that he saw at moments, as to their final +impulse or their final remedy, the need to bury in the dark blindness +of each other's arms the knowledge of each other that they couldn't +undo. + +Save indeed that the sense in which it was in these days a question of +arms was limited, this might have been the intimate expedient to which +they were actually resorting. It had its value, in conditions that made +everything count, that thrice over, in Battersea Park--where Mrs. +Lowder now never drove--he had adopted the usual means, in sequestered +alleys, of holding her close to his side. She could make absences, on +her present footing, without having too inordinately to account for +them at home--which was exactly what gave them for the first time an +appreciable margin. He supposed she could always say in Chelsea--though +he didn't press it--that she had been across the town, in decency, for +a look at her aunt; whereas there had always been reasons at Lancaster +Gate for her not being able to plead the look at her other relatives. +It was therefore between them a freedom of a purity as yet untasted; +which for that matter also they made in various ways no little show of +cherishing as such. They made the show indeed in every way but the way +of a large use--an inconsequence that they almost equally gave time to +helping each other to regard as natural. He put it to his companion +that the kind of favour he now enjoyed at Lancaster Gate, the wonderful +warmth of his reception there, cut in a manner the ground from under +their feet. He was too horribly trusted--they had succeeded too well. +He couldn't in short make appointments with her without abusing Aunt +Maud, and he couldn't on the other hand haunt that lady without tying +his hands. Kate saw what he meant just as he saw what she did when she +admitted that she was herself, to a degree scarce less embarrassing, in +the enjoyment of Aunt Maud's confidence. It was special at present--she +was handsomely used; she confessed accordingly to a scruple about +misapplying her licence. Mrs. Lowder then finally had found--and all +unconsciously now--the way to baffle them. It wasn't however that they +didn't meet a little, none the less, in the southern quarter, to point +for their common benefit the moral of their defeat. They crossed the +river; they wandered in neighbourhoods sordid and safe; the winter was +mild, so that, mounting to the top of trams, they could rumble together +to Clapham or to Greenwich. If at the same time their minutes had never +been so counted it struck Densher that by a singular law their tone--he +scarce knew what to call it--had never been so bland. Not to talk of +what they _might_ have talked of drove them to other ground; it was as +if they used a perverse insistence to make up what they ignored. They +concealed their pursuit of the irrelevant by the charm of their manner; +they took precautions for the courtesy they had formerly left to come +of itself; often, when he had quitted her, he stopped short, walking +off, with the aftersense of their change. He would have described their +change--had he so far faced it as to describe it--by their being so +damned civil. That had even, with the intimate, the familiar at the +point to which they had brought them, a touch almost of the droll. What +danger had there ever been of their becoming rude--after each had long +since made the other so tremendously tender? Such were the things he +asked himself when he wondered what in particular he most feared. + +Yet all the while too the tension had its charm--such being the +interest of a creature who could bring one back to her by such +different roads. It was her talent for life again; which found in her a +difference for the differing time. She didn't give their tradition up; +she but made of it something new. Frankly moreover she had never been +more agreeable nor in a way--to put it prosaically--better company: he +felt almost as if he were knowing her on that defined basis--which he +even hesitated whether to measure as reduced or as extended; as if at +all events he were admiring her as she was probably admired by people +she met "out." He hadn't in fine reckoned that she would still have +something fresh for him; yet this was what she had--that on the top of +a tram in the Borough he felt as if he were next her at dinner. What a +person she would be if they _had_ been rich--with what a genius for the +so-called great life, what a presence for the so-called great house, +what a grace for the so-called great positions! He might regret at +once, while he was about it, that they weren't princes or billionaires. +She had treated him on their Christmas to a softness that had struck +him at the time as of the quality of fine velvet, meant to fold thick, +but stretched a little thin; at present, however, she gave him the +impression of a contact multitudinous as only the superficial can be. +She had throughout never a word for what went on at home. She came out +of that and she returned to it, but her nearest reference was the look +with which, each time, she bade him good-bye. The look was her repeated +prohibition: "It's what I _have_ to see and to know--so don't touch it. +That but wakes up the old evil, which I keep still, in my way, by +sitting by it. I go now--leave me alone!--to sit by it again. The way +to pity me--if that's what you want--is to believe in me. If we could +really _do_ anything it would be another matter." + +He watched her, when she went her way, with the vision of what she thus +a little stiffly carried. It was confused and obscure, but how, with +her head high, it made her hold herself! He really in his own person +might at these moments have been swaying a little aloft as one of the +objects in her poised basket. It was doubtless thanks to some such +consciousness as this that he felt the lapse of the weeks, before the +day of Kate's mounting of his stair, almost swingingly rapid. They +contained for him the contradiction that, whereas periods of waiting +are supposed in general to keep the time slow, it was the wait, +actually, that made the pace trouble him. The secret of that anomaly, +to be plain, was that he was aware of how, while the days melted, +something rare went with them. This something was only a thought, but a +thought precisely of such freshness and such delicacy as made the +precious, of whatever sort, most subject to the hunger of time. The +thought was all his own, and his intimate companion was the last person +he might have shared it with. He kept it back like a favourite pang; +left it behind him, so to say, when he went out, but came home again +the sooner for the certainty of finding it there. Then he took it out +of its sacred corner and its soft wrappings; he undid them one by one, +handling them, handling _it_, as a father, baffled and tender, might +handle a maimed child. But so it was before him--in his dread of who +else might see it. Then he took to himself at such hours, in other +words, that he should never, never know what had been in Milly's +letter. The intention announced in it he should but too probably know; +only that would have been, but for the depths of his spirit, the least +part of it. The part of it missed for ever was the turn she would have +given her act. This turn had possibilities that, somehow, by wondering +about them, his imagination had extraordinarily filled out and refined. +It had made of them a revelation the loss of which was like the sight +of a priceless pearl cast before his eyes--his pledge given not to save +it--into the fathomless sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice +of something sentient and throbbing, something that, for the spiritual +ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail. This was the sound he +cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and +guarded the stillness, so that it might prevail there till the +inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh, +should smother and deaden it--doubtless by the same process with which +they would officiously heal the ache in his soul that was somehow one +with it. It moreover deepened the sacred hush that he couldn't +complain. He had given poor Kate her freedom. + +The great and obvious thing, as soon as she stood there on the occasion +we have already named, was that she was now in high possession of it. +This would have marked immediately the difference--had there been +nothing else to do it--between their actual terms and their other +terms, the character of their last encounter in Venice. That had been +_his_ idea, whereas her present step was her own; the few marks they +had in common were, from the first moment, to his conscious vision, +almost pathetically plain. She was as grave now as before; she looked +around her, to hide it, as before; she pretended, as before, in an air +in which her words at the moment itself fell flat, to an interest in +the place and a curiosity about his "things"; there was a recall in the +way in which, after she had failed a little to push up her veil +symmetrically and he had said she had better take it off altogether, +she had acceded to his suggestion before the glass. It was just these +things that were vain; and what was real was that his fancy figured her +after the first few minutes as literally now providing the element of +reassurance which had previously been his care. It was she, supremely, +who had the presence of mind. She made indeed for that matter very +prompt use of it. "You see I've not hesitated this time to break your +seal." + +She had laid on the table from the moment of her coming in the long +envelope, substantially filled, which he had sent her enclosed in +another of still ampler make. He had however not looked at it--his +belief being that he wished never again to do so; besides which it had +happened to rest with its addressed side up. So he "saw" nothing, and +it was only into her eyes that her remark made him look, declining any +approach to the object indicated. "It's not 'my' seal, my dear; and my +intention--which my note tried to express--was all to treat it to you +as not mine." + +"Do you mean that it's to that extent mine then?" + +"Well, let us call it, if we like, theirs--that of the good people in +New York, the authors of our communication. If the seal is broken well +and good; but we _might_, you know," he presently added, "have sent it +back to them intact and inviolate. Only accompanied," he smiled with +his heart in his mouth, "by an absolutely kind letter." + +Kate took it with the mere brave blink with which a patient of courage +signifies to the exploring medical hand that the tender place is +touched. He saw on the spot that she was prepared, and with this signal +sign that she was too intelligent not to be, came a flicker of +possibilities. She was--merely to put it at that--intelligent enough +for anything. "Is it what you're proposing we _should_ do?" + +"Ah it's too late to do it--well, ideally. Now, with that sign that we +_know_--!" + +"But you don't know," she said very gently. + +"I refer," he went on without noticing it, "to what would have been the +handsome way. Its being dispatched again, with no cognisance taken but +one's assurance of the highest consideration, and the proof of this in +the state of the envelope--_that_ would have been really satisfying." + +She thought an instant. "The state of the envelope proving refusal, you +mean, not to be based on the insufficiency of the sum?" + +Densher smiled again as for the play, however whimsical, of her humour. +"Well yes--something of that sort." + +"So that if cognisance _has_ been taken--so far as I'm concerned--it +spoils the beauty?" + +"It makes the difference that I'm disappointed in the hope--which I +confess I entertained--that you'd bring the thing back to me as you had +received it." + +"You didn't express that hope in your letter." + +"I didn't want to. I wanted to leave it to yourself. I wanted--oh yes, +if that's what you wish to ask me--to see what you'd do." + +"You wanted to measure the possibilities of my departure from delicacy?" + +He continued steady now; a kind of ease--from the presence, as in the +air, of something he couldn't yet have named--had come to him. "Well, I +wanted--in so good a case--to test you." + +She was struck--it showed in her face--by his expression. "It _is_ a +good case. I doubt whether a better," she said with her eyes on him, +"has ever been known." + +"The better the case then the better the test!" + +"How do you know," she asked in reply to this, "what I'm capable of?" + +"I don't, my dear! Only with the seal unbroken I should have known +sooner." + +"I see"--she took it in. "But I myself shouldn't have known at all. And +you wouldn't have known, either, what I do know." + +"Let me tell you at once," he returned, "that if you've been moved to +correct my ignorance I very particularly request you not to." + +She just hesitated. "Are you afraid of the effect of the corrections? +Can you only do it by doing it blindly?" + +He waited a moment. "What is it that you speak of my doing?" + +"Why the only thing in the world that I take you as thinking of. Not +accepting--what she has done. Isn't there some regular name in such +cases? Not taking up the bequest." + +"There's something you forget in it," he said after a moment. "My +asking you to join with me in doing so." + +Her wonder but made her softer, yet at the same time didn't make her +less firm. "How can I 'join' in a matter with which I've nothing to do?" + +"How? By a single word." + +"And what word?" + +"Your consent to my giving up." + +"My consent has no meaning when I can't prevent you." + +"You can perfectly prevent me. Understand that well," he said. + +She seemed to face a threat in it. "You mean you won't give up if I +_don't_ consent?" + +"Yes. I do nothing." + +"That, as I understand, is accepting." + +Densher paused. "I do nothing formal." + +"You won't, I suppose you mean, touch the money." + +"I won't touch the money." + +It had a sound--though he had been coming to it--that made for gravity. +"Who then in such an event _will?_" + +"Any one who wants or who can." + +Again a little she said nothing: she might say too much. But by the +time she spoke he had covered ground. "How can I touch it but _through_ +you?" + +"You can't. Any more," he added, "than I can renounce it except through +you." + +"Oh ever so much less! There's nothing," she explained, "in my power." + +"I'm in your power," Merton Densher said. + +"In what way?" + +"In the way I show--and the way I've always shown. When have I shown," +he asked as with a sudden cold impatience, "anything else? You surely +must feel--so that you needn't wish to appear to spare me in it--how +you 'have' me." + +"It's very good of you, my dear," she nervously laughed, "to put me so +thoroughly up to it!" + +"I put you up to nothing. I didn't even put you up to the chance that, +as I said a few moments ago, I saw for you in forwarding that thing. +Your liberty is therefore in every way complete." + +It had come to the point really that they showed each other pale faces, +and that all the unspoken between them looked out of their eyes in a +dim terror of their further conflict. Something even rose between them +in one of their short silences--something that was like an appeal from +each to the other not to be too true. Their necessity was somehow +before them, but which of them must meet it first? "Thank you!" Kate +said for his word about her freedom, but taking for the minute no +further action on it. It was blest at least that all ironies failed +them, and during another slow moment their very sense of it cleared the +air. + +There was an effect of this in the way he soon went on. "You must +intensely feel that it's the thing for which we worked together." + +She took up the remark, however, no more than if it were commonplace; +she was already again occupied with a point of her own. "Is it +absolutely true--for if it is, you know, it's tremendously +interesting--that you haven't so much as a curiosity about what she has +done for you?" + +"Would you like," he asked, "my formal oath on it?" + +"No--but I don't understand. It seems to me in your place--!" + +"Ah," he couldn't help breaking in, "what do you know of my place? +Pardon me," he at once added; "my preference is the one I express." + +She had in an instant nevertheless a curious thought. "But won't the +facts be published?" + +"'Published'?"--he winced. + +"I mean won't you see them in the papers?" + +"Ah never! I shall know how to escape that." + +It seemed to settle the subject, but she had the next minute another +insistence. "Your desire is to escape everything?" + +"Everything." + +"And do you need no more definite sense of what it is you ask me to +help you to renounce?" + +"My sense is sufficient without being definite. I'm willing to believe +that the amount of money's not small." + +"Ah there you are!" she exclaimed. + +"If she was to leave me a remembrance," he quietly pursued, "it would +inevitably not be meagre." + +Kate waited as for how to say it. "It's worthy of her. It's what she +was herself--if you remember what we once said _that_ was." + +He hesitated--as if there had been many things. But he remembered one +of them. "Stupendous?" + +"Stupendous." A faint smile for it--ever so small--had flickered in her +face, but had vanished before the omen of tears, a little less +uncertain, had shown themselves in his own. His eyes filled--but that +made her continue. She continued gently. "I think that what it really +is must be that you're afraid. I mean," she explained, "that you're +afraid of _all_ the truth. If you're in love with her without it, what +indeed can you be more? And you're afraid--it's wonderful!--to be in +love with her." + +"I never was in love with her," said Densher. + +She took it, but after a little she met it. "I believe that now--for +the time she lived. I believe it at least for the time you were there. +But your change came--as it might well--the day you last saw her; she +died for you then that you might understand her. From that hour you +_did_." With which Kate slowly rose. "And I do now. She did it _for_ +us." Densher rose to face her, and she went on with her thought. "I +used to call her, in my stupidity--for want of anything better--a dove. +Well she stretched out her wings, and it was to _that_ they reached. +They cover us." + +"They cover us," Densher said. + +"That's what I give you," Kate gravely wound up. "That's what I've done +for you." + +His look at her had a slow strangeness that had dried, on the moment, +his tears. "Do I understand then--?" + +"That I do consent?" She gravely shook her head. "No--for I see. You'll +marry me without the money; you won't marry me with it. If I don't +consent _you_ don't." + +"You lose me?" He showed, though naming it frankly, a sort of awe of +her high grasp. "Well, you lose nothing else. I make over to you every +penny." + +Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no smile this time to spare. +"Precisely--so that I must choose." + +"You must choose." + +Strange it was for him then that she stood in his own rooms doing it, +while, with an intensity now beyond any that had ever made his breath +come slow, he waited for her act. "There's but one thing that can save +you from my choice." + +"From your choice of my surrender to you?" + +"Yes"--and she gave a nod at the long envelope on the table--"your +surrender of that." + +"What is it then?" + +"Your word of honour that you're not in love with her memory." + +"Oh--her memory!" + +"Ah"--she made a high gesture--"don't speak of it as if you couldn't +be. I could in your place; and you're one for whom it will do. Her +memory's your love. You _want_ no other." + +He heard her out in stillness, watching her face but not moving. Then +he only said: "I'll marry you, mind you, in an hour." + +"As we were?" + +"As we were." + +But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. "We +shall never be again as we were!" + + +THE END + + + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS + +U . S . A + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Wings of the Dove, Volume II, by Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINGS OF THE DOVE, VOLUME II *** + +***** This file should be named 30059.txt or 30059.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/0/5/30059/ + +Produced by James Adcock. Special thanks to The Internet +Archive: American Libraries, and Project Gutenberg Australia + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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