 Book 3, Chapter 1 of The Wings of the Dove This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Wings of the Dove by Henry James Book 3, Chapter 1 The two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season, had been warned that their design was unconsidered, that the passes wouldn't be clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns open. The two ladies who, characteristically, had braved a good deal of possibly interested remonstrants, were finding themselves, as their adventure turned out, wonderfully sustained. It was the judgement of the head-waiters and other functionaries on the Italian lakes that approved itself now as interested. They themselves had been conscious of impatiencies of bolder dreams, at least the younger had, so that one of the things they made out together, making out as they did an endless variety, was that in those operatic places of the Villa d'Este, of Cadenabia, of Palazza and Strasza, lone women, however reinforced by a travelling library of instructive volumes, were apt to be beguiled and undone. Their flights of fancy, moreover, had been modest. They had, for instance, risked nothing vital in hoping to make their way by the Brunig. They were making it, in fact, happily enough, as we meet them, and were only wishing that, for the wondrous beauty of the early high-climbing spring, it might have been longer, and the places to pause and rest more numerous. Such, at least, had been the intimated attitude of Mrs. Stringham, the elder of the companions, who had her own view of the impatiencies of the younger, to which, however, she offered an opposition but of the most circuitous. She moved, the admirable Mrs. Stringham, in a fine cloud of observation and suspicion. She was in the position, as she believed, of knowing much more about Millie Thiel than Millie herself knew, and yet of having to darken her knowledge as well as make it active. The woman in the world least formed by nature, as she was quite aware, for duplicities and labyrinths. She found herself dedicated to personal subtlety by a new set of circumstances, above all by a new personal relation. Had now, in fact, to recognise that an education in the occult, she could scarcely say what to call it, had begun for her the day she left New York with Mildred. She had come on from Boston for that purpose, had seen little of the girl, or rather had seen her but briefly, for Mrs. Stringham, when she saw anything at all, saw much, saw everything, before accepting her proposal, and had accordingly placed herself by her act in a boat that she more and more estimated as, humanly speaking, of the biggest, though likewise no doubt in many ways, by reason of its size, of the safest. In Boston the winter before, the young lady, in whom we are interested, had, on the spot, deeply, yet almost tacitly, appealed to her, dropped into her mind the shy conceit of some assistance, some devotion to render. Mrs. Stringham's little life had often been visited by shy conceits, secret dreams that had fluttered their hour between its narrow walls, without, for any great part, so much as mustering courage to look out of its rather dim windows. But this imagination, the fancy of a possible link with the remarkable young thing from New York, had mustered courage, had perched on the instant that the clearest look out it could find, and might be said to have remained there till, only a few months later, it had caught, in surprise and joy, the unmistakable flash of a signal. Millie Thiel had Boston friends, such as they were, and of recent making, and it was understood that her visit to them, a visit that was not to be meager, had been undertaken after a series of bereavements, in the interest of the particular piece that New York couldn't give. It was recognised, liberally enough, that there were many things, perhaps even too many, New York could give, but this was felt to make no difference in the important truth that what you had most to do, under the discipline of life or of death, was really to feel your situation as grave. Boston could help you to that, as nothing else could, and it had extended to Millie, by every presumption, some such measure of assistance. Mrs. Stringham was never to forget, for the moment had not faded, nor the infinitely fine vibration it set up in any degree ceased, her own first sight of the striking apparition, then unheralded and unexplained. The slim, constantly pale, delicately haggard, anomalously agreeably angular young person of not more than two and twenty summers, in spite of her marks, whose hair was somehow exceptionally red, even for the real thing, which it innocently confessed to being, and whose clothes were remarkably black, even for robes of mourning, which was the meaning they expressed. It was New York morning, it was New York hair, it was a New York history, confused as yet but multitudinous of the loss of parents, brothers, sisters, almost every human appendage, all on a scale and with a sweep that had required the greatest age. It was a New York legend of affecting, of romantic isolation, and beyond everything, it was, by most accounts, in respect to the mass of money so piled on the girl's back, a set of New York possibilities. She was alone, she was stricken, she was rich, and in particular was strange, a combination in itself of a nature to engage Mrs. Stringham's attention, but it was the strangeness that most determined our good lady's sympathy, convinced, as she had to be, that it was greater than anyone else, anyone but the soul Susan Stringham, supposed. Susan privately settled it, that Boston was not in the least seeing her, was only occupied with her seeing Boston, and that any assumed affinity between the two characters was delusive and vain. She was seeing her, and she had quite the finest moment of her life in now obeying the instinct to conceal the vision. She couldn't explain it, no one would understand, they would say clever Boston things. Mrs. Stringham was from Burlington, Vermont, which she boldly upheld as the real heart of New England, Boston being too far south, but they would only darken Council. There could be no better proof, than this quick intellectual split, of the impression made on our friend, who shone herself, she was well aware, with but the reflected light of the admirable city. She too had had her discipline, but it had not made her striking, it had been prosaically usual, though doubtless a decent dose, and had only made her usual to match it, usual that is, as Boston went. She had lost first her husband, and then her mother, with whom, on her husband's death, she had lived again, so that now, childless, she was but more sharply single than before. Yet she sat rather coldly light, having, as she called it, enough to live on, so far that is, as she lived by bread alone. How little indeed she was regularly content with that diet, appeared from the name she had made, Susan Shepard Stringham, as a contributor to the best magazines. She wrote short stories, and she fondly believed she had her note, the art of showing New England, without showing it wholly in the kitchen. She had not herself been brought up in the kitchen, she knew others who had not, and to speak for them had thus become with her a literary mission. To be in truth literary had ever been her dearest thought, the thought that kept her bright little nippers perpetually in position. There were masters, models, celebrities, mainly foreign, whom she finally accounted so, and in whose light she ingeniously laboured. There were others whom, however, chatted about, she ranked with the inane, for she bristled with discriminations. But all categories failed her, they ceased at least to signify, as soon as she found herself in presence of the real thing, the romantic life itself. That was what she saw in Mildred, what positively made her hand a wild tremble too much for the pen. She had had, it seemed to her, a revelation, such as even New England, refined and grammatical, couldn't give. And, all made up as she was of small, neat memories and ingenuities, little industries and ambitions, mixed with something moral, personal, that was still more intensely responsive. She felt her new friend would have done her an ill turn if their friendship shouldn't develop, and yet that nothing would be left of anything else if it should. It was for the surrender of everything else that she was, however, quite prepared, and while she went about her usual Boston business, with her usual Boston probity, she was really all the while holding herself. She wore her handsome felt hat, so Tyrellese, yet somehow, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so truly domestic, with the same straightness and security. She attached her fur boa with the same honest precautions, she preserved her balance on the ice slopes with the same practised skill, she opened each evening her transcript with the same interfusion of suspense and resignation. She attended her almost daily concert with the same expenditure of patience and the same economy of passion. She flitted in and out of the public library, with the air of conscientiously returning, or bravely carrying off in her pocket, the key of knowledge itself. And finally, it was what she most did, she watched the thin trickle of effective love interest through that somewhat serpentine channel in the magazines, which she mainly managed to keep clear for it. But the real thing all the while was elsewhere, the real thing had gone back to New York, leaving behind it the two unsolved questions, quite distinct of why it was real, and whether she should ever be so near it again. For the figure to which these questions attached themselves, she had found a convenient description, she thought of it for herself always as that of a girl with a background. The great reality was in the fact that, very soon, after but two or three meetings, the girl with the background, the girl with the crown of old gold, and the morning that was not as the morning of Boston, but at once more rebellious in its gloom and more frivolous in its frills, had told her she had never seen anyone like her. They had met thus as opposed curiosities, and that simple remark of Millie's, if simple it was, became the most important thing that had ever happened to her. It deprived the love interest for the time of actuality, and even of pertinence. It moved her first, in short, in a high degree to gratitude, and then to no small compassion. Yet in respect to this relation at least, it was what did prove the key of knowledge. It lighted up as nothing else could do the poor young woman's history. That the potential heiress of all the ages should never have seen anyone like a mere typical subscriber, after all, to the transcript was a truth that, in a special as announced with modesty, with humility, with regret, described a situation. It laid upon the elder woman, as to the void to be filled, a weight of responsibility. But in particular it led her to ask whom poor Mildred had then seen, and what range of contacts it had taken to produce such queer surprises. That was really the inquiry that had ended by clearing the air. The key of knowledge was felt to click in the lock from the moment it flashed upon Mrs. Stringham that her friend had been starved for culture. Culture was what she herself represented for her, and it was living up to that principle that would surely prove the great business. She knew, the clever lady, what the principle itself represented, and the limits of her own store, and a certain alarm would have grown upon her if something else hadn't grown faster. This was, fortunately for her, and we give it in her own words, the sense of a harrowing pathos. That, primarily, was what appealed to her, what seemed to open the door of romance for her, still wider than any, than a still more reckless, connection with the picture papers. For such was essentially the point. It was rich, romantic, abysmal to have, as was evident, thousands and thousands a year, to have youth and intelligence, and, if not beauty, at least in equal measure, a high, dim, charming, ambiguous oddity, which was even better, and then, on top of all, to enjoy boundless freedom, the freedom of the wind in the desert, it was unspeakably touching to be so equipped, and yet to have been reduced by fortune to little, humble-minded mistakes. It brought our friend's imagination back again to New York, where aberrations were so possible in the intellectual sphere, and it, in fact, caused a visit she presently paid there to overflow with interest. As Millie had beautifully invited her, so she would hold out if she could against the strain of so much confidence in her mind, and the remarkable thing was that, even at the end of three weeks, she had held out. But by this time her mind had grown comparatively bold and free. It was dealing with new quantities, a different proportion altogether, and that had made for refreshment. Millie had, accordingly, gone home in convenient possession of her subject. New York was vast, New York was startling with strange histories, with wild cosmopolite backward generations that accounted for anything, and to have got nearer the luxuriant tribe of which the rare creature was the final flower, the immense extravagant unregulated cluster with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins, lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all busts and curls, preserved, though so exposed, in the marble of famous French chisels. All this, to say nothing of the effect of closer growths of the stem, was to have had one small world-space both crowded and enlarged. Our couple had, at all events, effected an exchange. The elder friend had been as consciously intellectual as possible, and the younger, a bounding in personal revelation, had been as unconsciously distinguished. This was poetry, it was also history, Mrs. Stringham thought, to a finer tune, even than metalink and patter, than marbeau and Gregorovius. She appointed occasions for the reading of these authors with her hostess, rather perhaps than actually achieved great spans, but what they managed and what they missed, speedily sank for her into the dim depth of the merely relative, so quickly, so strongly had she clutched her central clue. All her scruples and hesitations, all her anxious enthousiasms, had reduced themselves to a single alarm, the fear that she really might act on her companion, clumsily and coarsely. She was positively afraid of what she might do to her, and to avoid that, to avoid it with piety and passion, to do rather nothing at all, to leave her untouched, because no touch one could apply, however light, however just, however earnest and anxious, would be half-good enough, would be anything but an ugly smudge upon perfection, this now imposed itself as a consistent and inspiring thought. Less than a month after the event that had so determined Mrs. Stringham's attitude, close upon the heels, that is, of her return from New York, she was reached by a proposal that brought up for her the kind of question her delicacy might have to contend with. Would she start for Europe with her young friend at the earliest possible date, and should she be willing to do so without making conditions? The inquiry was launched by wire, explanations in sufficiency were promised, extreme urgency was suggested and a general surrender invited. It was to the honour of her sincerity that she made the surrender on the spot, though it was not perhaps altogether to that of her logic. She had wanted, very consciously, from the first to give something up for her new acquaintance, but she had now no doubt that she was practically giving up all. What settled this was the fullness of a particular impression, the impression that had throughout more and more supported her, and which she would have uttered so far as she might by saying that the charm of the creature was positively in the creature's greatness. She would have been content so to leave it, unless indeed she had said more familiarly that Mildred was the biggest impression of her life. That was at all events the biggest account of her, and none but a big clearly would do. Her situation, as such things were called, was on the grand scale, but it still was not that. It was her nature, once for all, a nature that reminded Mrs Stringham of the term always used in the newspapers about the great new steamers, the inordinate number of feet of water they drew, so that if in your little boat you had chosen to hover and approach, you had but yourself to thank, when once motion was started, for the way the draft pulled you. Millie drew the feet of water, and odd though it might seem that a lonely girl who was not robust and who hated sound and show should stir the stream like a leviathan, her companion floated off with the sense of rocking violently at her side. More than prepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs Stringham mainly failed of ease in respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for an indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her hands off. If she wished to be sure of neither touching nor smudging, the straighter plan would doubtless have been not to keep her friend within reach. This in fact she fully recognised, and with it the degree to which she desired that the girl should lead her life, a life certain to be so much finer than that of anybody else. The difficulty however, by good fortune, cleared away as soon as she had further recognised, as she was speedily able to do, that she, Susan Shepard, the name with which Millie for the most part amused herself, was not anybody else. She had renounced that character, she had now no life to lead, and she honestly believed that she was thus supremely equipped for leading Millie's own. No other person, whatever she was sure, had to an equal degree this qualification, and it was really to assert it that she fondly embarked. Many things, though not in many weeks, had come and gone since then, and one of the best of them doubtless had been the voyage itself by the happy southern course to the succession of Mediterranean ports with the dazzled wind-up at Naples. Two or three others had preceded this, incidents indeed rather lively marks of their last fortnight at home, and one of which had determined on Mrs. Stringham's part a rush to New York, forty-eight breathless hours there, previous to her final rally. But the great sustained sea-light had drunk up the rest of the picture, so that for many days other questions and other possibilities sounded with as little effect as a trio of penny whistles might sound in a Wagner overture. It was the Wagner overture that practically prevailed, up through Italy, where Millie had already been, still further up and across the Alps, which were also partly known to Mrs. Stringham, only perhaps taken to a time not wholly congruous, hurried in fact on account of the girl's high restlessness. She had been expected, she had frankly promised, to be restless, that was partly why she was great, or was a consequence at any rate, if not a cause, yet she had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hard at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful to Mrs. Stringham, that she had her ears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her through the wanton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its higher sides, and fond almost of nothing else. But the vagueness, the openness, the eagerness without point, and the interest without pause, all a part of the charm of her oddity, as at first presented, had become more striking, in proportion as they triumphed over movement and change. She had arts and idiosyncrasies, of which no great account could have been given, but which were a daily grace, if you lived with them, such as the art of being almost tragically impatient, and yet making it as light as air, of being inexplicably sad, and yet making it as clear as noon, of being unmistakably gay, and yet making it as soft as dusk. Mrs. Stringham, by this time, understood everything, was more than ever confirmed in wonder and admiration, in her view that it was life enough simply to feel her companion's feelings. But there were special keys she had not yet added to her bunch, impressions that of a sudden were apt to affect her as new. This particular day on the Great Swiss Road had been, for some reason, full of them, and they referred themselves provisionally to some deeper depth than she had touched, though into two or three such depths, it must be added, she had peeped long enough to find herself suddenly draw back. It was not Millie's unpacified state, in short, that now troubled her, though certainly, as Europe was the Great American Sedative, the failure was to some extent to be noted. It was the suspected presence of something behind the state, which, however, could scarcely have taken its place there since their departure. What a fresh motive of unrest could suddenly have sprung from was, in short, not to be divine. It was but half an explanation to say that excitement, for each of them, had naturally dropped, and what they had left behind, or tried to, the great serious facts of life, as Mrs. Stringham liked to call them, was once more coming into sight as objects loomed through the smoke, when smoke begins to clear. For these were general appearances from which the girl's own aspect, her really larger vagueness, seemed rather to disconnect itself. The nearest approach to a personal anxiety, indulged in as yet by the elder lady, was on her taking occasion to wonder if what she had more than anything else got hold of, mightn't be one of the finer, one of the finest, one of the rarest, as she called it, so that she might call it nothing worse, cases of American intensity. She had just had a moment of alarm, asked herself if her young friend were merely going to treat her to some complicated drama of nerves. At the end of a week, however, with their further progress, her young friend had effectively answered the question, and given her the impression, indistinct indeed as yet, of something that had a reality compared with which the nervous explanation would have been cause. Mrs. Stringham found herself from that hour, in other words, in presence of an explanation that remained a muffled and intangible form, but that assuredly, should it take on sharpness, would explain everything, and more than everything, would become instantly the light in which Milly was to be read. Such a match as this may, at all events, speak of the style in which our young woman could affect those who were near her, may testify to the sort of interest she could inspire. She worked, and seemingly quite without design, upon the sympathy, the curiosity, the fancy of her associates, and we shall really ourselves, scarce otherwise, come closer to her than by feeling their impression, and sharing, if need be, their confusion. She reduced them, Mrs. Stringham would have said, to a consenting bewilderment, which was precisely for that good lady, on a last analysis, what was most in harmony with her greatness. She exceeded, escaped measure, was surprising, only because they were so far from great. Thus it was, that on this wondrous day by the Brunig, the spell of watching her had grown more than ever irresistible. A proof of what, or of a part of what, Mrs. Stringham had, with all the rest, been reduced to. She had almost the sense of tracking her young friend, as if at a given moment, to pounce. She knew she shouldn't pounce, she hadn't come out to pounce, yet she felt her attention secretive all the same, and her observation scientific. She struck herself as hovering like a spy, applying tests, laying traps, conceding signs. This would last, however, only till she should fairly know what was the matter, and to watch was, after all, meanwhile, a way of clinging to the girl, not less than an occupation, a satisfaction in itself. The pleasure of watching, moreover, if a reason were needed, came from a sense of her beauty. Her beauty, hadn't at all originally, seemed a part of the situation, and Mrs. Stringham had even, in the first flush of friendship, not named it grossly to anyone. Having seen early that for stupid people, and who she sometimes secretly asked herself wasn't stupid, it would take a great deal of explaining. She had learnt not to mention it till it was mentioned first, which occasionally happened, but not too often, and then she was there in force. Then she both warmed to the perception that met her own perception, and disputed it suspiciously as to special items. While, in general, she had learnt to refine, even to the point of herself, employing the word, that most people employed. She employed it to pretend she was also stupid, and so have done with the matter, spoke of her friend as plain, as ugly even, in a case of especially dense insistence, but as in appearance so awfully full of things. This was her own way of describing a face that, thanks doubtless to rather too much forehead, too much nose, and too much mouth, together with too little mere conventional colour and conventional line, was expressive, irregular, exquisite, both for speech and for silence. When Millie smiled, it was a public event. When she didn't, it was a chapter of history. They had stopped on the brooning for luncheon, and there had come up for them, under the charm of the place, the question of a longer stay. Mrs. Stringham was now on the ground of thrilled recognitions, small, sharp echoes of a past which she kept in a well-thumbed case, but which, on pressure of a spring and exposure to the air, still showed itself ticking as hard as an honest old watch. The embalmed Europe of her younger time had partly stood for three years of Switzerland, a term of continuous school at Veve, with rewards of merit in the form of silver medals tied by blue ribbons and mild mountain passes attacked with Alpenstocks. It was the good girls who, in the holidays, were taken highest, and our friend could now judge, from what she supposed her familiarity with the minor peaks, that she had been one of the best. These reminiscences, sacred to-day, because prepared in the hushed chambers of the past, had been part of the general train laid for the pair of sisters, daughters early fatherless, by their brave Vermont mother, who struck her at present as having, apparently, almost like Columbus, worked out, all unassisted, a conception of the other side of the globe. She had focused Veve, by the light of nature and with extraordinary completeness, at Burlington, after which she had embarked, sailed, landed, explored, and above all made good her presence. She had given her daughters the five years in Switzerland and Germany that were to leave them ever afterwards a standard of comparison for all cycles of Cathay, and to stamp the younger in especial, Susan was the younger, with a character that, as Mrs. Stringham had often had occasion through life to say herself, made all the difference. It made all the difference for Mrs. Stringham, over and over again, and in the most remote connections, that, thanks to her parents, lonely, thrifty, hardy faith, she was a woman of the world. She had never seen who were all sorts of things that she wasn't, but who, on the other hand, were not that and who didn't know she was, which she liked, it relegated them still further and didn't know either how it enabled her to judge them. She had never seen herself so much in this light as during the actual phase of her associated, if slightly undirected, pilgrimage. And the consciousness gave perhaps to her plea for a pause more intensity than she knew. The irrecoverable days had come back to her from far off. They were part of the sense of the cool upper air and of everything else that hung like an indestructible scent to the torn garment of youth, the taste of honey and the luxury of milk, the sound of cattle-bells and the rush of streams, the fragrance of trodden balms and the dizziness of deep gorges. Milly clearly felt these things too, but they affected her companion at moments. That was quite the way Mrs. Stringham would have expressed it, as the princess in a conventional tragedy might have affected the confidant if a personal emotion had ever been permitted to the latter. That a princess could only be a princess was a truth which, essentially, a confidant, however responsive, had to live. Mrs. Stringham was a woman of the world, but Milly Thiel was a princess. The only one she had yet had to deal with, and this, in its way, too, made all the difference. It was a perfectly definite doom for the wearer. It was, for everyone else, an office nobly filled. It might have represented, possibly, with its involved loneliness and other mysteries, the weight under which she fancied her companion's admirable head occasionally and ever so submissively bowed. Milly had quite assented at luncheon to their staying-over and had left her to look at rooms, settle questions, arrange about their keeping on their carriage and horses, cares that had now, moreover, fallen to Mrs. Stringham as a matter of course and that yet, for some reason, on this occasion particularly, brought home to her, all agreeably, richly, almost grandly, to live with the great. Her young friend had, in a sublime degree, a sense closed to the general question of difficulty, which she got rid of, furthermore, not in the least as one had seen many charming persons do by merely passing it on to others. She kept it completely at a distance. It never entered the circle. The most plaintive confidant couldn't have dragged it out and to tread the path of a confidant was accordingly to live exempt. Service was, in other words, so easy to render that the whole thing was like caught life without the hardships. It came back, of course, to the question of money and our observant lady had by this time repeatedly reflected that if one were talking of the difference it was just this, this incomparably and nothing else, that, when all was said and done, most made it. A less vulgarly, less obviously purchasing or parading person she couldn't have imagined, but it prevailed even as the truth of truths that the girl couldn't get away from her wealth. She might leave her conscientious companion as freely alone with it as possible and never ask a question, scarce even tolerate a reference, but it was in the fine folds of the helplessly expensive little black frock that she drew over the grass vaguely off. It was in the curious and splendid coils of hair done with no eye whatever to the maud du jour that peeped from under the corresponding indifference of her hat, the merely personal tradition that suggested a sort of noble inelegance. It lurked between the leaves of the uncut but antiquated taachnitz volume of which before going out she had mechanically possessed herself. She couldn't dress it away nor walk it away nor read it away nor think it away. She could neither smile it away in any dreamy absence nor blow it away in any softened sign. She couldn't have lost it if she had tried. That was what it was to be really rich. It had to be the thing you were. When at the end of an hour she hadn't returned to the house, and the bright afternoon was yet young, took with precautions the same direction, went to join her in case of her caring for a walk. But the purpose of joining her was in truth less distinct than that of a due regard for a possibly preferred detachment so that once more the good lady proceeded with a quietness that made her slightly underhand even in her own eyes. She couldn't help that however and she didn't care what she really wanted wasn't to overstep but to stop in time. It was to be able to stop in time that she went softly but she had on this occasion further to go than ever yet for she followed in vain and at last with some anxiety the footpath she believed Millie to have taken. It wound up a hillside and into the higher alpine meadows in which all these last days they had so often wanted to play and then it obscured itself in a wood but always going up, up and with a small cluster of brown, old, high-pitched chalets evidently for its goal. Mrs. Stringham reached in due course the chalets and there received from a bewildered old woman a very fearful person to behold an indication that sufficiently guided her. The young lady had been seen not long before passing further on over a crest to a place where the way would drop again as our unappeased inquirer found it in fact a quarter of an hour later markedly and almost alarmingly to do. It led somewhere yet apparently quite into space for the great side of the mountain appeared from where she pulled up to fall away altogether though probably but to some issue below and out of sight. Her uncertainty moreover was brief for she next became aware of the presence on a fragment of rock twenty yards off of the Tachnitz volume the girl had brought out and that therefore pointed to her shortly previous passage. She had rid herself of the book which was an encumbrance and meant of course to pick it up on her return but as she hadn't yet picked it up what on earth had become of her. Mrs. Stringham I hasten to add was within a few moments to see an accident that she hadn't before they were over betrayed by her deeper agitation the fact of her own nearness the whole place with the descent of the path and as a sequel to a sharp turn that was masked by rocks and shrubs appeared to fall precipitously and to become a view pure and simple a view of great extent and beauty but thrown forward and vertiginous Millie with the promise of it and above had gone straight down to it not stopping till it was all before her and here on what struck her friend as the dizzy edge of it she was seated at her ease the path somehow took care of itself and its final business but the girl's seat was a slab of rock at the end of a short promontory or excrescence that merely pointed off to the right at gulfs of air and that was so placed by good fortune if not by the worst it was completely visible for Mrs Stringham stifled a cry on taking in what she believed to be the danger of such a perch for a mere maiden her liability to slip, to slide to leap, to be precipitated by a single false movement by a turn of the head how could one tell into whatever was beneath a thousand thoughts for the minute roared in the poor ladies ears but without reaching as happened Millie's it was a commotion of her observer intensely still and holding her breath what had first been offered her was the possibility of a latent intention however wild the idea in such a posture of some betrayed accordance of Millie's caprice with a horrible hidden obsession but since Mrs Stringham stood as motionless as if a sound a syllable must have produced the start that would be fatal but her presence had partly a reassuring effect it gave her time to receive the impression which when she some minutes later softly retraced her steps was to be the sharpest she carried away this was the impression that if the girl was deeply and recklessly meditating there she wasn't meditating a jump she was on the contrary as she sat much more in a state of uplifted she was looking down on the kingdoms of the earth and though indeed that of itself might well go to the brain it wouldn't be with a view of renouncing them was she choosing among them or did she want them all this question before Mrs Stringham had decided what to do made others vain in accordance with which she saw or believed she did that if it might be dangerous to call out to sound in any way a surprise she would probably be safe enough to withdraw as she had come she watched a while longer she held her breath and she never knew afterwards what time had elapsed not many minutes probably yet they hadn't seemed few and they had given her so much to think of not only while creeping home but while waiting afterwards at the inn that she was still busy with them when late in the afternoon Millie reappeared in the morning and with a pencil attached to her watch-guard had scrawled a word abianto across the cover after which even under the girl's continued delay she had measured time without a return of alarm for she now saw that the great thing she had brought away was precisely a conviction that the future wasn't to exist for her princess in the form of any sharp glance from the human predicament it wouldn't be for her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape it would be a question of taking full in the face the whole assault of life to the general muster of which indeed her face might have been directly presented as she sat there on her rock Mrs. Stringham was thus able to say to herself during still another wait of some length that if her young friend wouldn't be because whatever the opportunity she had cut short the thread she wouldn't have committed suicide she knew herself unmistakably reserved for some more complicated passage this was the very vision in which she had with no little awe been discovered the image that thus remained with the elder lady kept the character of a revelation during the breathless minutes of her watch the character's type aspect, marks her history, her state her beauty, her mystery all unconsciously betrayed themselves to the alpine air and all had been gathered in again to feed Mrs. Stringham's flame they are things that will more distinctly appear for us they are meanwhile briefly represented by the enthusiasm that was stronger on our friend's part than any doubt it was a consciousness of her being but she had as beneath her feet a mind of something precious she seemed to herself to stand near the mouth not yet quite cleared the mind but needed working and would certainly yield a treasure she wasn't thinking either of Millie's gold and of Book 3, Chapter 1 Book 3, Chapter 2 of The Wings of the Dove this is a LibriVox recording are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Wings of the Dove by Henry James Book 3, Chapter 2 the girl said nothing when they met about the words scrawled on the tauchnitz and Mrs. Stringham then noticed that she hadn't the book with her she had left it lying and probably would never remember it at all her comrade's decision was therefore quickly made not to speak of having followed her and within five minutes of her return wonderfully enough the preoccupation denoted by her forgetfulness further declared itself should you think me quite abominable if I were to say that after all Mrs. Stringham had already thought with the first sound of the question everything she was capable of thinking and had immediately made such a sign that Millie's words gave place to visible relief at her ascent you don't care for our stop here you'd rather go straight on we'll start then with the peep of tomorrow's dawn or as early as you like it's only rather late now to take the road again and she smiled to show how she meant it for a joke that an instant onward rush was what the girl would have wished I bullied you into stopping she added so it serves me right Millie made in general the most of her good friends jokes but she humoured this one a little absently oh yes you do bully me and it was thus arranged between them with no discussion at all that they would resume their journey in the morning the younger tourists interest in the detail of the matter in spite of a declaration from the elder that she would consent to be dragged anywhere appeared almost immediately afterwards quite to lose itself she promised however to think till supper of where with the world all before them they might go supper having been ordered for such time as permitted of lighted candles it had been agreed between them that lighted candles at wayside ends in strange countries amid mountain scenery gave the evening meal a peculiar poetry such being the mild adventures the refinements of impression that they as they would have said went in for it was now as if before this repast Millie had designed to lie down but at the end of three minutes more she wasn't lying down she was saying instead abruptly with a transition that was like a jump of 4,000 miles what was it that in New York on the ninth when you saw him alone Dr Finch said to you it was not till later that Mrs Stringham fully knew it was still more than its suddenness explained though the effect of it even at the moment was almost to frighten her into a false answer she had to think to remember the occasion the ninth in New York the time she had seen Dr Finch alone and to recall the words he had then uttered and when everything had come back it was quite at first for a moment as if he had said something that immensely mattered he hadn't however in fact it was only as if he might perhaps after all have been going to it was on the sixth within ten days of their sailing that she had hurried from Boston under the alarm a small but a sufficient shock a hearing that Mildred had suddenly been taken ill had had from some obscure cause such an upset has threatened to stay their journey the bearing of the accident had happily soon presented itself as slight and there had been in the event a few hours of anxiety the journey had been pronounced again not only possible but as representing change highly advisable and if the zealous guest had had five minutes by herself with the doctor this was clearly no more at his instance than at her own almost nothing had passed between them but an easy exchange of enthusiasm in respect to the remedial properties of Europe and due assurance to her she was now able to give nothing whatever my word of honour that you might know or might not then have known I have no secret with him about you what makes you suspect it I don't quite make out how you know I did see him alone no you never told me said Millie and I don't mean she went on during the 24 hours while I was bad when you're putting your heads together I mean after I was better the last thing before you went home Mrs. Stringham continued to wonder who told you I saw him then he didn't himself nor did you write me it afterwards we speak of it now for the first time that's exactly why Millie declared with something in her face and voice that the next moment betrayed for her companion that she had really known nothing had only conjectured and chancing her charge made a hit yet why had her mind been busy with the question but if you're not as you now assure me in his confidence she smiled it's no matter I'm not in his confidence he had nothing to confide but are you feeling unwell the elder woman was earnest for the truth though the possibility she named was not at all the one that seemed to fit witness the long climb Millie had just indulged in the girl showed her constant white face but this her friends had all learnt to discount and it was often brightest when superficially not bravest she continued for a little mysteriously to smile I don't know haven't really the least idea but it might be well to find out Mrs. Stringham at this flared into sympathy are you in trouble in pain not the least distressed I don't know I don't know in pain not the least little bit but I sometimes wonder yes she pressed wonder what well if I shall have much of it Mrs. Stringham stared much of what not of pain of everything of everything I have anxiously again tenderly our friend cast about you have everything so that when you say much of it I only mean the girl broken shall I have it for long that is if I have got it she had at present the effect a little of confounding or at least of perplexing her comrade who was touched who was always touched by something helpless in her grace and abrupt in her turns and yet actually half made out in her a sort of mocking light if you got an ailment if you got everything Millie laughed ah that like almost nobody else then for how long Mrs. Stringham's eyes entreated her she had gone close to her half enclosed her with urgent arms do you want to see someone and then as the girl only met it with a slow head shake though looking perhaps a shade more conscious will go straight to the best near doctor this too however a qualified ascent and a silence sweet and vague that left everything open our friend decidedly lost herself tell me for God's sake if you're in distress I don't think I've really everything Millie said as if to explain and as if also to put it pleasantly but what on earth can I do for you the girl debated then seemed on the point of being able to say she suddenly changed and expressed herself otherwise dear dear thing I'm only too happy it brought them closer but it rather confirmed Mrs. Stringham's doubt then what's the matter that's the matter that I can scarcely bear it but what is it you think you haven't got Millie waited another moment then she found it and found for it the bliss of what I have Mrs. Stringham took it in her sense of being put off with it the possible probable irony of it and her tenderness renewed itself in the positive grimness of a long murmur whom will you see for it was as if they looked down from their height at a continent of doctors where will you first go Millie had for the third time an air of consideration but she came back with it to her plea of some minutes before I'll tell you at supper goodbye till then and she left the room with a lightness that testified for her companion to something that again particularly pleased her in the renewed promise of motion the odd passage just concluded Mrs. Stringham mused as she once more sat alone with a hooked needle and a ball of silk with which she was always provided this mystifying mood had simply been precipitated no doubt by their prolonged halt with which the girl hadn't really been in sympathy one had only to admit that her complaint was in fact but the excess of the joy of life and everything did then fit she couldn't stop for the joy but she could go on for it and with the pulse of her going on she floated again to her senses there was no evasion of any truth so at least Susan Shepherd hoped in one sitting there while the twilight deepened and feeling still more finely that the position of this young lady was magnificent the evening at that height had naturally turned to cold and the travellers had bespoken a fire with their meal the great Alpine Road asserted its brave presence with low clean windows with incidents at the indoor the yellow diligence the great wagons the hurrying hooded private conveyances reminders for our fanciful friend of old stories old pictures historic flights escapes, pursuits things that had happened things indeed that by a sort of strange congruity helped her to read the meanings of the greatest interest of the relation in which she was now so deeply involved it was natural that this record of the magnificence of her companions position should strike her as after all the best meaning she could extract for she herself was seated in the magnificence as in a court carriage she came back to that and such a method of progression such a view from crimson cushions would evidently have a great deal more to give by the time the candles were lighted for supper and the short white curtains drawn Millie had reappeared and the little scenic room had then all its romance that charm moreover was far from broken by the words in which she without further loss of time satisfied her patient mate I want to go straight to London it was unexpected corresponding with no view positively taken at their departure when England had appeared on the contrary rather relegated and postponed seen for the moment as who should say at the end of an avenue of preparations and introductions London in short might have been supposed to be the crown and to be achieved like a siege by gradual approaches Millie's actual fine stride was therefore the more exciting as any simplification was to Mrs Stringham who besides was afterwards to recall as a piece of that very exposition dear to the dramatist the terms in which between their smoky candles the girl had put her preference and in which still other things had come up come while the clank of wagon chains in the sharp air reached their ears with the stamp of hoofs the rattle of buckets and the foreign questions foreign answers the converse of the road the girl brought it out in truth as she might have brought a huge confession something she admitted herself shy about and that would seem to show her as frivolous it had rolled over her that what she wanted of Europe was people so far as they were to be had and that if her friend really wished to know the vision of this same equivocal quantity was what had haunted her in their previous days in museums and churches and what was again spoiling for her the pure taste of scenery she was all for scenery yes but she wanted it human and personal and all she could say was that there would be in London wouldn't there more of that kind than anywhere else she came back to her idea that if it wasn't for long if nothing should happen to be so for her what she would look of would probably have most to give her in the time would probably be less than anything else a waste of her remainder she produced this last consideration indeed with such gaiety that Mrs. Stringham was not again disconcerted by it was in fact quite ready if talk of early dying was in order to match it from her own future good then they would eat and drink because of what might happen tomorrow and of course from that moment with a view to such eating and drinking they ate and drank that night in truth as in the spirit of this decision whereby the air before they separated felt itself the clearer it had cleared perhaps to a view only too extensive extensive that is in proportion to the signs of life presented the idea of people was not so entertained on Millie's part there were no particular persons and the fact remained for each of the ladies that they would completely unknown disembark at Dover amid the completely unknowing they had no relation already formed this plea Mrs. Stringham put forward to see what it would produce it produced nothing at first but the observation on the girls side that what she had in mind was no thought of society nor of scraping acquaintance this is are the opportunities represented for the compatriot in general by a trunk full of letters it wasn't a question in short of the people the compatriot was after it was the human the English picture itself as they might see it in their own way the concrete world inferred so fondly from what one had read and dreamt Mrs. Stringham did every justice to this concrete world but when later on in the event itself she made a point of not omitting to remark that it might be a comfort to know in advance one or two of the human particles of its concretion this still however failed in vulgar parlance to fetch Millie so that she had presently to go all the way haven't I understood from you for that matter that you gave Mr. Denture something of a promise there was a moment on this representing one of two things either that she was completely vague about the promise or that Mr. Denture's name itself started no train but she really couldn't be so vague about the promise the partner of these hours quickly saw without attaching it to something it had to be a promise to somebody in particular to be so repudiated in the event accordingly she acknowledged Mr. Merton Denture the so unusually bright young Englishman who had made his appearance in New York on some special literary business wasn't it shortly before their departure and who had been three or four times in her house during the brief period between her visit to Boston and her companion's subsequent stay with her but she required much reminding before it came back to her that she had mentioned to this companion just afterwards the confidence expressed by the personage in question in her never doing so dire a thing as to come to London without as the phrase was looking a fellow up she had left him the enjoyment of his confidence the form of which might have appeared a trifle free this she now reasserted she had done nothing either to impair or to enhance it but she had also left Mrs. Stringham in the connection and at the time to have missed Mr. Denture she had thought of him again after that the elder woman she had likewise gone so far as to notice that Millie appeared not to have done so which the girl might easily have betrayed and interested as she was in everything that concerned her she had made out for herself for herself only and rather idly that but for interruptions the young Englishman might have become a better acquaintance at all one of the signs that in the first days had helped to place Millie as a young person with the world before her for sympathy and wonder isolated, unmothered, unguarded but with her other strong marks her big house her big fortune her big freedom she had lately begun to receive for all her few years as an older woman might have done as was done precisely by princesses to observe and who came of age very early if it was thus distinct to Mrs. Stringham then that Mr. Denture had gone off somewhere else in connection with his errand before her visit to New York it had been also not undiscoverable that he had come back for a day or two later on that is after her own second excursion that he had in fine reappeared on a single occasion on his way to the west his way from Washington as she believed he was out of sight at the time of her joining her friend for their departure it hadn't occurred to her before to exaggerate it had not occurred to her that she could but she seemed to become aware tonight that there had been just enough in this relation to meet to provoke the free conception of a little more she presently put it that at any rate promise or no promise Millie would at a pinch be able in London to act on his permission to which Millie replied with readiness that her ability, though evident would be nonetheless quite wasted in as much as the gentlemen would to a certainty be still in America he had a great deal to do there which he would scarce have begun and in fact she might very well not have thought of London at all if she hadn't been sure he wasn't yet near coming back it was perceptible to her companion that the moment our young woman had so far committed herself she had a sense of having overstepped which was not quite patched up by her saying the next minute possibly with a certain failure of presence of mind that the last thing she desired was the air of running after him Mrs Stringham wondered privately what question there could be of any such appearance the danger of which thus suddenly came up but she said for the time other things one of which was for instance that if Mr Dencher was away he was away and this the end of it also that of course they must be discreet at any price but what was the measure of discretion and how was one to be sure so it was that as they sat there she produced her own case she had a possible tie with London which she desired as little to disown as she might wish and she had nothing on it she treated her companion in short for their evening's end to the story of Maud Manningham the odd but interesting English girl who had formed her special affinity in the old days at the Veve school whom she had written to after their separation with a regularity that had at first faltered and then altogether failed yet that had been for the first time quite a fine case of crude constancy so that it had in fact cut up again of itself on the occasion of the marriage of each they had then once more fondly scrupulously written Mrs Louder first and even another letter or two had afterwards passed this however had been the end though with no rupture only a gentle drop Maud Manningham had made she believed a great marriage while she herself had made a small on top of which moreover distance, difference diminished community and impossible reunion had done the rest of the work it was but after all these years that reunion had begun to show as possible if the other party to it that is should be still in existence that was exactly what it now appeared to our friend interesting to ascertain as with one aid and another she believed she might it was an experiment that she didn't object Millie in general objected to nothing and though she asked a question or two she raised no present plea her questions or at least her own answers to them kindled on Mrs Stringham's part a backward train she hadn't known till tonight how much she remembered or how fine it might be to see what had become of large high-coloured Maud exotic which had been just the spell even to the perceptions of youth there was the danger she frankly touched it that such a temperament might not have matured with the years all in the sense of fineness it was the sort of danger that in renewing relations after long breaks one had always to look in the face to gather in strayed threads was to take a risk for which however the possible fun she confessed was by itself rather tempting and she fairly sounded with this wound up a little as she was the note of fun as the harmless final rite of 50 years of mere New England virtue among the things she was afterwards to recall was the indescribable look dropped on her at that by her companion she was still seated there in the upper while Millie moved about and the look was long to figure for her as an inscrutable comment on her notion of freedom challenged at any rate as for the last wise word Millie showed perhaps musingly, charmingly that though her attention had been mainly soundless her friend's story produced as a resource unsuspected a card from up the sleeve half surprised her such as it was depended on that she brought out before she went to bed an easy alight risk everything this quality seemed possibly a little to deny weight to more loud as evoked presence as Susan Stringham still sitting up became an excited reflection a trifle more conscious something determinant when the girl had left her took place in her way coercive it was as if she knew again in this fullness of time that she had been after Maud's marriage just sensibly outlived or as people nowadays said shunted Mrs. Lauder had left her behind and on the occasion subsequently of the corresponding date in her own life not the second the sad one with its dignity of sadness but the first with the meagerness of her post felicity she had been in the same spirit almost patronizingly pitted if that suspicion even when it had ceased to matter had never quite died out for her there was doubtless some oddity in its now offering itself as a link rather than as another break in the chain and indeed there might well have been for her a mood in which the notion of the development of patronage in her quantum schoolmate would have settled her question in another sense it was actually settled if the case be worth our analysis by the happy consummation the poetic justice the generous revenge of her having at last something to show Maud on their parting company had appeared to have so much and would now for wasn't it also in general quite the rich law of English life in the sense that there was so much there was so much so much more very good such things might be she rose to the sense of being ready for them whatever mrs. Lauder might have to show and one hoped one did the presumptions all justice she would have nothing like Millie Thiel who constituted the trophy producible by poor Susan poor Susan lingered late with a neat portfolio she hadn't lost the old clue there were connections she remembered addresses she could try so the thing was to begin she wrote on the spot and of book three chapter two book fourth chapter one of the wings of the dove this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elizabeth Klett the wings of the dove by Henry James book fourth chapter one it had all gone so fast after this that Millie uttered but the truth nearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on her right who was by the same token the gentleman on her hostesses left that she scares even then knew where she was the words marking her first full sense of a situation really romantic they were already dining she and her friend at Lancaster Gate and surrounded as it seemed to her with every English accessory though her consciousness of Mrs. Lauder's existence and still more of her remarkable identity had been of so recent and so sudden a birth Susie as she was apt to call her companion for a lighter change had only had to wave a neat little wand for the fairy tale to begin at once in consequence of which Susie now glittered for with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of success it came to that in the character of a fairy godmother Millie had almost insisted on dressing her for the present occasion as one and it was no fault of the girls if the good lady hadn't now appeared in a peaked hat a short petticoat and diamond shoe buckles brandishing the magic crutch the good lady bore herself in truth not less contentedly than if these insignia had marked her work and his observation to Lord Mark had doubtless just been the result of such a light exchange of looks with her as even the great length of the table couldn't baffle there were twenty persons between them but this sustained passage was the sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of views during the pause on the Swiss pass it almost appeared to Millie that their fortune had been unduly precipitated as if properly they were in the position of having ventured on a small joke and found the answer out of proportion grave that this moment for instance have said whether, with her quickened perceptions she were more enlivened or oppressed and the case might in fact have been serious hadn't she, by good fortune from the moment the picture loomed quickly made up her mind that what finally most concerned her was neither to seek nor to shirk wasn't even to wonder too much but was to let things calm as they would since there was little enough doubt of how they would go Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinner but by the handsome girl that lady's niece who was now at the other end and on the same side as Susie he had taken her in and she meant presently to ask him about Miss Croy the handsome girl actually offered to her sight though now in a splendid way but for the second time the first time had been the occasion only three days before of her calling at their hotel with her aunt and then making for our other two heroines who were present and although her attention was aware at the same time of everything else her eyes were mainly engaged with Kate Croy when not engaged with Susie that wonderful creature's eyes moreover readily met them she ranked now as a wonderful creature and it seemed part of the swift prosperity of the American visitors that so little in the original reckoning she should yet appear conscious charmingly, frankly conscious of possibilities of friendship for them Millie had easily visualized English girls had a special strong beauty which particularly showed an evening dress above all when as was strikingly the case with this one the dress itself was what it should be that observation she had already for Lord Mark when they should after a little get round to it she seemed even now to see that there might be a good deal they would get round to the indication being that taken up once for all with her other neighbor their hostess would leave them much to themselves Mrs. Louder's other neighbor a real bishop such as Millie had never seen with a complicated costume a voice like an old fashioned wind instrument and a face all the portrait of a prelate while the gentleman on our young ladies left a gentleman thick-necked, large and literal who looked straight before him and as if he were not to be diverted by vain words from that pursuit clearly counted as an offset the possession of Lord Mark as Millie made out these things with a shade of exhilaration she saw how she was justified of her plea for people and her love of life it wasn't then as the prospect seemed to show so difficult to get into the current or to stand at any rate on the bank it was easy to get near if they were near and yet the elements were different enough from any of her old elements and positively rich and strange she asked herself if her right hand neighbor would understand what she meant by such a description of them should she throw it off when she was awakened was that no decidedly he wouldn't it was nevertheless by this time open to her that his line would be to be clever and indeed evidently no little of the interest was going to be in the fresh reference and fresh effect both of people's cleverness and of their simplicity she thrilled she consciously flushed and all to turn pale again with the certitude it had never been so present that she should find herself completely involved the very air of the place of vision had for her both so sharp a ring and so deep an undertone the smallest things the faces, the hands, the jewels of the women the sound of words especially of names across the table the shape of the forks the arrangement of the flowers the attitude of the servants the walls of the room were all touches in a picture and denotements in a play and they marked for her moreover her alertness of vision in such a state of vibration her sensibility was almost too sharp for her comfort there were for example more indications than she could reduce to order in the manner of the friendly niece who struck her as distinguished and interesting as in fact surprisingly genial this young woman's type had visibly other possibilities yet here of its own free movement it had already sketched a relation were they Miss Croy and she to take up the tale where their two elders had left it off so many years before were they to find they liked each other and to try for themselves whether a scheme of constancy on more modern lines could be worked she had doubted as they came to England of Maude Manningham had believed her a broken reed and a vague resource had seen their dependence on her as a state of mind that would have been shamefully silly so far as it was dependence had they wished to do anything so inane as get into society to have made their pilgrimage they might have in reserve for them that didn't bear thinking of it all and she herself had quite chosen her course for curiosity about other matters she would have described this curiosity as a desire to see the places she had read about and that description of her motive she was prepared to give her neighbor even though as a consequence of it he should find how little she had read it was almost at present as if her poor provision had been rebuked by the majesty she could scarcely call it less a commanding character of the two figures she could scarcely call that less either mainly presented Mrs. Louder and her niece however dissimilar had at least in common that each was a great reality that was true primarily of the aunt so true that Millie wondered how her own companion had arrived in other years at so odd an alliance yet she nonetheless felt Mrs. Louder as a person of whom the mind might in two or three days roughly make the circuit she would sit there massive at least while one attempted it whereas Miss Croy, the handsome girl would indulge an incalculable movement that might interfere with one's tour she was the amusing resisting ominous fact nonetheless and each other person and thing was just such a fact and it served them right no doubt the pair of them for having rushed into their adventure Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile however had met her own quite sufficiently to enable him to tell her to clear up her situation he explained for that matter or at least he hinted that there was no such thing today in London as saying where anyone was every one was everywhere nobody was anywhere he should be put to it yes frankly to give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's set was it a set at all or wasn't it and where there not really no such things is set in the place any more was there anything but the groping and pawing that of the vague billows of the DCC in mid-channel of masses of bewildered people trying to get they didn't know what or where he threw out the question which seemed large Millie felt that at the end of five minutes he had thrown out a great many though he followed none more than a step or two perhaps he would prove suggestive but he helped her as yet to know discriminations he spoke as if he had given them up from too much knowledge he was thus at the opposite extreme from herself but as a consequence of it also wandering and lost furthermore for all his temporary incoherence to which she guessed there would be some key as packed a concretion as either Mrs. Louder or Kate the only light in which he placed the former of these ladies was that of an extraordinary woman a most extraordinary woman and the more extraordinary the more one knows her while of the latter he said nothing for the moment but that she was tremendously yes tremendously good-looking it was some time she thought each minute she believed in that mystery more quite apart from what her hostess had told her on first naming him perhaps he was one of the cases she had heard of at home those characteristic cases of people in England who concealed their play of mind so much more than they advertised it even Mr. Denture a little did that and what made Lord Mark at any rate so real either when this was a trick he had apparently so mastered his type somehow as by a life a need an intention of its own took all care for vividness off his hands that was enough it was difficult to guess his age whether he were a young man who looked old or an old man who looked young it seemed to prove nothing as against other things that he was bald and as might have been said slightly stale or more delicately perhaps dry there was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him and his eyes at moments though it was an appearance they could suddenly lose very neat very light and so fair that there was little other indication of his moustache than his constantly feeling it which was again boyish he would have affected her as the most intellectual person present if he had not affected her as the most frivolous the latter quality was rather in his look than in anything else though he constantly wore his double eyeglass which was much more Bostonian and thoughtful the idea of his frivolity had no doubt to do with his personal designation as yet for our young woman a little confusedly a connection with an historic patriciate a class that in turn also confusedly represented an affinity with the social element she had never heard otherwise described then as fashion the supreme social element in New York had never known itself but as reduced to that category and though Millie was aware that as applied to a territorial and political aristocracy the label was probably too simple to enrich her idea with the perception that her interlocutor was indifferent yet this, indifferent as aristocracies notoriously were saw her but little further in as much as she felt that in the first place he would rather get on with her than not and in the second was only thinking of too many matters of his own if he kept her in view on the one hand and kept so much else on the other the way he crummed up his bread was a proof why did he hover before her as a potentially insolent noble she couldn't have answered the question and it was precisely one of those that swarmed they were complicated she might fairly have said by his visibly knowing having known from afar off that she was a stranger and an American and by his none the less making no more of it than if she and her like were the chief of his diet he took her kindly enough but imperturbably, irreclaimably for granted and it wouldn't in the least help that she herself knew him as quickly for having been in her country there would be nothing for her to explain or attenuate or brag about she could neither escape nor prevail by her strangeness he would have for that matter on such a subject more to tell her than to learn from her she might learn from him why she was so different from the handsome girl but she didn't know being merely able to feel it or to any rate might learn from him why the handsome girl was so different from her on these lines however they would move later the lines immediately laid down were in spite of his vagueness for his own convenience definite enough she was already he observed to her thinking what she should say on her other side which was what Americans were always doing she needn't in conscience say anything at all but Americans never knew that nor ever poor creatures yes, she had interposed the poor creatures what not to do the burdens they took on the things positively they made an affair of this easy and after all friendly jibe at her race was really for her on her new friend's part the note of personal recognition so far she required it and she gave him a prompt and conscious example of morbid anxiety by insisting that her desire to be herself lovely all round was justly founded on the lovely way Mrs. Louder had met her he was directly interested in that and it was not till afterward she fully knew how much more information about their friend he had taken than given here again for instance was a characteristic note that had plunged into the obscured depths of a society constituted from far back encountered the interesting phenomenon of complicated a possibly sinister motive however Maude Manningham her name even in her presence somehow still fed the fancy had all the same been lovely and one was going to meet her now quite as far on as one had oneself been met she had been with them at their hotel they were a pair before even they had supposed she could have got their letter of course indeed they had written in advance very fast she had thus engaged them to dine but two days later and on the morrow again without waiting for return visit without waiting for anything she had called with her niece it was as if she really cared for them and it was magnificent fidelity fidelity to Mrs. Stringham her own companion and Mrs. Louder's former schoolmate the lady with the charming face and the rather high dress down there at the end Lord Mark took in through his nippers equally magnificent well it's a beautiful sentiment but it isn't as if she had anything to give hasn't she got you Lord Mark asked without excessive delay me to give Mrs. Louder Millie had clearly not yet seen herself in the light of such an offering oh I'm a rather poor present and I don't feel as if even at that I had as yet quite been given you've been shown and if our friend has jumped at you it comes to the same thing as Lord Mark without amusement for himself yet it wasn't that he was grim to be seen you must recognize is for you to be jumped at and if it's a question of being shown here you are again only it has now been taken out of your friend's hands it's Mrs. Louder already who's getting the benefit look round the table and you'll make out I think that your being from top to bottom jumped at well then said Millie it's better than being made fun of it was one of the things she afterwards saw Millie was forever seeing things afterwards that her companion had here had some way of his own quite unlike anyone else's of assuring her of his consideration she wondered how he had done it for he had neither apologized nor protested she said to herself at any rate that he had let her on and what was most odd was the question by which he had done so does she know much about you even for this his traveled lordships seasoned and saturated had no laugh I mean you particularly has that lady with the charming face which is charming told her Millie cast about told her what everything this with the way he dropped it again considerably moved her made her feel for a moment that as a matter of course she was a subject for disclosures but she quickly found her answer oh as for that you must ask her your clever companion Mrs. Lauder he replied to this that their hostess was a person with whom there were certain liberties one never took but that he was none the less fairly upheld in as much as she was for the most part kind to him and as should he be very good for a while she would probably herself tell him and I shall have at any rate in the meantime the interest of seeing what she does with you that will teach me more or less Millie followed this it was lucid but it suggested something apart how much does she know about you nothing said Lord Mark serenely but that doesn't matter for what she does with me and then as to anticipate Millie's question about the nature of such doing this for instance turning me straight on for you the girl thought and you mean she wouldn't if she didn't know he met it as if it were really a point no I believe to do her justice as she still would so you can be easy Millie had the next instant then acted on the permission because you're even at the worst the best thing she has with this he was at last amused I was till you came you're the best now it was strange his word should have given her the sense of his knowing but it was positive that they did so and to the extent of making her believe them though still with wonder that really from this first of their meetings she accepted almost helplessly she surrendered so to the inevitable in it being the sort of thing as he might have said that he at least thoroughly believed he had in going about seen enough of for all practical purposes her submission was naturally moreover not to be impaired by her learning later on that he had paid at short intervals though at a time apparently just previous to her own emergence from the obscurity of extreme youth three separate visits to New York with friends in his contrasted contacts had been numerous his impression, his recollection of the whole mixed quantity was still visibly rich it had helped him to place her and she was more and more sharply conscious of having as with the door sharply slammed upon her and the guards hand raised and signal to the train being popped into the compartment in which she was to travel for him it was a use of her that many a girl would have been doubtless quick to resent and the kind of mind that thus in our young lady made all for mere seeing and taking is precisely one of the charms of our subject Millie had practically just learned from him had made out as it were from her rumbling compartment that he gave her the highest place among their friends actual properties she was a success that was what it came to he presently assured her and this was what it was to be a success it always happened before one could know it one's ignorance was in fact the greatest part of it you haven't had time yet he said this is nothing but you'll see you'll see everything you can you know everything you dream of he made her more and more wonder she almost felt as if he was showing her visions while he spoke and strangely enough though it was visions that had drawn her on she hadn't had them in connection that is in such preliminary tone in such a manner he had for an instant the effect of making her ask herself if she were after all going to be afraid so distinct was it for fifty seconds that a fear passed over her there they were again yes certainly Susie's overture to Mrs. Louder had been their joke but they had pressed in that gaiety an electric bell that continued to sound positively while she sat there she had the loud rattle in her ears and she wondered during these moments why the others didn't hear it and the fear in her that I speak of was but her own desire to stop it that dropped however as if the alarm itself had ceased she seemed to have seen in a quick throw tempered glare that there were two courses for her one to leave London again the first thing in the morning the other to do nothing at all well she would do nothing at all she was already doing it more than that she had already done it and her chance was gone she gave herself up and she went on again with Lord Mark inexpressive but intensely significant he met as no one else could have done the very question she had suddenly put to Mrs. Stringham on the broonig should she have it whatever she did have that question had been for long ah so possibly not her neighbor appeared to reply therefore don't you see I'm the way it was vivid that he might be in spite of his absence of flourish the way being doubtless just in that absence the handsome girl she didn't lose sight of and who she felt kept her also in view Mrs. Louder's striking niece would perhaps be the way as well for in her too was the absence of flourish though she had little else so far as one could tell in common with Lord Mark yet how indeed could one tell what did one understand and of what was one for that matter provisionally conscious but of their being somehow together in what they represented Kate Croy, fine but friendly Lord Mark's effect on her if she could guess this effect what then did she know about it and in what degree had she felt it herself did that represent as between them anything particular and should she have to count with them as duplicating as intensifying by a mutual intelligence the relation into which she was sinking nothing was so odd as that she should have to recognize so quickly in each of these glimpses of an instant the various signs of a relation and this anomaly itself as well might almost terribly have suggested to her that her doom was to live fast it was clearly a question of the short run and the consciousness proportionately crowded these were immense excursions for the spirit of a young person at Mrs. Louder's mere dinner party but what was so significant and so admonitory as the fact of their being possible what could they have been but just a part already of the crowded consciousness and it was just a part likewise of what the kids in the banquet marked while appearances insisted and phenomena multiplied and words reached her from here and there like plashes of a slow thick tide while Mrs. Louder grew somehow more stout and more instituted and Susie at her distance and in comparison more thinly improvised and more different different that is from everyone and everything it was just a part that while this process went forward our young lady alighted came back taking up her destiny again with her wings to displace herself briefly in sight of an alternative to it whatever it was it had showed in this brief interval as better than the alternative and it now presented itself altogether in the image and in the place in which she had left it the image was that of her being as Lord Mark had declared a success this depended more or less of course on his idea of the thing into which at present however this might safely be left she'll get back he pleasantly said her money he could say it too which was singular without affecting her either as vulgar or as nasty and he soon explained himself by adding nobody here you know does anything for nothing ah if you mean that we shall reward her as hard as ever we can nothing is more certain but she's an idealist Millie continued and idealists in the long run Lord Mark seemed within the limits of his enthusiasm to find this charming ah she strikes you as an idealist she idealizes us my friend and me absolutely she sees us in a light said Millie that's all I've got to hold on by so don't deprive me of it I wouldn't think of such a thing for the world but do you suppose he continued as if it were suddenly important for him do you suppose she sees me in a light as she collected his question for a little partly because her attention attached itself more and more to the handsome girl partly because placed so near the hostess she wished not to show as discussing her too freely Mrs. Louder it was true steering in the other quarter a course in which she called it subject as if they were islets and an archipelago continued to allow them their ease and Kate Croy at the same time steadily revealed herself as interesting Millie in fact found of a sudden her ease found it all as she knew what she was looking for was a report on her quality and as perhaps might be said her value from Lord Mark she wished him the wonderful lady to have no pretext for not knowing what he thought of Miss Thiel why his judgment so mattered remain to be seen but it was this divination that in any case now determined Millie's rejoinder no she knows you she has probably reasoned to and you all here know each other I see that so far as you know anything and that only that makes you but there are things you don't know he took it in as if it might fairly to do him justice be a point things that I don't with all the pains I take in the way I've run about the world to leave nothing unlearned Millie thought and it was perhaps the very truth of his claim it's not being negligible that sharpened her impatience and thereby her wit you're blasé but you're not enlightened you're familiar with everything Lord Mark at this threw back his head ranging with his eyes the opposite side of the room and showing himself at last so much more flagrantly diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice Mrs. Louder however only smiled on Millie for a sign that something racy was what she had expected and resumed with a splash of her screw her cruise among the islands oh I've heard that the young man replied before there it is then you've heard me of course before in my country often enough oh never too often he protested I'm sure I hope I shall still hear you again and again but what good then has it done you the girl went on as if now frankly to amuse him oh you'll see when you know me but most assuredly I shall never know you then that will be exactly he laughed the good if it established thus they couldn't or wouldn't mix why did Millie nonetheless feel through it to perverse quickening of the relation in spite of herself appointed what queer consequence of their not mixing than their talking for it was what they had arrived at almost intimately she wished to get away from him or indeed much rather away from herself so far as she was present to him she saw already wonderful creature after all herself too that there would be a good deal more of him to come for her and that the special sign of their intercourse would be to keep herself out of the question everything else might come in perhaps even go far this in fact might quite have begun on the spot with her returning again to the topic of the handsome girl if she was to keep herself out she could naturally best do so by putting in somebody else she accordingly put in Kate Croy being ready to that extent as she was not at all afraid for her to sacrifice her if necessary Lord Mark himself for that matter had made it easy by saying a little while before that no one among them did anything for nothing what then she was aware of being abrupt to be so interested do it for what has she to gain by her lovely welcome look at her now Millie broke out with characteristic freedom of praise though pulling herself up also with a compunctious oh! as the direction thus given to their eyes happened to coincide with the turn of Kate's face to them all she had meant to do was to insist that this face was fine but what she had in fact done was to renew again her effect of showing herself to its possessor as conjoined with Lord Mark she promptly met her question to gain why your acquaintance well what's my acquaintance to her she can care for me she must feel that only by being sorry for me and that's why she's lovely to be already willing to take the trouble to be it's the height of the disinterested there were more things in this than one that Lord Mark might have taken up but in a minute he had made his choice ah! then I'm nowhere for I'm afraid I'm not sorry for you in the least what do you make then why just the great reason of all it's just because our friend there sees it that she pities me she understands Millie said she's better than any of you she's beautiful he appeared struck with this at last with the point the girl made of it to which she came back even after a diversion created by a dish presented between them beautiful in character I see is she so you must tell me about her Millie wondered have you seen her for yourself no I've failed with her it's no use I don't make her out and I assure you I really should like to his assurance had in fact for his companion a positive suggestion of sincerity he affected her as now saying something he did feel and she was the more struck with it as she was still conscious of the failure even of curiosity he had just shown in respect to herself she had meant something though indeed for herself almost only in speaking of their friend's natural pity it had doubtless been a note of questionable taste but it had quavered out in spite of her and he hadn't so much as cared to inquire why natural not that it wasn't really much better for her that he shouldn't explanations would in truth have taken her much too far only she now perceived that in comparison her word about this other person really drew him and there were things in that probably many things as to which she would learn more and which glimmered there already as part and parcel of that larger real with which in her new situation she was to be beguiled it was in fact at the very moment this element not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying so you're wrong you see as to our knowing all about each other there are cases where we break down I at any rate give her up up that is to you you must do her for me tell me I mean when you know more you'll notice he pleasantly wound up that I have confidence in you why shouldn't you have Milly asked observing in this as she thought a fine though for such a man surprisingly artless fatuity it was as if there might have been a question of her falsifying for the sake of her own show that is of the failure of her honesty to be proof against her desire to keep well with him herself she didn't nonetheless otherwise protest against his remark there was something else she was occupied in seeing it was the handsome girl alone one of his own species and his own society who had made him feel uncertain of his certainties about a mere little American a cheap exotic imported almost wholesale and whose habitat with its conditions of climate growth and cultivation its immense perfusion but its few varieties and thin development he was perfectly satisfied the marvel was too that Milly understood his satisfaction feeling she expressed the truth in presently saying of course I make out that she must be difficult just as I see that I myself must be easy and that was what for all the rest of this occasion remained with her as the most interesting thing that could remain she was more and more content herself to be easy she would have been resigned even had it been brought straighter home to her to passing for a cheap exotic provisionally at any rate that protected her wish to keep herself with Lord Mark in abeyance they had all affected her as inevitably knowing each other and if the handsome girls place among them was something even their initiation couldn't deal with why then she would indeed be a quantity