 Book 5th Chapter 7 of the Wings of the Dub. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Lars Rolander. The Wings of the Dub by Henry James, Book 5th Chapter 7. The idea of the National Gallery had been with her from the moment of her hearing from Sherlock Strait about his hour of coming. It had been in her mind as a place so meagerly visited, as one of the places that had seemed at home one of the attractions of Europe and one of its highest aids to culture. But that, the old story, the typical frivolous always ended by sacrificing to vulgar pleasures. She had had perfectly at those whimsical moments at the Brunish, the half-shamed sense of turning her back on such opportunities for real improvement as had figured to her. From of old in connection with a continental tour, under the general head of pictures and things, and at last she knew for what she had done so. The plea had been explicit. She had done so for life as opposed to learning, the upshot of which had been that life was now beautifully provided for. Despite of those few dips and dashes into the many colored stream of history for which of late Kate Croy had helped her to find time, there were possible great chances she had neglected. Possible great moments she should save for today have all but missed. Still she had felt overtake one or two of them among the Titians and the Turners. She had been honestly nursing the hour, and once she was in the benign and halls, her faith knew itself justified. It was the air she wanted and the world she would now exclusively choose. The quiet chambers nobly overwhelming, rich but slightly veiled, opened out round her and made her presently say, If I could lose myself here. There were people, people in plenty, but admirably no personal question. It was immense outside the personal question, but she had blissfully left it outside, and the nearest it came, for a quarter of an hour, to glimmering again into view, was when she watched for a little one of the more earnest of the Lady Copyists. Two or three in particular, spectacled, aproned, absorbed, engaged her sympathy to an absurd extent, seemed to show her for the time the right way to live. She should have been a Lady Copyist. It met so the case. The case was the case of escape, of living underwater, of being at once impersonal and firm. There it was before one, one had only to stick and stick. Millie yielded to this charm till she was almost ashamed. She watched the Lady Copyists till she found herself wondering what would be thought by others of a young woman of adequate aspect, who should appear to regard them as the pride of the place. She would have liked to talk to them, to get, as it figured to her, into their lives, and was deterred but by the fact that she didn't quite see herself as purchasing imitations, and yet feared she might excite the expectation of purchase. She really knew before long that what held her was the mere refuge that something within her was outlawed too weak for the Turner's anticians. They joined hands about her in a circle too vast, though a circle that a year before she would only have decided to trace. They were truly for the larger, not for the smaller life, the life of which the actual pitch, for example, was an interest, the interest of compassion in misguided efforts. She marked absurdly her little stations, blinking in her shrinkage of curiosity at the glorious walls, yet keeping an eye on Vistas and approaches, so that she shouldn't be flagrantly caught. The Vistas and approaches drew her in this way from room to room, and she had been through many parts of the show, as she supposed, when she sat down to rest. There were chairs in scant clusters, places from which one could gaze. Millie indeed at present fixed her eyes more than elsewhere on the appearance, first that she couldn't quite after all have accounted to an examiner for the order of her schools, and then on that of her being more tired than she had meant, in spite of her having been so much less intelligent. They found her eyes it should be added other occupation as well, which she let them freely follow. They rested largely in her vagueness on the vagueness of other visitors. They attached themselves in a special with mixed results to the surprising stream of her compatriots. She was struck by the circumstance that the great museum, early in August, was haunted with these pilgrims, as also with that of her knowing them from afar, marking them easily, each and all, and recognizing not less promptly that they had ever new lights for her, new lights on their own darkness. She gave herself up at last, and it was a consummation like another, what she should have come to the National Gallery for today, would be to watch the copists and reckon the bed-eckers. That perhaps was the moral of a menace state of health, that one would sit in public places, and count the Americans. It passed the time in a manner, but it seemed already the second line of defense, and this notwithstanding the pattern so unmistakable of her country folk. They were cut out as by scissors, colored, labeled, mounted, but the relation to her failed to act, they somehow did nothing for her. Partly no doubt they didn't so much as notice or know her, didn't even recognize their community of collapse with her, the sign on her as she sat there that for her too Europe was tough. It came to her idly thus, for her humor could still play, that she didn't seem then the same success with them as with the inhabitants of London, who had taken her up on scarce more of an acquaintance. She could wonder if they would be different should she go back with this glamour attached, and she could also wonder if it came to that whether she would ever go back. Her friends straggled past, at any rate, in all the vividness of their absent criticism, and she had even at last the sense of taking a mean advantage. There was a finer instant, however, at which three ladies, clearly a mother and daughters, had paused before her under compulsion of a comment apparently just uttered by one of them, in referring to some object on the other side of the room. Millie had her back to the object, but her face very much to her young compatriot, the one who had spoken and in whose look she perceived a certain gloom of recognition. Recognition, for that matter, sat confiscedly in her own eyes. She knew the three, generically, as easily as a schoolboy with a crib in his lap would know the answer in class. She felt like the schoolboy, guilty enough, questioned as honour went, as to her right so to possess, to dispossess, people who hadn't consciously provoked her. She would have been able to say where they lived, and also how, had the place and the way been but amenable to the positive. She bent tenderly in imagination of a marital paternal mister whatever he was at home, eternally named with all the honours and placidities, but eternally unseen and existing only as someone who could be financially heard from. The mother, the puffed and composed whiteness of whose hair had no relation to her apparent age, showed a countenance almost chemically clean and dry. Her companions wore an air of vagress sentiment, humanised by fatigu, and the three were equally adorned with short cloaks of coloured cloth, surmounted by little tartan hoods. The tartan's were doubtless conceivable as different, but the cloaks furiously only thinkable as one. Handsome? Well, if you choose to say so. It was the mother who had spoken, who herself added after a pause during which Millie took the reference as to a picture, in the English style. The three pair of eyes had converged, and their possessors had for an instance rested with the effect of a drop of the subject on this last characterization. With that, too, of a gloom not less mute in one of the daughters than murmured in the other. Millie's heart went out to them while they turned their backs. She said to herself that they ought to have known her, that there was something between them they might have beautifully put together, but she had lost them also. They were cold. They left her in her weak wonder as to what they had been looking at. The handsome disposed her to turn, all the more that the English style would be the English school which she liked, only she saw before moving by the array on the side facing her that she was in fact among small Dutch pictures. The action of this was again appreciable, the dim surmise that it wouldn't then be by a picture that the spring in the three ladies had been pressed. It was at all events time she should go, and she turned as she got on her feet. She had had behind her one of the entrances and various visitors who had come in while she sat, visitors single and in pairs, by one of the former of whom she felt her eyes suddenly held. This was a gentleman in the middle of the place, a gentleman who had removed his hat and was for a moment while he glanced absently as she could see at the top tier of the collection, tapping his forehead with his pocket handkerchief. The occupation held him long enough to give Millie time to take for granted, and a few seconds sufficed that his face was the object just observed by her friends. This could only have been because she concurred in their tribute even qualified, and indeed the English style of the gentleman, perhaps by instant contrast to the American, was what had had the arresting power. This arresting power at the same time, and that was the marvel, had already sharpened almost to pain, for in the very act of judging the bared head with detachment she felt herself shaken by a knowledge of it. It was Merton Densher's own, and he was standing there, standing long enough unconscious for her to fix him, and then hesitate. These successions were swift, so that she could still ask herself in freedom if she had best let him see her. She could still reply to this, that she shouldn't like him to catch her in the effort to prevent it. And she might further have decided that he was too preoccupied to see anything had not a perception intervene that surpassed the first in violence. She was unable to think afterwards how long she had looked at him before knowing herself as otherwise looked at. All she was coherently to put together was that she had had a second recognition without his having noticed her. The source of this latter shock was nobody less than Kate Croy. Kate Croy, who was suddenly also in the line of vision, and whose eyes met her eyes at their next movement. Kate was but two yards off, Mr. Densher wasn't alone. Kate's face specifically said so, for after stares blank at first as millies, it broke into a far smile. That was what, wonderfully, in addition to the marvel of their meeting, passed from her, for millie, the instant reduction to easy terms of the fact of their being there. The two young women together, it was perhaps only afterwards that the girl fully felt the connection between this touch and her already established conviction that Kate was a prodigious person. Yet on the spot she nonetheless, in a degree, knew herself handled, and again, as she had been the night before, dealt with, absolutely even dealt with for her greater pleasure. A minute in fine hadn't elapsed before Kate had somehow made her provisionally take everything as natural. The provisional was just the charm, acquiring that character from one moment to the other. It represented happily so much that Kate would explain on the very first chance. This left moreover, and that was the greatest wonder, all due margin for amusement at the way things happened. The monstrous oddity of their turning up in such a place on the very heels of their having separated without allusion to it. The handsome girl was thus literally in control of the scene, by the time Merton Densher was ready to exclaim with a high flush or a vivid blush, one didn't distinguish the embarrassment from the joy. Why, Miss Thiel, fancy, and why, Miss Thiel, what luck! Miss Thiel had meanwhile the sense that for him too, on Kate's part, something wonderful and unspoken was determinant, and this although distinctly his companion had no more looked at him with a hint than he had looked at her with a question. He had looked and was looking only at Milly herself, ever so pleasantly and considerably, she scarce knew what to call it, but without prejudice to her consciousness, all the same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. The predicament of course wasn't definite nor frasable, and the way they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a characteristic triumph of the civilised state. But she took it for granted insistently with a small private flair of passion, because the one thing she could think of to do for him was to show him how she eased him off. She would really, tired and nervous, have been much disconcerted if the opportunity in question hadn't saved her. It was what had saved her most, what had made her, after the first few seconds, almost as brave for Kate as Kate was for her, had made her only ask herself what their friend would like of her, that he was at the end of three minutes, without the least complicated reference, so smoothly their friend was just the effect of their all being sublimely civilised. The flash in which he saw this was, for Milly, fairly inspiring, to that degree in fact that she was even now on such a plane, journeying to be supreme. It took no doubt a big dose of inspiration to treat as not funny, or at least as not unpleasant, the anomaly for Kate, that she knew their gentleman, and for herself, that Kate was spending the morning with him. But everything continued to make for this after Milly had tasted of her draft. She was to wonder in subsequent reflection, what in the world they had actually said, since they had made such a success of what they didn't say. The sweetness of the draft for the time, at any rate, was to feel success assured. What depended on this for Mr. Dencher was all obscurity to her, and she perhaps but invented the image of his need as a shortcut to accommodation. Whatever the facts their perfect manners all round saw them through. The finest part of Milly's own inspiration, it may further be mentioned, was the quick perception that what would be of most service was, so to speak, her own native would note. She had long been conscious with shame for her thin blood, or at least for her poor economy, of her unused margin as an American girl. Closely indeed, as in English here, the next might appear to cover the page. She still had reserves of spontaneity if not of comicality, so that all this cash in hand could now find employment. She became as spontaneous as possible as an American as it might conveniently appeal to Mr. Dencher after his travels to find her. She said things in the air, and yet flattered herself that she struck him as saying them not in the tone of agitation, but in the tone of New York. In the tone of New York agitation was beautifully discounted, and she had now a sufficient view of how much it might accordingly help her. The help was fairly rendered before they left the place, when her friends presently accepted her imitation to adjourn with her to luncheon at her hotel, it was in Fifth Avenue that the meal might have waited. Kate had never been there so straight, but Millie was at present taking her, and if Mr. Dencher had been, he had at least never had to come so fast. She proposed it as the natural thing, proposed it as the American girl, and she saw herself quickly justified by the pace at which she was followed. The beauty of the case was that to do it all, she had only to appear to take Kate's hint. This had said in its fine first smile, oh yes, our looks queer, but give me time, and the American girl could give time as nobody else could. What Millie thus gave, she therefore made them take, even if, as they might surmise, it was rather more than they wanted. In the porch of the museum she expressed her preference for a four-wheeler. They would take their course in that case precisely to multiply the minutes. She was more than ever justified by the positive charm that her spirit imparted, even to their juice of this conveyance, and she touched her highest point, that is certainly for herself, as she ushered her companions into the presence of Susie. Susie was there with luncheon as well as with her return in prospect, and nothing could now have filled her own consciousness more to the brim than to see this good friend take in how little she was objectively anxious. The cup itself actually offered to this good friend might in truth well be startling, for it was composed beyond question of ingredients oddly mixed. She caught Susie fairly looking at her as if to know whether she had brought in guests to hear Sir Luke Stretch's report. Well, it was better her companion should have too much than too little to wonder about. She had come out anyway, as they said at home, for the interest of the thing and interest truly sat in her eyes. Millie was nonetheless at the sharpest crisis, a little sorry for her. She could of necessity extract from the odd scenes so comparatively little of a soothing secret. She saw Mr. Denture suddenly popping up, but she saw nothing else that had happened. She saw in the same way her young friend indifferent to her young friend's doom, and she lacked what would explain it. The only thing to keep her in patience was the way, after luncheon, Kate almost, as might be said, made up to her. This was actually perhaps as well what most kept Millie herself in patience. It had in fact for our young woman a positive beauty, was so marked as a deviation from the handsome girl's previous courses. Susie had been a bore to the handsome girl, and the change was now suggestive. The two sat together after they had risen from table in the apartment in which they had lunched, making it thus easy for the other guest and his entertainer to sit in the room adjacent. This for the latter personage was the beauty. It was almost on Kate's part like a prayer to be relieved. If she honestly liked better to be thrown with Susan Shepherd than with her other friend, why that said practically everything? It didn't perhaps altogether say why she had gone out with him for the morning, but it said as one thought about as much as she could say to his face. Little by little indeed, under the vividness of Kate's behaviour, the probabilities fell back into their order. Merton Densher was in love, and Kate couldn't help it, could only be sorry and kind. Wouldn't that, without wild flourish cover, everything? Millie at all events tried it as a cover, tried it hard for the time. Pulled it over her, in front, the larger room, drew it up to her chin with energy. If it didn't, so treated, do everything for her, it did so much that she could herself supply the rest. She made that up by the interest of her great question, the question of whether seeing him once more with all that, as she called it herself, had come and gone. Her impression of him would be different from the impression received in New York. That had held her from the moment of their leaving the museum. It kept her company through their drive and during luncheon, and now that she was a quarter of an hour alone with him, it became acute. She was to feel at this crisis that no clear, no common answer, no direct satisfaction on this point was to reach her. She was to see her question itself simply go to pieces. She couldn't tell if he were different or not, and she didn't know nor care if she were. These things had ceased to matter in the light of the only thing she did know. This was that she liked him, as she put it to herself, as much as ever. And if that were to mount to liking a new person, the amusement would be but the greater. She had thought him at first very quiet in spite of his recovery from his original confusion, though even the shade of bewilderment she yet perceived had not been due to such vagueness on the subject of her re-intensified identity as the probable sight over there of many thousands of her kind would sufficiently have justified. Now he was quiet inevitably for the first half of the time, because Millie's own lively line, the line of spontaneity, made everything else relative, and because too, so far as Kate was spontaneous, it was ever so finely in the air among them that the normal pitch must be kept. Afterwards, when they had got a little more used as it were to each other's separate felicity, he had begun to talk more clearly, with thinking himself at a given moment of what his natural lively line would be. It would be able to take for granted she must wish to hear of the states, and to give her in its order everything he had seen and done there. He abounded of a sudden. He almost insisted. He returned after breaks to the charge, and the effect was perhaps the more odd, as he gave no clue whatever to what he had admired, as he went or to what he hadn't. He simply drenched her with his sociable story, especially during the time they were away from the others. She had stopped then being American, all to let him be English, a permission of which he took she could feel both immense and unconscious advantage. She had really never cared less for the states than at this moment, but that had nothing to do with the matter. It would have been the occasion of her life to learn about them, for nothing could put him off, and he ventured on no reference to what had happened for herself. It might have been almost as if he had known that the greatest of all these adventures was her doing just what she did then. It was at this point that she saw the smash of her great question complete, saw that all she had to do with was the sense of being there with him. And there was no chill for this in what she also presently saw, that however he had begun, he was now acting from a particular desire, determined either by new facts or new fancies, to be like everyone else, simplifyingly kind to her. He had caught on already as to manner, fallen into line with everyone else, and if his spirit severely had gone up it might well be that he had thus felt himself lighting on the remedy for all awkwardness. Whatever he did or he didn't, Millie knew she should still like him. There was no alternative to that, but her heart could nonetheless sink a little on feeling how much this view of her was destined to have in common with, as she now sighed over it, the view. She could have dreamt of his not having the view, of his having something or other if need be quite viewless of his own, but he might have what he could with least trouble, and the view wouldn't be after all a positive bar to her seeing him. The defect of it in general, if she might so ungraciously criticize, was that by its sweet universality, it made relations rather prosaically a matter of course. It anticipated and superseded the likewise sweet operation of real affinities. It was this that was doubtless marked in her power to keep him now, this and her glassy lustre of attention to his pleasantness about the scenery in the Rockies. She was in truth a little measuring her success in detaining him by Kate's success in standing Susan. It wouldn't be if she could help it, Mr. Dencher who should first break down. Such at least was one of the forms of the girl's inward tension, but beneath even this deep reason was her motive still finer. What she had left at home on going out to give it a chance was meanwhile still, was more sharply and actively there. What had been at the top of her mind about it and then violently pushed down, this quantity was again working up. As soon as their friends should go, Susie would break out, and what she would break out upon wouldn't be interested in that gentleman as she had more than once shown herself. The personal fact of Mr. Dencher, Millie had found in her face at luncheon a feverish glitter, and he told what she was full of. She didn't care now for Mr. Dencher's personal facts. Mr. Dencher had risen before her only to find his proper place in her imagination already of a sudden occupied. This personal fact failed, so far as she was concerned, to be personal, and her companion noticed the failure. This could only mean that she was full to the brim of Sir Luke's threat, and of what she had had from him. What had she had from him? It was indeed now working upward again that Millie would do well to know, though knowledge looked stiff in the light of Susie's glitter. It was therefore on the whole, because Dencher's young hostess was divided from it by so thin a partition that she continued to cling to the Rockies. End of book 5th, chapter 7, and end of volume 1 of The Wings of the Dove, read by Lars Rolander. Book 6, Chapter 1 of The Wings of the Dove. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Krithika. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I say, you know Kate, you did stay, had been Merton Dencher's punctual remark on their adventure after they had Acidware 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 recognize 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 their 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 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 today who saw her and she profited by it for her joy. Tomorrow, inevitably, she should have time to think and then, as inevitably, would become a basic creature, a creature of alarms and precautions. It was nonetheless for tomorrow at an early hour that she had appointed their meeting, keeping in mind for the present a particular obligation to show at Lancaster Gate by six o'clock. She had given with implications 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 an 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 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 rooffulness in regard to that subject as one of the strongest. He was aware later on that there were questions his impatience had shared, 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 Houston 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 lodgings, 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 provision that once at his door they could 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 bang or two, but nonetheless in wait for him, there, on the Houston 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 menace that boon. If Kate had consented to drive away with him in light at his house, there would probably enough have occurred for them at the foot of his steps, as one of those strange incidents between man and woman that blow upon the red spark, the spark of conflict, even 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 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 contrary to spend with him, Kate showed so well how she could deal with things that mattered. She seemed to ask him to beseech him, and for all his better comfort, to leave her now, and henceforth treat them in her own way. She had still met 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 inside of the Ivory 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 it is not against aunt Maude, 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 finally 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 checkbook. 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. In that consideration it was that had just now tidied 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 splendor that almost scared him even in the small corner of the room at Houston, almost scared him because it 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 safe 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 ask 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 presumed 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 railway station. Not again either in Kensington Gardens which they could easily and tacitly agree would have had too much of their taste and of their old frustrations. The present taste, the taste that moaning 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. She could easily console him from 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 though she herself believed it enough to appease him. She couldn't pretend she believed he would believe it enough to render her 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 that you considered 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 the 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 spot 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 might not 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 used to. They drew upon them freely now and Kate appeared quite to forget which is prodigiously becoming of 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 in consequence 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 men 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 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 like the young person. Whereupon she had answered that he must find out more 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 Thiele's individual history was not stuffed for his newspaper besides which moreover he was seeing but too many Little Miss Thiele's. 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 a special perhaps the irrepressible the super eminent young persons his best pen was ready. Thus it was that they 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 perceptions that preparations of more than one kind had been exactly what both yesterday and today he felt her as having in hand. That appearance in fact if he dwelt on it so ministered to apprehension as to require some bursting 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 gap which as announced a resumed policy on her part he found himself deprecating. He stood a while by the 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 parentheses 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 gray page of print that somehow managed to be crowded without being fine. The gray however was more or less the blur of a point of view not yet quite ceased again and there could be color enough to come out. He was back flatly enough but back to possibilities and prospects on 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 Millie the rigid spark and though he moved further and faster he finally sat down like Millie 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 the previous encounters the times when they had reached in their stroll the south 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 caps good or bad for the sense of union its importance was less from the particular laws 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 two 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 handsome charged them during which he felt himself disappointed as he was grimacing back at the superiority of her very humour and its added grace of gaiety to the celebrated solemn American the 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. Lauder knew of his return not from me gait had replied 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 have 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 or it's nothing to ask I'll ask tonight and if you leave it to me my cleverness I assure you has grown infernal I'll make it alright 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 questions Kate had really got off without meeting his little challenge about the terms of their intercourse with her dear Millie her dear Millie it was sensible was somehow in the picture her dear Millie 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 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 connection with Kate scarce enjoyed a space to turn around but Miss Thiele was perhaps at the present juncture a possibility of the same sort as the softened if not squared aunt Maude it might be true of her also that if she weren't or 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 denture head 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 end of chapter one the wings of the dove book sixth chapter two of the wings of the dove this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the wings of the dove by Henry James book sixth chapter two it was extraordinary enough that he should actually be finding himself when Thursday arrived none so wide as Mark Kate hadn't come all the way to this for him but she had come 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 saw now under her hand did fall more or less together and 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 formal 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 Maude 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 a secret they must in other terms inevitably speak to Aunt Maude 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 today for denture 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 supplier 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 Thiel then could do nothing for them he frankly brought out what he had ventured it 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 too glad without more due to point the moral now I hope you see we can't work it anyhow if she had laughed for this and her spirits seemed really high it was because of the opportunity that at the hotel he had just shown himself as enjoying your idea is beautiful when one remembers that you hadn't a word except for Millie but she was as beautifully good humid you might of course get used to her you will you're quite right so long as they're with us or nearest 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 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 Millie besides she particularly likes us she particularly likes you I say oh 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 a 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 nonetheless 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 found 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 vanished 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 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 alright 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 alright he took in anew the shut doors and the permitted privacy the solid stillness 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 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 wit 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 route of her vision 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 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 point 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 elude 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 past all the same without his again attempting to make just as he was serve he had no more money just as he was then he had had just as he had been all then he should have probably when it came to that just as he always would be where she on her side in comparison with her state of some months before had measurably 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. Lauda 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 a florid several of complicated brass in which their but do I expressed it she said almost all in fact by saying on this article of aunt Maude 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 a stronger 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 she has been about us today 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 check 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 her a thing why said Kate she shrugs but lets it go she really has 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 denture 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 a sacred joy it must take more than that to make it compunctious I don't say we can do it again I mean she explained meet here denture indeed had been wondering where they could do it again if Lancaster gate was so limited that issue reappeared I may end 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 everyone's in love with me she hesitated I don't say everyone you said just now miss feel 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. Lauder in person I mean for this as from myself but you know not too much she had an ironic gaiety for the implication of his this besides wishing to insist on a general prudence she'll wonder what you're thanking her for denture 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 want more interviews then if she has to see us as obstinous and constant denture 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 this 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 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 accuse me just now of saying that Millie is 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 to help us to go on Denture 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 need 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 nonetheless 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 lack 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 none more than decent of you he of course took in her reference he had fully in mind what had passed between them in New York it had been at 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 Dencher her being in love with me is nonsense but I must quite independently of that make every acknowledgement of the 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 herself 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 where in she and I ever so deep 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 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 strangers it may appear to your glory never he couldn't piece it together but won't Mrs. Lauder 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 Millie that I've in anyway as they say distinguished you and you don't suppose said Densha that they must have made it out for themselves no my dear I don't not even Kate declared after Millie'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 and perhaps to please you completely where others are concerned show it enough can you show it or not as you'd like Densha 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 Millie only sees that I'm decently good to you very good indeed she must think it very good indeed then she easily sees me 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 and before he again spoke she had returned to remembrance and prudence they were now not to forget that Aunt Maude'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 wouldn't help them but she came back to Millie too mind you go to see her Densha still however took up nothing of this then I may come again for Aunt Maude 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 Millie 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 Densha asked so 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 a 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 thus bound himself thrown back and while he asked if his spirit and 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 at 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 she knew what she liked but he made a last effort to understand her allusion to the difference bringing him round to it he indeed caught it 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 a simply for this gross way of putting it one of her more marked shows of impatience with which in fact she was probably closed to the discussion he opened the door and 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 end of book 6 chapter 2 next occasion had for him still other surprises than that he received from Mrs. Ladder on the morning after his visit to Kate the telegraphic expression of a hope that he might be free to dine with him 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 but she 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 8.30 Mrs. Stringham came in alone long daylight the postponed lamps the habit of the hour made dinners late and guests later so that punctual as he was he had found Mrs. Ladder 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 new 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 one 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 likes so in general the quantities in which Mrs. Ladder 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 lending his wonder show just a little as silly he was conscious more over 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 and 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 he 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 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 brumagem 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 favorite 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 confusion 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 all together 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 denture 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. Lauder had attached to her high and fixed this estimate ruled on each occasion at Lancaster gate the social scene so that he now recognize in it something like the artistic idea the plastic substance imposed by tradition by genius by criticism and respect to a given character on a distinguished actress as such a person was to dress the part to walk to look to speak and 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 makeup had had the last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual aunt Maude's appreciation of that tonight was indeed managerial and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on parade denture saw himself for the moment as in his purchase stall at the play the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of lights 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 denture come and go it must be granted in very much less time than notation demands but we may nonetheless 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 denture relegated to dictatorship a paying place in front and what are the most expensive this is 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 discipline faced it offered him over the footlights as he believed the small gleam fine faint but exquisite of a special intelligence so might a practice performer even when raked by double barrel glasses seemed 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 denture sought meanwhile went on amplified soon enough by the advent of two other guests stray gentlemen both stragglers in the routes of the season who visibly presented themselves to Kate during the next moments as subjects for a like impersonal treatment and shares 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 wrestled 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 the circumstance of their charming friends illness was the first thing Kate took up with denture 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 Teal's participation Mrs. Ladder had made dear Millie the topic and it proved on the spot a topic as familiar to the enthusiastic younger as to the sagacious older men any knowledge they might lack Mrs. Ladder's niece was moreover alert to supply while denture 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 proceeding her in a friendly spirit as he had the ear of society with a sharp flashlight or two he matched poor denture these inquiries as he could listening with interest yet with discomfort and sensing 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 paragraph a modest young lady they dream dreams in truth he appeared to perceive that fairly weight him up and he settled himself in his apartment and to catch the full revelation his embarrassment came naturally from the fact that if he could claim no credit from his teal 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 then if she hadn't been absent he found himself rather stupefied at the range of Middle East triumph Mrs. Latter had wonders to tell of it the two wares of the waistcoat either with sincerity or with hypocrisy professed in the matter an equal expert and denture at last seem to know himself in presence of the social case it was Mrs. Stringo 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 really but would let them nonetheless injustice through their goodwill and express it in their coarser fashion denture himself was an 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 unmistakably rejoiced and soared he nonetheless saw her at moments as even more agitated than pleasure required it was a state of emotion in her that would scarce represent simply an impatient 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. Lauder herself who addressed him that inquiry 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 honor of discovery the less expansive the white waist coasts propounded the theory that it was much more 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 data product he didn't mean that Miss Teal was funny though she was weird 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 nothing over there and yet were awfully taken up in England just as to make the balance right thank goodness they sometimes send out beauties and celebrities who left the Britain cold the Britain's temperature and truth wasn't to be calculated a formulation of the matter that was not reached however without producing a Mrs. Stringham final feverish sally she announced that if the point of view for a proper admiration of her young friend seemed to fail a little in New York there was no matter of doubt of her having carried Boston by storm it pointed to 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 dentures mind her nearest approach to supplying the weirdness in which Millie'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 did she 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 am I having tremendously appreciated it to which he added he scares new 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. Lauder 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 we 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 perceptively faltered in her retort to Mrs. Lauder's joke oh it's precisely my point that Mr. Denture 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 reply the good lady as if now to keep well with him he has nothing better she was off with you to these parts before I knew it I myself was off to a way off to wonderful parts where I had endlessly more to see but you didn't forget her Aunt Maude 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 chatter to others about her she'll thank you sir said Mrs. Dringham with flushed firmness yet doesn't silence in such a case Aunt Maude blandly inquired very often quite proved the depth of the impression he would have been amused hadn't he been slightly displeased that all they seemed desirous to fasten on him well the impression was as deep as you like but I really want Miss Teal to know he pursued for Mrs. Dringham that I don't figure by any consent of my own any authority about her Kate came to his assistance if assistance it was before their friend had had time to meet this charge you write about her not being easy to know one sees her with intensity sees her more than one sees almost anyone 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 Millie's anxious companion sat and looked look very much as some spectator and 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 it made Mrs. Stringham uneasy and her mute communion with denture 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 so 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 seasons and to keep denture 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 bit 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 once patients was shorter than once curiosity one had vaguely taken for possible in London but in which one had never been even to the small extent concerned the little American sudden social adventure her happy and no doubt harmless flourish had probably been favored by several accidents but it had been favored 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 have 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 smaller within 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 journalizing hand that hand already in attention 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 eras 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 long desperately accounted 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 in the idea that what he had thus caught in the fact was the trick of a fashion the tone of a society went so far as to make him take up again his sense of independence he had supposed himself civilized but if this was civilization 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 low 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 what she came overtly to his aid very much as of guessing some of his thoughts she annunciated to believe as bewilderment the obvious truth that you couldn't leave London for three months at that time of the year and come back 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 and fine his disclaimer about Millie without honor 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 she had backed denture 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. Dringham had secretly resented them Mrs. Dringham holding the opinion of which he was ultimately to have all the Kate Croy's in Christendom were but dust for the feet of her Millie 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 saved the one other more imperturbably cerebral that she entertained for the art of Guida Mopassant she slipped in the observation that her Millie was incapable of changing was just exactly on the contrary the same Millie and 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 handicap 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 Millie's having spoken to her of this view on the good lady's part she would like Millie 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 Maude Stringham who was full of sentiment she had never known there was none other to be employed these things were of later evidence yet denture might even then have felt them in the air they were practically in it already when Kate waving the question of her friend's chemical change wound up with a comparatively unobjectionable proposition that he must now having missed so much take them all up on trust further on he made 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 a nice thing about her was that she could measure how much so that by the time dinner was over they had really covered ground end of book 6 chapter 3 recording by Steve Young