 Book Seventh Chapter One of the Wings of the Dub This is a LibriVox recording, all 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 Seventh Chapter One When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Millie, face to face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which they warned the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again feeling for the sword at his side carries his hand straight to the quarter of his carriage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two women stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepard had received their great doctor's visit, which had been clearly no small affair for her, but Millie had since then, with insistence, kept in place against communication and betrayal, as she now practically confessed the barrier of their invited guests. You've been too dear. With what I see you're full of, you treated them beautifully. Isn't Kate charming when she wants to be? Poor Susie's expression contending at first, as in a high fine spass with different dangers, had now quite let itself go. She had to make an effort to reach a point in space already so remote. Miss Croy? Oh, she was pleasant and clever. She knew, Mrs. Stringham added, she knew. Millie brazed herself, but conscious above all at the moment of a high compassion for her mate, she made her out as struggling, struggling in all her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, given her nature, could only be a torment. Millie gathered from the struggle how much there was of the pity and how, therefore, it was both in her tenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered. Wonderful and beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadied the girl, ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease with the drop of their barrier they were to find themselves together. She felt the question met with a relief that was almost joy. The basis, the inevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who to all appearance had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a manner to be sorry for her. Mrs. Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs. Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had the poor girl at all events on the spot five minutes of exaltation in which she turned the tables on her friend with a pass of the hand, a gesture of an energy that made a wind in the air. Kate knew, she asked, that you were full of Sir Luke's threat. She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice. She seemed to want to help me through, which the good lady had no sooner said, however, than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She glared at Millie with a pretended pluck. What I mean is that she saw one had been taken up with something. When I saw she knows, I should say she's a person who guesses, and her grimace was also on its side heroic. But she doesn't matter, Millie. The girl felt she by this time could face anything. Nobody matters, Susie, nobody, which her next words however rather contradicted. Did he take it ill at that I wasn't here to see him? Wasn't it really just what he wanted, to have it out so much more simply with you? We didn't have anything out, Millie, Mrs. Stringham delicately quavered. Didn't he awfully like you, Millie went on, and didn't he think you're the most charming person I could possibly have referred him to for an account of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together, and in fact fall quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for you to have me as a common ground? You're going to make I can see no end of a good thing of me. My own child, my own child, Mrs. Stringham pleadingly murmured, yet showing as she did so, that she feared the effect even of deprecation. Isn't he beautiful and good to himself, all together whatever he may say a lovely quaintance to have made? You're just the right people for me, I see it now, and do you know what between you you must do? Then, as Susie still but stared, wonder struck and holding herself, you must simply see me through any way you choose, make it out together. I on my side will be beautiful too, and we'll be the three of us with whatever others owe as many as the case requires. Anyone you like, a sight for the gods, I'll be as easy for you as carrying a feather. Susie took it for a moment in such silence that her young friend almost saw her and scarcely withheld the observation as taking it for a part of the disease. This accordingly helped Millie to be, as she judged, definite and wise. He is at any rate awfully interesting, isn't he? Which is so much to the good, we haven't at least as we might have with the way we tumble into it, got hold of one of the dreary. Interesting, dearest, Mrs. Stringham felt her feet firmer. I don't know if he's interesting or not, but I do know, my own, she continued to quaver, that he's just as much interested as you could possibly desire. Certainly that's it, like all the world. No, my precious, not like all the world, very much more deeply and intelligently. Ah, there you are, Millie love. That's the way, Susie, I want you. So, back up, my dear. We'll have beautiful times with him. Don't worry. I'm not worrying, Millie. And poor Susie's face registered the sublimity of her lie. It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her companion went to her, met by her with an embrace in which things were said that exceeded speech. Each held and clasped the other as if to console her for this unnamed woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham of learning the torment of helplessness, the woe for Millie of having her at such time to think of. Millie's assumption was immense, and the difficulty for her friend was that of not being able to gainsay it without bringing it more to the proof than tenderness and vagueness could permit. Nothing, in fact, came to the proof between them but that they could thus cling together, except indeed that, as we have indicated, the pledge of protection and support was all the younger woman's own. I don't ask you, she presently said, what he told you for yourself, nor what he told you to tell me, nor how he took it, really, that I had left him to you, nor what passed between you about me in any way. It wasn't to get that out of you that I took my means to make sure of your meeting freely, for there are things I don't want to know. I shall see him again and again, and shall know more than enough. All I do want is that you shall see me through on his basis, whatever it is, which it's enough for the purpose that you yourself should know that is with him to show you how. I'll make it charming for you, that's what I mean. I'll keep you up to it in such a way that half the time you won't know you're doing it, and for that you're to rest upon me. There, it's understood. We keep each other going, and you may absolutely feel of me that I shan't break down. So, with the way you haven't so much as a dig of the elbow to fear, how could you be safer? He told me I can help you. Of course, he told me that. Susie on her side eagerly contended. Why shouldn't he? And for what else have I come out with you? But he told me nothing dreadful, nothing, nothing, nothing, the poor lady passionately protested, only that you must do as you like, and as he tells you, which is just simply to do as you like. I must keep in sight of him. I must from time to time go to him, but that's of course doing as I like. It's lucky, Millie smiled, that I like going to him. Mrs. Stringham was here in agreement. She gave a clutch at the account of their situation that most showed it as workable. That's what will be charming for me, and what I'm sure he really wants of me to help you to do as you like. And also a little, won't it be, Millie laughed, to save me from the consequences. Of course, she added, there must first be things I like. Oh, I think you'll find some, Mrs. Stringham more bravely said. I think there are some, as for instance just this one. I mean, she explained really having us so. Millie thought, just as if I wanted you comfortable about him, and him the same about you. Yes, I shall get the good of it. Sushant Shepard appeared to wonder from this into a slight confusion. Which of them are you talking of? Millie wondered an instant, then had a light. I'm not talking of Mr. Densher, with which moreover she showed amusement, though if you can be comfortable about Mr. Densher too, so much the better. Oh, you mean Sir Luke Stret. Certainly, he's a fine type. Do you know, Susie continued, whom he reminds me of, of our great man, Dr. Patrick of Boston. Millie recognized Dr. Patrick of Boston, but she dropped him after a tributary pause. What do you think, now that you have seen him, of Mr. Densher? It was not till after consideration, with her eyes fixed on her friends, that Susie produced her answer. I think he's very handsome. Millie remained smiling at her, though putting on a little the manner of a teacher with a pupil. Well, that will do for the first time. I have done, she went on, what I wanted. Then that's all we want. You see, there are plenty of things. Millie shook her head for the plenty. The best is not to know that includes them all. I don't know. Nothing about anything except that you're with me. Remember that, please. There won't be anything that on my side for you, I shall forget. So, it's all right. The effect of it by this time was fairly as intended to sustain Susie, who dropped in spite of herself into the reassuring. Most certainly it's all right. I think you ought to understand that he sees no reason why I shouldn't have a grand long life. Millie had taken it straight up as to understand it and for a moment consider it, but she disposed of it otherwise. Of course, I know that. She spoke as if her friends' point were small. Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. Well, what I mean is that he didn't say to me anything that he hasn't said to yourself. Really? I would in his place. She might have been disappointed, but she had her good humor. He tells me to live, and she oddly limited the word. It left Susan a little at sea. Then what do you want more? My dear, the girl presently said, I don't want, as I assure you, anything. Still, she added, I am living. Oh, yes, I'm living. He put them again face to face, but it had wound Mrs. Stringham up. So am I, then. You'll see. She spoke with the note of her recovery. Yet it was her wisdom now, meaning by it as much as she did, not to say more than that. She had risen, by Millie's aid, to a certain command of what was before them. The ten minutes of their talk had in fact made her more distinctly aware of the presence in her mind of a new idea. It was really perhaps an old idea with a new value. It had at all events begun during the last hour, though at first but feebly to shine with a special light. That was because in the morning darkness had so suddenly descended a sufficient shade of night to bring out the powers of a star. The dusk might be thick yet, but the sky had comparatively cleared, and Susan Shepherd's star from this time on continued to twinkle for her. It was for the moment after a passage with Millie, the one spark left in the heavens. She recognized as she continued to watch it, that it had really been set there by Sir Luke Stretch's visit, and that the impressions immediately following had done no more than fix it. Millie's reappearance with Mr. Densher at her heels, or so oddly perhaps at Miss Croy's heels, Miss Croy being at Millie's, had contributed to this effect, though it was only with the lapse of the greater obscurity that Susie made that out. The obscurity had drained during the hour of their friend's visit, faintly clearing indeed while in one of the more rooms Kate Croy's remarkable advance to her intensified the fact that Millie and the young men were conjoined in the other. If it hadn't acquired on the spot all the intensity of which it was capable, this was because the poor lady still sat in her primary gloom, the gloom the great Benignan Doctor had practically left behind him. The intensity, the circumstance in question might wear to the informed imagination would have been sufficiently revealed for us, no doubt, and with other things to our purpose in two or three of those confidential passages with Mrs. Loder that she now permitted herself. She hadn't yet been so glad that she believed in her old friend, for if she hadn't had at such a pass somebody or other to believe in, she should certainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist of silence, silence was gross and thick, whereas wisdom should taper, however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gate the morning after the colloquy just noted, and there in Maud Manningham's own sanctum she gradually found relief in giving an account of herself. An account of herself was one of the things that she had long been in the habit of expecting herself regularly to give, the regularity depending of course much on such tests of merit as might by laws beyond her control rise in her path. She never spared herself in short of proper sharpness of conception of how she had behaved, and it was a statement that she for the most part found herself able to make. What had happened at present was that nothing, as she felt, was left of her to report to. She was all too sunk in the inevitable and the abysmal. To give an account of herself she must give it to somebody else, and her first instalment of it to her hostess was that she must please let her cry. She couldn't cry with mealy in observation at the hotel, which she had accordingly left for that purpose, and the power happily came to her with a good opportunity. She cried and cried at first. She confined herself to that. It was for the time the best statement of her business. Mrs. Loder, moreover, intelligently took it as such, though knocking off a note or two more, as she said, while Susan sat near her table. She could resist the contagion of tears, but her patience did justice to her visitor's most vivid plea for it. I shall never be able, you know, to cry again, at least not ever with her, so I must make it out when I can. Even if she does herself it won't be for me to give away. For what would that be but a confession of despair? I am not with her for that. I am with her to be regularly sublime. Besides, mealy won't cry herself. I am sure, I hope, said Mrs. Loder, that she won't have occasion to. She won't even if she does have occasion. She won't shed a tear. There is something that will prevent her. Oh, said Mrs. Loder. Yes, her pride, Mrs. Stringham explained in spite of her friend's doubt, and it was with this that her communication took consistent form. It had never been pride what Manningham had hinted that kept her from crying when other things made for it. It had only been that these same things, at such times, made still more for business, arrangements, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the marshalling of servants, the taking of decisions. I might be crying now, she said, if I weren't writing letters, and this quite without harshness for her anxious companion, to whom she allowed just the administrative margin for difference. She had interrupted her no more than she would have interrupted the piano tuner. It gave poor Susie time, and when Mrs. Loder, to save appearances and catch the post, had, with her addressed and stamped notes, met at the door of the room the footman summoned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the case were sufficiently ready for her. It took but two or three, however, given their importance, to lay the ground for the great one, Mrs. Stringham's interview of the day before with Sir Luke, who had wished to see her about Millie. He had wished it himself? I think he was glad of it. Clearly indeed he was. He stayed a quarter of an hour. I could see that for him it was long. He is interested, said Mrs. Stringham. Do you mean in her case? He says it isn't a case. What then is it? It isn't, at least, Mrs. Stringham explained, the case she believed it to be, though it at any rate might be, when, without my knowledge, she went to see him. She went because there was something she was afraid of, and he examined her thoroughly. He has made sure. She's wrong. She hasn't what she thought. And what did she think? Mrs. Loder demanded. He didn't tell me. And you didn't ask? I asked nothing, said poor Susie. I only took what he gave me. He gave me no more than he had to. He was beautiful, she went on. He is, thank God, interested. He must have been interested in you, dear, Maud Manningham absurd with kindness. Her visitor met it with candour. Yes, love, I think he is. I mean that he sees what he can do with me. Mrs. Loder took it rightly. For her? For her. Anything in the world he will or he must. He can use me to the last bone, and he likes at least that. He says the great thing for her is to be happy. It's surely the great thing for everyone. Why, therefore, Mrs. Loder handsomely asked, should we cry so hard about it? Only, poor Susie wailed, that it's so strange, so beyond us, I mean if she can't be. She must be, Mrs. Loder knew no impossibles. She shall be. Well, if you will help, he thinks you know we can help. Mrs. Loder faced a moment in her massive way, what Sir Luke's dread thought. She sat back there, her knees apart, not unlike a picturesque earring matron at a market stall, while her friend before her dropped their items, tossed the separate truth of the matter one by one into her capacious apron. But is that all he came to you for, to tell you she must be happy? That she must be made so. That's the point. It seemed enough as he told me. Mrs. Stringen went on. He makes it somehow such a grand possible affair. Ah, well, if he makes it possible. I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave it to me. That is as my part. The rest's his own. And what's the rest? Mrs. Loder asked. I don't know. His business. He means to keep hold of her. Then why do you say it isn't a case? It must be very much a one. Everything in Mrs. Stringen confessed to the extent of it. It's only that it isn't the case. She herself supposed. It's another. It's another. Examining her for what she supposed, he finds something else. Something else. And what does he find? Ah, Mrs. Stringen cried. God keep me from knowing. He didn't tell you that. But poor Susie had recovered herself. What I mean is that if it's there, I shall know in time. He's considering, but I can trust him for it, because he does. I feel. Trust me. He's considering, she repeated. He's, in other words, not sure. Well, he's watching. I think that's what he means. She's to get away now, but to come back to him in three months. Then I think, said Maud Loder, that he oughtn't meanwhile to scare us. It roused Susie a little, Susie being already enrolled in the Great Doctor's course. This came out at least in her glimmer of reproach. Does it scare us to enlist us for her happiness? Mrs. Loder was rather stiff for it. Yes, it scares me. I'm always scared. I may call it so till I understand. What happiness is he talking about? Mrs. Stringen at this came straight. Oh, you know. She had really said it so that her friend had to take it, which the latter, in fact, after a moment, showed herself as having done. A strange light humor in the matter, even perhaps suddenly aiding. She met it with a certain accommodation. Well, say one seems to see, the point is, but fairly too full now of a question, she dropped. The point is, will it cure? Precisely. Is it absolutely a remedy, the specific? Well, I should think we might know, Mrs. Stringen delicately declared. Ah, but we haven't the complaint. Have you never, dearest, been in love? Susan Shepherd inquired. Yes, my child, but not by the Doctor's direction. Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth, which operated, and happily too, as a challenge to her visitor spirit. Oh, of course we don't ask his sleeve to fall, but it's something to know he thinks it good for us. My dear woman, Mrs. Loder cried. It strikes me, we know it without him, so that when that's all he has to tell us. Ah, Mrs. Stringham interposed. It isn't all, I feel Sir Luke will have more. He won't have put me off with anything inadequate. I'm to see him again. He as good as told me that he'll wish it, so it won't be for nothing. Then what will it be for? Do you mean he has somebody of his own to propose? Do you mean you told him nothing? Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. I showed him, I understood him. That was all I could do. I didn't feel at liberty to be explicit, but I felt, even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of what I had from you night before last. What I spoke to you of in the carriage, when we had left her with Kate. You had seen, apparently in three minutes, and now that he's here, now that I've met him and had my impression of him, I feel, said Mrs. Stringham, that you've been magnificent. Of course I've been magnificent. When, asked Mood Manningham, was I anything else? But Millie won't be, you know, if she marries Merton Densher. Oh, it's always magnificent to marry the man one loves, but we're going fast, Mrs. Stringham woefully smiled. The thing is to go fast, if I see the case right. What had I, after all, but my instinct of that, on coming back with you night before last, to pick up Kate, I felt what I felt. I knew in my bones the man had returned. That's just where, as I say, you're magnificent. But wait, said Mrs. Stringham, till you've seen him. I shall see him immediately, Mrs. Loder took it up with decision. What is then, she asked, your impression? Mrs. Stringham's impression seemed lost in her doubts. How can he ever care for her? Her companion, in her companion's heavy manner, sat on it, by being put in the way of it. For God's sake, then, Mrs. Stringham wailed, put him in the way. You have him, one feels, in your hand. What Loder's eyes at this rested on her friends. Is that your impression of him? It's my impression, dearest, of you. You handle everyone. Mrs. Loder's eyes still rested, and Susan Shepard now felt, for a wonder, not less sincere by seeing that she pleased her. But there was a great limitation. I don't handle Kate. It suggested something that her visitor hadn't yet had from her. Something the sense of which made Mrs. Stringham gasp. Do you mean Kate cares for him? The fact the Lady of Lancaster Gate had up to this moment, as we know enshroded, and her friend's quick question had produced a change in her face. She blinked, then looked at the question hard, after which whether she had inadvertently betrayed herself or had only reached decision, and then been affected by the quality of Mrs. Stringham's surprise, she accepted all results. What to place in her for Susan Shepard was not simply that she made the best of them, but that she suddenly saw more in them to her purpose than she could have imagined. A certain impatient in fact marked in her this transition, she had been keeping back, very hard, an important truth, and wouldn't have liked to hear that she hadn't concealed it cleverly. Susie nevertheless felt herself pass as not a little of a fool, with her for not having thought of it. What Susie indeed however most thought of at present, in the quick new light of it, was the wonder of Kate's dissimulation. She had time for that view while she waited for an answer to her cry. Kate thinks she cares, but she is mistaken, and no one knows it. These things distinct and responsible were Mrs. Loader's retort, yet they weren't all of it. You don't know it, that must be our line, or rather your line must be that you deny it utterly. Deny that she cares for him? Deny that she so much as thinks that she does? Positively and absolutely, deny that you've so much as heard of it? Susie faced this new duty. To milli you mean, if she asks? To milli naturally, no one else will ask. Well, said Mrs. Stringham after a moment, milli won't. Mrs. Loader wondered, are you sure? Yes, the more I think of it, and luckily for me, I lie badly. I lie well, thank God, Mrs. Loader almost knotted. When as sometimes will happen, there is nothing else so good. One must always do the best, but without lies then, she went on, perhaps we can work it out. Her interest had risen, her friends saw her, as within some in its more enrolled and inflamed, presently felt in her what had made the difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, described this at the time, but dimly she only made out at first that Maud had found a reason for helping her. The reason was strangely, she might help Maud too, for which she now decided to profess herself ready even to lying. What really perhaps most came out for her was that her hostess was a little disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of this appliance, and that in turn was to become a steadier light. The truth about Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the delusion about the state of her affections, which might be removed, this was apparently the ground on which they now might more intimately meet. Mrs. Stringham saw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's delusion, by arts however, in truth that she as yet white failed to compass, or was it perhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. Densher's, success in which indeed might entail other successes. Before that job, unfortunately, her heart had already failed. She felt that she believed in her bones what Millie believed, and what would now make working for Millie such a dreadful upward tug. All this within her was confused present, a cloud of questions out which Maud Manningham's large seated self loomed, however as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From the oracle the sound did come, or at any rate the sense did, a sense all according with the insufflation she had just seen working. Yes, the sense was, I'll help you for Millie, because if that comes off I shall be helped by its doing so for Kate, a view into which Mrs. Stringham could now sufficiently enter. She found herself of sudden, strange to say, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate's good as Mrs. Loder, with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herself in short not caring what became of Kate, only convinced at bottom of her predominance of Kate's star. Kate wasn't in danger. Kate wasn't pathetic. Kate Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate Croy. She saw moreover by this time that her friend was travelling even beyond her own speed. Mrs. Loder had already in mind drafted a rough plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said, you must stay on a few days and you must immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner. In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having, by an instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much two nights before to prepare that ground. The poor child, when I was with her there while you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away to me. Oh, I remember how you afterwards put it to me, though it was nothing more. Susie did herself the justice to observe, then what I too had quite felt. But Mrs. Loder fronted her so on this that she wondered what she had said, I suppose I ought to be edified at what you can so beautifully give up. Give up, Mrs. Stringham echoed, why? I give up nothing, I cling. Her hostess showed impatience, turning again with some stiffness to her great brass-bound cylinder-desk, and giving a push to an object or two disposed there. I give up, then. You know how little such a person as Mr. Densher was to be my idea for her? You know what I've been thinking perfectly possible. Oh, you've been great! Susie was perfectly fair. A duke, a duchess, a princess, a palace, you've made me believe in them too. But where we break down is that she doesn't believe in them. Luckily for her, as it seems to be turning out, she doesn't want them. So what's one to do? I assure you, I've had many dreams, but I've only one dream now. Mrs. Stringham's tone in these last words gave so fully her meaning that Mrs. Loder could but show herself as taken it in. They sat a moment longer confronted on it. Her having what she doesn't want, if it will do anything for her. Mrs. Loder seemed to think what it might do, but she spoke for the instant of something else. It does provoke me a bit, you know, for, of course, I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet it doesn't prevent the fact that we must be decent. We must take her, Mrs. Stringham carried that out as she is. And we must take Mr. Densher as he is. With which Mrs. Loder gave a somber laugh. It's a pity he isn't better. Well, if he were better, her friend rejoined. You'd have liked him for your niece. And in that case Millie would interfere. I mean, Susie added, interfere with you. She interferes with me as it is. Not that it matters now. But I saw Kate and her really as soon as you came to me, set up side by side. I saw your girl, I don't mind telling you, helping my girl. And when I say that, Mrs. Loder continued, you'll probably put in for yourself that it was part of the reason for my welcome to you. So you see what I give up. I do give it up. But when I take that line, she further said forth, I take it handsomely. So goodbye to it all. Goodbye to Mrs. Densher. Heavens, she growled. Susie held herself a minute. Even as Mrs. Densher, my girl, will be somebody? Yes, she won't be nobody. Besides, said Mrs. Loder, we're talking in the air. Her companions sadly assented. We're leaving everything out. It's nevertheless interesting. And Mrs. Loder had another thought. He's not quite nobody either. It brought her back to the question she had already put, and which her friend hadn't at the time dealt with. What in fact do you make of him? Susan shepherd at this for reasons not clear even to herself was moved a little to caution. She remained general. He's charming. She had met Mrs. Loder's eyes with that extreme pointedness in her own to which people resort when they are not quite candid, a circumstance that had its effect. Yes, he is charming. The effect of the words, however, was equally marked. They all must determine in Mrs. Stringham a return of amusement. I thought you didn't like him. I don't like him for Kate. But you don't like him for Millie either. Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend also got up. I like him, my dear, for myself. Then that's the best way of all. Well, it's one way. He's not good enough for my niece, and he's not good enough for you. Once an aunt, once a wretch, and once a fool. Oh, I'm not, not either, Susie declared. But her companion kept on. One lives for others. You do that. If I were living for myself, I shouldn't at all mind him. But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. Ah, if I find him charming, it's, however, I'm living. Well, it broke Mrs. Loder down. She hanged fire, but an instant giving herself away with the laugh. Of course, he's all right in himself. That's all I contend, Susie said with more reserve, and the note in question, what Merton Denscher was, in himself, closed practically with some inconsequence, this first of their counsels. It had at least made the difference for them. They could feel of an informed state in respect to the great doctor, whom they were now to take as watching, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing to himself some such process before he should make up his mind. Mrs. Stringham understood him as considering the matter, meanwhile in a spirit that, on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had come back to a rough notation of before retiring. She followed the course of his reckoning. If what they had talked of could happen, if Millie, that is, could have her thoughts taken off herself, it wouldn't do any harm and might conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happen, if anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves, conjoined, could do nothing to contribute to it, they would be nowhere's box than before. Only in this latter case the girl would have had her free range for the summer, for the autumn she would have done her best in the sense enjoined on her, and coming back at the end to her imminent man would, besides having more to show him, find him more ready to go on with her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherd, as well as being ground for a second report to her old friend that Millie did her part for a working view of the general case, inasmuch as she mentioned frankly and promptly that she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir Luke Strett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for, his having been so easy about her behavior. You see, I didn't know that for the liberty I took, I shouldn't afterwards get a stiff note from him. So much Millie had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. Oh, you'll never get a stiff note from him in your life. She felt her rashness the next moment at her young friend's question. Why not, as well as anyone else who has played him a trick? Well, because he doesn't record it as a trick, he could understand your action. It's all right, you see. Yes, I do see. It is all right. He's easier with me than with anyone else, because that's the way to let me down. He's only making believe, and I'm not worth hauling up. Roofful at having provoked again this ominous flair, poor Susie grasped at her only advantage. Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett of trifling with you? She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave her, a strange half-amused perception of what she made of it. Well, so far as it's trifling with me to pity me so much. He doesn't pity you, Susie earnestly reasoned. He just, the same as anyone else, likes you. He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as anyone else. Why not, if he wants to work for you? Millie gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. Ah, there you are! Mrs. Stringham colored for there indeed she was again. But Millie let her off. Work for me all the same. Work for me. It's, of course, what I want. Then, as usual, she embraced her friend. I am not going to be as nasty as this to him. I am sure, I hope not! and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. I have no doubt, however, he take it from you. It's you, my dear, who are not the same as anyone else. Millie's ascent to which after an instant gave her the last word. No, so that people can take anything from me. And what Mrs. Stringham did indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning, in fact, between them of an odd independence, an independence positively of action and custom on the subject of Millie's future. They went their separate ways with a girl's intense ascent, this being really nothing but what she had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's first encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favored the idea that Susie had or was to have other encounters, private, pointed, personal. She favored every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as if nothing were the matter, since she was to be worked for that would be her way. And though her companions learned from herself nothing of it, this was in the event her way with her medical advisor. She put a visit to him on the simplest ground. She had come just to tell him how touched she had been by his good nature. That required little explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood. He could but reply that it was all right. I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got good friends. So each one of them thinks of all the others, but so I also think, Millie went on, of all of them together. You're excellent for each other, and it's in that way I dare say that you're best for me. There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her alarms, the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility, if not of value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every point, embarrass his exercise of kindness that, no doubt, rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her. Susie had a noble idea that she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. He wouldn't have time even should he wish, whereby, in a word, Millie felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her smooth, strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling, as she had known in her crucial talk with Susie. It came round to the same thing, him too she would help to help her, if that could possibly be, but if it couldn't possibly be, she would assist also to make this right. It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician. What was he in fact but patient? What was she but physician? From the moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy of saving him alarms about her subtlety. She would leave the subtlety to him, he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine that the inward success of these reflections flushed her for the minute, to his eyes with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health, and what barely next occurred was that he gave color to the presumption. Every little helps, no doubt, he noticed good humoredly her harmless sally, but help or no help, you're looking, you know, remarkably well. Oh, I thought I was, she answered, and it was as if already she saw his line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he had guessed anything at all, it would be rather remarkable of him. As for what there was to guess, he couldn't, if this was present to him, have arrived at it saved by his own acuteness. That acuteness was there for immense, and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. Neither for that matter would hers be, which she was even actually enjoying. She wondered if really then there might not be something for her. She hadn't been sure in coming to him that she was better, and he hadn't used, he would be awfully careful not to use that compromising term about her, in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say for the amiable sympathy of it. Yes, I must be, for he had this unaided sense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided, a course who could have told him of anything. Susie, she was certain, hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible she could have told him the first time, since such was his penetration. Therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept the new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate her on, as a sufficient course? If one nursed a course tenderly enough, it might produce an effect, and this to begin with would be a way of nursing. You gave me the other day, she went on, plenty to think over, and I've been doing that, thinking it over, quite as you'll have probably wished me. I think I must be pretty easy to treat, she smiled, since you've already done me so much good. The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advance so closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed the pleasure of really improving it. Oh no, you're extremely difficult to treat. I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit. Well, I mean, I do come up, she hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his answer, convinced that she was that if she had been difficult, it would be the last thing he would have told her. I'm doing, she said, as I like. Then it is as I like, but you must really, though we're having such a decent month, get straight away. In pursuance of which, when she had replied with promptitude that her departure for the Tyrol, and then for Venice, was quite fixed for the 14th, he took her up with alacrity. For Venice? That's perfect, for we shall meet there. I've a dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off. Three weeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers. I heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice. That's lovely, then, I shall expect you there, and anything that, in advance, or in any way I can do for you. Oh, thank you, my niece, I seem to feel dust for me, but it will be capital to find you there. I think it ought to make you feel, she said after a moment, that I am easy to treat. But he shook his head again, he wouldn't have it. You've not come to that yet. One has to be so bad for it? Well, I don't think I've ever come to it, to ease of treatment. I doubt if it's possible. I'm not if it is found any one bad enough. The ease, you see, is for you. I see, I see. They had an odd friendly, but perhaps the least bit awkward pause on it, after which Sir Luke asked. And that clever lady, she goes with you. Mrs. Stringham? Oh, dear, yes. She'll stay with me. I hope to the end. He had a cheerful blankness. To the end of what? Well, of everything. Ah, then, he laughed. You're in luck. The end of everything is far off. This, you know, I'm hoping, said Sir Luke, is only the beginning. And the next question he risked might have been a part of his hope. Just you and she together? No, two other friends, two ladies of whom we've seen more here than of anyone, and who are just the right people for us. He thought a moment. You'll be four women together then? Ah, said Millie. We're widows and orphans. But I think she added, as if to say what she so would reassure him, that we shall not be unattractive, as we move to gentlemen. When you talk of life, I suppose you mean mainly gentlemen. When I talk of life, he made answer after a moment during which he might have been appreciating her raciness. When I talk of life, I think I mean more than anything else the beautiful show of it, in its freshness made by young persons of your age. So go on as you are. I see more and more how you are. You can't. He went on so far as to say for pleasantness better it. She took it from him with a great show of peace. One of our companions will be Miss Croy, who came with me here first. It's in her that life is splendid, and a part of that is even that she's devoted to me, but she's above all magnificent in herself, so that if you'd like, she freely threw out to see her. Oh, I shall like to see anyone who's devoted to you, for clearly it will be jolly to be in it, so that if she's to be at Venice, I shall see her. We must arrange it. I shan't fail. She moreover has a friend who may also be there. Millie found herself going on to this. He's likely to come, I believe, for he always follows her. Sir Luke wondered, You mean their lovers? He is Millie's mild, but not she. She doesn't care for him. Sir Luke took an interest. What's the matter with him? Nothing but that she doesn't like him. Sir Luke kept it up. Is he all right? Oh, he's very nice. Indeed, he's remarkably so. And he's to be in Venice. So she tells me she fears, for if he's there, he'll be constantly about with her. And she'll be constantly about with you? As we're great friends, yes. Well then, said Sir Luke, you won't be four women alone. Oh, no, I quite recognize the chance of gentlemen. But he won't, Millie pursued in the same wondrous way, have come, you see, for me. No, I see. But can't you help him? Can't you, Millie after a moment quaintly asked? Then for the joke of it, she explained, I'm putting you, you see, in relation with my entourage. It might have been for the joke of it, too, by this time that her eminent friend fell in. But if this gentleman isn't of your entourage, I mean if he's of, what do you call her, Miss Crois, unless indeed you also take an interest in him. Oh, certainly I take an interest in him. You think there may be then some chance for him? I like him, said Millie, enough to hope so. Then that's all right. But what pray, Sir Luke next asked, have I to do with him? Nothing, said Millie, except that if you're to be there, so may he be, and also that we shan't in that case be simply four dreary women. He considered her as if, at this point, she a little tried his patience. You're the least dreary woman I ever, ever seen. Ever, do you know? There's no reason why you shouldn't have a really splendid life. So everyone tells me, she promptly returned. The conviction, strong already when I had seen you once, is strengthened in me by having seen your friend. There is no doubt about it. The words before you. What did my friend tell you, Millie asked? Nothing that wouldn't have given you pleasure. We talked about you, and freely I don't deny that, but it shows me I don't require of you the impossible. She was now on her feet. I think I know what you require of me. Nothing for you, he went on, is impossible. So go on. He repeated it again, wanting her so to feel that today he saw it. You're all right. Well, she smiled, keep me so. Oh, you'll get away from me. Keep me, keep me, she simply continued with her gentle eyes on him. She had given him her hand for good-bye, and he thus for a moment did keep her. Something then, while he seemed to think if there were anything more, came back to him. Though something of which there wasn't too much to be made. Of course, if there's anything I can do for your friend, I mean the gentleman you speak of, he gave out in short that he was ready. Oh, Mr. Densher, it was as if she had forgotten. Mr. Densher, is that his name? Yes, but his case isn't so dreadful. She had within a minute got away from that. No doubt, if you take an interest, she had got away, but it was as if he made out in her eyes, though they also had rather got away, a reason for calling her back. Still, if there's anything one can do, she looked at him while she thought, while she smiled. I'm afraid there's really nothing one can do. End of book seven, chapter two, read by Lars Rolander. Book seventh, chapter three 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. Reading by Lars Rolander. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, book seventh, chapter three. Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink into possession, gratefully glad that the warmth of the southern summer was still in the high florid rooms. Palatial chambers where hard-cooled payments took reflections in their lifelong polish, and where the sun on the stirred seawater flickering up through open windows played over the painted subjects in the splendid ceilings. Medallions of purple and brown, of brave old melancholy color, medals as of old red and gold embossed and bereaved, all toned with time and all flourished and scalloped and dillied about, set in their great molded and figured concavity, a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures of the air, and appreciated by the aid of that second tear of small lights straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with the bedikers and photographs of Millie's party, dreadfully meeting the eye, to make of the place an apartment of state. This at last, though she had enjoyed the palace for three weeks, seemed to count as effective occupation, perhaps because it was the first time she had been alone, rarely to call alone, since she had left London. It ministered to her first full and unembarrassed sense of what the Great Judenior had done for her. The Great Judenior, recommended by Grand Dukes and Americans, had entered her service during the last hours of all, had crossed from Paris after multiplied poor parlours with Mrs. Stringham, to whom she had allowed more than ever a free hand, on purpose to escort her to the continent and encompass her there, and had dedicated to her from the moment of their meeting all the treasures of his experience. She had judged him in advance polyglot and universal, very dear and very deep, as probably but a swindler finished of the fingertips, for he was for ever carrying one well-kept Italian hand to his heart, and plunging the other straight into her pocket, which, as she had instantly observed him to recognize, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable thing was that these elements of their common consciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructible link, formed the ground of a happy relation, being by this time strangely, protestly, delightfully what most kept up confidence between them, and what most expressed it. She had seen quickly enough what was happening, the usual thing again, yet another again. Judenior had, in an interview of five minutes, understood her. He had got hold like all the world of the idea not so much of the care with which she must be taken up as of the care with which she must be let down. All the world understood her. All the world had got hold, but for nobody yet she felt would the idea have been so close a tie or one from herself so patient a surrender. Gracefully, respectfully, consumedly enough, always with hands in position and a look in his thick neat white hair, smooth fat face, and black professional almost theatrical eyes, as of some famous tenor grown too old to make love, but with an arch still to make money, did he on occasion convey to her that she was of all the clients of his glorious career the one in whom his interest was most personal and paternal. The others had come in the way of business, but for her his sentiment was special. Confidence rested thus on her completely believing that there was nothing of which she felt more sure. It passed between them every time they conversed. He was abysmal, but this intimacy lived on the surface. He had taken his place already for her among those who were to see her through, and meditation ranked him in the constant perspective for the final function side by side with poor Susie, whom she was now pitting more than ever for having to be herself so sorry and to say so little about it. Dutinia had the general tact of residuary legati, which was a character that could be definitely worn, whereas she could see Susie in the event of her death in no character at all. Susie being insistently exclusively concerned in her mere makeshift duration. This principle for that matter, mealy at present, with a renewed flair of fancy, felt she should herself have liked to believe in. Dutinia had really done for her more than he probably knew. He didn't after all know everything, in having, for the wind-up of the autumn, on a weak word from her, so admirably, so perfectly established her. Her weak word as a general hint had been, at Venice, please, if possible, no dreadful, no vulgar hotel, but if it can be at all managed, you know what I mean, some fine old rooms, fully independent for a series of months, plenty of them too, and the more interesting the better. Part of a palace, historic and picturesque, but strictly inaudorous, where we shall beat ourselves with a cook, don't you know? With servants, frescoes, tapered strips, antiquities, the thorough make-believe of a settlement. The proof of how he better and better understood her was in all the place, as to his masterly acquisition of which she had from the first asked no questions. She had shown him enough what she thought of it, and her forbearance pleased him, with a part of the transaction that mainly concerned her she would soon enough become acquainted, and his connection with such values as she would then find noted could scarce her growing, as it were still more residuary. Charming people, conscious Venice lovers, evidently, had given up their house to her, and had fled to a distance to other countries, to hide their blushes like over what they had, however briefly alienated, and over what they had, however durably gained. They had preserved and consecrated, and she now, her part of it was shameless, appropriated, and enjoyed. Palazzo Leporelli held its history still in its great lap, even like a painted idol. A solemn puppet hung about with decorations, hung about with pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the ineffasible character was the presence revered and served, which brings us back to our truth a moment ago. The fact that more than ever, this October morning, awkward novice though she might be, merely moved slowly to and fro as the priestess of the worship. Certainly it came from the sweet taste of solitude, caught again and cherished for the hour, always a need of her nature, moreover when things spoke to her with Venetration. It was mostly in stillness they spoke to her best. Amid voices she lost the sense. Voices had surrounded her for weeks, and she had tried to listen, had cultivated them, and had answered back. These had been weeks in which there were other things they might well prevent her from hearing. More than the prospect had at first promised or threatened, she had felt herself going on in a crowd, and with a multiplied escort. The four ladies pictured by her to Sir Luc Stret as a phalanx, comparatively closed and detached, had in fact proved a rolling snowball, condemned from day to day to cover more ground. Susan Rippert had compared this portion of the girl's excursion to the Empress Catherine's famous progress across the steppes of Russia. Improvised settlements appeared at each turn of the road, villagers waiting with addresses drawn up in the language of London. Old friends in Fyne were in ambush. Mrs. Loader's, Kate Croy's, her own. When the addresses weren't in the language of London, they were in the more insistence idioms of American centers. The current was swollen even by Susie's social connections, so that were days at hotels, at Dolomite picnics, on lake steamers, when she could almost repay to Aunt Maude and Kate with interest, the debt contracted by the London success to which they had opened the door. Mrs. Loader's success and Kate's, amid the shock of millies and Mrs. Stringham's compatriots, failed but little, really, of the concert pitch. It had gone almost as fast as the boom over the sea of the last great native novel. Those ladies were so different, different observably enough from the ladies so apprising them. It being throughout a case mainly of ladies of a dozen at once sometimes in Millie's apartment, pointing also at ones that moral and many others. Millie's companions were acclaimed not only as perfectly fascinating in themselves, the nicest people yet known to the acclaimers, but as obvious helping hands, socially speaking, for the eccentric young woman, evident initiators and smoothers of her path, possible subduers of her eccentricity. Short intervals to her own sense stood now for great differences, and this renewed inhalation of her native air had somehow left her to feel that she already, that she mainly, struck the compatriot as queer and dissociated. She moved such a critic it would appear as to rather an odd suspicion, a benevolence induced by want of complete trust, all of which showed her in the light of a person to plain and too ill-clothed for a thorough good time, and yet too rich and too befriended, an intuitive cunning within her managing this last for a thorough bad one. The compatriots, in short, by what she made out, approved her friends for their expert wisdom with her, in spite of which judicial sagities was the compatriots who recorded themselves as the innocent parties. She saw things in these days that she had never seen before, and she couldn't have said why save on a principle too terribly to name, whereby she saw that neither Lancaster Gate was what New York took it for, nor New York, but Lancaster Gate fondly fancied it in coquettting with the plain of a series of American visits. The plan might have been humorously on Mrs. Loader's part for the improvement over social position, and it had verily in that direction lights that were perhaps but half a century too prompt, at all of which Kate Croy assisted with a cool controlled facility that went so well, as the other said, with her particular kind of good looks, the kind that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded even when guiltless like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended to that she would like to go to America, it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that might up for their public grimaces, and amid which face to face they verily put off their mask. These putting off of the mask had finally quite come the form taken by their moments together. Moments indeed not increasingly frequent, and not prolonged thanks to the consciousness of Fatigu on Milly's side, whenever, as she herself expressed it, she got out of harness. They flourished their masks, the independent pair, as they might have flourished Spanish fans. They smiled and sighed on removing them, but the gesture, the smiles, the sighs, strangely enough, might have been suspected the greatest reality in the business. Strangely enough, we say, for the volume of a fusion in general would have been found by either on measurement to be scarce proportional to the paraphernalia of relief. It was when they called each other's attention to their ceasing to pretend, it was then that what they were keeping back was most in the air. There was a difference, no doubt, and mainly to Kate's advantage. Milly didn't quite see what a friend could keep back, was possessed of, in fine that would be so subject to retention, whereas it was comparatively plain sailing for Kate, that poor Milly had a treasure to hide. This was not the treasure of a shy and object-affection concealment on that head, belonging to quite another face of such states. It was much rather a principle of pride, relatively bold and hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at the lightest pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was the truth about the girl's own conception of her validity. Thus was a wandering, pitying sister, condemned wistfully to look at her from the far side of the moat she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of the connection of these young women show for us, such is the twilight that gathers about them in the likeness of some dim scene in a metalink play. We have positively the image in the delicate dusk of the figures so associated and yet so opposed, so mutually watchful, that of the angular pale princess, ostrich-plumed, black-robed, hung about with amulets, reminders, relics, mainly seated, mainly still, and that of the upright, restless, slow-circling lady of our court, who exchanged with her across the black-water street with evening gleams, fitful questions and answers. The upright lady, with thick, dark braids down her back, drawing over the grass a more embroidered train, makes the whole circuit and makes it again, and the broken talk, brief and sparingly elusive, seems more to cover than to free their sense. This is because when it fairly comes to not having others to consider, they meet in an air that appears rather anxiously to wait for their words. Such an impression as that was in the fact grave and might be tragic, so that plainly enough, systematically at last, they settled to care for what they said. There could be no gross phrasing to Millie, in particular, of the probability that if she wasn't so proud, she might be pitted with more comfort, more to the person pitting. There could be no spoken proof, no sharper demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude that this marvellous mixture of her weakness and of her strength, her peril if such it were, and her option made her, kept her, irresistibly interesting. Kate's predicament in the matter was, after all, very much Mrs. Stringham's own, and Susan Shepherd herself indeed, in our meddling picture, might well have hooured in the gloaming by the moat. It may be declared for Kate at all events that her sincerity about her friend, through this time was deep, her compassionate imagination strong, and that these things gave her a virtue, a good conscience, a credibility for herself, so to speak, that were later to be precious to her. She grasped with her keen intelligence the logic of their common duplicity, when unassisted through the same ordeal as Millie's other hushed follower. Easily saw that for the girl to be explicit was to betray divinations, gratitudes, glimpses of the felt contrast between her fortune and her fear, all of which would have contradicted her systematic probado. That was it Kate wanderingly saw, to recognize was to bring down the avalanche, the avalanche Millie lid so in watch for, and that might be started by the lightest of breasts, though less possibly the breadth of her own stifled plane than that of the vain sympathy, the mere helpless caping inference of others, with so many suppressions as these, therefore between them, their withdrawal together to unmask had to fall back, as we have hinted on a nominal motive, which was decently represented by a joy at the drop of chatter. chatter had in truth all along attended their steps, but they took the despairing view of it on purpose to have ready when face to face some view or other of something. The relief of getting out of harness that was the moral of their meetings, but the moral of this in turn was that they couldn't so much as ask each other why harness need be worn. Millie wore it as a general armor. She was out of it at present, for some reason, as she hadn't been for weeks. She was always out of it, that is, when alone, and her companions had never yet so much as just now affected her as dispersed and suppressed. It was as if still again, still more tacitly and wonderfully, Eugenia had understood her, taking it from her without a word, and just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, of the beautiful day. Yes, get me an hour alone. Take them off, I don't care where. Absorb, amuse, detain them, drown them, kill them, if you will, so that I may just a little all by myself see where I am. She was conscious of the dire impatience of it, for she gave up Susie as well as the others to him. Susie, who would have drowned her very self for her, gave her up to a mercenary monster through whom she thus purchased respites. Strange were the turns of life and the moods of weakness, strange the flickers of fancy and the cheats of hope, yet lawful all the same, weren't they? Those experiments tried with the truth that consisted at the worst, but in practicing on oneself. She was now playing with the thought that Eugenia might inclusively assist her. He had brought home to her an always by remarks that were really quite soundless, the conception hitherto ungrasped of some complete use of her wealth itself, some use of it as a counter move to fate. It had passed between them as preposterous that with so much money she should just stupidly and awkwardly want any more, want life, a career, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage, or a cook. It was as if she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure of what he was in a position at a stretch to undertake for her, the thoroughness of which for that matter she could closely compare with the looseness on Sir Luke's stretch part, that at least in Palazzo Leporelli, when mornings were fine, showed us almost amateurish. Sir Luke hadn't said to her, pay enough money and leave the rest to me, which was distinctly what Eugenia did say. Sir Luke had appeared indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a different sort of cash. Those were amounts not to be named nor reckoned, and such moreover as she wasn't sure of having at her command. Eugenia, this was the difference, could name, could reckon, and prices of his kind were things she had never suffered to scare her. She had been willing, goodness new, to pay enough for anything, for everything, and here was simply a new view of the sufficient quantity. She amused herself, for it came to that, since Eugenia was there to sign the receipt with possibilities of meeting the bill. She was more prepared than ever to pay enough, and quite as much as ever to pay too much. What else, if such were points at which your most trusted servant failed, was the use of being as the dear suces of earth called you, a priestess in a palace? She made now alone the full circuit of the place, noble and peaceful, while the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain, or an outer blind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging to it that perhaps Eugenia could manage. She was in it, as in the arc of her deluge, and filled with such tenderness for it, that why shouldn't this in common mercy be warrant enough? She would never, never leave it. She would engage to that, would ask nothing more than to sit tight in it, and float on and on. The beauty and intensity, the real momentary relief of this conceit, reached the climax in the positive purpose to put the question to Eugenia on his return as she had not yet put it. Though the design it must be added dropped a little when coming back to the great saloon, from which she had started on her pensive progress, she found Lord Mark, of whose arrival in Venice she had been unaware, and who had now, while a servant was following her through empty rooms, been asked in her absence to wait. He had waited then, Lord Mark. He was waiting, oh, unmistakably. Never before had he so much struck her as the man to do that on occasion, with patience, to do it indeed almost as with gratitude for the chance, though at the same time with a sort of notifying fairness. The odd thing, as she was afterwards to recall, was that her wonder for what had brought him was not immediate, but had come at the end of five minutes, and also quite incoherently, that she felt almost as glad to see him, and almost as forgiving of his interruption over solitude, as if he had already been in her thought or acting at her suggestion. He was somehow, at the best, the end of her speed. One might like him very much, and yet feel that his presence tempered precious solitude more than any others known to one, in spite of all of which, as he was neither dear Susie, nor dear Kate, nor dear Aunt Maude, nor even for the least dear Eugenio in person, the sight of him did no damage to her sense of the dispersal of her friends. She hadn't been so thoroughly alone with him since those moments of his showing her the great portrait at Machham, the moments that had exactly made her high watermark of her security, the moments during which her tears themselves, though she had been ashamed of, were the sign of her consciously rounding her protective promontory, quitting the blue gulf of comparative ignorance and reaching her view of the troubled sea. His presence now referred itself to his presence then, reminding her how kind he had been altogether at Machham, and telling her unexpectedly at a time when she could particularly feel it, that for such kindness and for the beauty of what they remember together, she hadn't lost him, quite the contrary. To receive him handsomely, to receive him there, to see him interested and charmed as well, clearly as delighted to have found her without some other person to spoil it, these things were so pleasant for the first minutes that they might have represented on her part some happy foreknowledge. She gave an account of her companions while he on his side failed to press her about them, even though describing his appearance so unheralded, as the result of an impulse obeyed on the spot. He had been shivering at Carlsbad, belated there and blue, when taken by it, so that, knowing where they all were, he had simply caught the first train. He explained how he had known where they were. He had heard, what more natural, from their friends, Millis and his. He mentioned this b-times, but it was with his mention, singularly, that the girl became conscious of her inner question about his reason. She noticed his plural, which added to Mrs. Loader or added to Kate, but she presently noticed also that it didn't affect her as explaining. Aunt Maude had written to him, Kate apparently, and this was interesting, had written to him, but their design presumably hadn't been that he should come and sit there as if rather relieved, so far as they were concerned at postponements. He only said, oh, and again, oh, when she sketched their probable mornings for him under Eugenius' care and Mrs. Stringham's, sounding it quite as if any suggestion that he should overtake them at Trio Alto or the bridge of size would leave him temporarily cold. This precisely it was that, after a little, operated for Millie as an obscure, but still fairly direct check to confidence. He had known where they all were from the others, but it was not for the others that, in his actual dispositions, he had come. That strange to say was a pity, for strangers still to say she could have shown him more confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention so chilled her from the moment she found herself divining it, that just for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of their remembrance together at Machum and the Bronzino, the climax of a fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him, and to reasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There had been for ten minutes with the directness of a welcome to him, and the way this clearly pleased him, something of the grace of a mensmaid, even though he couldn't know it, a mens for her not having been originally sure, for instance at the first dinner of Aunt Maud's, that he was adequately human. That first dinner of Aunt Maud's added itself to the hour at Machum, added itself to other things to conciliate for her present benevolence, the ease of their relation, making it suddenly delightful that he had thus turned up. He exclaimed as he looked about, on the charm of the place. What a temple to taste, and an expression of the pride of life, yet with all that, what a jolly home! So that, for his entertainment, she could offer to walk him about, though she mentioned that she had just been, for her own purposes, in a general prowl, taking everything in more susceptibly than before. He embraced her offer without a scruple, and seemed to rejoice that he was to find her susceptible.