 6 The younger of the other men it afterwards appeared, was most in his element at the piano, so they had coffee and comic songs upstairs. The gentleman temporarily relinquished, submitting easily in this interest to Mrs. Louder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. Our special young man sat tighter when restored to the drawing-room. He made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, often on, foregather without a fence. He had perhaps stronger needs in this general respect than she, but she had better names for the scant risks to which she consented. It was the blessing of a big house that intervals were large and of an August night that windows were open, whereby, at a given moment on the wide balcony with the songs sufficiently sung, Aunt Maude could hold her little court more freshly. Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side-by-side a small sofa, a luxury formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism, of their remarkably good conscience. To seem not to know each other, once you're here, would be, the girl said, too overdo it, and she arranged it charmingly, they must have some passage to put Aunt Maude off the scent. She would be wondering otherwise what in the world they found their account in. For Densher, nonetheless, the prophet of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor. There were in particular at present more things in his mind than he could bring out while watching the windows. It was true, on the other hand, that she suddenly met most of them, and more than he could see on the spot, by coming out for him with a reference to Millie that was not in the key of those made at dinner. She's not a bit right, you know, I mean, in health, just see her tonight. I mean, it looks gray, for you she would have come, you know, if it had been at all possible. He took this in such patience as he could muster. What in the world's the matter with her? That Kate continued without saying, unless indeed your being here has been just a reason for her funking it. What in the world's the matter with her, Densher asked again? Why, just what I've told you, that she likes you so much. Then why would she deny herself the joy of meeting me? Kate cast about. It would take so long to explain. And perhaps it's true that she is bad. She easily may be. But easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. Stringham, who's visibly preoccupied and worried, visibly enough yet it may, said Kate, be only for that. For what then? But this question, too, on thinking she neglected. Why, if it's anything real, doesn't that poor lady go home? She'd be anxious, and she has done all she need to be civil. I think, Densher remark, she has been quite beautifully civil. It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit harder. But she was already in her manner explaining. Her preoccupation is probably on two different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other makes her stay. She's commissioned to tell Millie all about you. Well, then, said the young man between a laugh and a sigh, I'm glad I felt downstairs a kind of drawing to her. Wasn't I rather decent to her? Offly nice. You've instincts, you fiend. It's all Kate declared as it should be. Perhaps he, after a moment cynically suggested, that she isn't getting much good of me now. Will she report to Millie on this? Then as Kate seemed to wonder what this might be, on her present disregard for appearances. Ah, leave appearances to me, she's spoken her high way. I'll make them all right, and mod more over, she added, as her so engaged that she won't notice. Densher felt with this that his companion had indeed perceptive flights he couldn't hope to match. And for instance another when she still subjoined, and Mrs. Stringham's appearing to respond just in order to make that impression. Well Densher dropped with some humor. Life's very interesting. I hope it's really as much so for you as you make it for others. I mean, judging by what you make it for me, you seem to me to represent it as thrilling for Saddam in a different way for each. And mod Susan Shepard, Millie, but what is he wound up? The matter. Do you mean she's as ill as she looks? Kate's face struck him as replying at first that his derisive speech deserved no satisfaction. Then she appeared to yield to a need of her own. The need to make the point that, as ill as she looked, was what Millie's scarce could be. If she had been as ill as she looked, she could scarce be a question with them. For her end would, in that case, be near. She believed herself nevertheless, and Kate couldn't help believing her too seriously menaced. There was always the fact that they'd been on the point of leaving town, the two ladies, and had suddenly been pulled up. We bade them good-bye. Or all but Aunt Maught and I, the night before Millie, popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a farewell look, found you and me together. They were then to get off a day or two later, but they've not got off. They're not getting off. When I see them and I saw them this morning, they had showy reasons. They do mean to go, but they've postponed it. With which the girl brought out, they've postponed it for you. He protested so far as a man might without fatuity, since a protest was itself credulous, but Kate has ever understood herself. You've made Millie change her mind. She wants not to miss you, though she wants also not to show she wants you, which is why, as I hinted a moment ago, she may consciously have hung back tonight. She doesn't know when. She may see you again. She doesn't know when she may ever may. She doesn't see the future. It is open out before her in these last weeks as a dark, confused thing. Densher wondered. After the tremendous time you've all been telling me she has had? That's it. There's a shadow across it. The shadow you consider of some physical break-up? Some physical break-down. Nothing less. She's scared. She has so much to lose, and she wants more. Ah well, said Densher, with a sudden strange sense of discomfort, couldn't one say to her that she can't have everything? No, for one wouldn't want to. She really, Kate went on, has been somebody here. Ask Aunt Maude. You may think me prejudiced, the girl oddly smiled, and Maude will tell you, the world's before her. It has all come since you saw her, and it's a pity you've missed it, for it certainly would have amused you. She has really been a perfect success, I mean, of course, so far as possible in the scrap of time. And she has taken it like a perfect angel. If you can imagine an angel with a thumping bank account, you'll have the simplest expression of the kind of thing. Her fortune's absolutely huge. Aunt Maude has had all the facts, or enough of them, in the last confidence from Susie, and Susie speaks by book. Take them then, and the last confidence from me. There she is. Kate expressed above all what it most came to. It's open to her to make, you see, the very greatest marriage. I assure you, we're not vulgar about her. Her possibilities are quite plain. Denture showed he knew disbelief nor grudge them. But what good then on earth can I do her? Well she had it ready. You can console her. And for what? For all that if she's stricken she must cease swept away. I shouldn't care for her if she hadn't so much, Kate very simply said. And then as it made him laugh not quite happily, I shouldn't trouble about her if there was one thing she did have, the girl spoke indeed with noble compassion. She has nothing. Not all the young dukes? Well, we must see, see if anything can come of them. She at any rate does love life. To have met a person like you, Kate further explained, is to have felt you become with all the other fine things a part of life. Oh, she has you arranged. You have it strikes me, my dear, and I look both detached and rueful. Pray, what am I to do with the dukes? Oh, the dukes will be disappointed. Then why shan't I be? You'll have expected, last Kate wonderfully smiled. Besides, you will be. You'll have expected enough for that. Yet it's what you want to let me in for? I want, said the girl, to make things pleasant for her. I use for the purpose what I have. You're what I have of most precious and you're therefore what I use most. He looked at her long. I wish I could use you a little more, after which, as she continued to smile at him, isn't a bad case of lungs, he asked. Kate showed for a little, as if she wished it might be. Not lungs, I think. Isn't consumption taken in time now curable? People are, no doubt, patched up, but he wondered, do you mean she has something that's past patching, and before she could answer? It's really as if her appearance put her outside of such things. Being in spite of her youth, she should be exposed to. Instead of a person who has been through all its conceivable she should be exposed to. She affects one, I should say, as a creature safe from a shipwreck. Such a creature may surely, in these days, on the doctrine of chances, go to sea again with confidence. She has had her wreck. She has met her adventure. Oh, I grant you a wreck, Kate was all response so far, but do let her have her adventure. There are wrecks that are not adventures. Well, if there be also adventures that are not wrecks, adventure in short was willing, but he came back to his point. What I mean is that she has none of the effect, on one's nerves or whatever, of an invalid. Kate on her side did this justice. No, that's the beauty of her. The beauty? Yes, she's so wonderful. You won't show for that any more than your watch when it's about to stop for want of being wound up, gives you convenient notice or shows as different from usual. She won't die, she won't live by inches, she won't smell as it were of drugs, she won't taste as it were of medicine. No one will know. Then what he demanded, frankly mystified now, are we talking about, and what extraordinary state is she? Kate went on as if at this, making it out in a fashion for herself, I believe that if she's ill at all, she's very ill. I believe that if she's bad, she's not a little bad. I can't tell you why, but that's how I see her. She'll really live or she'll really not. She'll have it all or she'll miss it all. Now, I don't think she'll have it all. She had followed this with his eyes upon her, her own having thoughtfully wandered, and as if it were more impressive than lucid. You think, and you don't think, and yet you remain all the while without an inkling of her complaint. No, not without an inkling, but it's a matter in which I don't want knowledge. She moreover herself doesn't want one to want it. She has as to what may be preying upon her a kind of ferocity or modesty, a kind of, I don't know what to call it, intensity of pride. And then, and then, with this she faltered. And then what? I'm a brute about illness. I hate it. It's well for you, my dear Kate, continue. That you're as sound as a bell. Thank you, tends your laugh. It's rather good, then, for yourself, too, that you're as strong as the sea. She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish gladness of their young immunities. It was all they had together, but they had it at least without a flaw. Each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the personal virtue, love, and desire of the other. Yet it was as if that very consciousness threw them back the next moment into pity for the poor girl who had everything else in the world, the great genial good they, alas, didn't have, but failed on the other hand of this. How we're talking about her, Kate, compunctiously sighed. But there were the facts. From illness I keep away. But you don't, since here you are in spite of all you say, in the midst of it. Ah, I'm only watching. And putting me forward in your place? Thank you. Oh, said Kate, I'm breaking you in. Let it give you the measure of what I shall expect of you. One can't begin too soon. She drew away, as from the impression of a stir on the balcony, the hand of which he had a minute before possessed himself, and the warning brought him back to attention. You haven't even an idea if it's a case of surgery. I daresay it may be, that is, that if it comes to anything it may come to that, of course she's in the highest hands. The doctors are after her, then? She's after them. It's the same thing. I think I'm free to say it now. She sees Sir Luke's dread. It made him quickly wince. Ah, fifty thousand knives! Then after an instant. One seems to guess. Yes, but she waive it away. Don't guess. Only do as I tell you. For a moment now in silence he took it all in. Might have had it before him. What you want of me, then, is to make up to a sick girl. Ah, before you admit yourself that she doesn't affect you with sick, you understand moreover just how much, and just how little. It's amazing, he presently answered, what you think I understand. Well, if you brought me to it, my dear, she returned, that has been your way of breaking me in, besides which so far is making up to her goes plenty of others' will. Denture for a little under this suggestion might have been seeing their young friend on a pile of cushions and in a perpetual tea-gown amid flowers withdrawn blinds surrounded by the higher nobility. Others can follow their tastes, besides others are free. But so are you, my dear. She had spoken with impatience, and her suddenly quitting him had sharpened it, in spite of which she kept his place, only looking up at her. You're prodigious. Of course I'm prodigious. And as immediately happened she gave her further sign of it that he fairly sat watching. The door from the lobby had, as she spoke, been thrown open for a gentleman who immediately finding her within his view advanced to greet her before the announcement of his name could reach her companion. Denture nonetheless felt himself brought quickly into relation. Kate's welcome to the visitor became almost precipitately and appealed to her friend, who slowly rose to meet it. I don't know whether you know, Lord Mark, and then for the other party, Mr. Dirtan Denture, who has just come back from America. Oh! said the other party, while Denture said nothing, occupied as he mainly was on the spot with weighing the sound in question. He recognized it in a moment as less imponderable than it might have appeared, as having indeed positive claims. It wasn't that is, he knew, the Oh! of the idiot, however great the superficial resemblance. It was that of the clever, the accomplished man. It was the very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive training and experience had gone to producing it. Denture felt somehow that, as a thing of value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an awkwardness to which he was conscious of contributing his share. Kate failing to ask Lord Mark to be seated, but letting him know that he would find Mrs. Louder with some others on the balcony. Oh! and Miss Thule, I suppose? As I seem to hear outside from below, Mrs. Stringham's unmistakable voice. Yes, but Mrs. Stringham's alone. Millie's unwell, the girl explained, and was compelled to disappoint us. Ah! Disappoint! Rather! And lingering a little, he kept his eyes on Denture. She isn't really bad, I trust. Denture, after all, he had heard easily supposed him interested in Millie. But he could imagine him also interested in the young man with whom he had found Kate engaged, and whom he yet considered without visible intelligence. The young man concluded in a moment that he was doing what he wanted, satisfying himself as to each. To this he was aided by Kate, who produced a prompt. Oh! dear no! I think not. I've just been reassuring Mr. Denture, she added, who's as concerned as the rest of us. I've been calming his fears. Oh! said Lord Mark again, and again it was just as good. That was for Denture the latter could see, or think you saw. And then for the others. My fears would want calming. We must take great care of her, this way. She went with him a few steps, and while Denture hanging about gave him frank attention, presently paused again for some further colloquy. What passed between them their observer lost, but she was presently with him again, Lord Mark joining the rest. Denture was by this time quite ready for her. It's he who's your aunt's man? Oh! immensely. I mean for you. That's what I mean too, Kate smiled. There he is. Now you can judge. Judge of what? Judge of him. Why should I judge of him? Denture asked. I've nothing to do with him. Then why do you ask about him? To judge of you, which is different. Kate seemed for a little to look at the difference. To take the measure, do you mean of my danger? He hesitated. Then he said, I'm thinking I dare say of Miss Teals. How does your aunt reconcile his interest in her? With his interest in me? With her interest in you, Denture said, while she reflected, if that interest Mrs. Ladders takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn't he rather to look out for the forms he takes? Kate seemed interested in the question, but oh, she takes them easily, she answered. The beauty is that she doesn't trust him. That Millie doesn't? Yes, Millie, either. But I mean Aunt Maude. Not really. Denture gave it as wonder. Takes him to her heart? And yet thinks he cheats? Yes, said Kate. That's the way people are. What they think of their enemies, goodness knows, is bad enough. But I'm still more struck with what they think of their friends. Millie's own state of mind, however, she went on, is lucky. That's Aunt Maude's security, though she doesn't yet fully recognize it besides being Millie's own. You conceive it a real escape, then, not to care for him? She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. You oughtn't to make me say too much, but I'm glad I don't. Don't say too much? Don't care for Lord Mark. Oh, Denture answered with a sound like his lordship's own, to which he added, You absolutely hold that that poor girl doesn't? You know whether I hold about that poor girl? It had made her again impatient. Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. You scarcely call him, I suppose, one of the dukes. Mercy, no. He's not from it. He's not compared with other possibilities. In it. Millie, it's true, she said, to be exact, has no natural sense of social values, doesn't in the least understand our differences or know who's who or what's what. I see. That Denture laughed as her reason for liking me. Precisely. She doesn't resemble me, said Kate, who at least know what I lose. Well, it had all risen for Denture to a considerable interest. And Aunt Maude? Why shouldn't she know? I mean, that your friend there isn't really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value? Scarcely, save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That's undeniably something he's the best morofer we can get. Oh! Oh! said Denture, and his doubt was not all derisive. It isn't Lord Mark's grandeur she went on without heeding this. Because perhaps in the line of that loan, as he has no money, Maude could be done, but she's not a bit sordid. She only counts with the sordidness of others. Besides, he's grand enough. With the duke and his family, and at the other end of the string, the things his genius. And do you believe in that? In Lord Mark's genius, Kate, as if for more a final opinion than had yet been asked of her, took a moment to think. She balanced indeed so that one would scarce have known what to expect. But she came out in time with a very sufficient yes. Political? Universal. I don't know, at least, she said. What else to call it when a man's able to make himself without effort, without violence, without machinery of any sort, so intensely felt, he has somehow an effect without his being in any traceable way a cause? Ah! But if the effects at Denture with conscious superficiality, isn't agreeable? Oh! But it is. Not surely for everyone. If you mean not for you, Kate returned, you may have reasons, and men don't count. Women don't know if it's agreeable or not. Then there you are. Denture stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus promptly easily and above all amusingly met him with would have been found. Should it have come to an analysis to take? Something suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and overflowed. The sense of his good fortune and her variety of the future she promised, the interest she supplied. All women but you are stupid. How can I look at another? You're different and different and then you're different again. No Marvel ant-mod builds on you, except that you're so much too good for what she builds for. Even society won't know how good for it you are. It's too stupid, and you're beyond it. You'd have to pull it uphill, it's you yourself who are at the top. The women one meets. What are they but books one has already read? You're a whole library of the unknown, the uncut. He almost moaned, he ached from the depth of his content. In my word I have a subscription. She took it from him with her face again giving out all it had and answer, and they remained once more confronted and united in their essential wealth of life. It's you who draw me out. I exist in you, not in others. It had been, however, as if the thrill of their association itself pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp spring of fear. See here, you know, don't—don't—don't what? Don't fail me. It would kill me. She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes. So you think you'll kill me in time to prevent it? She smiled, but he saw her the next instant as smiling through tears, and the instant after this she had gotten, respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come back to another, which was one of her own. Her own were so closely connected that dentures were at best but parenthetic. Still she had a distance to go. You do then see your way? She put it to him before they joined, as was high time the others, and she made him understand she meant his way with Millie. He had dropped a little in presence of the explanation. Then she had brought him up to a sort of recognition. He could make out by this light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was undispelled since his return. There's something you must definitely tell me. If our friend knows that all the while—she came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though quite to smooth it down—all the while she and I here were growing intimate, you and I were an unmentioned relation—if she knows that, yes, she knows our relation must have involved your writing to me, then how could she suppose you weren't answering? She doesn't suppose it. How then can she imagine you never named her? She doesn't. She knows how I did name her. I've told her everything. She's in possession of reasons that will perfectly do. Still he just brooded. She takes things from you exactly as I take them? Exactly as you take them. She's just such another victim? Just such another? You're a pair. Then if anything happens, said Densher, we can console each other? Ah, something may indeed happen, she returned, if you'll only go straight. He watched the others an instant through the window. What do you mean by going straight? Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try as I've told you before, and you'll see. You'll have me perfectly always to refer to. Oh, rather, I hope. But if she's going away? It pulled Kate up but a moment. I'll bring her back. There you are. You won't be able to say I haven't made it smooth for you. He faced it all, and certainly it was queer, but it wasn't the queerness that after another minute was uppermost. He was in a wondrous silken web, and it was amusing. You spoil me. He wasn't sure if Mrs. Ladder, who at this juncture reappeared, had caught his word as a drop from him. Probably not, he thought, her attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and who is now none too soon taking leave of her. They were followed by Lord Mark and by the other men, but two or three things happened before any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found time to say to him with furtive emphasis, you must go now. Another was that she next addressed herself in all frankness to Lord Mark, drew near to him with an almost reproachful, come and talk to me. A challenge resulting after a minute for denture in a consciousness of their installation together in an out-of-the-way corner, though not the same he himself had just occupied with her. Still another was that Mrs. Stringham, in the random intensity of her farewells, affected him as looking at him with a small grave intimation, something into which he afterwards read the meaning that if he had happened to desire a few words with her after dinner he would have found her ready. This impression was naturally light, but it just left him with the sense of something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. It gathered perhaps a slightly sharper shade from the mild formality of her, good night, sir, as she passed him, a matter as to which there was now nothing more to be done. Thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this time had her praise as even more harmless than himself. This personage had forestalled him in opening the door for her and was evidently, with a view, denture might have judged to ulterior designs on Millie, proposing to attend her to her carriage. What further occurred was that Aunt Maude, having released her, immediately had a word for himself. It was an imperative, wait a minute, by which she both detained and dismissed him. She was particular about her minute, but he hadn't yet given her as happened a sign of withdrawal. Return to our little friend, you'll find her really interesting. If you mean Miss Teal, he said, I shall certainly not forget her, but you must remember that, so far as her interest is concerned, I myself discovered, I, as was said at dinner, invented her. Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn't taken out the patent. Don'ta, I only mean in the press of other things, too much neglect her. Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Cates, he asked himself quickly if it mightn't help him with her. And anyway could but try. You were all looking after my manners. That's exactly, you know, what Miss Croy has been saying to me. She keeps me up. She has had so much to say about them. He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his passage with Cate, that while quite voracious, might be reassuring to herself. But Aunt Maude, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as if her confidence was supplied with other props. If she saw his intention in it, she yet blanked neither with doubt nor with acceptance. She only said imperturbably, yes, she'll herself do anything for her friend, so that she but preaches what she practices. Denture really quite wondered if Aunt Maude knew how far Cate's devotion went. He was moreover a little puzzled by this special harmony, in face of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Latter had bethought herself of the American girl as a distraction form, and if Cate's mastery of the subject were therefore but an appearance addressed to her aunt. What might really become in all of this of the American girl was therefore a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none of its sharpness. However questions could wait, and it was easy, so far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Latter. It isn't a bit all the same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss Teal charming. Well, it was all she wanted. Then don't miss a chance. The only thing is, he went on, that she's naturally now leaving town, and as I take it, going abroad. Aunt Maude looked indeed an instant as if she herself had been dealing with this difficulty. She won't go, she smiled in spite of it, till she has seen you. Moreover, when she does go, she paused, leaving him uncertain. But the next minute he was still more at sea. We shall go too. He gave a smile that he himself took for slightly strange. And what good will that do me? We shall be near them somewhere, and you'll come out to us. Oh! He said a little awkwardly. I'll see that you do. I mean, I'll write to you. Ah! Thank you! Thank you! Merton Denture laughed. She was indeed putting him on his honor. And his honor wins the little, at the use he rather helplessly saw himself suffering her to believe she could make of it. There are all sorts of things, he vaguely remarked to consider. No doubt, but there's above all the great thing. And pray, what's that? Why the importance of your not losing the occasion of your life? I'm treating you handsomely. I'm looking after it for you. I can. I can smooth your path. She's charming. She's clever. And she's good. And her fortunes are real fortune. Ah! There it was, Aunt Maude. The pieces fell together for him as he felt her thus buying him off and buying him. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so grave, with Miss Teal's money. He ventured derisive, fairly to treat it as extravagant. I much obliged you for the handsom offer. Of what doesn't belong to me? She wasn't abashed. I don't say it does, but there's no reason it shouldn't to you. Mind you moreover, she kept it up. I'm not one who talks in the air. You owe me something, if you want to know why. Distinct he felt her pressure. He felt, given her basis, her consistency, he even felt to agree that was immediately to receive an odd confirmation. Her truth, for that matter, was that she believed him bribeable, a belief that his own mind as well, while they stood there, lighted up the impossible. What then in this light did Kate believe him? But that wasn't what he asked aloud. Of course I know I owe you thanks for a deal of kind treatment. You're inviting me for instance to-night. Yes, my inviting you to-night's a part of it, but you don't know, she added, how far I've gone for you. He felt himself red, and as if his honor were coloring up. But he laughed again as he could. I see how far you're going. I'm the most honest woman in the world, but I've nevertheless done for you what was necessary, and then as her now quite somber gravity only made him stare, to start you it was necessary. For me it has the weight. He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. Don't you understand me? I've told the proper lie for you. Still he only showed her his flush, strained smile, and spite of which speaking with force, and as if he must with a minute's reflection see what she meant, she turned away from him. I depend upon you now to make me right. The minute's reflection he was, of course, more free to take after he had left the house. He walked up the Bayswater Road, but he stopped short under the murky stars before the modern church in the middle of the square that going eastward opened out on his left. He had had his brief stupidity, but now he understood. She had guaranteed to Millie Teal through Mrs. Dringham that Kate didn't care for him. She had affirmed through the same source that the attachment was only his. He made it out, he made it out, and he could see what she meant by it starting him. She had described Kate as merely compassionate, so that Millie might be compassionate too. Proper indeed it was, her lie, the very properest possible, and the most deeply richly diplomatic. So Millie was successfully deceived. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, book 6, chapter 5 To see her alone, the poor girl, he nonetheless promptly felt, was to see her after all very much on the old basis, the basis of his three vices in New York, the new element when once he was again face to face with her, not really amounting to much more than a recognition, with a little surprise of the positive extent of the old basis. Everything but that, everything embarrassing fell away after he had been present five minutes. It was in fact wonderful that their excellent, their pleasant, their permitted and proper and harmless American relation, the legitimacy of which he could thus scarce express in names enough, should seem so unperturbed by other matters. They had both since then had great adventures. Such an adventure for him was his mental annexation of her country, and it was now for the moment as if the greatest of them all were this acquired consciousness of reasons other than those that had already served. Densher had asked for her at her hotel the day after Aunt Maud's dinner, with a rich, that is with a highly troubled preconception of the part likely to be played for him at present, in any contact with her, by Kate's and Mrs. Loader so oddly conjoined, and so really superfluous attempts to make her interesting. She had been interesting enough without them, that appeared today to come back to him, and admirable and beautiful as was the charitable seal of the two ladies. Kate might easily have nipped in the bud the germs of a friendship inevitably limited, but still perfectly open to him. What had happily averted the need of his breaking off, what would as happily continue to avert it, was his own good sense and good humor, a certain spring of mind in him which ministered imagination aiding to understandings and allowances, and which he had positively never felt such ground as just now to rejoice in the possession of. Many men he practically made the reflection, wouldn't have taken the matter that way, would have lost patience, finding the appeal in question irrational, exorbitant, and thereby making short work with it, would have let it render any further acquaintance with Mithil impossible. He had talked with Kate of this young woman's being sacrificed, and that would have been one way so far as he was concerned to sacrifice her. Such however had not been the tune to which his at first bewildered view had, since the night before cleared itself up. It wasn't so much that he failed of being the kind of man who chucked, for he knew himself as the kind of man wise enough to mark the case, in which chucking might be the minor evil and the least cruelty. It was that he liked too much everyone concerned, willingly to show himself merely impracticable. He liked Kate goodness new, and he all so clearly enough liked Mrs. Loader. He liked in particular Milly herself, and hadn't it come up for him the evening before that he quite liked even Susan Shepard? He had never known himself so generally merciful. It was a footing at all events whatever accounted for it, on which he should surely be rather a muff not to manage by one turn or another to escape disobliging. Should he find it he couldn't work it there would still be time enough. The idea of working it crystallized before him in such guise as not only to promise much interest, fairly in case of success much enthusiasm, but positively to impart to failure an appearance of barbarity. Arriving thus in Brook Street, both with the best intentions and with a margin consciously left for some primary awkwardness, he found his burden to his great relief unexpectedly light. The awkwardness involved in the responsibility so newly and so ingeniously crazed for him turned round on the spot to present him another face. This was simply the face of his old impression, which he now fully recovered. The impression that American girls, when rare case they had the attraction of Milly, were clearly the easiest people in the world. That what had happened been that this specimen of the class was from the first so committed to ease that nothing subsequent could ever make her difficult. That affected him now a still more probable than on the occasion of the hour or two lately past with her in Kate's society. Milly Thiel had recognized no complication to Densher's view while bringing him with his companion from the National Gallery and entertaining them at luncheon. It was therefore scarce supposable that complications had become so soon too much for her. His pretext for presenting himself was fortunately of the best and simplest, the least he could decently do, given their happy acquaintance, was to call with an inquiry after learning that she had been prevented by illness from meeting him at dinner. And then there was the beautiful accident of her other demonstration. He must at any rate have given a sign as a sequel to the hospitality he had shared with Kate. While he was giving one now, such as it was, he was finding her to begin with accessible and very naturally and prettily glad to see him. He had come after luncheon early, though not so early, but that she might already be out if she were well enough, and she was well enough and yet still at home. He had an inner glimpse with this of the common Kate would have made on it. It wasn't absent from his thought that Milly would have been at home by her account because expecting, after talk with Mrs. Stringham, that a certain person might turn up. He even so pleasantly did things go, enjoyed freedom of minds to welcome on that supposition, a fresh sign of the beautiful hypocrisy of women. He went so far as to enjoy believing the girl might have stayed in for him. It helped him to enjoy her behaving as if she hadn't. She expressed that is exactly the right degree of surprise. She didn't a bit overdo it. The lesson of which was perceptibly that, so far as his late lights had opened the door to any want of the natural in their meetings, he might trust her to take care of it for him as well as for herself. She had begun this admirably on his entrance, with her turning away from the table at which she had apparently been engaged in letter writing. It was the very possibility of his traying a concern for her as one of the afflicted that she had within the first minute conjured away. She was never, never did he understand to be one of the afflicted for him, and the manner in which he understood it, something of the answering pleasure that he couldn't help knowing he showed constituted he was very soon after to acknowledge something like a start for intimacy. When things like that could pass, people had in truth to be equally conscious of a relation. It soon made one at all events, when it didn't find one made. She had let him ask there had been time for that, he solutioned her friend's explanatory arrival at Lancaster Gate without her being inevitable, but she had blown away and quite as much with a look in her eyes as with a smile on her lips, every ground for anxiety and every chance for insistence. How was she? Why she was as he thus so her, and as she had reasons of her own, nobody else's business for desiring to appear. Kate's account of her as too proud for pity, as fiercely shy about so personal a secret came back to him, so that he rejoiced he could take a hint, especially when he wanted to. The question the girl had quickly disposed of, oh, it was nothing, I'm all right, thank you. One he was glad enough to be able to banish. It wasn't at all in spite of the appeal Kate had made to him on it, his affair, for his interest had been invoked in the name of compassion, and the name of compassion was exactly what he felt himself at the end of two minutes forbidden so much as to whisper. He had been sent to see her in order to be sorry for her, and how sorry he might be, quite privately, he was yet to make out. Didn't that signify, however, almost not at all, in as much as whatever his upshot, he was never to give her a glimpse of it. Thus the ground was unexpectedly cleared, though it was not till a slightly longer time had passed that he read clear, at first with amusement, and then with a strange shade of respect what had most operated. However ordinarily, quite amazingly, he began to see that if his pity hadn't had to yield to still other things, it would have had to yield quite definitely to her own. That was the way the case had turned round. He had made his visit to be sorry for her, but he would repeat it, if he did repeat it, in order that she might be sorry for him. This situation made him, she judged, when once one liked him, a subject for that degree of tenderness. He felt this judgment in her, and felt it as something he should really in decency, in dignity, in common honesty, have very soon to reckon with. Odd enough was it certainly, that the question originally before him, the question placed thereby Kate, should so of a sudden find itself quite dislodged by another. This other, it was easy to see, came straight up with the fact of her beautiful delusion and of wasted charity, the whole thing preparing for him as a pretty case of conscience as he could have decided, and one at the prospect of which he was already wincing. If he was interesting, it was because he was unhappy, and if he was unhappy, it was because his passion for Kate had spent itself in vain. And if Kate was indifferent, inexorable, it was because she had left Millie if no doubt of it. That above all was what came up for him, how clear an impression of his attitude, how definite an account of his own failure, Kate must have given her friend. His immediate quarter of an hour there with a girl, lighted up for him almost luridly, such an inference. It was almost as if the other party, to their remarkable understanding, had been with them as they talk, had been hovering about, had dropped in to look after her work. The value of the work affected him as different from the moment he saw it so expressed in poor Millie. Since it was false that he wasn't loved, so his right was quite quenched to figure on that ground as important. And if he didn't look out, he should find himself appreciating in a way quite at odds with straightness the good faith of Millie's benevolence. There was the place for scruples, there the need absolutely to mind what he was about. If it wasn't proper for him to enjoy consideration on a perfectly false footing, where was the guarantee that, if he kept on, he mightn't soon himself pretend to the grievance in order not to miss the sweet. Consideration from a charming girl was soothing on whatever theory, and it didn't take him far to remember that he had himself as yet done nothing deceptive. It was Kate's description of him, his defeated state, it was none of his own, his responsibility would begin, as he might say, only with acting it out. The sharp point was, however, in the difference between acting and not acting. This difference, in fact, it was that made the case of conscience. He saw it with a certain alarm rise before him, that everything was acting that was not speaking the particular word. If you like me because you think she doesn't, it isn't a bit true. She does like me awfully. That would have been the particular word, which there were at the same time are too palpably such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldn't it be virtually as indelicate to challenge her as to leave her deluded? And this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would constitute a kind of trail. Kate's design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate, that he felt himself shrink from the complications involved in judging it, not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes, once they had gone a certain length. That was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the objection of love. Loyalty was, of course, supremely prescribed in presence of any design on her part, however round about, to do one nothing but good. Peter had quite to steady himself not to be avestruck at the immensity of the good his own friend must on all this evidence have wanted to do him. A one thing indeed meanwhile he was sure. Millie Thiel wouldn't herself precipitate his necessity of intervention. She would absolutely never say to him, Is it so impossible she shall ever care for you seriously? But wish nothing could well be less delicate than for him aggressively to set her right. Kate would be free to do that if Kate, in some prudence, some contrition, for some better reason in fine, should revise her plan. But he asked himself what failing this he could do that wouldn't be after all more gross than doing nothing. This brought him round again to the acceptance of the fact that the poor girl liked him. She put it for reasons of her own on a simple, a beautiful ground, a ground that already supplied her with the pretext she required. The ground was there. That is, in the impression she had received, retained, cherished. The pretext over and above it was the pretext for acting on it. That she now believed as she did made her sure at last that she might act, so that what denture therefore would have struck at would be the root in her soul of a pure pleasure. It positively lifted its head and flowered this pure pleasure, why the young man now sat with her, and there were things she seemed to say that took the words out of his mouth. These were not all the things she did say. They were rather what such things meant in the light of what he knew. Her warning him, for instance, of the question of how she was, the quick, brave little art with which she did that, represented to his fancy a truth she didn't utter. I'm well for you. That's all you have to do with or need trouble about. I shall never be anything so horrid as ill for you. So there you are. Worry about me. Spare me, please, as little as you can. Don't be afraid, in short, to ignore my interesting side. It isn't you see, even now, while you sit here, that there aren't lots of others. Only do them justice, and we shall get on beautifully. This was what was folded finally up in her talk, all quite ostensibly, about her impressions and her intentions. She tried to put denture again on his American doings, but he wouldn't have that today. As he thought of the way in which the other afternoon before Kate, he had sat complacently dawning, he accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having made at least apparently more of a set at their entertainer, than he was at all events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her out about London, about her vision of life there, and only too glad to treat her as a person with whom he could easily have other topics than her aches and pains. He spoke to her above all of the evidence offered him at Lancaster Gate, that she had come but a conquer, and when she had met this with full and gay assent. How could I help being the feature of the season, the what do you call it, the theme of every tongue? They fraternized freely over all that had come and gone, for each since their interrupted encounter in New York. At the same time, while many things in quick succession came up for them, came up in particular for denture, nothing perhaps was just so sharp as the odd influence of their present conditions on their view of their past ones. It was as if they hadn't known how thick they had originally become, as if in a manner they had really fallen to remembrance of more passages of intimacy than there had in fact at the time quite been room for. They were in a relation now so complicated, whether by what they said or by what they didn't say, that it might have been seeking to justify its speedy growth by reaching back to one of those fabulous periods in which prosperous states placed their beginnings. He recalled what had been said at Mrs. Loader's about the steps and stages in people's careers, that absence caused one to miss and about the resulting frequent sense of meeting them further on, which with some other matters also recall, he took occasion to communicate to Millie. The matters he couldn't mention mingle themselves with those he did, so that it would doubtless have been hard to say which of the two groups now played most of a part. He was kept face to face with this young lady by a force absolutely resident in their situation and operating for his nurse with a swiftness of the forces commonly regarded by sensitive persons as beyond their control. The current thus determined had positively become for him by the time he had been ten minutes in the room, something that but for the absurdity of comparing the very small with the very great he would freely have likened to the rapids of Niagara. An uncriticized acquaintance between a clever young man and a responsive young woman who do nothing more at the most then go and his actual experiment went and went and went, nothing probably so conduced to make it go as the marked circumstance that they had spoken all the while not a word about Kate. And this in spite of the fact that if it were a question for them of what had occurred in the past weeks, nothing had occurred comparable to Kate's predominance. Densher had but the night before appealed to her for instruction as to what he must do about her, but he fairly winced to find how little this came to. She had foretold him, of course, how little, but it was a truth that looked different when shown him by Millie. It proved to him that the latter had in fact been dealt with, but it produced in him the thought that Kate might perhaps again conveniently be questioned. He would have liked to speak to her before going further, to make sure she really meant him to succeed quite so much. With all the difference that, as we say, came up for him, it came up afresh naturally, that he might make his visit brief and never renew it. Yet the strangest thing of all was that the argument against that issue would have sprung precisely from the beautiful little eloquence involved in Millie's avoidances. Precipitate these well might be, since they emphasised the fact that she was proceeding in the sense of the assurances she had taken. Over the latter she had visibly not hesitated, for hadn't they had the merit of giving her a chance? Densher quite so her, felt her take it, the chance neither more nor less of help rendered him according to her freedom. It was what Kate had left her with. Listen to him? I? Never. So do as you like. What Millie liked was to do it, thus appeared as she was doing. Our young man's glimpse, of which was just what would have been for him not less a glimpse of the peculiar brutality of shaking her off. The choice exhaled its shy fragrant of heroism, for it was not aided by any questions of parting with Kate. She would be charming to Kate as well as to Kate's adorer. She would incur whatever pain could well for her in the sight. Should she continue to be exposed to the sight of the adorer thrown with the adored, it wouldn't really have taken much more to make him wonder if he hadn't before in one of those rare cases of exaltation. Food for fiction, food for poetry, in which a man's fortune with a woman who doesn't care for him is positively promoted by the woman who does. It was as if Millie had said to herself, Well, he can at least meet her in my society, if that's anything to him, so that my line can only be to make my society attractive. She certainly couldn't have made a different impression if she had so reasoned, all of which nonetheless didn't prevent his soon enough saying to her quite as if she were to be world into space. And now then, what becomes of you? Do you begin to rush about to visits to country houses? She disowned the idea with a headshake that, put on what face she would, couldn't help betraying to him something of her suppressed view of the possibility, ever, ever perhaps of any such proceedings. They weren't at any rate for her now. Dear no, we go abroad for a few weeks somewhere of high air. That has been before us for many days. We've only been kept on by last necessities here. However, everything's done and the winds in our sails. May you scud then happily before it, but when he asked, do you come back? She looked ever so vague, then as if to correct it. Oh, when the wind turns, and what do you do with your summer? Ah, I spend it in sordid toil. I drench it with mercenary ink. My work in your country counts for play as well. You see what's thought of the pleasure your country can give. My holiday's over. I'm sorry you had to take it, said Millie, at such a different time from ours. If you could but have worked while we've been working. I might be playing while you play. Oh, the distinction isn't great with me. There's a little of each for me, a work and of play in either. But you and Mrs. Stringham and Mrs. Croy and Mrs. Loder, you all, he went on, have been given up, like navies or niggers, to real physical toil. Your rest is something you've earned, and you need. My labor's comparatively light. Very true, she smiled, but all the same. I like mine. It doesn't leave you done? Not a bit. I don't get tired when I'm interested. Oh, I could go far. He bethought himself. Then why don't you, since you've got here as I learned the whole place in your pocket? Well, it's a kind of economy. I'm saving things up. I've enjoyed so what you speak of, though your account of it's fantastic, that I'm watching over his future, that I can't help being anxious and careful. I want in the interest itself of what I've had and may still have, not to make stupid mistakes. The way not to make them is to get off again to a distance and see the situation from there. I shall keep it fresh, she wound up, as if herself rather pleased with the ingenuity of her statement. I shall keep it fresh by that prudence for my return. And then you will return? Can you promise one that? Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise, but she made, as if bargaining a little. Isn't London rather awful in winter? He had been going to ask her if she meant for the invalid, but he checked the infelicity of this and took the inquire as referring to social life. No, I like it. With one thing and another, it's less of a mob than later on, and it would have for you as the merit, should you come here then, that we should probably see more of you, so do reappear for us, if it isn't a question of climate. She looked at that a little graver. If what isn't a question? Why, the determination of your movements, you spoke just now of going somewhere for that. For better air, she remembered, oh yes, one certainly wants to get out of London in August. Rather, of course, he fully understood, though I am glad you hang on long enough for me to catch you. Try us at any rate, he continued, once more. Whom do you mean by us? She presently asked. It pulled him up an instant, representing as he saw it might have seemed an illusion to himself as conjoined with Kate, whom he was proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did. But these you was easy. I mean all of us together. Everyone you'll find ready to surround you with sympathy. It made her nonetheless, in her odd charming way, challenge him afresh. Why do you say sympathy? Well, it's doubtless a pale word. What we shall feel for you will be much nearer worship, as near then as you like, with which at last Kate's name was sounded. The people I'd most come back for are the people you know. I do it for Mrs. Loder was been beautifully kind to me. So she has to me, said Densher. I feel he added, as she at first answered nothing, that quite contrary to anything I originally expected, I made a good friend of her. I didn't expect it either. It's turning out as it has. But I did, said Millie, with Kate. I shall come back for her too. I do anything she kept it up for Kate. Looking at him as with conscious clearness, while she spoke, she might for the moment have effectively laid a trap for whatever remains of the ideal straightness in him, were still able to pull themselves together and operate. He was afterwards to say to himself that something had at that moment hung for him by a hair. Oh, I know what one would do for Kate. It had hung for him by a hair to break out with that, which he felt he had really been kept from by an element in his consciousness stronger still. The proof of the truth in question was precisely in his silence. Resisting the impulse to break out was what he was doing for Kate. This at the time moreover came and went quickly enough. He was trying the next minute, but to make Millie's solution easy for herself. Of course I know what friends you are, and of course I understand, he permitted himself to add, any amount of devotion to a person so charming. That's the good turn then she'll do us all. I mean her working for your return. Oh, you don't know, said Millie, how much I'm really on her hands. He could but accept the appearance of wondering how much he might show he knew. Ah, she's very masterful. She's great, yet I don't say she bullies me. No, that's not the way. At any rate it isn't hers, he smiled. He remembered, however, then that an undue acquaintance with Kate's ways was just what he mustn't show, and he pursued the subject no further than to remark with a good intention that he had the further merit of representing a truth. I don't feel as if I knew her real to call no. Well, if you come to that, I don't either, she laughed. The words gave him as soon as they were uttered a sense of responsibility for his own, though during a silence that ensued for a minute he had time to recognize that his own contained after all no element of falsity. Strange enough therefore was it that he could go too far, if it was too far, without being false. His observation was one he could perfectly have made to Kate herself, and before he again spoke, and before Millie did, he took time for more still. For feeling how just here it was that he must break short of if his mind was really made up not to go further. It was as if he had been at a corner and fairly put there by his last speech, so that it depended on him whether or not to turn it. The silence if prolonged but an instant might even have given him a sense of her waiting to see what he would do. It was filled for them the next thing by the sound rather voluminous for the august afternoon of the approach in the street below them of heavy carriage wheels and of horses trained to step. A rumble, a great shake, a considerable effective clatter had been apparently succeeded by a pause at the door of the hotel, which was in turn accompanied by a due display of diminished prancing and stamping. You were visitor, dentsher laugh, and it must be at least an ambassador. It's only my own carriage. It does that. Isn't it wonderful? Every day. But we find it, Mrs. Stringham and I, in the innocence of our hearts very amusing. She had got up as she spoke to assure herself of what she said, and at the end of a few steps they were together on the balcony and looking down at her waiting chariot which made indeed a brave show. Is it very awful? It was to dentsher's eyes say for its absurd heaviness only pleasantly pompous. It seems to me delightfully rococo, but how do I know? You're mistress of these things in contact with the highest wisdom. You occupy a position moreover thanks to which your carriage, well by this time in the eye of London, also occupies one. But she was going out, and he mustn't stand in her way. What had happened the next minute was first that she had denied she was going out, so that he might prolong his stay, and second that she had said she would go out with pleasure if he would like to drive, that in fact there were always things to do, that there had been a question for her to do of several in particular, and that this in short was why the carriage had been ordered so early. They perceived as she said these things, that an inquirer had presented himself, and coming back they found Millie Servant announcing the carriage and prepared to accompany her. This appeared to have for her the effect of settling the matter, on the basis that is of dentsher's happy response. Dentsher's happy response, however, had us yet hung fire. The process we have described in him operating by this time with extreme intensity. The system of not pulling up, not breaking off, had already brought him headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actually stood, and just now it was with the vengeance that he must do either one thing or the other. He had been waiting for some moments, which probably seemed to him longer than they were. This was because he was anxiously watching himself wait. He couldn't keep that up forever, and since one thing or the other was what he must do, it was for the other that he presently became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting, it settled itself in the manner of a bump, and considerable violence against a firm object in the stream. Oh, yes, I'll go with you with pleasure. It's a charming idea. She gave no look to thank him. She rather looked away. She only said at once to her servant, in ten minutes, and then to her visitor as the man went out. We'll go somewhere. I shall like that, but I must ask of you time as little as possible to get ready. She looked over the room to provide for him, keep him there. There are books and things plenty, and I address very quickly. He caught her eyes only as she went, on which he thought them pretty and touching. Why especially touching at that instant he could certainly scarce have said? It was involved. It was lost in the sense of her wishing to oblige him. Clearly what had occurred was her having wished it so, that she had made him simply wish in civil acknowledgement to oblige her, which he had now fully done by turning his corner. He was quite rounded, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her, and he stood there alone. Alone he remained for three minutes more, remained with several very living little matters to think about. One of these was the phenomenon typical highly American, he would have said, of Millis' extreme spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought refuge, refuge from another question, in the almost exclusive contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere, not even to sound generalization about American girls. It was spontaneous for his young friend to have asked him to drive with her alone, since she hadn't mentioned her companion. But she struck him, after all, as no more advanced in doing it than Kate, for instance, who wasn't an American girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate would have done it, though Kate wasn't at all in the same sense as Millie spontaneous. And then, in addition, Kate had done it, or things very like it. Furthermore, he was engaged to Kate, even if his ostensibly not being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds at any rate, the relation between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate, was a different one from any he could associate or cultivate, as to anything, with a girl who had just left him to prepare to give herself up to him. It had never struck him before, and he moved about the room while he thought of it, touching none of the books placed at his disposal. Millie was forward, as might be said, but not advanced, whereas Kate was backward, backward still comparatively as an English girl, and yet advanced in a high degree. However, though this didn't straighten it out, Kate was of course two or three years older, which at their time of life considerably counted. Thus ingenuously discriminating, Densher continued slowly to wonder, yet without keeping at bay for long the sense of having rounded his corner. He had so rounded it that he felt himself loose, even the option of taking advantage of Millie's absence to retrace his steps. If he might have turned tail, vulgarly speaking, five minutes before, he couldn't turn tail now. He must simply wait there with his consciousness charged to the brim. Quickly enough, moreover, that issue was closed from without. In the course of three minutes more, Miss Thiele Servant had returned. He preceded a visitor whom he had met obviously at the foot of the stairs, and whom, throwing open the door, he'd loudly announced a smiss cry. Kate, on following him in, stopped short and sight of Densher, only after an instant as the young man saw with free amusement. Not from surprise, and still less from discomforture. Densher immediately gave his explanation. Miss Thiele had gone to prepare to drive, on receipt of which the servant effaced himself. And you're going with her? Kate asked. Yes, with your approval, which I've taken as you see for granted. Oh, she laughed. My approvals complete. She was thoroughly consistent and handsome about it. What I mean is, of course, he went on, for he was sensibly affected by her gaiety, at your so lively instigation. She had looked about the room. She might have been vaguely looking for signs of the duration, of the character of his visit, a momentary aid in taking a decision. Well, instigation then, as much as you like. She treated it as pleasant, the success of her plea with him. She made a fresh joke of his direct impression of it. So much so as that? Do you know, I think, I won't wait? Not to see her after coming? Well, with you in the field. I came for news of her, but she must be all right if she is. But he took her straight up. Ah, how do I know? He was moved to say more. It's not I who am responsible for her, my dear. It seems to me it's you. She struck him as making light of a matter that had been costing him sundry qualms, so that they couldn't both be quite just. Either she was too easy, or he had been too anxious. He didn't want at all events to feel a fool for that. I'm doing nothing, and shall not, I assure you, do anything but what I'm told. Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his words, and he had taken it from her the next moment that he really needed to get into a state. What in the world was the matter, she asked it, with interest for all answer. Isn't she better, if she's able to see you? She assures me she's in perfect health. Kate's interest grew. I knew she would, on which she added. It won't have been really for illness that she stayed away last night. For what, then? Well, for nervousness. Nervousness about what? Oh, you know, she spoke with a hint of impatience, smiling, however, the next moment. I've told you that. He looked at her to recover in her face what she had told him. Then it was as if what he saw there prompted him to say, What have you told her? She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered where they were, liable to surprise, talking with softened voices, even stretching their opportunity by such talk beyond a quite right feeling. Millie's room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying things. For a moment, nonetheless, they kept it up. Ask her, if you like. You're free, she'll tell you. Act as you think best. Don't trouble about what you think I may or main tab told. I'm all right with her, said Kate. So there you are. If you mean here I am, he answered, it's unmistakable. If you also mean that her believing in you is all I have to do with, you're so far right as that she certainly does believe in you. Well, then take example by her. She's really doing it for you, denture continued. She's driving me out for you. In that case, said Kate, with her soft tranquility, you can do it a little for her. I'm not afraid, she smiled. He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it, and effected again, as he had already so often been by more things in this face, and in her bold person and presence than he was, to his relief obliged to find words for. It wasn't under such impressions a question of words. I do nothing for anyone in the world but you, but for you I'll do anything. Good, good, said Kate, that's how I like you. He waited again an instant. Then you swear to it? To it? To what? Why that you do like me? Since it's all for that, you know that I'm letting you do? Well, God knows what with me. She gave it this with a stare, a disheartened gesture, the sense of which she immediately further expressed. If you don't believe in me, then, after all, hadn't you better break off before you've gone further? Break off with you? Break off with me, Lee. You might go now, she said, and I'll stay and explain to her why it is. He wondered as if it struck him. What would you say? Why that you find you can't stand her, and that there's nothing for me but to bear with you as I best may? He considered of this. How much do you abuse me to her? Exactly enough, as much as you see by her attitude. Again he thought. It doesn't seem to me I ought to mind her attitude. Well then, just as you like, I'll stay and do my best for you. He saw she was sincere, was really giving him a chance, and that of itself made things clearer. The feeling of how far he had gone came back to him, not in repentance, but in this very vision of an escape, and it was not of what he had done, but of what Kate offered, that he now weighed the consequence. Won't it make her, her not finding me here, be rather more sure there's something between us? Kate thought. Oh, I don't know. It will of course greatly upset her, but you needn't trouble about that. She won't die of it. Do you mean she will? Densher presently asked. Don't put me questions when you don't believe what I say. You make too many conditions. She spoke now with a shade of rational weariness that made the want of pliancy, the failure to oblige her, look poor and ugly, so that what it suddenly came back to for him was his deficiency in the things a man of any taste, so engaged, so enlisted, would have liked to make sure of being able to show imagination, intact, positively even humor. The circumstance is doubtless odd, but the truth is nonetheless that the speculation uppermost with him at his juncture was, what if I should begin to bore this creature, and that within a few seconds had translated itself, if you'll swear again you'll love me. She looked about at door and window, as if he were asking for more than he said. Here? There's nothing between us here, Kate smiled. Oh, isn't there? Her smile itself with this had so settled something for him, that he had come to her pleadingly, and holding out his hands, which he immediately seized with her own, as if both to check him and to keep him. It was by keeping him thus for a minute that she did check him. She held him long enough, while with their eyes deeply meeting, they waited in silence for him to recover himself, and renew his discretion. He coloured us with the return of the sense of where they were, and that gave her precisely one of her usual victories, which immediately took further form. By the time he had dropped her hands, he had again taken hold, as it were, of millies. It was not at any rate with Millie he had broken. I'll do all you wish, he declared, as if to acknowledge the acceptance of his condition, that he had practically, after all, drawn from her, a declaration on which she, then, recurring to her first idea, promptly acted. If you are as good as that I go, you'll tell her that finding you with her, I wouldn't wait. Say that, you know, from yourself, she'll understand. She had reached the door with it. She was full of decision, but he had before she left him one more doubt. I don't see how she can understand enough, you know, without understanding too much. You don't need to see. He required then a last injunction. I must simply go it blind? You must simply be kind to her, and leave the rest to you. Leave the rest to her, said Kate, disappearing. It came back then afresh to that, as it had come before. Millie, three minutes after Kate had gone, returned in her array, her big black hat, so little superstitiously in the fashion, her fine black garments throughout, the swathing of her throat, which denser vaguely took for an infinite number of yards of priceless lace, and which its folded fabric kept in place by heavy rows of pearls, hung down to her feet like the stole of a priestess. He spoke to her at once of their friend's visit and flight. She hadn't known she'd find me, he said, and said at present without difficulty. He had so rounded his corner that it wasn't a question of a word more or less. She took this account of the matter as quite sufficient. She glossed over whatever might be awkward. I'm sorry, but I of course often see her. He felt the discrimination in his favor, and how it justified Kate. This was Millie's tone when the matter was left to her. Well, it should now be fully left.