The Wings of the Dove ........................................................................................................................................1

Henry James .............................................................................................................................................1

Volume 1 .................................................................................................................................................2

Book First, Chapter 1 .............................................................................................................................2

Book First, Chapter 2 ...........................................................................................................................11

Book Second, Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................18

Book Second, Chapter 2 .......................................................................................................................28

Book Third, Chapter 1 ..........................................................................................................................37

Book Third, Chapter 2 ..........................................................................................................................45

Book Fourth, Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................50

Book Fourth, Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................58

Book Fourth, Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................63

Book Fifth, Chapter 1 ...........................................................................................................................71

Book Fifth, Chapter 2 ...........................................................................................................................75

Book Fifth, Chapter 3 ...........................................................................................................................79

Book Fifth, Chapter 4 ...........................................................................................................................86

Book Fifth, Chapter 5 ...........................................................................................................................90

Book Fifth, Chapter 6 ...........................................................................................................................96

Book Fifth, Chapter 7 .........................................................................................................................100

Volume 2 ............................................................................................................................................105

Book Sixth, Chapter 1 .........................................................................................................................105

Book Sixth, Chapter 2 .........................................................................................................................109

Book Sixth, Chapter 3 .........................................................................................................................115

Book Sixth, Chapter 4 .........................................................................................................................121

Book Sixth, Chapter 5 .........................................................................................................................132

Book Seventh, Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................................142

Book Seventh, Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................152

Book Seventh, Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................157

Book Seventh, Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................................162

Book Eighth, Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................171

Book Eighth, Chapter 2 .....................................................................................................................176

Book Eighth, Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................182

Book Ninth, Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................195

Book Ninth, Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................201

Book Ninth, Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................207

Book Ninth, Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................219

Book Tenth, Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................224

Book Tenth, Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................235

Book Tenth, Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................240

Book Tenth, Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................245

Book Tenth, Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................250

Book Tenth, Chapter 6 ........................................................................................................................256

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at

which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had

brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. It was at this point, however, that she remained;

changing her place, moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed cloth that gave at

onceshe had tried itthe sense of the slippery and of the sticky. She had looked at the sallow prints on the

walls and at the lonely magazine, a year old, that combined, with a small lamp in coloured glass and a knitted

white centrepiece wanting in freshness, to enhance the effect of the purplish cloth on the principal table; she

had above all from time to time taken a brief stand on the small balcony to which the pair of long windows

gave access. The vulgar little street, in this view, offered scant relief from the vulgar little room; its main

office was to suggest to her that the narrow black housefronts, adjusted to a standard that would have been

low even for backs, constituted quite the publicity implied by such privacies. One felt them in the room

exactly as one felt the roomthe hundred like it or worsein the street. Each time she turned in again, each

time, in her impatience, she gave him up, (4) it was to sound to a deeper depth, while she tasted the faint flat

emanation of things, the failure of fortune and of honour. If she continued to wait it was really in a manner

that she mightn't add the shame of fear, of individual, of personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel the

street, to feel the room, to feel the tablecloth and the centrepiece and the lamp, gave her a small salutary

sense at least of neither shirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst thing yetas including in

particular the interview to which she had braced herself; and for what had she come but for the worst? She

tried to be sad so as not to be angry, but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was

misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalkmarked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in

Her father's life, her sister's, her own, that of her two lost brothersthe whole history of their house had the

effect of some fine florid voluminous phrase, say even a musical, that dropped first into words and notes

without sense and then, hanging unfinished, into no words nor any notes at all. Why should a set of people

have been put in motion, on such a scale and with such an air of being equipped for a profitable journey, only

to break down without an accident, to stretch themselves in the wayside dust without a reason? The answer to

these questions was not in Chirk Street, but the questions themselves bristled there, and the girl's repeated

pause before the mirror and the chimneyplace might have represented her nearest approach to an escape

from them. Wasn't it (5) in fact the partial escape from this "worst" in which she was steeped to be able to

make herself out again as agreeable to see? She stared into the tarnished glass too hard indeed to be staring at

her beauty alone. She readjusted the poise of her black closelyfeathered hat; retouched, beneath it, the thick

fall of her dusky hair; kept her eyes aslant no less on her beautiful averted than on her beautiful presented

oval. She was dressed altogether in black, which gave an even tone, by contrast, to her clear face and made

her hair more harmoniously dark. Outside, on the balcony, her eyes showed as blue; within, at the mirror,

they showed almost as black. She was handsome, but the degree of it was not sustained by items and aids; a

circumstance moreover playing its part at almost any time in the impression she produced. The impression

was one that remained, but as regards the sources of it no sum in addition would have made up the total. She

had stature without height, grace without motion, presence without mass. Slender and simple, frequently

soundless, she was somehow always in the line of the eyeshe counted singularly for its pleasure. More

"dressed," often, with fewer accessories, than other women, or less dressed, should occasion require, with

more, she probably couldn't have given the key to these felicities. They were mysteries of which her friends

were consciousthose friends whose general explanation was to say that she was clever, whether or no it

were taken by the world as the cause or as the effect of her charm. If she saw more things than her fine face in

the dull glass of her father's lodgings she might have seen that after all (6) she was not herself a fact in the

collapse. She didn't hold herself cheap, she didn't make for misery. Personally, no, she wasn't chalkmarked

for auction. She hadn't given up yet, and the broken sentence, if she was the last word, WOULD end with a

sort of meaning. There was a minute during which, though her eyes were fixed, she quite visibly lost herself

in the thought of the way she might still pull things round had she only been a man. It was the name, above

all, she would take in handthe precious name she so liked and that, in spite of the harm her wretched father

had done it, wasn't yet past praying for. She loved it in fact the more tenderly for that bleeding wound. But

When her father at last appeared she became, as usual, instantly aware of the futility of any effort to hold him

to anything. He had written her he was ill, too ill to leave his room, and that he must see her without delay;

and if this had been, as was probable, the sketch of a design he was indifferent even to the moderate finish

required for deception. He had clearly wanted, for the perversities he called his reasons, to see her, just as she

herself had sharpened for a talk; but she now again felt, in the inevitability of the freedom he used with her,

all the old ache, her poor mother's very own, that he couldn't touch you ever so lightly without setting up. No

relation with him could be so short or so superficial as not to be somehow to your hurt; and this, in the

strangest way in the world, not because he desired it to befeeling often, as he surely must, the profit for

him of its not (7) beingbut because there was never a mistake for you that he could leave unmade, nor a

conviction of his impossibility in you that he could approach you without strengthening. He might have

awaited her on the sofa in his sittingroom, or might have stayed in bed and received her in that situation.

She was glad to be spared the sight of such penetralia, but it would have reminded her a little less that there

was no truth in him. This was the weariness of every fresh meeting; he dealt out lies as he might the cards

from the greasy old pack for the game of diplomacy to which you were to sit down with him. The

inconvenienceas always happens in such caseswas not that you minded what was false, but that you

missed what was true. He might be ill and it might suit you to know it, but no contact with him, for this,

could ever be straight enough. Just so he even might die, but Kate fairly wondered on what evidence of his

He had not at present come down from his room, which she knew to be above the one they were in: he had

already been out of the house, though he would either, should she challenge him, deny it or present it as a

proof of his extremity. She had, however, by this time, quite ceased to challenge him; not only, face to face

with him, vain irritation dropped, but he breathed upon the tragic consciousness in such a way that after a

moment nothing of it was left. The difficulty was not less that he breathed in the same way upon the comic:

she almost believed that with this latter she might still have found a foothold for clinging to him. He had

ceased to be amusinghe (8) was really too inhuman. His perfect look, which had floated him so long, was

practically perfect still; but one had long since for every occasion taken it for granted. Nothing could have

better shown than the actual how right one had been. He looked exactly as much as usualall pink and silver

as to skin and hair, all straightness and starch as to figure and dress; the man in the world least connected

with anything unpleasant. He was so particularly the English gentleman and the fortunate settled normal

person. Seen at a foreign table d'hote he suggested but one thing: "In what perfection England produces

them!" He had kind safe eyes, and a voice which, for all its clean fulness, told the quiet tale of its having

never had once to raise itself. Life had met him so, halfway, and had turned round so to walk with him,

placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose the pace. Those who knew him a little said "How

he does dress!"those who knew him better said "How DOES he?" The one stray gleam of comedy just now

in his daughter's eyes was the absurd feeling he momentarily made her have of being herself "looked up" by

him in sordid lodgings. For a minute after he came in it was as if the place were her own and he the visitor

with susceptibilities. He gave you absurd feelings, he had indescribable arts, that quite turned the tables: this

had been always how he came to see her mother so long as her mother would see him. He came from places

they had often not known about, but he patronised Lexham Gardens. Kate's only actual expression of

(9) "I'm not so much better, my dearI'm exceedingly unwell; the proof of which is precisely that I've been

out to the chemist'sthat beastly fellow at the corner." So Mr. Croy showed he could qualify the humble

hand that assuaged him. "I'm taking something he has made up for me. It's just why I've sent for youthat

"Oh papa, it's long since I've ceased to see you otherwise than as you really are! I think we've all arrived by

this time at the right word for that: 'You're beautifuln'en parlons plus.' You're as beautiful as everyou

look lovely." He judged meanwhile her own appearance, as she knew she could always trust him to do;

recognising, estimating, sometimes disapproving, what she wore, showing her the interest he continued to

take in her. He might really take none at all, yet she virtually knew herself the creature in the world to whom

he was least indifferent. She had often enough wondered what on earth, at the pass he had reached, could give

him pleasure, and had come back on these occasions to that. It gave him pleasure that she was handsome, that

she was in her way a tangible value. It was at least as marked, nevertheless, that he derived none from similar

conditions, so far as they WERE similar, in his other child. Poor Marian might be handsome, but he certainly

didn't care. The hitch here of course was that, with whatever beauty, her sister, widowed and almost in want,

with four bouncing children, had no such measure. She asked him the next thing how long he had been in his

actual quarters, though aware of how little it mattered, how little any answer he might make would (10)

probably have in common with the truth. She failed in fact to notice his answer, truthful or not, already

occupied as she was with what she had on her own side to say to him. This was really what had made her

waitwhat superseded the small remainder of her resentment at his constant practical impertinence; the

result of all of which was that within a minute she had brought it out. "Yeseven now I'm willing to go with

you. I don't know what you may have wished to say to me, and even if you hadn't written you would within a

day or two have heard from me. Things have happened, and I've only waited, for seeing you, till I should be

"Anywhere. I'll stay with you. Even here." She had taken off her gloves and, as if she had arrived with her

Lionel Croy hung about in his disengaged wayhovered there as if looking, in consequence of her words,

for a pretext to back out easily: on which she immediately saw she had discounted, as it might be called, what

he had himself been preparing. He wished her not to come to him, still less to settle with him, and had sent

for her to give her up with some style and state; a part of the beauty of which, however, was to have been his

sacrifice to her own detachment. There was no style, no state, unless she wished to forsake him. His idea had

accordingly been to surrender her to her wish with all nobleness; it had by no means been to have positively

to keep her off. She cared, however, not a straw for his embarrassment(11) feeling how little, on her own

part, she was moved by charity. She had seen him, first and last, in so many attitudes that she could now

deprive him quite without compunction of the luxury of a new one. Yet she felt the disconcerted gasp in his

"Haven't you thought then," his daughter asked, "of what I speak of? I mean of my being ready."

Standing before her with his hands behind him and his legs a little apart, he swayed slightly to and fro,

inclined toward her as if rising on his toes. It had an effect of conscientious deliberation. "NoI haven't. I

couldn't. I wouldn't." It was so respectable a show that she felt afresh, and with the memory of their old

despair, the despair at home, how little his appearance ever by any chance told about him. His plausibility had

been the heaviest of her mother's crosses; inevitably so much more present to the world than whatever it was

that was horridthank God they didn't really know!that he had done. He had positively been, in his way,

by the force of his particular type, a terrible husband not to live with; his type reflecting so invidiously on the

woman who had found him distasteful. Had this thereby not kept directly present to Kate her self that it

might, on some sides, prove no light thing for her to leave uncompanion'd a parent with such a face and such

a manner? Yet if there was much she neither knew nor dreamed of it passed between them (12) at this very

moment that he was quite familiar with himself as the subject of such quandaries. If he recognised his

younger daughter's happy aspect as a tangible value, he had from the first still more exactly appraised every

point of his own. The great wonder was not that in spite of everything these points had helped him; the great

wonder was that they hadn't helped him more. However, it was, to its eternal recurrent tune, helping him all

the while; her drop into patience with him showed how it was helping him at this moment. She saw the next

instant precisely the line he would take. "Do you really ask me to believe you've been making up your mind

She had to consider her own line. "I don't think I care, papa, what you believe. I never, for that matter, think

of you as believing anything; hardly more," she permitted herself to add, "than I ever think of you as yourself

"Oh dear, no; not at all. That's no part of the question. If I haven't understood you by this time I never shall,

and it doesn't matter. It has seemed to me you may be lived with, but not that you may be understood. Of

His daughter took the place in again, and it might well have seemed odd that with so little to meet the eye

there should be so much to show. What showed was the uglinessso positive and palpable that it (13) was

somehow sustaining. It was a medium, a setting, and to that extent, after all, a dreadful sign of life; so that it

"Do you throw it up at me again," he pleasantly put to her, "that I've not made away with myself?"

She treated the question as needing no reply; she sat there for real things. "You know how all our anxieties,

under mamma's will, have come out. She had still less to leave than she feared. We don't know how we lived.

It all makes up about two hundred a year for Marian, and two for me, but I give up a hundred to Marian."

"Oh you weak thing!" her father sighed as from depths of enlightened experience.

He gave her a look; then, slipping his hands into his pockets and turning away, stood for a little at the

window she had left open. She said nothing moreshe had placed him there with that question, and the

silence lasted a minute, broken by the call of an appealing costermonger, which came in with the mild March

air, with the shabby sunshine, fearfully unbecoming to the room, and with the small homely hum of Chirk

Street. Presently he moved nearer, but as if her question had quite dropped. "I don't see what has so suddenly

"I should have thought you might perhaps guess. Let me at any rate tell you. Aunt Maud has made (14) me a

"Oh I don't knowmany things. I'm not so precious a capture," the girl a little dryly explained. "No one has

Looking always what was proper, her father looked now still more surprised than interested. "You've not had

proposals?" He spoke as if that were incredible of Lionel Croy's daughter; as if indeed such an admission

scarce consorted, even in filial intimacy, with her high spirit and general form.

"Not from rich relations. She's extremely kind to me, but it's time, she says, that we should understand each

Mr. Croy fully assented. "Of course it ishigh time; and I can quite imagine what she means by it."

"Oh perfectly. She means that she'll 'do' for you handsomely if you'll break off all relations with me. You

He showed with a gesture how thoroughly he had taken it in; after which, within a few seconds, he had quite

congruously turned the situation about. "Do you really suppose me in a position to justify your throwing

(15) "Well then, you're of feebler intelligence than I should have ventured to suppose you."

"Ah how you've all always hated me!" he murmured with a pensive gaze again at the window.

"No one could be less of a mere cherished memory," she declared as if she had not heard him. "You're an

actual person, if there ever was one. We agreed just now that you're beautiful. You strike me, you know,

asin your own waymuch more firm on your feet than I. Don't put it to me therefore as monstrous that

the fact that we're after all parent and child should at present in some manner count for us. My idea has been

that it should have some effect for each of us. I don't at all, as I told you just now," she pursued, "make out

your life; but whatever it is I hereby offer to accept it. And, on my side, I'll do everything I can for you."

"I see," said Lionel Croy. Then with the sound of extreme relevance: "And what CAN you?" She only, at this,

hesitated, and he took up her silence. "You can describe yourselfTO yourselfas, in a fine flight, giving

up your aunt for me; but what good, I should like to know, would your fine flight do me?" As she still said

nothing he developed a little. "We're not possessed of so much, at this charming pass, please to remember, as

that we can afford not to take hold of any perch held out to us. I like the way you talk, my dear, about 'giving

up'! One doesn't give up the use of a spoon because one's reduced to living on broth. And your spoon, that is

your aunt, please consider, is partly mine as well." (16) She rose now, as if in sight of the term of her effort,

in sight of the futility and the weariness of many things, and moved back to the poor little glass with which

she had communed before. She retouched here again the poise of her hat, and this brought to her father's lips

another remarkin which impatience, however, had already been replaced by a free flare of appreciation.

His daughter turned round to him. "The condition Aunt Maud makes is that I shall have absolutely nothing to

do with you; never see you, nor speak nor write to you, never go near you nor make you a sign, nor hold any

sort of communication with you. What she requires is that you shall simply cease to exist for me."

He had always seemedit was one of the marks of what they called the "unspeakable" in himto walk a

little more on his toes, as if for jauntiness, under the touch of offence. Nothing, however, was more wonderful

than what he sometimes would take for offence, unless it might be what he sometimes wouldn't. He walked at

any rate on his toes now. "A very proper requirement of your Aunt Maud, my dearI don't hesitate to say

it!" Yet as this, much as she had seen, left her silent at first from what might have been a sense of sickness, he

had time to go on: "That's her condition then. But what are her promises? Just what does she engage to do?

"You mean make her feel," Kate asked after a moment, "how much I'm attached to you?"

(17) "Well, what a cruel invidious treaty it is for you to sign. I'm a poor ruin of an old dad to make a stand

about giving upI quite agree. But I'm not, after all, quite the old ruin not to get something FOR giving up."

"Oh I think her idea," said Kate almost gaily now, "is that I shall get a great deal."

The girl went through the show. "More or less, I think. But many of them are things I dare say I may take for

"There's nothing I understand so well, always, as the things I needn't! But what I want to do, you see," he

went on, "is to put it to your conscience that you've an admirable opportunity; and that it's moreover one for

"I confess I don't see," Kate observed, "what my 'conscience' has to do with it."

"Then, my dear girl, you ought simply to be ashamed of yourself. Do you know what you're a proof of, all

you hard hollow people together?" He put the question with a charming air of sudden spiritual heat. "Of the

deplorably superficial morality of the age. The family sentiment, in our vulgarised brutalised life, has gone

utterly to pot. There was a day when a man like meby which I mean a parent like mewould have been

for a daughter like you quite a distinct value; what's called in the business world, I believe, an 'asset.' " He

continued sociably (18) to make it out. "I'm not talking only of what you might, with the right feeling, do

FOR me, but of what you mightit's what I call your opportunitydo WITH me. Unless indeed," he the

next moment imperturbably threw off, "they come a good deal to the same thing. Your duty as well as your

chance, if you're capable of seeing it, is to use me. Show family feeling by seeing what I'm good for. If you

had it as I have it you'd see I'm still goodwell, for a lot of things. There's in fact, my dear," Mr. Croy

wound up, "a coachandfour to be got out of me." His lapse, or rather his climax, failed a little of effect

indeed through an undue precipitation of memory. Something his daughter had said came back to him.

"But you mean practically to let Marian collar it?" They stood there face to face, but she so denied herself to

his challenge that he could only go on. "You've a view of three hundred a year for her in addition to what her

husband left her with? Is THAT," the remote progenitor of such wantonness audibly wondered, "your

Kate found her answer without trouble. "Is it your idea that I should give you everything?"

The "everything" clearly struck himto the point even of determining the tone of his reply. "Far from it.

How can you ask that when I refuse what you tell me you came to offer? Make of my idea what you can; I

think I've sufficiently expressed it, and it's at (19) any rate to take or to leave. It's the only one, I may

nevertheless add; it's the basket with all my eggs. It's my conception, in short, of your duty."

The girl's tired smile watched the word as if it had taken on a small grotesque visibility. "You're wonderful on

such subjects! I think I should leave you in no doubt," she pursued, "that if I were to sign my aunt's

"Rather, my own love! It's just your honour that I appeal to. The only way to play the game IS to play it.

She looked about her and picked up her parasol. "Because you're not so afraid of any one else in the world as

you are of HER? My husband, if I should marry, would be at the worst less of a terror? If that's what you

mean there may be something in it. But doesn't it depend a little also on what you mean by my getting a

proper one? However," Kate added as she picked out the frill of her little umbrella, "I don't suppose your idea

"Dear nonot a bit." He spoke as not resenting either the fear or the hope she imputed; met both imputations

in fact with a sort of intellectual relief. "I place the case for you wholly in your aunt's hands. (20) I take her

view with my eyes shut; I accept in all confidence any man she selects. If he's good enough for

HERelephantine snob as she ishe's good enough for me; and quite in spite of the fact that she'll be sure

to select one who can be trusted to be nasty to me. My only interest is in your doing what she wants. You

"Well then goodbye, papa," the girl said after a reflexion on this that had perceptibly ended for her in a

renunciation of further debate. "Of course you understand that it may be for long."

Her companion had hereupon one of his finest inspirations. "Why not frankly for ever? You must do me the

justice to see that I don't do things, that I've never done them, by halvesthat if I offer you to efface myself

She turned her handsome quiet face upon him at such length that it might indeed have been for the last time.

"No more do I, my dear. I've spent my life in trying in vain to discover. Like nothingmore's the pity. If

there had been many of us and we could have found each other out there's no knowing what we mightn't have

done. But it doesn't matter now. Goodbye, love." He looked even not sure of what she would wish him to

She forbore in fact for a moment longer to clear it up. "I wish there were some one here who might (21)

servefor any contingencyas a witness that I HAVE put it to you that I'm ready to come."

"You may not believe me," she pursued, "but I came really hoping you might have found some way. I'm very

sorry at all events to leave you unwell." He turned away from her on this and, as he had done before, took

refuge, by the window, in a stare at the street. "Let me put itunfortunately without a witness," she added

When he took these words up it was still with his back to her. "If I don't strike you as having already spoken

"I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt exactly to what she wants of me in respect to you. She wants me

to choose. Very well, I WILL choose. I'll wash my hands of her for you to just that tune."

He at last brought himself round. "Do you know, dear, you make me sick? I've tried to be clear, and it isn't

"I don't quite see what's the matter with you," he said, "and if you can't pull yourself together I'llupon my

honourtake you in hand. Put you into a cab and deliver you again safe at Lancaster Gate."

"Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it, (22) there's a good you can do me and a help you can render."

"Yes," she answered patiently, "but so in the wrong way. I'm perfectly honest in what I say, and I know what

I'm talking about. It isn't that I'll pretend I could have believed a month ago in anything to call aid or support

from you. The case is changedthat's what has happened; my difficulty is a new one. But even now it's not a

question of anything I should ask you in a way to 'do.' It's simply a question of your not turning me

awaytaking yourself out of my life. It's simply a question of your saying: 'Yes then, since you will, we'll

stand together. We won't worry in advance about how or where; we'll have a faith and find a way.' That's

allTHAT would be the good you'd do me. I should HAVE you, and it would be for my benefit. Do you

If he didn't it wasn't for want of looking at her hard. "The matter with you is that you're in love, and that your

aunt knows andfor reasons, I'm sure, perfecthates and opposes it. Well she may! It's a matter in which I

trust her with my eyes shut. Go, please." Though he spoke not in angerrather in infinite sadnesshe fairly

turned her out. Before she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what he felt, opened the door of the

room. He had fairly, in his deep disapproval, a generous compassion to spare. "I'm sorry for her, deluded

Kate stood a moment in the draught. "She's not (23) the person i pity most, for, deluded in many ways though

she may be, she's not the person who's most so. I mean," she explained, "if it's a question of what you call

He took it as if what she meant might be other than her description of it. "You're deceiving TWO persons

She shook her head with detachment. "I've no intention of that sort with respect to any one nowto Mrs.

Lowder least of all. If you fail me"she seemed to make it out for herself"that has the merit at least that it

"You demand a great deal of satisfaction," she observed, "for the little you give."

It brought him up again before her as with a sense that she was not to be hustled, and though he glared at her

a little this had long been the practical limit to his general power of objection. "If you're base enough to incur

your aunt's reprobation you're base enough for my argument. What, if you're not thinking of an utterly

improper person, do your speeches to me signify? Who IS the beggarly sneak?" he went on as her response

Her response, when it came, was cold but distinct. "He has every disposition to make the best of you. He only

"Then he MUST be an ass! And how in the world can you consider it to improve him for me," her father

pursued, "that he's also destitute and impossible? (24) There are boobies and boobies eventhe right and the

wrongand you appear to have carefully picked out one of the wrong. Your aunt knows THEM, by good

fortune; I perfectly trust, as I tell you, her judgement for them; and you may take it from me once for all that I

won't hear of any one of whom SHE won't." Which led up to his last word. "If you should really defy us

"Well, my sweet child, I think thatreduced to insignificance as you may fondly believe meI should still

She had a pause, a grave one, but not, as appeared, that she might measure this danger. "If I shouldn't do it,

He showed her, this time unmistakeablyit was before her there on the landing, at the top of the tortuous

stairs and in the midst of the strange smell that seemed to cling to themhow vain her appeal remained. "I've

never pretended to do more than my duty; I've given you the best and the clearest advice." And then came up

the spring that moved him. "If it only displeases you, you can go to Marian to be consoled." What he couldn't

forgive was her dividing with Marian her scant share of the provision their mother had been able to leave

She had gone to Mrs. Lowder on her mother's deathgone with an effort the strain and pain of which made

her at present, as she recalled them, reflect on the long way she had travelled since then. There had been

nothing else to donot a penny in the other house, nothing but unpaid bills that had gathered thick while its

mistress lay mortally ill, and the admonition that there was nothing she must attempt to raise money on, since

everything belonged to the "estate." How the estate would turn out at best presented itself as a mystery

altogether gruesome; it had proved in fact since then a residuum a trifle less scant than, with her sister, she

had for some weeks feared; but the girl had had at the beginning rather a wounded sense of its being watched

on behalf of Marian and her children. What on earth was it supposed that SHE wanted to do to it? She wanted

in truth only to give upto abandon her own interest, which she doubtless would already have done hadn't

the point been subject to Aunt Maud's sharp intervention. Aunt Maud's intervention was all sharp now, and

the other point, the great one, was that it was to be, in this light, either all put up with or all declined. Yet at

the winter's end, nevertheless, she could scarce have said what stand she conceived she had taken. It wouldn't

be the first time she had seen herself obliged to accept with smothered irony other people's interpretation of

her conduct. She often (26) ended by giving up to themit seemed really the way to livethe version that

The tall rich heavy house at Lancaster Gate, on the other side of the Park and the long South Kensington

stretches, had figured to her, through childhood, through girlhood, as the remotest limit of her vague young

world. It was further off and more occasional than anything else in the comparatively compact circle in which

she revolved, and seemed, by a rigour early marked, to be reached through long, straight, discouraging vistas,

perfect telescopes of streets, and which kept lengthening and straightening, whereas almost everything else in

life was either at the worst roundabout Cromwell Road or at the furthest in the nearer parts of Kensington

Gardens. Mrs. Lowder was her only "real" aunt, not the wife of an uncle, and had been thereby, both in

ancient days and when the greater trouble came, the person, of all persons, properly to make some sign; in

accord with which our young woman's feeling was founded on the impression, quite cherished for years, that

the signs made across the interval just mentioned had never been really in the note of the situation. The main

office of this relative for the young Croysapart from giving them their fixed measure of social

greatnesshad struck them as being to form them to a conception of what they were not to expect. When

Kate came to think matters over with wider knowledge, she failed quite to see how Aunt Maud could have

been differentshe had rather perceived by this time how many other things might have been; yet she also

made out that if they had all consciously (27) lived under a liability to the chill breath of ultima Thule they

couldn't either, on the facts, very well have done less. What in the event appeared established was that if Mrs.

Lowder had disliked them she yet hadn't disliked them so much as they supposed. It had at any rate been for

the purpose of showing how she struggled with her aversion that she sometimes came to see them, that she at

regular periods invited them to her house and in short, as it now looked, kept them along on the terms that

would best give her sister the perennial luxury of a grievance. This sister, poor Mrs. Croy, the girl knew, had

always judged her resentfully, and had brought them up, Marian, the boys and herself, to the idea of a

particular attitude, for signs of the practice of which they watched each other with awe. The attitude was to

make plain to Aunt Maud, with the same regularity as her invitations, that they sufficedthanks awfullyto

themselves. But the ground of it, Kate lived to discern, was that this was only because SHE didn't suffice to

them. The little she offered was to be accepted under protest, yet not really because it was excessive. It

The number of new things our young lady looked out on from the high south window that hung over the

Parkthis number was so great (though some of the things were only old ones altered and, as the phrase was

of other matters, done up) that life at present turned to her view from week to week more and more the face

of a striking and distinguished stranger. She had reached a great agefor it quite seemed to her that at

twentyfive it was late to reconsider, and (28) her most general sense was a shade of regret that she hadn't

known earlier. The world was differentwhether for worse or for betterfrom her rudimentary readings,

and it gave her the feeling of a wasted past. If she had only known sooner she might have arranged herself

more to meet it. She made at all events discoveries every day, some of which were about herself and others

about other persons. Two of theseone under each headmore particularly engaged, in alternation, her

anxiety. She saw as she had never seen before how material things spoke to her. She saw, and she blushed to

see, that if in contrast with some of its old aspects life now affected her as a dress successfully "done up," this

was exactly by reason of the trimmings and lace, was a matter of ribbons and silk and velvet. She had a dire

accessibility to pleasure from such sources. She liked the charming quarters her aunt had assigned herliked

them literally more than she had in all her other days liked anything; and nothing could have been more

uneasy than her suspicion of her relative's view of this truth. Her relative was prodigiousshe had never

done her relative justice. These larger conditions all tasted of her, from morning till night; but she was a

person in respect to whom the growth of acquaintance could onlystrange as it might seemkeep your

The girl's second great discovery was that, so far from having been for Mrs. Lowder a subject of superficial

consideration, the blighted home in Lexham Gardens had haunted her nights and her days. Kate had spent, all

winter, hours of observation that were (29) not less pointed for being spent alone; recent events, which her

mourning explained, assured her a measure of isolation, and it was in the isolation above all that her

neighbour's influence worked. Sitting far downstairs Aunt Maud was yet a presence from which a sensitive

niece could feel herself extremely under pressure. She knew herself now, the sensitive niece, as having been

marked from far back. She knew more than she could have told you, by the upstairs fire, in a whole dark

December afternoon. She knew so much that her knowledge was what fairly kept her there, making her at

times circulate more endlessly between the small silkcovered sofa that stood for her in the firelight and the

great grey map of Middlesex spread beneath her lookout. To go down, to forsake her refuge, was to meet

some of her discoveries halfway, to have to face them or fly before them; whereas they were at such a height

only like the rumble of a faroff siege heard in the provisioned citadel. She had almost liked, in these weeks,

what had created her suspense and her stress: the loss of her mother, the submersion of her father, the

discomfort of her sister, the confirmation of their shrunken prospects, the certainty, in especial, of her having

to recognise that should she behave, as she called it, decentlythat is still do something for othersshe

would be herself wholly without supplies. She held that she had a right to sadness and stillness; she nursed

them for their postponing power. What they mainly postponed was the question of a surrender, though she

couldn't yet have said exactly of what: a general surrender of everythingthat was at moments the way (30)

it presented itselfto Aunt Maud's looming "personality." It was by her personality that Aunt Maud was

prodigious, and the great mass of it loomed because, in the thick, the foglike air of her arranged existence,

there were parts doubtless magnified and parts certainly vague. They represented at all events alike, the dim

and the distinct, a strong will and a high hand. It was perfectly present to Kate that she might be devoured,

and she compared herself to a trembling kid, kept apart a day or two till her turn should come, but sure sooner

The cage was Aunt Maud's own room, her office, her countinghouse, her battlefield, her especial scene, in

fine, of action, situated on the groundfloor, opening from the main hall and figuring rather to our young

woman on exit and entrance as a guardhouse or a tollgate. The lioness waitedthe kid had at least that

consciousness; was aware of the neighbourhood of a morsel she had reason to suppose tender. She would

have been meanwhile a wonderful lioness for a show, an extraordinary figure in a cage or anywhere;

majestic, magnificent, highcoloured, all brilliant gloss, perpetual satin, twinkling bugles and flashing gems,

with a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of raven hair, a polish of complexion that was like that of wellkept china

and thatas if the skin were too tighttold especially at curves and corners. Her niece had a quiet name for

hershe kept it quiet: thinking of her, with a free fancy, as somehow typically insular, she talked to herself

of Britannia of the Market PlaceBritannia unmistakeable but with a (31) pen on her earand felt she

should not be happy till she might on some occasion add to the rest of the panoply a helmet, a shield, a trident

and a ledger. It wasn't in truth, however, that the forces with which, as Kate felt, she would have to deal were

those most suggested by an image simple and broad; she was learning after all each day to know her

companion, and what she had already most perceived was the mistake of trusting to easy analogies. There

was a whole side of Britannia, the side of her florid philistinism, her plumes and her train, her fantastic

furniture and heaving bosom, the false gods of her taste and false notes of her talk, the sole contemplation of

which would be dangerously misleading. She was a complex and subtle Britannia, as passionate as she was

practical, with a reticule for her prejudices as deep as that other pocket, the pocket full of coins stamped in

her image, that the world best knew her by. She carried on in short, behind her aggressive and defensive

front, operations determined by her wisdom. It was in fact as a besieger, we have hinted, that our young lady,

in the provisioned citadel, had for the present most to think of her, and what made her formidable in this

character was that she was unscrupulous and immoral. So at all events in silent sessions and a youthful

offhand way Kate conveniently pictured her: what this sufficiently represented being that her weight was in

the scale of certain dangersthose dangers that, by our showing, made the younger woman linger and lurk

above, while the elder, below, both militant and diplomatic, covered as much of the ground as possible. Yet

what were the dangers, after (32) all, but just the dangers of life and of London? Mrs. Lowder WAS London,

WAS lifethe roar of the siege and the thick of the fray. There were some things, after all, of which

Britannia was afraid; but Aunt Maud was afraid of nothingnot even, it would appear, of arduous thought.

These impressions, none the less, Kate kept so much to herself that she scarce shared them with poor Marian,

the ostensible purpose of her frequent visits to whom yet continued to be to talk over everything. One of her

reasons for holding off from the last concession to Aunt Maud was that she might be the more free to commit

herself to this so much nearer and so much less fortunate relative, with whom Aunt Maud would have almost

nothing direct to do. The sharpest pinch of her state, meanwhile, was exactly that all intercourse with her

sister had the effect of casting down her courage and tying her hands, adding daily to her sense of the part,

not always either uplifting or sweetening, that the bond of blood might play in one's life. She was face to face

with it now, with the bond of blood; the consciousness of it was what she seemed most clearly to have "come

into" by the death of her mother, much of that consciousness as her mother had absorbed and carried away.

Her haunting harassing father, her menacing uncompromising aunt, her portionless little nephews and nieces,

were figures that caused the chord of natural piety superabundantly to vibrate. Her manner of putting it to

herselfbut more especially in respect to Marianwas that she saw what you might be brought to by the

cultivation of (33) consanguinity. She had taken, in the old days, as she supposed, the measure of this

liability; those being the days when, as the secondborn, she had thought no one in the world so pretty as

Marian, no one so charming, so clever, so assured in advance of happiness and success. The view was

different now, but her attitude had been obliged, for many reasons, to show as the same. The subject of this

estimate was no longer pretty, as the reason for thinking her clever was no longer plain; yet, bereaved,

disappointed, demoralised, querulous, she was all the more sharply and insistently Kate's elder and Kate's

own. Kate's most constant feeling about her was that she would make her, Kate, do things; and always, in

comfortless Chelsea, at the door of the small house the small rent of which she couldn't help having on her

mind, she fatalistically asked herself, before going in, which thing it would probably be this time. She noticed

with profundity that disappointment made people selfish; she marvelled at the serenityit was the poor

woman's only oneof what Marian took for granted: her own state of abasement as the secondborn, her life

reduced to mere inexhaustible sisterhood. She existed in that view wholly for the small house in Chelsea; the

moral of which moreover, of course, was that the more you gave yourself the less of you was left. There were

always people to snatch at you, and it would never occur to THEM that they were eating you up. They did

There was no such misfortune, or at any rate no such discomfort, she further reasoned, as to be formed at

once for being and for seeing. You always saw, (34) in this case something else than what you were, and you

got in consequence none of the peace of your condition. However, as she never really let Marian see what she

was Marian might well not have been aware that she herself saw. Kate was accordingly to her own vision not

a hypocrite of virtue, for she gave herself up; but she was a hypocrite of stupidity, for she kept to herself

everything that was not herself. What she most kept was the particular sentiment with which she watched her

sister instinctively neglect nothing that would make for her submission to their aunt; a state of the spirit that

perhaps marked most sharply how poor you might become when you minded so much the absence of wealth.

It was through Kate that Aunt Maud should be worked, and nothing mattered less than what might become of

Kate in the process. Kate was to burn her ships in short, so that Marian should profit; and Marian's desire to

profit was quite oblivious of a dignity that had after all its reasonsif it had only understood themfor

keeping itself a little stiff. Kate, to be properly stiff for both of them, would therefore have had to be selfish,

have had to prefer an ideal of behaviourthan which nothing ever was more selfishto the possibility of

stray crumbs for the four small creatures. The tale of Mrs. Lowder's disgust at her elder niece's marriage to

Mr. Condrip had lost little of its point; the incredibly fatuous behaviour of Mr. Condrip, the parson of a dull

suburban parish, with a saintly profile which was always in evidence, being so distinctly on record to keep

criticism consistent. He had presented his profile on system, having, goodness (35) knew, nothing else to

presentnothing at all to fullface the world with, no imagination of the propriety of living and minding his

business. Criticism had remained on Aunt Maud's part consistent enough; she was not a person to regard such

proceedings as less of a mistake for having acquired more of the privilege of pathos. She hadn't been

forgiving, and the only approach she made to overlooking them was by overlookingwith the surviving

delinquentthe solid little phalanx that now represented them. Of the two sinister ceremonies that she

lumped together, the marriage and the interment, she had been present at the former, just as she had sent

Marian before it a liberal cheque; but this had not been for her more than the shadow of an admitted link with

Mrs. Condrip's course. She disapproved of clamorous children for whom there was no prospect; she

disapproved of weeping widows who couldn't make their errors good; and she had thus put within Marian's

reach one of the few luxuries left when so much else had gone, an easy pretext for a constant grievance. Kate

Croy remembered well what their mother, in a different quarter, had made of it; and it was Marian's marked

failure to pluck the fruit of resentment that committed them as sisters to an almost equal fellowship in

abjection. If the theory was that, yes, alas, one of the pair had ceased to be noticed, but that the other was

noticed enough to make up for it, who would fail to see that Kate couldn't separate herself without a cruel

pride? That lesson became sharp for our young lady the day after her interview with her father.

(36) "I can't imagine," Marian on this occasion said to her, "how you can think of anything else in the world

"And, pray, how do you know," Kate enquired in reply, "anything about my thoughts? It seems to me I give

you sufficient proof of how much I think of YOU. I don't really, my dear, know what else you've to do with!"

Marian's retort on this was a stroke as to which she had supplied herself with several kinds of preparation, but

there was none the less something of an unexpected note in its promptitude. She had foreseen her sister's

general fear; but here, ominously, was the special one. "Well, your own business is of course your own

business, and you may say there's no one less in a position than I to preach to you. But, all the same, if you

wash your hands of me for ever in consequence, I won't, for this once, keep back that I don't consider you've

It was after the children's dinner, which was also their mother's, but which their aunt mostly contrived to keep

from ever becoming her own luncheon; and the two young women were still in the presence of the crumpled

table cloth, the dispersed pinafores, the scraped dishes, the lingering odour of boiled food. Kate had asked

with ceremony if she might put up a window a little, and Mrs. Condrip had replied without it that she might

do as she liked. She often received such enquiries as if they reflected in a manner on the pure essence of her

little ones. The four had retired, with much movement and noise, under imperfect (37) control of the small

Irish governess whom their aunt had hunted up for them and whose brooding resolve not to prolong so

uncrowned a martyrdom she already more than suspected. Their mother had become for Katewho took it

just for the effect of being their motherquite a different thing from the mild Marian of the past: Mr.

Condrip's widow expansively obscured that image. She was little more than a ragged relic, a plain prosaic

result of himas if she had somehow been pulled through him as through an obstinate funnel, only to be left

crumpled and useless and with nothing in her but what he accounted for. She had grown red and almost fat,

which were not happy signs of mourning; less and less like any Croy, particularly a Croy in trouble, and

sensibly like her husband's two unmarried sisters, who came to see her, in Kate's view, much too often and

stayed too long, with the consequence of inroads upon the tea and breadandbuttermatters as to which

Kate, not unconcerned with the tradesmen's books, had feelings. About them moreover Marian WAS touchy,

and her nearer relative, who observed and weighed things, noted as an oddity that she would have taken any

reflexion on them as a reflexion on herself. If that was what marriage necessarily did to you Kate Croy would

have questioned marriage. It was at any rate a grave example of what a manand such a man!might make

of a woman. She could see how the Condrip pair pressed their brother's widow on the subject of Aunt

Maudwho wasn't, after all, THEIR aunt; made her, over their interminable cups, chatter and even swagger

about Lancaster Gate, made her (38) more vulgar than it had seemed written that any Croy could possibly

become on such a subject. They laid it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gate was to be kept in sight,

and that she, Kate, was to keep it; so that, curiously, or at all events sadly, our young woman was sure of

being in her own person more permitted to them as an object of comment than they would in turn ever be

permitted to herself. The beauty of which too was that Marian didn't love them. But they were

Condripsthey had grown near the rose; they were almost like Bertie and Maudie, like Kitty and Guy. They

talked of the dead to her, which Kate never did; it being a relation in which Kate could but mutely listen. She

couldn't indeed too often say to herself that if that was what marriage did to you! It may easily be guessed

therefore that the ironic light of such reserves fell straight across the field of Marian's warning. "I don't quite

see," she answered, "where in particular it strikes you that my danger lies. I'm not conscious, I assure you, of

the least disposition to 'throw' myself anywhere. I feel that for the present I've been quite sufficiently

"You don't feel"Marian brought it all out"that you'd like to marry Merton Densher?"

Kate took a moment to meet this enquiry. "Is it your idea that if I should feel so I would be bound to give you

notice, so that you might step in and head me off? Is that your idea?" the girl asked. Then as her sister also

"I talk of him just because you don't. That you (39) never do, in spite of what I knowthat's what makes me

think of him. Or rather perhaps it's what makes me think of YOU. If you don't know by this time what I hope

for you, what I dream ofmy attachment being what it isit's no use my attempting to tell you." But

Marian had in fact warmed to her work, and Kate was sure she had discussed Mr. Densher with the Miss

Condrips. "If I name that person I suppose it's because I'm so afraid of him. If you want really to know, he

fills me with terror. If you want really to know, in fact, I dislike him as much as I dread him."

"Yes," Mrs. Condrip confessed, "I do think it dangerous; but how can I speak of him otherwise? I dare say, I

admit, that I shouldn't speak of him at all. Only I do want you for once, as I said just now, to know."

"That I should regard it," Marian promptly returned, "as far and away the worst thing that has happened to us

Marian met her with a readiness that was practically (40) pert. "To HAVE it, first. Not at any rate to go on

"We should indeed!" said Kate Croy. It was talk of a kind she loathed, but if Marian chose to be vulgar what

was one to do? It made her think of the Miss Condrips with renewed aversion. "I like the way you arrange

thingsI like what you take for granted. If it's so easy for us to marry men who want us to scatter gold, I

wonder we any of us do anything else. I don't see so many of them about, nor what interest I might ever have

for them. You live, my dear," she presently added, "in a world of vain thoughts."

"Not so much as you, Kate; for I see what I see and you can't turn it off that way." The elder sister paused

long enough for the younger's face to show, in spite of superiority, an apprehension. "I'm not talking of any

man but Aunt Maud's man, nor of any money even, if you like, but Aunt Maud's money. I'm not talking of

anything but your doing what SHE wants. You're wrong if you speak of anything that I want of you; I want

nothing but what she does. That's good enough for me!"and Marian's tone struck her companion as of the

"Your ideas are the more striking," Kate returned, "that they're the same as papa's. I had them from him,

you'll be interested to knowand with all the brilliancy you may imagineyesterday."

"And pray could you tell him more?" Marian gasped in her distress. "What in the world is he TO us? You

They faced each otherthe tears were in Marian's eyes. Kate watched them there a moment and then said: "I

had thought it well overover and over. But you needn't feel injured. I'm not going. He won't have me."

Her companion still pantedit took time to subside. "Well, i wouldn't have youwouldn't receive you at

all, I can assure youif he had made you any other answer. I do feel injuredat your having been willing.

If you were to go to papa, my dear, you'd have to stop coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a

picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently

make, could think herself masterful for making. "But if he won't take you," she continued, "he shows at least

Marian had always her views of sharpness; she was, as her sister privately commented, great on that resource.

But Kate had her refuge from irritation. "He won't take me," she simply repeated. "But he (42) believes, like

"So you WON'T?" As the girl at first said nothing her companion caught at it. "You won't, of course? I see

you won't. But I don't see why, conveniently, I shouldn't insist to you once for all on the plain truth of the

whole matter. The truth, my dear, of your duty. Do you ever think about THAT? It's the greatest duty of all."

"Oh I don't pretend to be immense, but I pretend to know more than you do of life; more even perhaps than

papa." Marian seemed to see that personage at this moment, nevertheless, in the light of a kinder irony. "Poor

She sighed it with as many condonations as her sister's ear had more than once caught in her "Dear old Aunt

Maud!" These were things that made Kate turn for the time sharply away, and she gathered herself now to go.

They were the note again of the abject; it was hard to say which of the persons in question had most shown

how little they liked her. The younger woman proposed at any rate to let discussion rest, and she believed

that, for herself, she had done so during the ten minutes elapsing, thanks to her wish not to break off short,

before she could gracefully withdraw. It then appeared, however, that Marian had been discussing still, and

there was something that at the last Kate had to take up. "Whom do you mean by Aunt Maud's young man?"

(43) "And where do you pick up such vulgar twaddle?" Kate demanded with her clear face. "How does such

She had no sooner spoken than she asked herself what had become of the grace to which she had sacrificed.

Marian certainly did little to save it, and nothing indeed was so inconsequent as her ground of complaint. She

desired her to "work" Lancaster Gate as she believed that scene of abundance could be worked; but she now

didn't see why advantage should be taken of the bloated connexion to put an affront on her own poor home.

She appeared in fact for the moment to take the position that Kate kept her in her "hole" and then heartlessly

reflected on her being in it. Yet she didn't explain how she had picked up the report on which her sister had

challenged herso that it was thus left to her sister to see in it once more a sign of the creeping curiosity of

the Miss Condrips. They lived in a deeper hole than Marian, but they kept their ear to the ground, they spent

their days in prowling, whereas Marian, in garments and shoes that seemed steadily to grow looser and larger,

never prowled. There were times when Kate wondered if the Miss Condrips were offered her by fate as a

warning for her own futureto be taken as showing her what she herself might become at forty if she let

things too recklessly go. What was expected of her by othersand by so many of themcould, all the same,

on occasion, present itself as beyond a joke; and this was just now the aspect it particularly wore. She was not

only to quarrel with Merton Densher for the pleasure of her five spectatorswith the Miss Condrips (44)

there were five; she was to set forth in pursuit of Lord Mark on some preposterous theory of the premium

attached to success. Mrs. Lowder's hand had hung out the premium, and it figured at the end of the course as

a bell that would ring, break out into public clamour, as soon as touched. Kate reflected sharply enough on

the weak points of this fond fiction, with the result at last of a certain chill for her sister's confidence; though

Mrs. Condrip still took refuge in the pleawhich was after all the great pointthat their aunt would be

munificent when their aunt should be content. The exact identity of her candidate was a detail; what was of

the essence was her conception of the kind of match it was open to her niece to make with her aid. Marian

always spoke of marriages as "matches," but that was again a detail. Mrs. Lowder's "aid" meanwhile awaited

themif not to light the way to Lord Mark, then to somebody better. Marian would put up, in fine, with

somebody better; she only wouldn't put up with somebody so much worse. Kate had once more to go through

all this before a graceful issue was reached. It was reached by her paying with the sacrifice of Mr. Densher

for her reduction of Lord Mark to the absurd. So they separated softly enough. She was to be let off hearing

about Lord Mark so long as she made it good that she wasn't underhand about any one else. She had denied

everything and every one, she reflected as she went awayand that was a relief; but it also made rather a

clean sweep of the future. The prospect put on a bareness that already gave her something in common with

Merton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the office of his newspaper, had at times, during

the day, to make up for it, a sense, or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with which he was not

infrequently to be met in different parts of the town at moments when men of business are hidden from the

public eye. More than once during the present winter's end he had deviated toward three o'clock, or toward

four, into Kensington Gardens, where he might for a while, on each occasion, have been observed to demean

himself as a person with nothing to do. He made his way indeed, for the most part, with a certain directness

over to the north side; but once that ground was reached his behaviour was noticeably wanting in point. He

moved, seemingly at random, from alley to alley; he stopped for no reason and remained idly agaze; he sat

down in a chair and then changed to a bench; after which he walked about again, only again to repeat both the

vagueness and the vivacity. Distinctly he was a man either with nothing at all to do or with ever so much to

think about; and it was not to be denied that the impression he might often thus easily make had the effect of

causing the burden of proof in certain directions to rest on him. It was a little the fault of his aspect, his

(48) He was a longish, leanish, fairish young Englishman, not unamenable, on certain sides, to

classificationas for instance by being a gentleman, by being rather specifically one of the educated, one of

the generally sound and generally civil; yet, though to that degree neither extraordinary nor abnormal, he

would have failed to play straight into an observer's hands. He was young for the House of Commons, he was

loose for the Army. He was refined, as might have been said, for the City and, quite apart from the cut of his

cloth, sceptical, it might have been felt, for the Church. On the other hand he was credulous for diplomacy, or

perhaps even for science, while he was perhaps at the same time too much in his mere senses for poetry and

yet too little in them for art. You would have got fairly near him by making out in his eyes the potential

recognition of ideas; but you would have quite fallen away again on the question of the ideas themselves. The

difficulty with Densher was that he looked vague without looking weakidle without looking empty. It was

the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of his straight hair and his

wellshaped head, never, the latter, neatly smooth, and apt into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls

upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and, supported behind by his uplifted arms and interlocked hands, place

him for unconscionable periods in communion with the ceiling, the treetops, the sky. He was in short visibly

absentminded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far; he was more a

prompt critic than a prompt follower of custom. He (49) suggested above all, however, that wondrous state of

youth in which the elements, the metals more or less precious, are so in fusion and fermentation that the

question of the final stamp, the pressure that fixes the value, must wait for comparative coolness. And it was

a mark of his interesting mixture that if he was irritable it was by a law of considerable subtletya law that

in intercourse with him it might be of profit, though not easy, to master. One of the effects of it was that he

He loitered, on the best of the relenting days, the several occasions we speak of, along the part of the Gardens

nearest to Lancaster Gate, and when, always, in due time, Kate Croy came out of her aunt's house, crossed the

road and arrived by the nearest entrance, there was a general publicity in the proceeding which made it

slightly anomalous. If their meeting was to be bold and free it might have taken place within doors; if it was

to be shy or secret it might have taken place almost anywhere better than under Mrs. Lowder's windows.

They failed indeed to remain attached to that spot; they wandered and strolled, taking in the course of more

than one of these interviews a considerable walk, or else picked out a couple of chairs under one of the great

trees and sat as much apartapart from every one elseas possible. But Kate had each time, at first, the air

of wishing to expose herself to pursuit and capture if those things were in question. She made the point that

she wasn't underhand, any more than she was vulgar; that the Gardens were charming in themselves and (50)

this use of them a matter of taste; and that, if her aunt chose to glare at her from the drawingroom or to

cause her to be tracked and overtaken, she could at least make it convenient that this should be easily done.

The fact was that the relation between these young persons abounded in such oddities as were not inaptly

symbolised by assignations that had a good deal more appearance than motive. Of the strength of the tie that

held them we shall sufficiently take the measure; but it was meanwhile almost obvious that if the great

possibility had come up for them it had done so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of the famous

law of contraries. Any deep harmony that might eventually govern them would not be the result of their

having much in commonhaving anything in fact but their affection; and would really find its explanation in

some sense, on the part of each, of being poor where the other was rich. It is nothing new indeed that

generous young persons often admire most what nature hasn't given themfrom which it would appear, after

Merton Densher had repeatedly said to himselfand from far backthat he should be a fool not to marry a

woman whose value would be in her differences; and Kate Croy, though without having quite so

philosophised, had quickly recognised in the young man a precious unlikeness. He represented what her life

had never given her and certainly, without some such aid as his, never would give her; all the high dim things

she lumped together as of the mind. It was on the side of the mind that Densher was rich for her and (51)

mysterious and strong; and he had rendered her in especial the sovereign service of making that element real.

She had had all her days to take it terribly on trust, no creature she had ever encountered having been able to

testify for it directly. Vague rumours of its existence had made their precarious way to her; but nothing had,

on the whole, struck her as more likely than that she should live and die without the chance to verify them.

The chance had comeit was an extraordinary oneon the day she first met Densher; and it was to the

girl's lasting honour that she knew on the spot what she was in presence of. That occasion indeed, for

everything that straightway flowered in it, would be worthy of high commemoration; Densher's perception

went out to meet the young woman's and quite kept pace with her own recognition. Having so often

concluded on the fact of his weakness, as he called it, for lifehis strength merely for thoughtlife, he

logically opined, was what he must somehow arrange to annex and possess. This was so much a necessity

that thought by itself only went on in the void; it was from the immediate air of life that it must draw its

breath. So the young man, ingenious but large, critical but ardent too, made out both his case and Kate Croy's.

They had originally met before her mother's deathan occasion marked for her as the last pleasure permitted

by the approach of that event; after which the dark months had interposed a screen and, for all Kate knew,

The beginningto which she often went backhad been a scene, for our young woman, of supreme (52)

brilliancy; a party given at a "gallery" hired by a hostess who fished with big nets. A Spanish dancer,

understood to be at that moment the delight of the town, an American reciter, the joy of a kindred people, an

Hungarian fiddler, the wonder of the world at largein the name of these and other attractions the company

in which Kate, by a rare privilege, found herself had been freely convoked. She lived under her mother's roof,

as she considered, obscurely, and was acquainted with few persons who entertained on that scale; but she had

had dealings with two or three connected, as appeared, with suchtwo or three through whom the stream of

hospitality, filtered or diffused, could thus now and then spread to outlying receptacles. A goodnatured lady

in fine, a friend of her mother and a relative of the lady of the gallery, had offered to take her to the party in

question and had there fortified her, further, with two or three of those introductions that, at large parties, lead

to other thingsthat had at any rate on this occasion culminated for her in conversation with a tall fair, a

slightly unbrushed and rather awkward, but on the whole a not dreary, young man. The young man had

affected her as detached, asit was indeed what he called himselfawfully at sea, as much more distinct

from what surrounded them than any one else appeared to be, and even as probably quite disposed to be

making his escape when pulled up to be placed in relation with her. He gave her his word for it indeed, this

same evening, that only their meeting had prevented his flight, but that now he saw how sorry he should have

been to miss it. This point they had (53) reached by midnight, and though for the value of such remarks

everything was in the tone, by midnight the tone was there too. She had had originally her full apprehension

of his coerced, certainly of his vague, conditionfull apprehensions often being with her immediate; then

she had had her equal consciousness that within five minutes something between them hadwell, she

couldn't call it anything but COME. It was nothing to look at or to handle, but was somehow everything to

They had found themselves regarding each other straight, and for a longer time on end than was usual even at

parties in galleries; but that in itself after all would have been a small affair for two such handsome persons. It

wasn't, in a word, simply that their eyes had met; other conscious organs, faculties, feelers had met as well,

and when Kate afterwards imaged to herself the sharp deep fact she saw it, in the oddest way, as a particular

performance. She had observed a ladder against a gardenwall and had trusted herself so to climb it as to be

able to see over into the probable garden on the other side. On reaching the top she had found herself face to

face with a gentleman engaged in a like calculation at the same moment, and the two enquirers had remained

confronted on their ladders. The great point was that for the rest of that evening they had been perchedthey

had not climbed down; and indeed during the time that followed Kate at least had had the perched feelingit

was as if she were there aloft without a retreat. A simpler expression of all this is doubtless but that they had

taken each other (54) in with interest; and without a happy hazard six months later the incident would have

closed in that account of it. The accident meanwhile had been as natural as anything in London ever is: Kate

had one afternoon found herself opposite Mr. Densher on the Underground Railway. She had entered the

train at Sloane Square to go to Queen's Road, and the carriage in which she took her place was all but full.

Densher was already in iton the other bench and at the furthest angle; she was sure of him before they had

again started. The day and the hour were darkness, there were six other persons and she had been busy

seating herself; but her consciousness had gone to him as straight as if they had come together in some bright

stretch of a desert. They had on neither part a second's hesitation; they looked across the choked compartment

exactly as if she had known he would be there and he had expected her to come in; so that, though in the

conditions they could only exchange the greeting of movements, smiles, abstentions, it would have been quite

in the key of these passages that they should have alighted for ease at the very next station. Kate was in fact

sure the very next station was the young man's true goalwhich made it clear he was going on only from the

wish to speak to her. He had to go on, for this purpose, to High Street Kensington, as it was not till then that

His chance put him however in quick possession of the seat facing her, the alertness of his capture of which

seemed to show her his impatience. It helped them moreover, with strangers on either side, little to (55) talk;

though this very restriction perhaps made such a mark for them as nothing else could have done. If the fact

that their opportunity had again come round for them could be so intensely expressed without a word, they

might very well feel on the spot that it had not come round for nothing. The extraordinary part of the matter

was that they were not in the least meeting where they had left off, but ever so much further on, and that these

added links added still another between High Street and Notting Hill Gate, and then worked between the

latter station and Queen's Road an extension really inordinate. At Notting Hill Gate Kate's righthand

neighbour descended, whereupon Densher popped straight into that seat; only there was not much gained

when a lady the next instant popped into Densher's. He could say almost nothingKate scarce knew, at

least, what he said; she was so occupied with a certainty that one of the persons opposite, a youngish man

with a single eyeglass which he kept constantly in position, had made her out from the first as visibly, as

strangely affected. If such a person made her out what then did Densher do?a question in truth sufficiently

answered when, on their reaching her station, he instantly followed her out of the train. That had been the real

beginningthe beginning of everything else; the other time, the time at the party, had been but the beginning

of THAT. Never in life before had she so let herself go; for always beforeso far as small adventures could

have been in question for herthere had been, by the vulgar measure, more to go upon. He had walked with

her to Lancaster Gate, and then she had walked with him away (56) from itfor all the world, she said to

This appearance, she was afterwards to feel, had been all in order for a relation that might precisely best be

described in the terms of the baker and the housemaid. She could say to herself that from that hour they had

kept company: that had come to represent, technically speaking, alike the range and the limit of their tie. He

had on the spot, naturally, asked leave to call upon herwhich, as a young person who wasn't really young,

who didn't pretend to be a sheltered flower, she as rationally gave. Thatshe was promptly clear about

itwas now her only possible basis; she was just the contemporary London female, highly modern,

inevitably battered, honourably free. She had of course taken her aunt straight into her confidencehad gone

through the form of asking her leave; and she subsequently remembered that though on this occasion she had

left the history of her new alliance as scant as the facts themselves, Mrs. Lowder had struck her at the time as

surprisingly mild. The occasion had been in every way full of the reminder that her hostess was deep: it was

definitely then that she had begun to ask herself what Aunt Maud was, in vulgar parlance, "up to." "You may

receive, my dear, whom you like"that was what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to people's doing as

they liked, had replied; and it bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were many

explanations, and they were all amusingamusing, that is, in the line of the sombre and brooding

amusement cultivated by Kate in her actual high (57) retreat. Merton Densher came the very next Sunday; but

Mrs. Lowder was so consistently magnanimous as to make it possible to her niece to see him alone. She saw

him, however, on the Sunday following, in order to invite him to dinner; and when, after dining, he came

againwhich he did three times, she found means to treat his visit as preponderantly to herself. Kate's

conviction that she didn't like him made that remarkable; it added to the evidence, by this time voluminous,

that she was remarkable all round. If she had been, in the way of energy, merely usual she would have kept

her dislike direct; whereas it was now as if she were seeking to know him in order to see best where to "have"

him. That was one of the reflexions made in our young woman's high retreat; she smiled from her lookout, in

the silence that was only the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds, as she caught the truth that you could easily

accept people when you wanted them so to be delivered to you. When Aunt Maud wished them dispatched it

was not to be done by deputy; it was clearly always a matter reserved for her own hand.

But what made the girl wonder most was the implication of so much diplomacy in respect to her own value.

What view might she take of her position in the light of this appearance that her companion feared so as yet

to upset her? It was as if Densher were accepted partly under the dread that if he hadn't been she would act in

resentment. Hadn't her aunt considered the danger that she would in that case have broken off, have seceded?

The danger was exaggeratedshe would have done nothing so gross; but that, (58) it would seem, was the

way Mrs. Lowder saw her and believed her to be reckoned with. What importance therefore did she really

attach to her, what strange interest could she take in their keeping on terms? Her father and her sister had

their answer to thiseven without knowing how the question struck her: they saw the lady of Lancaster Gate

as panting to make her fortune, and the explanation of that appetite was that, on the accident of a nearer view

than she had before enjoyed, she had been charmed, been dazzled. They approved, they admired in her one of

the belated fancies of rich capricious violent old womenthe more marked moreover because the result of

no plot; and they piled up the possible fruits for the person concerned. Kate knew what to think of her own

power thus to carry by storm; she saw herself as handsome, no doubt, but as hard, and felt herself as clever

but as cold; and as so much too imperfectly ambitious, futhermore [sic], that it was a pity, for a quiet life, she

couldn't decide to be either finely or stupidly indifferent. Her intelligence sometimes kept her stilltoo

stillbut her want of it was restless; so that she got the good, it seemed to her, of neither extreme. She saw

herself at present, none the less, in a situation, and even her sad disillusioned mother, dying, but with Aunt

Maud interviewing the nurse on the stairs, had not failed to remind her that it was of the essence of situations

to be, under Providence, worked. The dear woman had died in the belief that she was actually working the

Kate took one of her walks with Densher just after her visit to Mr. Croy; but most of it went, as usual, to (59)

their sitting in talk. They had under the trees by the lake the air of old friendsparticular phases of apparent

earnestness in which they might have been settling every question in their vast young world; and periods of

silence, side by side, perhaps even more, when "A long engagement!" would have been the final reading of

the signs on the part of a passer struck with them, as it was so easy to be. They would have presented

themselves thus as very old friends rather than as young persons who had met for the first time but a year

before and had spent most of the interval without contact. It was indeed for each, already, as if they were

older friends; and though the succession of their meetings might, between them, have been straightened out,

they only had a confused sense of a good many, very much alike, and a confused intention of a good many

more, as little different as possible. The desire to keep them just as they were had perhaps to do with the fact

that in spite of the presumed diagnosis of the stranger there had been for them as yet no formal, no final

understanding. Densher had at the very first pressed the question, but that, it had been easy to reply, was too

soon; so that a singular thing had afterwards happened. They had accepted their acquaintance as too short for

an engagement, but they had treated it as long enough for almost anything else, and marriage was somehow

before them like a temple without an avenue. They belonged to the temple and they met in the grounds; they

were in the stage at which grounds in general offered much scattered refreshment. But Kate had meanwhile

had so few confidants that (60) she wondered at the source of her father's suspicions. The diffusion of rumour

was of course always remarkable in London, and for Marian not lessas Aunt Maud touched neither

directlythe mystery had worked. No doubt she had been seen. Of course she had been seen. She had taken

no trouble not to be seen, and it was a thing she was clearly incapable of taking. But she had been seen

how?and what WAS there to see? She was in loveshe knew that: but it was wholly her own business,

and she had the sense of having conducted herself, of still so doing, with almost violent conformity.

"I've an ideain fact I feel surethat Aunt Maud means to write to you; and I think you had better know

it." So much as this she said to him as soon as they met, but immediately adding to it: "So as to make up your

She thought a little. "I can't do that. I should spoil it. She'll do the best for her own idea."

"Her idea, you mean, that I'm a sort of a scoundrel; or, at the best, not good enough for you?"

They were side by side again in their penny chairs, and Kate had another pause. "Not good enough for HER."

He put it as a truth rather more than as a question; but there had been plenty of truths between them that each

had contradicted. Kate, however, let this one sufficiently pass, only saying the next moment: "She has

(61) "And so have we," Densher declared. "I think, you know, we've been awfully decent."

"For ourselves, for each other, for people in general, yes. But not for HER. For her," said Kate, "we've been

monstrous. She has been giving us rope. So if she does send for you," the girl repeated, "you must know

"Well," said Kate after an instant, "her idea of that is what you'll have from her." He gave her a long look,

and whatever else people who wouldn't let her alone might have wished, for her advancement, his long looks

were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. What she felt was that, whatever might happen,

she must keep them, must make them most completely her possession; and it was already strange enough that

she reasoned, or at all events began to act, as if she might work them in with other and alien things, privately

cherish them and yet, as regards the rigour of it, pay no price. She looked it well in the face, she took it

intensely home, that they were lovers; she rejoiced to herself and, frankly, to him, in their wearing of the

name; but, distinguished creature that, in her way, she was, she took a view of this character that scarce

squared with the conventional. The character itself she insisted on as their right, taking that so for granted that

it didn't seem even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her, found himself moved to wonder at her

simplifications, her values. Life might prove difficultwas evidently going to; but meanwhile they had each

other, and (62) that was everything. This was her reasoning, but meanwhile, for HIM, each other was what

they didn't have, and it was just the point. Repeatedly, however, it was a point that, in the face of strange and

special things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross to urge. It was impossible to keep Mrs. Lowder out of

their scheme. She stood there too close to it and too solidly; it had to open a gate, at a given point, do what

they would, to take her in. And she came in, always, while they sat together rather helplessly watching her, as

in a coachandfour; she drove round their prospect as the principal lady at the circus drives round the ring,

and she stopped the coach in the middle to alight with majesty. It was our young man's sense that she was

magnificently vulgar, but yet quite that this wasn't all. It wasn't with her vulgarity that she felt his want of

means, though that might have helped her richly to embroider it; nor was it with the same infirmity that she

His want of meansof means sufficient for any one but himselfwas really the great ugliness, and was

moreover at no time more ugly for him than when it rose there, as it did seem to rise, all shameless, face to

face with the elements in Kate's life colloquially and conveniently classed by both of them as funny. He

sometimes indeed, for that matter, asked himself if these elements were as funny as the innermost fact, so

often vivid to him, of his own consciousnesshis private inability to believe he should ever be rich. His

conviction on this head was in truth quite positive and a thing by itself; he failed, after analysis, to understand

it, though he had naturally more lights on it (63) than any one else. He knew how it subsisted in spite of an

equal consciousness of his being neither mentally nor physically quite helpless, neither a dunce nor a cripple;

he knew it to be absolute, though secret, and also, strange to say, about common undertakings, not

discouraging, not prohibitive. Only now was he having to think if it were prohibitive in respect to marriage;

only now, for the first time, had he to weigh his case in scales. The scales, as he sat with Kate, often dangled

in the line of his vision; he saw them, large and black, while he talked or listened, take, in the bright air,

singular positions. Sometimes the right was down and sometimes the left; never a happy equipoiseone or

the other always kicking the beam. Thus was kept before him the question of whether it were more ignoble to

ask a woman to take her chance with you, or to accept it from your conscience that her chance could be at the

best but one of the degrees of privation; whether too, otherwise, marrying for money mightn't after all be a

smaller cause of shame than the mere dread of marrying without. Through these variations of mood and view,

nevertheless, the mark on his forehead stood clear; he saw himself remain without whether he married or not.

It was a line on which his fancy could be admirably active; the innumerable ways of making money were

beautifully present to him; he could have handled them for his newspaper as easily as he handled everything.

He was quite aware how he handled everything; it was another mark on his forehead: the pair of smudges

from the thumb of fortune, the brand on the passive fleece, dated from the primal hour and kept each other

(64) company. He wrote, as for print, with deplorable ease; since there had been nothing to stop him even at

the age of ten, so there was as little at twenty; it was part of his fate in the first place and part of the wretched

public's in the second. The innumerable ways of making money were, no doubt, at all events, what his

imagination often was busy with after he had tilted his chair and thrown back his head with his hands clasped

behind it. What would most have prolonged that attitude, moreover, was the reflexion that the ways were

ways only for others. Within the minute nowhowever this might behe was aware of a nearer view than

he had yet quite had of those circumstances on his companion's part that made least for simplicity of relation.

He saw above all how she saw them herself, for she spoke of them at present with the last frankness, telling

him of her visit to her father and giving him, in an account of her subsequent scene with her sister, an

instance of how she was perpetually reduced to patchingup, in one way or another, that unfortunate woman's

"The tune," she exclaimed, "to which we're a failure as a family!" With which he had it all again from

herand this time, as it seemed to him, more than all: the dishonour her father had brought them, his folly

and cruelty and wickedness; the wounded state of her mother, abandoned despoiled and helpless, yet, for the

management of such a home as remained to them, dreadfully unreasonable too; the extinction of her two

young brothersone, at nineteen, the eldest of the house, by typhoid fever contracted at a poisonous little

place, as they had afterwards (65) found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, the flower of the

flock, a middy on the _Britannia_, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp,

unrescued, while bathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during a holiday visit to the home

of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnatural marriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning of the other cheek to

fortune: her actual wretchedness and plaintiveness, her greasy children, her impossible claims, her odious

visitorsthese things completed the proof of the heaviness, for them all, of the hand of fate. Kate

confessedly described them with an excess of impatience; it was much of her charm for Densher that she

gave in general that turn to her descriptions, partly as if to amuse him by free and humorous colour,

partlyand that charm was the greatestas if to work off, for her own relief, her constant perception of the

incongruity of things. She had seen the general show too early and too sharply, and was so intelligent that she

knew it and allowed for that misfortune; therefore when, in talk with him, she was violent and almost

unfeminine, it was quite as if they had settled, for intercourse, on the short cut of the fantastic and the happy

language of exaggeration. It had come to be definite between them at a primary stage that, if they could have

no other straight way, the realm of thought at least was open to them. They could think whatever they liked

about whatever they wouldin other words they could say it. Saying it for each other, for each other alone,

only of course added to the taste. The implication was thereby constant that what they said when not together

had no (66) taste for them at all, and nothing could have served more to launch them, at special hours, on

their small floating island than such an assumption that they were only making believe everywhere else. Our

young man, it must be added, was conscious enough that it was Kate who profited most by this particular

play of the fact of intimacy. It always struck him she had more life than he to react from, and when she

recounted the dark disasters of her house and glanced at the hard odd offset of her present exaltationsince

as exaltation it was apparently to be consideredhe felt his own grey domestic annals make little show. It

was naturally, in all such reference, the question of her father's character that engaged him most, but her

picture of her adventure in Chirk Street gave him a sense of how little as yet that character was clear to him.

"I don't knowand I don't want to. I only know that years and years agowhen I was about

fifteensomething or other happened that made him impossible. I mean impossible for the world at large

first, and then, little by little, for mother. We of course didn't know it at the time," Kate explained, "but we

knew it later; and it was, oddly enough, my sister who first made out that he had done something. I can hear

her nowthe way, one cold black Sunday morning when, on account of an extraordinary fog, we hadn't gone

to church, she broke it to me by the schoolroom fire. I was reading a historybook by the lampwhen we

didn't go to church we had to read historybooksand I suddenly heard her say, out of (67) the fog, which

was in the room, and apropos of nothing: 'Papa has done something wicked.' And the curious thing was that I

believed it on the spot and have believed it ever since, though she could tell me nothing moreneither what

was the wickedness, nor how she knew, nor what would happen to him, nor anything else about it. We had

our sense always that all sorts of things HAD happened, were all the while happening, to him; so that when

Marian only said she was sure, tremendously sure, that she had made it out for herself, but that that was

enough, I took her word for itit seemed somehow so natural. We were not, however, to ask

motherwhich made it more natural still, and I said never a word. But mother, strangely enough, spoke of it

to me, in time, of her own accordthis was very much later on. He hadn't been with us for ever so long, but

we were used to that. She must have had some fear, some conviction that I had an idea, some idea of her own

that it was the best thing to do. She came out as abruptly as Marian had done: 'If you hear anything against

your fatheranything I mean except that he's odious and vileremember it's perfectly false.' That was the

way I knew it was true, though I recall my saying to her then that I of course knew it wasn't. She might have

told me it was true, and yet have trusted me to contradict fiercely enough any accusation of him that I should

meetto contradict it much more fiercely and effectively, I think, than she would have done herself. As it

happens, however," the girl went on, "I've never had occasion, and I've been conscious of it with a sort of

surprise. It has made the world seem at times more (68) decent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That

has been a part of the silence, the silence that surrounds him, the silence that, for the world, has washed him

out. He doesn't exist for people. And yet I'm as sure as ever. In fact, though I know no more than I did then,

I'm more sure. And that," she wound up, "is what I sit here and tell you about my own father. If you don't call

"It satisfies me beautifully," Densher returned, "but it doesn't, my dear child, very greatly enlighten me. You

don't, you know, really tell me anything. It's so vague that what am I to think but that you may very well be

"Well then," said Kate, "he has done some particular thing. It's knownonly, thank God, not to us. But it has

been the end of him. YOU could doubtless find out with a little trouble. You can ask about."

Densher for a moment said nothing; but the next moment he made it up. "I wouldn't find out for the world,

"My father's dishonour." Then she sounded for him, but more deeply than ever yet, her note of proud still

She had to take from him again, on this, one of his (69) long looks, and she took it to its deepest, its headiest

dregs. "I shall ask you, for the great thing in your life," he said, "to depend on ME a little more." After which,

"They've dropped HIM. Of that I'm sure. It ought to do for you. I offered him," the girl immediately

continued"and it was for that I went to himto come and be with him, make a home for him so far as is

Densher took this in with marked but generous wonder. "You offered him'impossible' as you describe him

to meto live with him and share his disadvantages?" The young man saw for the moment only the high

"Because it strikes you as being brave for him?" She wouldn't in the least have this. "It wasn't courageit

He had his air, so constant at this stage, as of her giving him finer things than any one to think about. "Escape

"No; I spoke to him of you, told himor what amounted to itthat I would bring you, if he would allow it,

"Won't hear of it on any terms. He won't help me, (70) won't save me, won't hold out a finger to me," Kate

went on. "He simply wriggles away, in his inimitable manner, and throws me back."

But she spoke again as with the sole vision of the whole scene she had evoked. "It's a pity, because you'd like

him. He's wonderfulhe's charming." Her companion gave one of the laughs that showed again how

inveterately he felt in her tone something that banished the talk of other women, so far as he knew other

women, to the dull desert of the conventional, and she had already continued. "He would make himself

"Well, he likes to please," the girl explained"personally. I've seen it make him wonderful. He would

appreciate you and be clever with you. It's to ME he objectsthat is as to my liking you."

"Heaven be praised then," cried Densher, "that you like me enough for the objection!"

But she met it after an instant with some inconsequence. "I don't. I offered to give you up, if necessary, to go

to him. But it made no difference, and that's what I mean," she pursued, "by his declining me on any terms.

"I wished to escape Aunt Maud. But he insists that it's through her and through her only that I may help him;

just as Marian insists that it's through her, (71) and through her only, that I can help HER. That's what I

"I would in a moment if she'd have me. That's all my virtuea narrow little family feeling. I've a small

stupid pietyI don't know what to call it." Kate bravely stuck to that; she made it out. "Sometimes, alone,

I've to smother my shrieks when I think of my poor mother. She went through thingsthey pulled her down;

I know what they were nowI didn't then, for I was a pig; and my position, compared with hers, is an

insolence of success. That's what Marian keeps before me; that's what papa himself, as I say, so inimitably

does. My position's a value, a great value, for them both"she followed and followed. Lucid and ironic, she

Everything between our young couple moved today, in spite of their pauses, their margin, to a quicker

measurethe quickness and anxiety playing lightninglike in the sultriness. Densher watched, decidedly, as

"Of course it holds me. It's a perpetual sound in my ears. It makes me ask myself if I've any right to personal

happiness, any right to anything but to be as rich and overflowing, as smart and shining, as I can be made."

(72) Densher had a pause. "Oh you might by good luck have the personal happiness too."

Her immediate answer to this was a silence like his own; after which she gave him straight in the face, but

It took him another moment; then he was also quiet and simple. "Will you settle it by our being married

"Let us wait to arrange it," Kate presently replied, "till after you've seen her."

They were talking, for the time, with the strangest mixture of deliberation and directness, and nothing could

have been more in the tone of it than the way she at last said: "You're afraid of her yourself."

He gave rather a glazed smile. "For young persons of a great distinction and a very high spirit we're a

"Yes," she took it straight up; "we're hideously intelligent. But there's fun in it too. We must get our fun

where we can. I think," she added, and for that matter not without courage, "our relation's quite beautiful. It's

It made him break into a laugh that had more freedom than his smile. "How you must be afraid you'll chuck

"No, no, THAT would be vulgar. But of course," she admitted, "I do see my danger of doing something

(73) "I SHAN'T sacrifice you. Don't cry out till you're hurt. I shall sacrifice nobody and nothing, and that's

just my situation, that I want and that I shall try for everything. That," she wound up, "is how I see myself

As soon as he had permitted himself this qualification of the unfortunate persons she so perversely cherished

he repented of his roughnessand partly because he expected a flash from her. But it was one of her finest

sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mild glow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more that

Kate for a moment said nothing. "After all I never asked her; never, when our troubles were at the worst,

appealed to her nor went near her. She fixed upon me herself, settled on me with her wonderful gilded

"Call it an eaglewith a gilded beak as well, and with wings for great flights. If she's a thing of the air, in

shortsay at once a great seamed silk balloonI never myself got into her car. I was her choice."

(74) It had really, her sketch of the affair, a high colour and a great style; at all of which he gazed a minute as

"Wonders!" And, speaking it loud, she stood straight up. "Everything. There it is."

Yes, there it was, and as she remained before him he continued to face it. "So that what you mean is that I'm

His eyes had followed her at this time quite long enough, before he overtook her, to make out more than ever

in the poise of her head, the pride of her stephe didn't know what best to call ita part at least of Mrs.

Lowder's reasons. He consciously winced while he figured his presenting himself as a reason opposed to

these; though at the same moment, with the source of Aunt Maud's inspiration thus before him, he was

prepared to conform, by almost any abject attitude or profitable compromise, to his companion's easy

injunction. He would do as SHE likedhis own liking might come off as it would. He would help her to the

utmost of his power; for, all the rest of this day and the next, her easy injunction, tossed off that way as she

turned her beautiful back, was like the crack of a great whip in the blue air, the high element in which Mrs.

Lowder hung. He wouldn't grovel perhapshe wasn't quite ready for that; but he would be patient,

ridiculous, reasonable, unreasonable, and above all deeply diplomatic. He would be clever with all his

clevernesswhich he now shook hard, as he sometimes shook his poor dear shabby old watch, to start it up

again. It wasn't, thank goodness, as if there weren't plenty of that "factor" (to use one of his great

newspaperwords), and with what they could muster between them it would be little to the credit of their star,

however pale, that defeat and surrendersurrender so early, so immediateshould (76) have to ensue. It

was not indeed that he thought of that disaster as at the worst a direct sacrifice of their possibilities: he

imaged itwhich was enoughas some proved vanity, some exposed fatuity in the idea of bringing Mrs.

Lowder round. When shortly afterwards, in this lady's vast drawingroomthe apartments at Lancaster Gate

had struck him from the first as of prodigious extenthe awaited her, at her request, conveyed in a

"replypaid" telegram, his theory was that of their still clinging to their idea, though with a sense of the

He had the place for a long timeit seemed to him a quarter of an hourto himself; and while Aunt Maud

kept him and kept him, while observation and reflexion crowded on him, he asked himself what was to be

expected of a person who could treat one like that. The visit, the hour were of her own proposing, so that her

delay, no doubt, was but part of a general plan of putting him to inconvenience. As he walked to and fro,

however, taking in the message of her massive florid furniture, the immense expression of her signs and

symbols, he had as little doubt of the inconvenience he was prepared to suffer. He found himself even facing

the thought that he had nothing to fall back on, and that that was as great an humiliation in a good cause as a

proud man could desire. It hadn't yet been so distinct to him that he made no showliterally not the smallest;

so complete a show seemed made there all about him; so almost abnormally affirmative, so aggressively

erect, were the huge heavy objects that syllabled his hostess's story. "When all's (77) said and done, you

know, she's colossally vulgar"he had once all but noted that of her to her niece; only just keeping it back at

the last, keeping it to himself with all its danger about it. It mattered because it bore so directly, and he at all

events quite felt it a thing that Kate herself would some day bring out to him. It bore directly at present, and

really all the more that somehow, strangely, it didn't in the least characterise the poor woman as dull or stale.

She was vulgar with freshness, almost with beauty, since there was beauty, to a degree, in the play of so big

and bold a temperament. She was in fine quite the largest possible quantity to deal with; and he was in the

cage of the lioness without his whipthe whip, in a word, of a supply of proper retorts. He had no retort but

that he loved the girlwhich in such a house as that was painfully cheap. Kate had mentioned to him more

than once that her aunt was Passionate, speaking of it as a kind of offset and uttering it as with a capital P,

marking it as something that he might, that he in fact ought to, turn about in some way to their advantage. He

wondered at this hour to what advantage he could turn it; but the case grew less simple the longer he waited.

His slow march to and fro seemed to give him the very measure; as he paced and paced the distance it

became the desert of his poverty; at the sight of which expanse moreover he could pretend to himself as little

as before that the desert looked redeemable. Lancaster Gate looked richthat was all the effect; which it was

unthinkable that any state of his own should (78) ever remotely resemble. He read more vividly, more

critically, as has been hinted, the appearances about him; and they did nothing so much as make him wonder

at his aesthetic reaction. He hadn't knownand in spite of Kate's repeated reference to her own rebellions of

tastethat he should "mind" so much how an independent lady might decorate her house. It was the

language of the house itself that spoke to him, writing out for him with surpassing breadth and freedom the

associations and conceptions, the ideals and possibilities of the mistress. Never, he felt sure, had he seen so

many things so unanimously uglyoperatively, ominously so cruel. He was glad to have found this last

name for the whole character; "cruel" somehow played into the subject for an articlean article that his

impression put straight into his mind. He would write about the heavy horrors that could still flourish, that

lifted their undiminished heads, in an age so proud of its short way with false gods; and it would be funny if

what he should have got from Mrs. Lowder were to prove after all but a small amount of copy. Yet the great

thing, really the dark thing, was that, even while he thought of the quick column he might add up, he felt it

less easy to laugh at the heavy horrors than to quail before them. He couldn't describe and dismiss them

collectively, call them either MidVictorian or Earlynot being certain they were rangeable under one

rubric. It was only manifest they were splendid and were furthermore conclusively British. They constituted

an order and abounded in rare materialprecious woods, metals, stuffs, stones. He had never dreamed of

anything so fringed and (79) scalloped, so buttoned and corded, drawn everywhere so tight and curled

everywhere so thick. He had never dreamed of so much gilt and glass, so much satin and plush, so much

rosewood and marble and malachite. But it was above all the solid forms, the wasted finish, the misguided

cost, the general attestation of morality and money, a good conscience and a big balance. These things finally

represented for him a portentous negation of his own world of thoughtof which, for that matter, in

presence of them, he became as for the first time hopelessly aware. They revealed it to him by their merciless

His interview with Aunt Maud, none the less, took by no means the turn he had expected. Passionate though

her nature, no doubt, Mrs. Lowder on this occasion neither threatened nor appealed. Her arms of aggression,

her weapons of defence, were presumably close at hand, but she left them untouched and unmentioned, and

was in fact so bland that he properly perceived only afterwards how adroit she had been. He properly

perceived something else as well, which complicated his case; he shouldn't have known what to call it if he

hadn't called it her really imprudent good nature. Her blandness, in other words, wasn't mere policyhe

wasn't dangerous enough for policy: it was the result, he could see, of her fairly liking him a little. From the

moment she did that she herself became more interesting, and who knew what might happen should he take

to liking HER? Well, it was a risk he naturally must face. She fought him at any rate but with one hand, with

a few loose grains of stray powder. He recognised at the end of ten minutes, (80) and even without her

explaining it, that if she had made him wait it hadn't been to wound him; they had by that time almost directly

met on the fact of her intention. She had wanted him to think for himself of what she proposed to say to

himnot having otherwise announced it; wanted to let it come home to him on the spot, as she had shrewdly

believed it would. Her first question, on appearing, had practically been as to whether he hadn't taken her

hint, and this enquiry assumed so many things that it immediately made discussion frank and large. He knew,

with the question put, that the hint was just what he HAD taken; knew that she had made him quickly forgive

her the display of her power; knew that if he didn't take care he should understand her, and the strength of her

purpose, to say nothing of that of her imagination, nothing of the length of her purse, only too well. Yet he

pulled himself up with the thought too that he wasn't going to be afraid of understanding her; he was just

going to understand and understand without detriment to the feeblest, even, of his passions. The play of one's

mind gave one away, at the best, dreadfully, in action, in the need for action, where simplicity was all; but

when one couldn't prevent it the thing was to make it complete. There would never be mistakes but for the

original fun of mistakes. What he must USE his fatal intelligence for was to resist. Mrs. Lowder meanwhile

It was after she had begun her statement of her own idea about Kate that he began on his side to reflect

thatwith her manner of offering it as really sufficient if he would take the trouble to embrace itshe (81)

couldn't half hate him. That was all, positively, she seemed to show herself for the time as attempting; clearly,

if she did her intention justice she would have nothing more disagreeable to do. "If I hadn't been ready to go

very much further, you understand, I wouldn't have gone so far. I don't care what you repeat to herthe

more you repeat to her perhaps the better; and at any rate there's nothing she doesn't already know. I don't say

it for her; I say it for youwhen I want to reach my niece I know how to do it straight." So Aunt Maud

delivered herselfas with homely benevolence, in the simplest but the clearest terms; virtually conveying

that, though a word to the wise was doubtless, in spite of the adage, NOT always enough, a word to the good

could never fail to be. The sense our young man read into her words was that she liked him because he was

goodwas really by her measure good enough: good enough that is to give up her niece for her and go his

way in peace. But WAS he good enoughby his own measure? He fairly wondered, while she more fully

expressed herself, if it might be his doom to prove so. "She's the finest possible creatureof course you

flatter yourself you know it. But I know it quite as well as you possibly canby which I mean a good deal

better yet; and the tune to which I'm ready to prove my faith compares favourably enough, I think, with

anything you can do. I don't say it because she's my niecethat's nothing to me: I might have had fifty

nieces, and I wouldn't have brought one of them to this place if I hadn't found her to my taste. I don't say I

wouldn't have done something else, but I wouldn't have put up with (82) her presence. Kate's presence, by

good fortune, I marked early. Kate's presenceunluckily for YOUis everything I could possibly wish.

Kate's presence is, in short, as fine as you know, and I've been keeping it for the comfort of my declining

years. I've watched it long; I've been saving it up and letting it, as you say of investments, appreciate; and you

may judge whether, now it has begun to pay so, I'm likely to consent to treat for it with any but a high bidder.

It was an oddity of Mrs. Lowder's that her face in speech was like a lighted window at night, but that silence

immediately drew the curtain. The occasion for reply allowed by her silence was never easy to take, yet she

was still less easy to interrupt. The great glaze of her surface, at all events, gave her visitor no present help. "I

didn't ask you to come to hear what it isn'tI asked you to come to hear what it IS."

His hostess went on as if his contribution to the subject were barely relevant. "I want to see her high, high

"Ah you naturally want to marry her to a duke and are eager to smooth away any hitch."

She gave him so, on this, the mere effect of the drawn blind that it quite forced him at first into the sense,

possibly just, of his having shown for flippant, perhaps even for low. He had been looked at so, in (83)

blighted moments of presumptuous youth, by big cold public men, but never, so far as he could recall, by any

private lady. More than anything yet it gave him the measure of his companion's subtlety, and thereby of

Kate's possible career. "Don't be TOO impossible!"he feared from his friend, for a moment, some such

answer as that; and then felt, as she spoke otherwise, as if she were letting him off easily. "I want her to

marry a great man." That was all; but, more and more, it was enough; and if it hadn't been her next words

They sat for a little face to face upon it, and he was conscious of something deeper still, of something she

wished him to understand if he only would. To that extent she did appealappealed to the intelligence she

desired to show she believed him to possess. He was meanwhile, at all events, not the man wholly to fail of

comprehension. "Of course I'm aware how little I can answer to any fond proud dream. You've a viewa

grand one; into which I perfectly enter. I thoroughly understand what I'm not, and I'm much obliged to you

for not reminding me of it in any rougher way." She said nothingshe kept that up; it might even have been

to let him go further, if he was capable of it, in the way of poorness of spirit. It was one of those cases in

which a man couldn't show, if he showed at all, save for poor; unless indeed he preferred to show for asinine.

It was the plain truth: he WASon Mrs. Lowder's basis, the only one in questiona very small quantity,

and he did know, damnably, what made quantities large. He desired to (84) be perfectly simple, yet in the

midst of that effort a deeper apprehension throbbed. Aunt Maud clearly conveyed it, though he couldn't later

on have said how. "You don't really matter, I believe, so much as you think, and I'm not going to make you a

martyr by banishing you. Your performances with Kate in the Park are ridiculous so far as they're meant as

consideration for me; and I had much rather see you myselfsince you're, in your way, my dear young man,

delightfuland arrange with you, count with you, as I easily, as I perfectly should. Do you suppose me so

stupid as to quarrel with you if it's not really necessary? It won'tit would be too absurd!BE necessary. I

can bite your head off any day, any day I really open my mouth; and I'm dealing with you now, seeand

successfully judgewithout opening it. I do things handsomely all roundI place you in the presence of the

plan with which, from the moment it's a case of taking you seriously, you're incompatible. Come then as near

it as you like, walk all round itdon't be afraid you'll hurt it!and live on with it before you."

He afterwards felt that if she hadn't absolutely phrased all this it was because she so soon made him out as

going with her far enough. He was so pleasantly affected by her asking no promise of him, her not proposing

he should pay for her indulgence by his word of honour not to interfere, that he gave her a kind of general

assurance of esteem. Immediately afterwards then he was to speak of these things to Kate, and what by that

time came back to him first of all was the way he had said to herhe mentioned it (85) to the girlvery

much as one of a pair of lovers says in a rupture by mutual consent: "I hope immensely of course that you'll

always regard me as a friend." This had perhaps been going farhe submitted it all to Kate; but really there

had been so much in it that it was to be looked at, as they might say, wholly in its own light. Other things

than those we have presented had come up before the close of his scene with Aunt Maud, but this matter of

her not treating him as a peril of the first order easily predominated. There was moreover plenty to talk about

on the occasion of his subsequent passage with our young woman, it having been put to him abruptly, the

night before, that he might give himself a lift and do his newspaper a serviceso flatteringly was the case

expressedby going for fifteen or twenty weeks to America. The idea of a series of letters from the United

States from the strictly social point of view had for some time been nursed in the inner sanctuary at whose

door he sat, and the moment was now deemed happy for letting it loose. The imprisoned thought had, in a

word, on the opening of the door, flown straight out into Densher's face, or perched at least on his shoulder,

making him look up in surprise from his mere inky officetable. His account of the matter to Kate was that

he couldn't refusenot being in a position as yet to refuse anything; but that his being chosen for such an

errand confounded his sense of proportion. He was definite as to his scarce knowing how to measure the

honour, which struck him as equivocal; he hadn't quite supposed himself the man for the class of job. This

confused consciousness, he intimated, (86) he had promptly enough betrayed to his manager; with the effect,

however, of seeing the question surprisingly clear up. What it came to was that the sort of twaddle that wasn't

in his chords was, unexpectedly, just what they happened this time not to want. They wanted his letters, for

queer reasons, about as good as he could let them come; he was to play his own little tune and not be afraid:

It would have been the whole, that is, had there not been a sharper one still in the circumstance that he was to

start at once. His mission, as they called it at the office, would probably be over by the end of June, which

was desirable; but to bring that about he must now not lose a week; his enquiries, he understood, were to

cover the whole ground, and there were reasons of statereasons operating at the seat of empire in Fleet

Streetwhy the nail should be struck on the head. Densher made no secret to Kate of his having asked for a

day to decide; and his account of that matter was that he felt he owed it to her to speak to her first. She

assured him on this that nothing so much as that scruple had yet shown her how they were bound together:

she was clearly proud of his letting a thing of such importance depend on her, but she was clearer still as to

his instant duty. She rejoiced in his prospect and urged him to his task; she should miss him too

dreadfullyof course she should miss him; but she made so little of it that she spoke with jubilation of what

he would see and would do. She made so much of this last quantity that he laughed at her innocence, though

also with scarce the (87) heart to give her the real size of his drop in the daily bucket. He was struck at the

same time with her happy grasp of what had really occurred in Fleet Streetall the more that it was his own

final reading. He was to pull the subject upthat was just what they wanted; and it would take more than all

the United States together, visit them each as he might, to let HIM down. It was just because he didn't nose

about and babble, because he wasn't the usual gossipmonger, that they had picked him out. It was a branch

of their correspondence with which they evidently wished a new tone associated, such a tone as, from now

"How you ought indeed, when you understand so well, to be a journalist's wife!" Densher exclaimed in

But she was almost impatient of the praise. "What do you expect one NOT to understand when one cares for

"Yes," she assented; "it fairly redeems my stupidity. I SHALL, with a chance to show it," she added, "have

She spoke of the future this time as so little contingent that he felt a queerness of conscience in making her

the report that he presently arrived at on what had passed for him with the real arbiter of their destiny. The

way for that had been blocked a little by his news from Fleet Street; but in the crucible of (88) their happy

discussion this element soon melted into the other, and in the mixture that ensued the parts were not to be

distinguished. The young man moreover, before taking his leave, was to see why Kate had spoken with a

wisdom indifferent to that, and was to come to the vision by a devious way that deepened the final cheer.

Their faces were turned to the illumined quarter as soon as he had answered her question on the score of their

being to appearance able to play patience, a prodigious game of patience, with success. It was for the

possibility of the appearance that she had a few days before so earnestly pressed him to see her aunt; and if

after his hour with that lady it had not struck Densher that he had seen her to the happiest purpose the poor

"It IS everything; everything SHE thinks it. It's the probabilityI mean as Mrs. Lowder measures

probabilitythat I may be prevented from becoming a complication for her by some arrangement, ANY

arrangement, through which you shall see me often and easily. She's sure of my want of money, and that

gives her time. She believes in my having a certain amount of delicacy, in my wishing to better my state

before I put the pistol to your head in respect to sharing it. The time this will take figures for her as the time

that will help her if she doesn't spoil her chance by treating me badly. She doesn't at all wish moreover,"

Densher went on, "to treat me badly, for I believe, upon my honour, odd as it may sound to you, (89) that she

personally rather likes me and that if you weren't in question I might almost become her pet young man. She

doesn't disparage intellect and culturequite the contrary; she wants them to adorn her board and be

associated with her name; and I'm sure it has sometimes cost her a real pang that I should be so desirable, at

once, and so impossible." He paused a moment, and his companion then saw how strange a smile was in his

facea smile as strange even as the adjunct in her own of this informing vision. "I quite suspect her of

believing that, if the truth were known, she likes me literally better thandeep downyou yourself do:

wherefore she does me the honour to think I may be safely left to kill my own cause. There, as I say, comes

in her margin. I'm not the sort of stuff of romance that wears, that washes, that survives use, that resists

familiarity. Once in any degree admit that, and your pride and prejudice will take care of the rest!the pride

fed full, meanwhile, by the system she means to practise with you, and the prejudice excited by the

comparisons she'll enable you to make, from which I shall come off badly. She likes me, but she'll never like

me so much as when she has succeeded a little better in making me look wretched. For then YOU'LL like me

Kate showed for this evocation a due interest, but no alarm; and it was a little as if to pay his tender cynicism

back in kind that she after an instant replied: "I see, I seewhat an immense affair she must think me! One

(90) "I think you'll make no mistake," said Densher, "in letting it go as deep as it will."

He had given her indeed, she made no scruple of showing, plenty to amuse herself with. "Her facing the

music, her making you boldly as welcome as you saythat's an awfully big theory, you know, and worthy of

all the other big things that in one's acquaintance with people give her a place so apart."

"Oh she's grand," the young man allowed; "she's on the scale altogether of the car of Juggernautwhich was

a kind of image that came to me yesterday while I waited for her at Lancaster Gate. The things in your

drawingroom there were like the forms of the strange idols, the mystic excrescences, with which one may

"Yes, aren't they?" the girl returned; and they had, over all that aspect of their wonderful lady, one of those

deep and free interchanges that made everything but confidence a false note for them. There were

complications, there were questions; but they were so much more together than they were anything else. Kate

uttered for a while no word of refutation of Aunt Maud's "big" diplomacy, and they left it there, as they

would have left any other fine product, for a monument to her powers. But, Densher related further, he had

had in other respects too the car of Juggernaut to face; he omitted nothing from his account of his visit, least

of all the way Aunt Maud had frankly at lastthough indeed only under artful pressurefallen foul of his

very type, his want of the right marks, his foreign accidents, his queer antecedents. She had (91) told him he

was but half a Briton, which, he granted Kate, would have been dreadful if he hadn't so let himself in for it.

"I was really curious, you see," he explained, "to find out from her what sort of queer creature, what sort of

social anomaly, in the light of such conventions as hers, such an education as mine makes one pass for."

"Oh," he laughed, "I like her so much; and then, for a man of my trade, her views, her spirit, are essentially a

thing to get hold of: they belong to the great public mind that we meet at every turn and that we must keep

"Ah yes, we must please her personally!" his companion echoed; and the words may represent all their

definite recognition, at the time, of Densher's politic gain. They had in fact between this and his start for New

York many matters to handle, and the question he now touched upon came up for Kate above all. She looked

at him as if he had really told her aunt more of his immediate personal story than he had ever told herself.

This, if it had been so, was an accident, and it perched him there with her for half an hour, like a cicerone and

his victim on a towertop, before as much of the bird'seye view of his early years abroad, his migratory

parents, his Swiss schools, his German university, as she had easy attention for. A man, he intimated, a man

of their world, would have spotted him straight as to many of these points; (92) a man of their world, so far as

they had a world, would have been through the English mill. But it was none the less charming to make his

confession to a woman; women had in fact for such differences blessedly more imagination and blessedly

more sympathy. Kate showed at present as much of both as his case could require; when she had had it from

beginning to end she declared that she now made out more than ever yet what she loved him for. She had

herself, as a child, lived with some continuity in the world across the Channel, coming home again still a

child; and had participated after that, in her teens, in her mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, to

Florence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts at economy from which there stuck to herthough in

general coldly expressed, through the instinctive avoidance of cheap rapturesthe religion of foreign things.

When it was revealed to her how many more foreign things were in Merton Densher than he had hitherto

taken the trouble to catalogue, she almost faced him as if he were a map of the continent or a handsome

present of a delightful new "Murray." He hadn't meant to swagger, he had rather meant to plead, though with

Mrs. Lowder he had meant also a little to explain. His father had been, in strange countries, in twenty

settlements of the English, British chaplain, resident or occasional, and had had for years the unusual luck of

never wanting a billet. His career abroad had therefore been unbroken, and as his stipend had never been

great he had educated his children, at the smallest cost, in the schools nearest, which was also a saving of

railwayfares. Densher's (93) mother, it further appeared, had practised on her side a distinguished industry,

to the success of whichso far as success ever crowned itthis period of exile had much contributed: she

copied, patient lady, famous pictures in great museums, having begun with a happy natural gift and taking in

betimes the scale of her opportunity. Copyists abroad of course swarmed, but Mrs. Densher had had a sense

and a hand of her own, had arrived at a perfection that persuaded, that even deceived, and that made the

"placing" of her work blissfully usual. Her son, who had lost her, held her image sacred, and the effect of his

telling Kate all about her, as well as about other matters until then mixed and dim, was to render his history

rich, his sources full, his outline anything but common. He had come round, he had come back, he insisted

abundantly, to being a Briton: his Cambridge years, his happy connexion, as it had proved, with his father's

college, amply certified to that, to say nothing of his subsequent plunge into London, which filled up the

measure. But brave enough though his descent to English earth, he had passed, by the way, through zones of

air that had left their ruffle on his wingshe had been exposed to initiations indelible. Something had

When Kate Croy said to him as much he besought her not to insist, declaring that this indeed was what was

gravely the matter with him, that he had been but too probably spoiled for native, for insular use. On which,

not unnaturally, she insisted the more, assuring him, without mitigation, that if he was various (94) and

complicated, complicated by wit and taste, she wouldn't for the world have had him more helpless; so that he

was driven in the end to accuse her of putting the dreadful truth to him in the hollow guise of flattery. She

was making him out as all abnormal in order that she might eventually find him impossible, and since she

could make it out but with his aid she had to bribe him by feigned delight to help her. If her last word for him

in the connexion was that the way he saw himself was just a precious proof the more of his having tasted of

the tree and being thereby prepared to assist her to eat, this gives the happy tone of their whole talk, the

measure of the flight of time in the near presence of his settled departure. Kate showed, however, that she

was to be more literally taken when she spoke of the relief Aunt Maud would draw from the prospect of his

His friend weighed his objection. "Your idea is that she likes you so much that she'll even go so far as to

Well, he saw it in their constant comprehensive way. "Since what she builds on is the gradual process of your

alienation, she may take the view that the process constantly requires me. Mustn't I be there to keep it going?

He went on with that fantasy, but at this point Kate ceased to attend. He saw after a little that she had been

following some thought of her own, and he had been feeling the growth of something determinant even

through the extravagance of much of the pleasantry, (95) the warm transparent irony, into which their livelier

intimacy kept plunging like a confident swimmer. Suddenly she said to him with extraordinary beauty: "I

The beauty was in everything, and he could have separated nothingcouldn't have thought of her face as

distinct from the whole joy. Yet her face had a new light. "And I pledge youI call God to witness!every

spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life." That was all, for the moment, but it was enough, and it

was almost as quiet as if it were nothing. They were in the open air, in an alley of the Gardens; the great

space, which seemed to arch just then higher and spread wider for them, threw them back into deep

concentration. They moved by a common instinct to a spot, within sight, that struck them as fairly

sequestered, and there, before their time together was spent, they had extorted from concentration every

advance it could make them. They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnised, so

far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement

to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other. They were to leave the place accordingly an

affianced couple, but before they left it other things still had passed. Densher had declared his horror of

bringing to a premature end her happy relation with her aunt; and they had worked round together to a high

level of discretion. Kate's free profession was that she wished not to deprive HIM of Mrs. Lowder's

countenance, which in the long run she was convinced he would continue to enjoy; and (96) as by a blest turn

Aunt Maud had demanded of him no promise that would tie his hands they should be able to propitiate their

star in their own way and yet remain loyal. One difficulty alone stood out, which Densher named.

"Of course it will never dowe must remember thatfrom the moment you allow her to found hopes of

you for any one else in particular. So long as her view is content to remain as general as at present appears I

don't see that we deceive her. At a given hour, you see, she must be undeceived: the only thing therefore is to

be ready for the hour and to face it. Only, after all, in that case," the young man observed, "one doesn't quite

"What she'll have got from US?" Kate put it with a smile. "What she'll have got from us," the girl went on, "is

her own affairit's for HER to measure. I asked her for nothing," she added; "I never put myself upon her.

She must take her risks, and she surely understands them. What we shall have got from her is what we've

already spoken of," Kate further explained; "it's that we shall have gained time. And so, for that matter, will

Densher gazed a little at all this clearness; his gaze was not at the present hour into romantic obscurity. "Yes;

no doubt, in our particular situation, time's everything. And then there's the joy of it."

"Not so much perhaps of our secret in itself, but of what's represented and, as we must somehow feel, secured

to us and made deeper and closer by it." And (97) his fine face, relaxed into happiness, covered her with all

"So gone. So extremely gone. However," he smiled, "we shall go a good deal further." Her answer to which

was only the softness of her silencea silence that looked out for them both at the far reach of their prospect.

This was immense, and they thus took final possession of it. They were practically united and splendidly

strong; but there were other thingsthings they were precisely strong enough to be able successfully to

count with and safely to allow for; in consequence of which they would for the present, subject to some better

reason, keep their understanding to themselves. It was not indeed however till after one more observation of

Densher's that they felt the question completely straightened out. "The only thing of course is that she may

Kate considered. "Ask me where, on my honour, we are? She may, naturally; but I doubt if in fact she will.

While you're away she'll make the most of that drop of the tension. She'll leave me alone."

"Very, very, very manymore than ever; and you know what that is! And then," Densher added, "there'll be

He looked at her a moment. "Do you think then (98) I had best address you elsewhere?" After which, before

she could quite answer, he added with some emphasis: "I'd rather not, you know. It's straighter."

She might again have just waited. "Of course it's straighter. Don't be afraid I shan't be straight. Address me,"

she continued, "where you like. I shall be proud enough of its being known you write to me."

He turned it over for the last clearness. "Even at the risk of its really bringing down the inquisition?"

Well, the last clearness now filled her. "I'm not afraid of the inquisition. If she asks if there's anything definite

"That I love you as I shall never in my life love any one else, and that she can make what she likes of that."

She said it out so splendidly that it was like a new profession of faith, the fulness of a tide breaking through;

and the effect of that in turn was to make her companion meet her with such eyes that she had time again

"Well then," said Densher, "we shall have had our particular joy. But what I feel is," he candidly added, "that,

by an idea of her own, her superior policy, she WON'T ask me. She'll let me off. I shan't have to lie to her."

But it was oddly, the very next moment, as if he had (99) perhaps been a shade too candid. His discrimination

seemed to mark a possible, a natural reality, a reality not wholly disallowed by the account the girl had just

given of her own intention. There WAS a difference in the aireven if none other than the supposedly usual

difference in truth between man and woman; and it was almost as if the sense of this provoked her. She

seemed to cast about an instant, and then she went back a little resentfully to something she had suffered to

pass a minute before. She appeared to take up rather more seriously than she need the joke about her freedom

to deceive. Yet she did this too in a beautiful way. "Men are too stupideven you. You didn't understand

just now why, if I post my letters myself, it won't be for anything so vulgar as to hide them."

"Yes; but you didn't, you don't, understand what the pleasure may be. There are refinements!" she more

patiently dropped. "I mean of consciousness, of sensation, of appreciation," she went on. "No," she sadly

insisted"men DON'T know. They know in such matters almost nothing but what women show them."

This was one of the speeches, frequent in her, that, liberally, joyfully, intensely adopted and, in itself, as

might be, embraced, drew him again as close to her, and held him as long, as their conditions permitted.

The two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season, had been warned that their design was unconsidered,

that the passes wouldn't be clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns openthe two ladies who, characteristically,

had braved a good deal of possibly interested remonstrance were finding themselves, as their adventure

turned out, wonderfully sustained. It was the judgement of the headwaiters and other functionaries on the

Italian lakes that approved itself now as interested; they themselves had been conscious of impatiences, of

bolder dreamsat least the younger had; so that one of the things they made out togethermaking out as

they did an endless variety was that in those operatic palaces of the Villa d'Este, of Cadenabbia, of

Pallanza and Stresa, lone women, however reenforced by a travellinglibrary of instructive volumes, were

apt to be beguiled and undone. Their flights of fancy moreover had been modest; they had for instance risked

nothing vital in hoping to make their way by the Brunig. They were making it in fact happily enough as we

meet them, and were only wishing that, for the wondrous beauty of the early highclimbing spring, it might

Such at least had been the intimated attitude of Mrs. Stringham, the elder of the companions, who had her

own view of the impatiences of the younger, (104) to which, however, she offered an opposition but of the

most circuitous. She moved, the admirable Mrs. Stringham, in a fine cloud of observation and suspicion; she

was in the position, as she believed, of knowing much more about Milly Theale than Milly herself knew, and

yet of having to darken her knowledge as well as make it active. The woman in the world least formed by

nature, as she was quite aware, for duplicities and labyrinths, she found herself dedicated to personal subtlety

by a new set of circumstances, above all by a new personal relation; had now in fact to recognise that an

education in the occultshe could scarce say what to call ithad begun for her the day she left New York

with Mildred. She had come on from Boston for that purpose; had seen little of the girlor rather had seen

her but briefly, for Mrs. Stringham, when she saw anything at all, saw much, saw everythingbefore

accepting her proposal; and had accordingly placed herself, by her act, in a boat that she more and more

estimated as, humanly speaking, of the biggest, though likewise, no doubt, in many ways, by reason of its

size, of the safest. In Boston, the winter before, the young lady in whom we are interested had, on the spot,

deeply, yet almost tacitly, appealed to her, dropped into her mind the shy conceit of some assistance, some

devotion to render. Mrs. Stringham's little life had often been visited by shy conceitssecret dreams that had

fluttered their hour between its narrow walls without, for any great part, so much as mustering courage to

look out of its rather dim windows. But this imaginationthe fancy of a possible link with the remarkable

young thing from (105) New YorkHAD mustered courage: had perched, on the instant, at the clearest

lookout it could find, and might be said to have remained there till, only a few months later, it had caught, in

Milly Theale had Boston friends, such as they were, and of recent making; and it was understood that her

visit to thema visit that was not to be meagrehad been undertaken, after a series of bereavements, in the

interest of the particular peace that New York couldn't give. It was recognised, liberally enough, that there

were many thingsperhaps even too manyNew York COULD give; but this was felt to make no

difference in the important truth that what you had most to do, under the discipline of life, or of death, was

really to feel your situation as grave. Boston could help you to that as nothing else could, and it had extended

to Milly, by every presumption, some such measure of assistance. Mrs. Stringham was never to forgetfor

the moment had not faded, nor the infinitely fine vibration it set up in any degree ceasedher own first sight

of the striking apparition, then unheralded and unexplained: the slim, constantly pale, delicately haggard,

anomalously, agreeably angular young person, of not more than twoandtwenty summers, in spite of her

marks, whose hair was somehow exceptionally red even for the real thing, which it innocently confessed to

being, and whose clothes were remarkably black even for robes of mourning, which was the meaning they

expressed. It was New York mourning, it was New York hair, it was a New York history, confused as yet, but

multitudinous, of the loss (106) of parents, brothers, sisters, almost every human appendage, all on a scale

and with a sweep that had required the greater stage; it was a New York legend of affecting, of romantic

isolation, and, beyond everything, it was by most accounts, in respect to the mass of money so piled on the

girl's back, a set of New York possibilities. She was alone, she was stricken, she was rich, and in particular

was strangea combination in itself of a nature to engage Mrs. Stringham's attention. But it was the

strangeness that most determined our good lady's sympathy, convinced as she had to be that it was greater

than any one elseany one but the sole Susan Stringhamsupposed. Susan privately settled it that Boston

was not in the least seeing her, was only occupied with her seeing Boston, and that any assumed affinity

between the two characters was delusive and vain. SHE was seeing her, and she had quite the finest moment

of her life in now obeying the instinct to conceal the vision. She couldn't explain itno one would

understand. They would say clever Boston thingsMrs. Stringham was from Burlington Vermont, which

she boldly upheld as the real heart of New England, Boston being "too far south"but they would only

There could be no better proof (than this quick intellectual split) of the impression made on our friend, who

shone herself, she was well aware, with but the reflected light of the admirable city. She too had had her

discipline, but it had not made her striking; it had been prosaically usual, though doubtless a decent dose; and

had only made her usual to match it (107)usual, that is, as Boston went. She had lost first her husband and

then her mother, with whom, on her husband's death, she had lived again; so that now, childless, she was but

more sharply single than before. Yet she sat rather coldly light, having, as she called it, enough to live

onso far, that is, as she lived by bread alone: how little indeed she was regularly content with that diet

appeared from the name she had madeSusan Shepherd Stringhamas a contributor to the best magazines.

She wrote short stories, and she fondly believed she had her "note," the art of showing New England without

showing it wholly in the kitchen. She had not herself been brought up in the kitchen; she knew others who

had not; and to speak for them had thus become with her a literary mission. To BE in truth literary had ever

been her dearest thought, the thought that kept her bright little nippers perpetually in position. There were

masters, models, celebrities, mainly foreign, whom she finally accounted so and in whose light she

ingeniously laboured; there were others whom, however chattered about, she ranked with the inane, for she

bristled with discriminations; but all categories failed herthey ceased at least to signifyas soon as she

found herself in presence of the real thing, the romantic life itself. That was what she saw in Mildredwhat

positively made her hand a while tremble too much for the pen. She had had, it seemed to her, a

revelationsuch as even New England refined and grammatical couldn't give; and, all made up as she was of

small neat memories and ingenuities, little industries and ambitions, mixed with something (108) moral,

personal, that was still more intensely responsive, she felt her new friend would have done her an ill turn if

their friendship shouldn't develop, and yet that nothing would be left of anything else if it should. It was for

the surrender of everything else that she was, however, quite prepared, and while she went about her usual

Boston business with her usual Boston probity she was really all the while holding herself. She wore her

"handsome" felt hat, so Tyrolese, yet somehow, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so truly domestic,

with the same straightness and security; she attached her fur boa with the same honest precautions; she

preserved her balance on the iceslopes with the same practised skill; she opened, each evening, her

_Transcript_ with the same interfusion of suspense and resignation; she attended her almost daily concert

with the same expenditure of patience and the same economy of passion; she flitted in and out of the Public

Library with the air of conscientiously returning or bravely carrying off in her pocket the key of knowledge

itself; and finallyit was what she most didshe watched the thin trickle of a fictive "loveinterest"

through that somewhat serpentine channel, in the magazines, which she mainly managed to keep clear for it.

But the real thing all the while was elsewhere; the real thing had gone back to New York, leaving behind it

the two unsolved questions, quite distinct, of why it WAS real, and whether she should ever be so near it

For the figure to which these questions attached themselves she had found a convenient descriptionshe

thought of it for herself always as that of a girl (109) with a background. The great reality was in the fact that,

very soon, after but two or three meetings, the girl with the background, the girl with the crown of old gold

and the mourning that was not as the mourning of Boston, but at once more rebellious in its gloom and more

frivolous in its frills, had told her she had never seen any one like her. They had met thus as opposed

curiosities, and that simple remark of Milly'sif simple it wasbecame the most important thing that had

ever happened to her; it deprived the loveinterest, for the time, of actuality and even of pertinence; it moved

her first, in short, in a high degree, to gratitude, and then to no small compassion. Yet in respect to this

relation at least it was what did prove the key of knowledge; it lighted up as nothing else could do the poor

young woman's history. That the potential heiress of all the ages should never have seen any one like a mere

typical subscriber, after all, to the _Transcript_ was a truth thatin especial as announced with modesty,

with humility, with regretdescribed a situation. It laid upon the elder woman, as to the void to be filled, a

weight of responsibility; but in particular it led her to ask whom poor Mildred HAD then seen, and what

range of contacts it had taken to produce such queer surprises. That was really the enquiry that had ended by

clearing the air: the key of knowledge was felt to click in the lock from the moment it flashed upon Mrs.

Stringham that her friend had been starved for culture. Culture was what she herself represented for her, and

it was living up to that principle that would surely prove the great business. She knew, the clever lady, what

the principle itself (110) represented, and the limits of her own store; and a certain alarm would have grown

upon her if something else hadn't grown faster. This was, fortunately for herand we give it in her own

wordsthe sense of a harrowing pathos. That, primarily, was what appealed to her, what seemed to open the

door of romance for her still wider than any, than a still more reckless, connexion with the "picturepapers."

For such was essentially the point: it was rich, romantic, abysmal, to have, as was evident, thousands and

thousands a year, to have youth and intelligence and, if not beauty, at least in equal measure a high dim

charming ambiguous oddity, which was even better, and then on top of all to enjoy boundless freedom, the

freedom of the wind in the desertit was unspeakably touching to be so equipped and yet to have been

It brought our friend's imagination back again to New York, where aberrations were so possible in the

intellectual sphere, and it in fact caused a visit she presently paid there to overflow with interest. As Milly

had beautifully invited her, so she would hold out if she could against the strain of so much confidence in her

mind; and the remarkable thing was that even at the end of three weeks she HAD held out. But by this time

her mind had grown comparatively bold and free; it was dealing with new quantities, a different proportion

altogetherand that had made for refreshment: she had accordingly gone home in convenient possession of

her subject. New York was vast, New York was startling, with strange histories, (111) with wild cosmopolite

backward generations that accounted for anything; and to have got nearer the luxuriant tribe of which the rare

creature was the final flower, the immense extravagant unregulated cluster, with freeliving ancestors,

handsome dead cousins, lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all busts and curls, preserved, though

so exposed, in the marble of famous French chiselsall this, to say nothing of the effect of closer growths of

the stem, was to have had one's small worldspace both crowded and enlarged. Our couple had at all events

effected an exchange; the elder friend had been as consciously intellectual as possible, and the younger,

abounding in personal revelation, had been as unconsciously distinguished. This was poetryit was also

historyMrs. Stringham thought, to a finer tune even than Maeterlinck and Pater, than Marbot and

Gregorovius. She appointed occasions for the reading of these authors with her hostess, rather perhaps than

actually achieved great spans; but what they managed and what they missed speedily sank for her into the

dim depths of the merely relative, so quickly, so strongly had she clutched her central clue. All her scruples

and hesitations, all her anxious enthusiasms, had reduced themselves to a single alarmthe fear that she

really might act on her companion clumsily and coarsely. She was positively afraid of what she might do to

her, and to avoid that, to avoid it with piety and passion, to do, rather, nothing at all, to leave her untouched

because no touch one could apply, however light, however just, however earnest and anxious, would be half

good enough, would be anything (112) but an ugly smutch upon perfectionthis now imposed itself as a

Less than a month after the event that had so determined Mrs. Stringham's attitudeclose upon the heels,

that is, of her return from New Yorkshe was reached by a proposal that brought up for her the kind of

question her delicacy might have to contend with. Would she start for Europe with her young friend at the

earliest possible date, and should she be willing to do so without making conditions? The enquiry was

launched by wire; explanations, in sufficiency, were promised; extreme urgency was suggested and a general

surrender invited. It was to the honour of her sincerity that she made the surrender on the spot, though it was

not perhaps altogether to that of her logic. She had wanted, very consciously, from the first, to give

something up for her new acquaintance, but she had now no doubt that she was practically giving up all.

What settled this was the fulness of a particular impression, the impression that had throughout more and

more supported her and which she would have uttered so far as she might by saying that the charm of the

creature was positively in the creature's greatness. She would have been content so to leave it; unless indeed

she had said, more familiarly, that Mildred was the biggest impression of her life. That was at all events the

biggest account of her, and none but a big clearly would do. Her situation, as such things were called, was on

the grand scale; but it still was not that. It was her nature, once for alla nature that reminded Mrs.

Stringham of (113) the term always used in the newspapers about the great new steamers, the inordinate

number of "feet of water" they drew; so that if, in your little boat, you had chosen to hover and approach, you

had but yourself to thank, when once motion was started, for the way the draught pulled you. Milly drew the

feet of water, and odd though it might seem that a lonely girl, who was not robust and who hated sound and

show, should stir the stream like a leviathan, her companion floated off with the sense of rocking violently at

her side. More than prepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed of ease in respect

to her own consistency. To attach herself for an indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her

hands off. If she wished to be sure of neither touching nor smutching, the straighter plan would doubtless

have been not to keep her friend within reach. This in fact she fully recognised, and with it the degree to

which she desired that the girl should lead her life, a life certain to be so much finer than that of anybody else.

The difficulty, however, by good fortune, cleared away as soon as she had further recognised, as she was

speedily able to do, that she Susan Shepherdthe name with which Milly for the most part amused

herselfwas NOT anybody else. She had renounced that character; she had now no life to lead; and she

honestly believed that she was thus supremely equipped for leading Milly's own. No other person whatever,

she was sure, had to an equal degree this qualification, and it was really to assert it that she fondly embarked.

Many things, though not in many weeks, had come (114) and gone since then, and one of the best of them

doubtless had been the voyage itself, by the happy southern course, to the succession of Mediterranean ports,

with the dazzled windup at Naples. Two or three others had preceded this; incidents, indeed rather lively

marks, of their last fortnight at home, and one of which had determined on Mrs. Stringham's part a rush to

New York, fortyeight breathless hours there, previous to her final rally. But the great sustained sealight

had drunk up the rest of the picture, so that for many days other questions and other possibilities sounded

with as little effect as a trio of penny whistles might sound in a Wagner overture. It was the Wagner overture

that practically prevailed, up through Italy, where Milly had already been, still further up and across the Alps,

which were also partly known to Mrs. Stringham; only perhaps "taken" to a time not wholly congruous,

hurried in fact on account of the girl's high restlessness. She had been expected, she had frankly promised, to

be restlessthat was partly why she was "great"or was a consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yet she

had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hard at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful

to Mrs. Stringham that she had arrears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her through the wanton

ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its higher sides, and fond almost of nothing else; but the

vagueness, the openness, the eagerness without point and the interest without pauseall a part of the charm

of her oddity as at first presentedhad become more striking in proportion as they triumphed (115) over

movement and change. She had arts and idiosyncrasies of which no great account could have been given, but

which were a daily grace if you lived with them; such as the art of being almost tragically impatient and yet

making it as light as air; of being inexplicably sad and yet making it as clear as noon; of being unmistakeably

gay and yet making it as soft as dusk. Mrs. Stringham by this time understood everything, was more than ever

confirmed in wonder and admiration, in her view that it was life enough simply to feel her companion's

feelings; but there were special keys she had not yet added to her bunch, impressions that of a sudden were

This particular day on the great Swiss road had been, for some reason, full of them, and they referred

themselves, provisionally, to some deeper depth than she had touchedthough into two or three such depths,

it must be added, she had peeped long enough to find herself suddenly draw back. It was not Milly's

unpacified state, in short, that now troubled herthough certainly, as Europe was the great American

sedative, the failure was to some extent to be noted: it was the suspected presence of something behind the

statewhich, however, could scarcely have taken its place there since their departure. What a fresh motive

of unrest could suddenly have sprung from was in short not to be divined. It was but half an explanation to

say that excitement, for each of them, had naturally dropped, and that what they had left behind, or tried

tothe great serious facts of life, as Mrs. Stringham liked to call themwas once more coming into sight as

objects loom through (116) smoke when smoke begins to clear; for these were general appearances from

which the girl's own aspect, her really larger vagueness, seemed rather to disconnect itself. The nearest

approach to a personal anxiety indulged in as yet by the elder lady was on her taking occasion to wonder if

what she had more than anything else got hold of mightn't be one of the finer, one of the finest, one of the

rarestas she called it so that she might call it nothing worsecases of American intensity. She had just had

a moment of alarmasked herself if her young friend were merely going to treat her to some complicated

drama of nerves. At the end of a week, however, with their further progress, her young friend had effectively

answered the question and given her the impression, indistinct indeed as yet, of something that had a reality

compared with which the nervous explanation would have been coarse. Mrs. Stringham found herself from

that hour, in other words, in presence of an explanation that remained a muffled and intangible form, but that

assuredly, should it take on sharpness, would explain everything and more than everything, would become

Such a matter as this may at all events speak of the style in which our young woman could affect those who

were near her, may testify to the sort of interest she could inspire. She workedand seemingly quite without

designupon the sympathy, the curiosity, the fancy of her associates, and we shall really ourselves scarce

otherwise come closer to her than by feeling their impression and sharing, if need be, their confusion. She

reduced them, Mrs. Stringham would (117) have said, to a consenting bewilderment; which was precisely, for

that good lady, on a last analysis, what was most in harmony with her greatness. She exceeded, escaped

measure, was surprising only because THEY were so far from great. Thus it was that on this wondrous day

by the Brunig the spell of watching her had grown more than ever irresistible; a proof of whator of a part

of whatMrs. Stringham had, with all the rest, been reduced to. She had almost the sense of tracking her

young friend as if at a given moment to pounce. She knew she shouldn't pounce, she hadn't come out to

pounce; yet she felt her attention secretive, all the same, and her observation scientific. She struck herself as

hovering like a spy, applying tests, laying traps, concealing signs. This would last, however, only till she

should fairly know what was the matter; and to watch was after all, meanwhile, a way of clinging to the girl,

not less than an occupation, a satisfaction in itself. The pleasure of watching moreover, if a reason were

needed, came from a sense of her beauty. Her beauty hadn't at all originally seemed a part of the situation,

and Mrs. Stringham had even in the first flush of friendship not named it grossly to any one; having seen

early that for stupid peopleand who, she sometimes secretly asked herself, wasn't stupid?it would take a

great deal of explaining. She had learned not to mention it till it was mentioned firstwhich occasionally

happened, but not too often; and then she was there in force. Then she both warmed to the perception that met

her own perception, and disputed it, suspiciously, as to special items; while, in general, she had learned (118)

to refine even to the point of herself employing the word that most people employed. She employed it to

pretend she was also stupid and so have done with the matter; spoke of her friend as plain, as ugly even, in a

case of especially dense insistence; but as, in appearance, so "awfully full of things." This was her own way

of describing a face that, thanks doubtless to rather too much forehead, too much nose and too much mouth,

together with too little mere conventional colour and conventional line, was expressive, irregular, exquisite,

both for speech and for silence. When Milly smiled it was a public eventwhen she didn't it was a chapter of

history. They had stopped on the Brunig for luncheon, and there had come up for them under the charm of the

Mrs. Stringham was now on the ground of thrilled recognitions, small sharp echoes of a past which she kept

in a wellthumbed case, but which, on pressure of a spring and exposure to the air, still showed itself ticking

as hard as an honest old watch. The embalmed "Europe" of her younger time had partly stood for three years

of Switzerland, a term of continuous school at Vevey, with rewards of merit in the form of silver medals tied

by blue ribbons and mild mountainpasses attacked with alpenstocks. It was the good girls who, in the

holidays, were taken highest, and our friend could now judge, from what she supposed her familiarity with

the minor peaks, that she had been one of the best. These reminiscences, sacred today because prepared in

the hushed chambers of the past, had been part of the general train laid for (119) the pair of sisters, daughters

early fatherless, by their brave Vermont mother, who struck her at present as having apparently, almost like

Columbus, worked out, all unassisted, a conception of the other side of the globe. She had focussed Vevey,

by the light of nature and with extraordinary completeness, at Burlington; after which she had embarked,

sailed, landed, explored and, above all, made good her presence. She had given her daughters the five years in

Switzerland and Germany that were to leave them ever afterwards a standard of comparison for all cycles of

Cathay, and to stamp the younger in especialSusan was the youngerwith a character, that, as Mrs.

Stringham had often had occasion, through life, to say to herself, made all the difference. It made all the

difference for Mrs. Stringham, over and over again and in the most remote connexions, that, thanks to her

parent's lonely thrifty hardy faith, she was a woman of the world. There were plenty of women who were all

sorts of things that she wasn't, but who, on the other hand, were not that, and who didn't know SHE was

(which she likedit relegated them still further) and didn't know either how it enabled her to judge them.

She had never seen herself so much in this light as during the actual phase of her associated, if slightly

undirected, pilgrimage; and the consciousness gave perhaps to her plea for a pause more intensity than she

knew. The irrecoverable days had come back to her from far off; they were part of the sense of the cool upper

air and of everything else that hung like an indestructible scent to the torn garment of youththe taste of

honey and the luxury of milk, the sound of (120) cattlebells and the rush of streams, the fragrance of

Milly clearly felt these things too, but they affected her companion at momentsthat was quite the way Mrs.

Stringham would have expressed itas the princess in a conventional tragedy might have affected the

confidant if a personal emotion had ever been permitted to the latter. That a princess could only be a princess

was a truth with which, essentially, a confidant, however responsive, had to live. Mrs. Stringham was a

woman of the world, but Milly Theale was a princess, the only one she had yet had to deal with, and this, in

its way too, made all the difference. It was a perfectly definite doom for the wearerit was for every one

else an office nobly filled. It might have represented possibly, with its involved loneliness and other

mysteries, the weight under which she fancied her companion's admirable head occasionally, and ever so

submissively, bowed. Milly had quite assented at luncheon to their staying over, and had left her to look at

rooms, settle questions, arrange about their keeping on their carriage and horses; cares that had now moreover

fallen to Mrs. Stringham as a matter of course and that yet for some reason, on this occasion particularly,

brought home to herall agreeably, richly, almost grandlywhat it was to live with the great. Her young

friend had in a sublime degree a sense closed to the general question of difficulty, which she got rid of

furthermore not in the least as one had seen many charming persons do, by merely passing it on to others. She

kept it completely at a distance: it never entered the circle; (121) the most plaintive confidant couldn't have

dragged it in; and to tread the path of a confidant was accordingly to live exempt. Service was in other words

so easy to render that the whole thing was like court life without the hardships. It came back of course to the

question of money, and our observant lady had by this time repeatedly reflected that if one were talking of the

"difference," it was just this, this incomparably and nothing else, that when all was said and done most made

it. A less vulgarly, a less obviously purchasing or parading person she couldn't have imagined; but it

prevailed even as the truth of truths that the girl couldn't get away from her wealth. She might leave her

conscientious companion as freely alone with it as possible and never ask a question, scarce even tolerate a

reference; but it was in the fine folds of the helplessly expensive little black frock that she drew over the grass

as she now strolled vaguely off; it was in the curious and splendid coils of hair, "done" with no eye whatever

to the mode du jour, that peeped from under the corresponding indifference of her hat, the merely personal

tradition that suggested a sort of noble inelegance; it lurked between the leaves of the uncut but antiquated

Tauchnitz volume of which, before going out, she had mechanically possessed herself. She couldn't dress it

away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy

absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. She couldn't have lost it if she had triedthat was what it was

to be really rich. It had to be THE thing you were. When at the end of an hour she hadn't (122) returned to the

house Mrs. Stringham, though the bright afternoon was yet young, took, with precautions, the same direction,

went to join her in case of her caring for a walk. But the purpose of joining her was in truth less distinct than

that of a due regard for a possibly preferred detachment: so that, once more, the good lady proceeded with a

quietness that made her slightly "underhand" even in her own eyes. She couldn't help that, however, and she

didn't care, sure as she was that what she really wanted wasn't to overstep but to stop in time. It was to be able

to stop in time that she went softly, but she had on this occasion further to go than ever yet, for she followed

in vain, and at last with some anxiety, the footpath she believed Milly to have taken. It wound up a hillside

and into the higher Alpine meadows in which, all these last days, they had so often wanted, as they passed

above or below, to stray; and then it obscured itself in a wood, but always going up, up, and with a small

cluster of brown old highperched chalets evidently for its goal. Mrs. Stringham reached in due course the

chalets, and there received from a bewildered old woman, a very fearful person to behold, an indication that

sufficiently guided her. The young lady had been seen not long before passing further on, over a crest and to

a place where the way would drop again, as our unappeased enquirer found it in fact, a quarter of an hour

later, markedly and almost alarmingly to do. It led somewhere, yet apparently quite into space, for the great

side of the mountain appeared, from where she pulled up, to fall away altogether, though probably but to

some issue below and (123) out of sight. Her uncertainty moreover was brief, for she next became aware of

the presence on a fragment of rock, twenty yards off, of the Tauchnitz volume the girl had brought out and

that therefore pointed to her shortly previous passage. She had rid herself of the book, which was an

encumbrance, and meant of course to pick it up on her return; but as she hadn't yet picked it up what on earth

had become of her? Mrs. Stringham, I hasten to add, was within a few moments to see; but it was quite an

accident that she hadn't, before they were over, betrayed by her deeper agitation the fact of her own nearness.

The whole place, with the descent of the path and as a sequel to a sharp turn that was masked by rocks and

shrubs, appeared to fall precipitously and to become a "view" pure and simple, a view of great extent and

beauty, but thrown forward and vertiginous. Milly, with the promise of it from just above, had gone straight

down to it, not stopping till it was all before her; and here, on what struck her friend as the dizzy edge of it,

she was seated at her ease. The path somehow took care of itself and its final business, but the girl's seat was

a slab of rock at the end of a short promontory or excrescence that merely pointed off to the right at gulfs of

air and that was so placed by good fortune, if not by the worst, as to be at last completely visible. For Mrs.

Stringham stifled a cry on taking in what she believed to be the danger of such a perch for a mere maiden; her

liability to slip, to slide, to leap, to be precipitated by a single false movement, by a turn of the headhow

could one tell?into whatever was beneath. A thousand thoughts, (124) for the minute, roared in the poor

lady's ears, but without reaching, as happened, Milly's. It was a commotion that left our observer intensely

still and holding her breath. What had first been offered her was the possibility of a latent

intentionhowever wild the ideain such a posture; of some betrayed accordance of Milly's caprice with a

horrible hidden obsession. But since Mrs. Stringham stood as motionless as if a sound, a syllable, must have

produced the start that would be fatal, so even the lapse of a few seconds had partly a reassuring effect. It

gave her time to receive the impression which, when she some minutes later softly retraced her steps, was to

be the sharpest she carried away. This was the impression that if the girl was deeply and recklessly meditating

there she wasn't meditating a jump; she was on the contrary, as she sat, much more in a state of uplifted and

unlimited possession that had nothing to gain from violence. She was looking down on the kingdoms of the

earth, and though indeed that of itself might well go to the brain, it wouldn't be with a view of renouncing

them. Was she choosing among them or did she want them all? This question, before Mrs. Stringham had

decided what to do, made others vain; in accordance with which she saw, or believed she did, that if it might

be dangerous to call out, to sound in any way a surprise, it would probably be safe enough to withdraw as she

had come. She watched a while longer, she held her breath, and she never knew afterwards what time had

Not many minutes probably, yet they hadn't seemed few, and they had given her so much to think (125) of,

not only while creeping home, but while waiting afterwards at the inn, that she was still busy with them

when, late in the afternoon, Milly reappeared. She had stopped at the point of the path where the Tauchnitz

lay, had taken it up and, with the pencil attached to her watchguard, had scrawled a worda

bientot!across the cover; after which, even under the girl's continued delay, she had measured time without

a return of alarm. For she now saw that the great thing she had brought away was precisely a conviction that

the future wasn't to exist for her princess in the form of any sharp or simple release from the human

predicament. It wouldn't be for her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape. It would be a

question of taking full in the face the whole assault of life, to the general muster of which indeed her face

might have been directly presented as she sat there on her rock. Mrs. Stringham was thus able to say to

herself during still another wait of some length that if her young friend still continued absent it wouldn't be

becausewhatever the opportunityshe had cut short the thread. She wouldn't have committed suicide; she

knew herself unmistakeably reserved for some more complicated passage; this was the very vision in which

she had, with no little awe, been discovered. The image that thus remained with the elder lady kept the

character of a revelation. During the breathless minutes of her watch she had seen her companion afresh; the

latter's type, aspect, marks, her history, her state, her beauty, her mystery, all unconsciously betrayed

themselves to the Alpine air, and all had been gathered in again (126) to feed Mrs. Stringham's flame. They

are things that will more distinctly appear for us, and they are meanwhile briefly represented by the

enthusiasm that was stronger on our friend's part than any doubt. It was a consciousness she was scarce yet

used to carrying, but she had as beneath her feet a mine of something precious. She seemed to herself to stand

near the mouth, not yet quite cleared. The mine but needed working and would certainly yield a treasure. She

The girl said nothing, when they met, about the words scrawled on the Tauchnitz, and Mrs. Stringham then

noticed that she hadn't the book with her. She had left it lying and probably would never remember it at all.

Her comrade's decision was therefore quickly made not to speak of having followed her; and within five

minutes of her return, wonderfully enough, the preoccupation denoted by her forgetfulness further declared

Mrs. Stringham had already thought, with the first sound of the question, everything she was capable of

thinking, and had immediately made such a sign that Milly's words gave place to visible relief at her assent.

"You don't care for our stop hereyou'd rather go straight on? We'll start then with the peep of tomorrow's

dawnor as early as you like; it's only rather late now to take the road again." And she smiled to show how

she meant it for a joke that an instant onward rush was what the girl would have wished. "I bullied you into

Milly made in general the most of her good friend's jokes; but she humoured this one a little absently. "Oh

yes, you do bully me." And it was thus arranged between them, with no discussion at all, that (128) they

would resume their journey in the morning. The younger tourist's interest in the detail of the matterin spite

of a declaration from the elder that she would consent to be dragged anywhereappeared almost

immediately afterwards quite to lose itself; she promised, however, to think till supper of where, with the

world all before them, they might gosupper having been ordered for such time as permitted of lighted

candles. It had been agreed between them that lighted candles at wayside inns, in strange countries, amid

mountain scenery, gave the evening meal a peculiar poetrysuch being the mild adventures, the refinements

of impression, that they, as they would have said, went in for. It was now as if, before this repast, Milly had

designed to "lie down"; but at the end of three minutes more she wasn't lying down, she was saying instead,

abruptly, with a transition that was like a jump of four thousand miles: "What was it that, in New York, on

It was not till later that Mrs. Stringham fully knew why the question had startled her still more than its

suddenness explained; though the effect of it even at the moment was almost to frighten her into a false

answer. She had to think, to remember the occasion, the "ninth," in New York, the time she had seen Doctor

Finch alone, and to recall the words he had then uttered; and when everything had come back it was quite, at

first, for a moment, as if he had said something that immensely mattered. He hadn't, however, in fact; it was

only as if he might perhaps after all have been going to. It was on the sixthwithin ten (129) days of their

sailingthat she had hurried from Boston under the alarm, a small but a sufficient shock, of hearing that

Mildred had suddenly been taken ill, had had, from some obscure cause, such an upset as threatened to stay

their journey. The bearing of the accident had happily soon presented itself as slight, and there had been in

the event but a few hours of anxiety; the journey had been pronounced again not only possible, but, as

representing "change," highly advisable; and if the zealous guest had had five minutes by herself with the

Doctor this was clearly no more at his instance than at her own. Almost nothing had passed between them but

an easy exchange of enthusiasms in respect to the remedial properties of "Europe"; and due assurance, as the

facts came back to her, she was now able to give. "Nothing whatever, on my word of honour, that you mayn't

know or mightn't then have known. I've no secret with him about you. What makes you suspect it? I don't

"Noyou never told me," said Milly. "And I don't mean," she went on, "during the twentyfour hours while

I was bad, when your putting your heads together was natural enough. I mean after I was betterthe last

"HE didn't himselfnor did you write me it afterwards. We speak of it now for the first time. That's exactly

why!" Milly declaredwith something in her face and voice that, the next moment, (130) betrayed for her

companion that she had really known nothing, had only conjectured and, chancing her charge, made a hit. Yet

why had her mind been busy with the question? "But if you're not, as you now assure me, in his confidence,"

"I'm not in his confidencehe had nothing to confide. But are you feeling unwell?"

The elder woman was earnest for the truth, though the possibility she named was not at all the one that

seemed to fitwitness the long climb Milly had just indulged in. The girl showed her constant white face,

but this her friends had all learned to discount, and it was often brightest when superficially not bravest. She

continued for a little mysteriously to smile. "I don't knowhaven't really the least idea. But it might be well

Anxiously again, tenderly, our friend cast about. "You 'have' everything; so that when you say 'much' of it"

"I only mean," the girl broke in, "shall I have it for long? That is if I HAVE got it."

She had at present the effect, a little, of confounding, (131) or at least of perplexing her comrade, who was

touched, who was always touched, by something helpless in her grace and abrupt in her turns, and yet

actually half made out in her a sort of mocking light. "If you've got an ailment?"

Mrs. Stringham's eyes entreated her; she had gone close to her, halfenclosed her with urgent arms. "Do you

want to see some one?" And then as the girl only met it with a slow headshake, though looking perhaps a

shade more conscious: "We'll go straight to the best near doctor." This too, however, produced but a gaze of

qualified assent and a silence, sweet and vague, that left everything open. Our friend decidedly lost herself.

"I don't think I've really EVERYTHING," Milly said as if to explainand as if also to put it pleasantly.

The girl debated, then seemed on the point of being able to say; but suddenly changed and expressed herself

It brought them closer, but it rather confirmed Mrs. Stringham's doubt. "Then what's the matter?"

Milly waited another moment; then she found it, and found for it a dim show of joy. "The power to resist the

(132) Mrs. Stringham took it inher sense of being "put off" with it, the possible, probable irony of itand

her tenderness renewed itself in the positive grimness of a long murmur. "Whom will you see?"for it was

as if they looked down from their height at a continent of doctors. "Where will you first go?"

Milly had for the third time her air of consideration; but she came back with it to her plea of some minutes

before. "I'll tell you at suppergoodbye till then." And she left the room with a lightness that testified for

her companion to something that again particularly pleased her in the renewed promise of motion. The odd

passage just concluded, Mrs. Stringham mused as she once more sat alone with a hooked needle and a ball of

silk, the "fine" work with which she was always providedthis mystifying mood had simply been

precipitated, no doubt, by their prolonged halt, with which the girl hadn't really been in sympathy. One had

only to admit that her complaint was in fact but the excess of the joy of life, and everything DID then fit. She

couldn't stop for the joy, but she could go on for it, and with the pulse of her going on she floated again, was

restored to her great spaces. There was no evasion of any truthso at least Susan Shepherd hopedin one's

sitting there while the twilight deepened and feeling still more finely that the position of this young lady was

magnificent. The evening at that height had naturally turned to cold, and the travellers had bespoken a fire

with their meal; the great Alpine road asserted its brave presence through the small panes of the low clean

windows, with incidents at the inndoor, the (133) yellow diligence, the great waggons, the hurrying hooded

private conveyances, reminders, for our fanciful friend, of old stories, old pictures, historic flights, escapes,

pursuits, things that had happened, things indeed that by a sort of strange congruity helped her to read the

meanings of the greatest interest into the relation in which she was now so deeply involved. It was natural

that this record of the magnificence of her companion's position should strike her as after all the best meaning

she could extract; for she herself was seated in the magnificence as in a courtcarriageshe came back to

that, and such a method of progression, such a view from crimson cushions, would evidently have a great

deal more to give. By the time the candles were lighted for supper and the short white curtains drawn Milly

had reappeared, and the little scenic room had then all its romance. That charm moreover was far from

broken by the words in which she, without further loss of time, satisfied her patient mate. "I want to go

It was unexpected, corresponding with no view positively taken at their departure; when England had

appeared, on the contrary, rather relegated and postponedseen for the moment, as who should say, at the

end of an avenue of preparations and introductions. London, in short, might have been supposed to be the

crown, and to be achieved, like a siege, by gradual approaches. Milly's actual fine stride was therefore the

more exciting, as any simplification almost always was to Mrs. Stringham; who, besides, was afterwards to

recall as a piece of that very "exposition" dear to the dramatist the terms in (134) which, between their smoky

candles, the girl had put her preference and in which still other things had come up, come while the clank of

waggonchains in the sharp air reached their ears, with the stamp of hoofs, the rattle of buckets and the

foreign questions, foreign answers, that were all alike a part of the cheery converse of the road. The girl

brought it out in truth as she might have brought a huge confession, something she admitted herself shy about

and that would seem to show her as frivolous; it had rolled over her that what she wanted of Europe was

"people," so far as they were to be had, and that, if her friend really wished to know, the vision of this same

equivocal quantity was what had haunted her during their previous days, in museums and churches, and what

was again spoiling for her the pure taste of scenery. She was all for sceneryyes; but she wanted it human

and personal, and all she could say was that there would be in Londonwouldn't there?more of that kind

than anywhere else. She came back to her idea that if it wasn't for longif nothing should happen to be so

for HERwhy the particular thing she spoke of would probably have most to give her in the time, would

probably be less than anything else a waste of her remainder. She produced this last consideration indeed

with such gaiety that Mrs. Stringham was not again disconcerted by it, was in fact quite readyif talk of

early dying was in orderto match it from her own future. Good, then; they would eat and drink because of

what might happen tomorrow; and they would direct their course from that moment with a view to such

eating and drinking. (135) They ate and drank that night, in truth, as in the spirit of this decision; whereby the

It had cleared perhaps to a view only too extensiveextensive, that is, in proportion to the signs of life

presented. The idea of "people" was not so entertained on Milly's part as to connect itself with particular

persons, and the fact remained for each of the ladies that they would, completely unknown, disembark at

Dover amid the completely unknowing. They had no relation already formed; this plea Mrs. Stringham put

forward to see what it would produce. It produced nothing at first but the observation on the girl's side that

what she had in mind was no thought of society nor of scraping acquaintance; nothing was further from her

than to desire the opportunities represented for the compatriot in general by a trunkful of "letters." It wasn't a

question, in short, of the people the compatriot was after; it was the human, the English picture itself, as they

might see it in their own waythe concrete world inferred so fondly from what one had read and dreamed.

Mrs. Stringham did every justice to this concrete world, but when later on an occasion chanced to present

itself she made a point of not omitting to remark that it might be a comfort to know in advance one or two of

the human particles of its concretion. This still, however, failed, in vulgar parlance, to "fetch" Milly, so that

she had presently to go all the way. "Haven't I understood from you, for that matter, that you gave Mr.

There was a moment, on this, when Milly's look (136) had to be taken as representing one of two

thingseither that she was completely vague about the promise or that Mr. Densher's name itself started no

train. But she really couldn't be so vague about the promise, the partner of these hours quickly saw, without

attaching it to something; it had to be a promise to somebody in particular to be so repudiated. In the event,

accordingly, she acknowledged Mr. Merton Densher, the so unusually "bright" young Englishman who had

made his appearance in New York on some special literary businesswasn't it?shortly before their

departure, and who had been three or four times in her house during the brief period between her visit to

Boston and her companion's subsequent stay with her; but she required much reminding before it came back

to her that she had mentioned to this companion just afterwards the confidence expressed by the personage in

question in her never doing so dire a thing as to come to London without, as the phrase was, looking a fellow

up. She had left him the enjoyment of his confidence, the form of which might have appeared a trifle

freethis she now reasserted; she had done nothing either to impair or to enhance it; but she had also left

Mrs. Stringham, in the connexion and at the time, rather sorry to have missed Mr. Densher. She had thought

of him again after that, the elder woman; she had likewise gone so far as to notice that Milly appeared not to

have done sowhich the girl might easily have betrayed; and, interested as she was in everything that

concerned her, she had made out for herself, for herself only and rather idly, that, but for interruptions, the

young (137) Englishman might have become a better acquaintance. His being an acquaintance at all was one

of the signs that in the first days had helped to place Milly, as a young person with the world before her, for

sympathy and wonder. Isolated, unmothered, unguarded, but with her other strong marks, her big house, her

big fortune, her big freedom, she had lately begun to "receive," for all her few years, as an older woman

might have doneas was done, precisely, by princesses who had public considerations to observe and who

came of age very early. If it was thus distinct to Mrs. Stringham then that Mr. Densher had gone off

somewhere else in connexion with his errand before her visit to New York, it had been also not

undiscoverable that he had come back for a day or two later on, that is after her own second excursionthat

he had in fine reappeared on a single occasion on his way to the West: his way from Washington as she

believed, though he was out of sight at the time of her joining her friend for their departure. It hadn't occurred

to her before to exaggerateit had not occurred to her that she could; but she seemed to become aware

tonight that there had been just enough in this relation to meet, to provoke, the free conception of a little

She presently put it that, at any rate, promise or no promise, Milly would at a pinch be able, in London, to act

on his permission to make him a sign; to which Milly replied with readiness that her ability, though evident,

would be none the less quite wasted, inasmuch as the gentleman would to a certainty be still in America. He

had a great deal to do therewhich he (138) would scarce have begun; and in fact she might very well not

have thought of London at all if she hadn't been sure he wasn't yet near coming back. It was perceptible to her

companion that the moment our young woman had so far committed herself she had a sense of having

overstepped; which was not quite patched up by her saying the next minute, possibly with a certain failure of

presence of mind, that the last thing she desired was the air of running after him. Mrs. Stringham wondered

privately what question there could be of any such appearancethe danger of which thus suddenly came up;

but she said for the time nothing of itshe only said other things: one of which was, for instance, that if Mr.

Densher was away he was away, and this the end of it: also that of course they must be discreet at any price.

But what was the measure of discretion, and how was one to be sure? So it was that, as they sat there, she

produced her own case: SHE had a possible tie with London, which she desired as little to disown as she

might wish to risk presuming on it. She treated her companion, in short, for their evening's end, to the story of

Maud Manningham, the odd but interesting English girl who had formed her special affinity in the old days at

the Vevey school; whom she had written to, after their separation, with a regularity that had at first faltered

and then altogether failed, yet that had been for the time quite a fine case of crude constancy; so that it had in

fact flickered up again of itself on the occasion of the marriage of each. They had then once more fondly,

scrupulously writtenMrs. Lowder first; and even another letter or two had afterwards passed. (139) This,

however, had been the endthough with no rupture, only a gentle drop: Maud Manningham had made, she

believed, a great marriage, while she herself had made a small; on top of which, moreover, distance,

difference, diminished community and impossible reunion had done the rest of the work. It was but after all

these years that reunion had begun to show as possibleif the other party to it, that is, should be still in

existence. That was exactly what it now appeared to our friend interesting to ascertain, as, with one aid and

another, she believed she might. It was an experiment she would at all events now make if Milly didn't object.

Milly in general objected to nothing, and though she asked a question or two she raised no present plea. Her

questionsor at least her own answers to themkindled on Mrs. Stringham's part a backward train: she

hadn't known till tonight how much she remembered, or how fine it might be to see what had become of

large highcoloured Maud, florid, alien, exoticwhich had been just the spelleven to the perceptions of

youth. There was the dangershe frankly touched itthat such a temperament mightn't have matured, with

the years, all in the sense of fineness: it was the sort of danger that, in renewing relations after long breaks,

one had always to look in the face. To gather in strayed threads was to take a riskfor which, however, she

was prepared if Milly was. The possible "fun," she confessed, was by itself rather tempting; and she fairly

sounded, with thiswound up a little as she wasthe note of fun as the harmless final right of fifty years of

mere (140) New England virtue. Among the things she was afterwards to recall was the indescribable look

dropped on her, at that, by her companion; she was still seated there between the candles and before the

finished supper, while Milly moved about, and the look was long to figure for her as an inscrutable comment

on HER notion of freedom. Challenged, at any rate, as for the last wise word, Milly showed perhaps,

musingly, charmingly, that, though her attention had been mainly soundless, her friend's storyproduced as

a resource unsuspected, a card from up the sleevehalfsurprised, halfbeguiled her. Since the matter, such

as it was, depended on that, she brought out before she went to bed an easy, a light "Risk everything!"

This quality in it seemed possibly a little to deny weight to Maud Lowder's evoked presenceas Susan

Stringham, still sitting up, became, in excited reflexion, a trifle more conscious. Something determinant,

when the girl had left her, took place in hernameless but, as soon as she had given way, coercive. It was as

if she knew again, in this fulness of time, that she had been, after Maud's marriage, just sensibly outlived or,

as people nowadays said, shunted. Mrs. Lowder had left her behind, and on the occasion, subsequently, of the

corresponding date in her own lifenot the second, the sad one, with its dignity of sadness, but the first, with

the meagreness of its supposed felicityshe had been, in the same spirit, almost patronisingly pitied. If that

suspicion, even when it had ceased to matter, had never quite died out for her, there was doubtless some

oddity in its (141) now offering itself as a link, rather than as another break, in the chain; and indeed there

might well have been for her a mood in which the notion of the development of patronage in her quondam

schoolmate would have settled her question in another sense. It was actually settledif the case be worth our

analysisby the happy consummation, the poetic justice, the generous revenge, of her having at last

something to show. Maud, on their parting company, had appeared to have so much, and would nowfor

wasn't it also in general quite the rich law of English life?have, with accretions, promotions, expansions,

ever so much more. Very good; such things might be; she rose to the sense of being ready for them. Whatever

Mrs. Lowder might have to showand one hoped one did the presumptions all justiceshe would have

nothing like Milly Theale, who constituted the trophy producible by poor Susan. Poor Susan lingered

latetill the candles were low, and as soon as the table was cleared she opened her neat portfolio. She hadn't

lost the old clue; there were connexions she remembered, addresses she could try; so the thing was to begin.

It had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered but the truth nearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on

her rightwho was, by the same token, the gentleman on her hostess's leftthat she scarce even then knew

where she was: the words marking her first full sense of a situation really romantic. They were already

dining, she and her friend, at Lancaster Gate, and surrounded, as it seemed to her, with every English

accessory; though her consciousness of Mrs. Lowder's existence, and still more of her remarkable identity,

had been of so recent and so sudden a birth. Susie, as she was apt to call her companion for a lighter change,

had only had to wave a neat little wand for the fairytale to begin at once; in consequence of which Susie

now glitteredfor, with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of success, it came to thatin the character of a fairy

godmother. Milly had almost insisted on dressing her, for the present occasion, as one; and it was no fault of

the girl's if the good lady hadn't now appeared in a peaked hat, a short petticoat and diamond shoebuckles,

brandishing the magic crutch. The good lady bore herself in truth not less contentedly than if these insignia

had marked her work; and Milly's observation to Lord Mark had doubtless just been the result of such a light

exchange of looks with her as even the great length of the table (146) couldn't baffle. There were twenty

persons between them, but this sustained passage was the sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of

views during the pause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to Milly that their fortune had been unduly

precipitatedas if properly they were in the position of having ventured on a small joke and found the

answer out of proportion grave. She couldn't at this moment for instance have said whether, with her

quickened perceptions, she were more enlivened or oppressed; and the case might in fact have been serious

hadn't she, by good fortune, from the moment the picture loomed, quickly made up her mind that what finally

most concerned her was neither to seek nor to shirk, wasn't even to wonder too much, but was to let things

Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinnernot by Mrs. Lowder, but by the handsome girl, that lady's

niece, who was now at the other end and on the same side as Susie; he had taken her in, and she meant

presently to ask him about Miss Croy, the handsome girl, actually offered to her sightthough now in a

splendid waybut for the second time. The first time had been the occasiononly three days beforeof

her calling at their hotel with her aunt and then making, for our other two heroines, a great impression of

beauty and eminence. This impression had remained so with Milly that at present, and although her attention

was aware at the same time of everything else, her eyes were mainly engaged with Kate Croy when not

engaged with Susie. That (147) wonderful creature's eyes moreover readily met themshe ranked now as a

wonderful creature; and it seemed part of the swift prosperity of the American visitors that, so little in the

original reckoning, she should yet appear conscious, charmingly, frankly conscious, of possibilities of

friendship for them. Milly had easily and, as a guest, gracefully generalised: English girls had a special strong

beauty which particularly showed in evening dressabove all when, as was strikingly the case with this one,

the dress itself was what it should be. That observation she had all ready for Lord Mark when they should,

after a little, get round to it. She seemed even now to see that there might be a good deal they would get

round to; the indication being that, taken up once for all with her other neighbour, their hostess would leave

them much to themselves. Mrs. Lowder's other neighbour was the Bishop of Murruma real bishop, such as

Milly had never seen, with a complicated costume, a voice like an oldfashioned wind instrument, and a face

all the portrait of a prelate; while the gentleman on our young lady's left, a gentleman thicknecked, large and

literal, who looked straight before him and as if he were not to be diverted by vain words from that pursuit,

clearly counted as an offset to the possession of Lord Mark. As Milly made out these thingswith a shade of

exhilaration at the way she already fell inshe saw how she was justified of her plea for people and her love

of life. It wasn't then, as the prospect seemed to show, so difficult to get into the current, or to stand at any

rate on the bank. It was easy to get nearif they WERE near; and yet the (148) elements were different

She asked herself if her righthand neighbour would understand what she meant by such a description of

them should she throw it off; but another of the things to which precisely her sense was awakened was that

no, decidedly, he wouldn't. It was nevertheless by this time open to her that his line would be to be clever;

and indeed, evidently, no little of the interest was going to be in the fresh reference and fresh effect both of

people's cleverness and of their simplicity. She thrilled, she consciously flushed, and all to turn pale again,

with the certitudeit had never been so presentthat she should find herself completely involved: the very

air of the place, the pitch of the occasion, had for her both so sharp a ring and so deep an undertone. The

smallest things, the faces, the hands, the jewels of the women, the sound of words, especially of names,

across the table, the shape of the forks, the arrangement of the flowers, the attitude of the servants, the walls

of the room, were all touches in a picture and denotements in a play; and they marked for her moreover her

alertness of vision. She had never, she might well believe, been in such a state of vibration; her sensibility

was almost too sharp for her comfort: there were for example more indications than she could reduce to order

in the manner of the friendly niece, who struck her as distinguished and interesting, as in fact surprisingly

genial. This young woman's type had, visibly, other possibilities; yet here, of its own free movement, it had

already sketched a relation. Were they, Miss Croy and she, (149) to take up the tale where their two elders

had left it off so many years before?were they to find they liked each other and to try for themselves

whether a scheme of constancy on more modern lines could be worked? She had doubted, as they came to

England, of Maud Manningham, had believed her a broken reed and a vague resource, had seen their

dependence on her as a state of mind that would have been shamefully sillyso far as it WAS

dependencehad they wished to do anything so inane as "get into society." To have made their pilgrimage

all for the sake of such society as Mrs. Lowder might have in reserve for themthat didn't bear thinking of at

all, and she herself had quite chosen her course for curiosity about other matters. She would have described

this curiosity as a desire to see the places she had read about, and THAT description of her motive she was

prepared to give her neighboureven though, as a consequence of it, he should find how little she had read.

It was almost at present as if her poor prevision had been rebuked by the majestyshe could scarcely call it

lessof the event, or at all events by the commanding character of the two figures (she could scarcely call

THAT less either) mainly presented. Mrs. Lowder and her niece, however dissimilar, had at least in common

that each was a great reality. That was true, primarily, of the auntso true that Milly wondered how her own

companion had arrived in other years at so odd an alliance; yet she none the less felt Mrs. Lowder as a person

of whom the mind might in two or three days roughly make the circuit. She would sit there massive at least

while one attempted it; whereas Miss Croy, (150) the handsome girl, would indulge in incalculable

movements that might interfere with one's tour. She was the amusing resisting ominous fact, none the less,

and each other person and thing was just such a fact; and it served them right, no doubt, the pair of them, for

Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile, however, had met her own quite sufficiently to enable him to tell her

how little he could clear up her situation. He explained, for that matteror at least he hintedthat there was

no such thing today in London as saying where any one was. Every one was everywherenobody was

anywhere. He should be put to ityes, franklyto give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's "set."

WAS it a set at all, or wasn't it, and were there not really no such things as sets in the place any more?was

there anything but the groping and pawing, that of the vague billows of some great greasy sea in

midChannel, of masses of bewildered people trying to "get" they didn't know what or where? He threw out

the question, which seemed large; Milly felt that at the end of five minutes he had thrown out a great many,

though he followed none more than a step or two; perhaps he would prove suggestive, but he helped her as

yet to no discriminations: he spoke as if he had given them up from too much knowledge. He was thus at the

opposite extreme from herself, but, as a consequence of it, also wandering and lost; and he was furthermore,

for all his temporary incoherence, to which she guessed there would be some key, as packed a concretion as

either Mrs. Lowder or Kate. The only light in which he (151) placed the former of these ladies was that of an

extraordinary womana most extraordinary woman, and "the more extraordinary the more one knows her,"

while of the latter he said nothing for the moment but that she was tremendously, yes, quite tremendously,

goodlooking. It was some time, she thought, before his talk showed his cleverness, and yet each minute she

believed in that mystery more, quite apart from what her hostess had told her on first naming him. Perhaps he

was one of the cases she had heard of at homethose characteristic cases of people in England who

concealed their play of mind so much more than they advertised it. Even Mr. Densher a little did that. And

what made Lord Mark, at any rate, so real either, when this was a trick he had apparently so mastered? His

type somehow, as by a life, a need, an intention of its own, took all care for vividness off his hands; that was

enough. It was difficult to guess his agewhether he were a young man who looked old or an old man who

looked young; it seemed to prove nothing, as against other things, that he was bald and, as might have been

said, slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry: there was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in

him, and his eyes, at momentsthough it was an appearance they could suddenly losewere as candid and

clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very neat, very light, and so fair that there was little other indication of his

moustache than his constantly feeling itwhich was again boyishhe would have affected her as the most

intellectual person present if he had not affected her as the most frivolous. The latter quality was (152) rather

in his look than in anything else, though he constantly wore his double eyeglass, which was, much more,

The idea of his frivolity had, no doubt, to do with his personal designation, which representedas yet, for

our young woman, a little confusedlya connexion with an historic patriciate, a class that in turn, also

confusedly, represented an affinity with a social element she had never heard otherwise described than as

"fashion." The supreme social element in New York had never known itself but as reduced to that category,

and though Milly was aware that, as applied to a territorial and political aristocracy, the label was probably

too simple, she had for the time none other at hand. She presently, it is true, enriched her idea with the

perception that her interlocutor was indifferent; yet this, indifferent as aristocracies notoriously were, saw her

but little further, inasmuch as she felt that, in the first place, he would much rather get on with her than not,

and in the second was only thinking of too many matters of his own. If he kept her in view on the one hand

and kept so much else on the otherthe way he crumbed up his bread was a proofwhy did he hover

before her as a potentially insolent noble? She couldn't have answered the question, and it was precisely one

of those that swarmed. They were complicated, she might fairly have said, by his visibly knowing, having

known from afar off, that she was a stranger and an American, and by his none the less making no more of it

than if she and her like were the chief of his diet. He took her, kindly enough, but imperturbably,

irreclaimably, (153) for granted, and it wouldn't in the least help that she herself knew him, as quickly, for

having been in her country and threshed it out. There would be nothing for her to explain or attenuate or brag

about; she could neither escape nor prevail by her strangeness; he would have, for that matter, on such a

subject, more to tell her than to learn from her. She might learn from HIM why she was so different from the

handsome girlwhich she didn't know, being merely able to feel it; or at any rate might learn from him why

On these lines, however, they would move later; the lines immediately laid down were, in spite of his

vagueness for his own convenience, definite enough. She was already, he observed to her, thinking what she

should say on her other sidewhich was what Americans were always doing. She needn't in conscience say

anything at all; but Americans never knew that, nor ever, poor creatures, yes (SHE had interposed the "poor

creatures!") what not to do. The burdens they took onthe things, positively, they made an affair of! This

easy and after all friendly jibe at her race was really for her, on her new friend's part, the note of personal

recognition so far as she required it; and she gave him a prompt and conscious example of morbid anxiety by

insisting that her desire to be, herself, "lovely" all round was justly founded on the lovely way Mrs. Lowder

had met her. He was directly interested in that, and it was not till afterwards she fully knew how much more

information about their friend he had taken than given. Here again for instance was a characteristic note: she

had, (154) on the spot, with her first plunge into the obscure depths of a society constituted from far back,

encountered the interesting phenomenon of complicated, of possibly sinister motive. However, Maud

Manningham (her name, even in her presence, somehow still fed the fancy) HAD, all the same, been lovely,

and one was going to meet her now quite as far on as one had one's self been met. She had been with them at

their hotelthey were a pairbefore even they had supposed she could have got their letter. Of course

indeed they had written in advance, but they had followed that up very fast. She had thus engaged them to

dine but two days later, and on the morrow again, without waiting for a return visit, without waiting for

anything, she had called with her niece. It was as if she really cared for them, and it was magnificent

fidelityfidelity to Mrs. Stringham, her own companion and Mrs. Lowder's former schoolmate, the lady

Lord Mark took in through his nippers these balanced attributes of Susie. "But isn't Mrs. Stringham's fidelity

"Well, it's a beautiful sentiment; but it isn't as if she had anything to GIVE."

"Meto give Mrs. Lowder?" Milly had clearly not yet seen herself in the light of such an offering. "Oh I'm

rather a poor present; and I don't feel as if, even at that, I had as yet quite been given."

"You've been shown, and if our friend has jumped (155) at you it comes to the same thing." He made his

jokes, Lord Mark, without amusement for himself; yet it wasn't that he was grim. "To be seen, you must

recognise, IS, for you, to be jumped at; and, if it's a question of being shown, here you are again. Only it has

now been taken out of your friend's hands; it's Mrs. Lowder already who's getting the benefit. Look round the

table, and you'll make out, I think, that you're being, from top to bottom, jumped at."

"Well then," said Milly, "I seem also to feel that I like it better than being made fun of."

It was one of the things she afterwards sawMilly was for ever seeing things afterwardsthat her

companion had here had some way of his own, quite unlike any one's else, of assuring her of his

consideration. She wondered how he had done it, for he had neither apologised nor protested. She said to

herself at any rate that he had led her on; and what was most odd was the question by which he had done so.

Even for this his travelled lordship, seasoned and saturated, had no laugh. "I mean YOU particularly. Has that

This, with the way he dropped it, again considerably moved hermade her feel for a moment that as a

matter of course she was a subject for disclosures. But she quickly found her answer. "Oh as for that you

He replied to this that their hostess was a person with whom there were certain liberties one never took, but

that he was none the less fairly upheld, inasmuch as she was for the most part kind to him and as, should he

be very good for a while, she would probably herself tell him. "And I shall have at any rate in the meantime

the interest of seeing what she does with you. That will teach me more or less, you see, how much she

Milly followed thisit was lucid, but it suggested something apart. "How much does she know about

"Nothing," said Lord Mark serenely. "But that doesn't matterfor what she does with me." And then as to

anticipate Milly's question about the nature of such doing: "This for instanceturning me straight on for

He met it as if it were really a point. "No. I believe, to do her justice, she still would. So you can be easy."

Milly had the next instant then acted on the permission. "Because you're even at the worst the best thing she

It was strange his words should have given her the sense of his knowing, but it was positive that they did so,

and to the extent of making her believe them, (157) though still with wonder. That really from this first of

their meetings was what was most to abide with her: she accepted almost helplesslyshe surrendered so to

the inevitable in itbeing the sort of thing, as he might have said, that he at least thoroughly believed he had,

in going about, seen enough of for all practical purposes. Her submission was naturally moreover not to be

impaired by her learning later on that he had paid at short intervals, though at a time apparently just previous

to her own emergence from the obscurity of extreme youth, three separate visits to New York, where his

nameable friends and his contrasted contacts had been numerous. His impression, his recollection of the

whole mixed quantity, was still visibly rich. It had helped him to place her, and she was more and more

sharply conscious of havingas with the door sharply slammed upon her and the guard's hand raised in

signal to the trainbeen popped into the compartment in which she was to travel for him. It was a use of her

that many a girl would have been doubtless quick to resent; and the kind of mind that thus, in our young lady,

made all for mere seeing and taking is precisely one of the charms of our subject. Milly had practically just

learned from him, had made out, as it were, from her rumbling compartment, that he gave her the highest

place among their friend's actual properties. She was a success, that was what it came to, he presently assured

her, and this was what it was to be a success; it always happened before one could know it. One's ignorance

was in fact often the greatest part of it. "You haven't had time yet," he said; "this is nothing. (158) But you'll

He made her more and more wonder; she almost felt as if he were showing her visions while he spoke; and

strangely enough, though it was visions that had drawn her on, she hadn't had them in connexionthat is in

such preliminary and necessary connexionwith such a face as Lord Mark's, such eyes and such a voice,

such a tone and such a manner. He had for an instant the effect of making her ask herself if she were after all

going to be afraid; so distinct was it for fifty seconds that a fear passed over her. There they were againyes,

certainly: Susie's overture to Mrs. Lowder had been their joke, but they had pressed in that gaiety an electric

bell that continued to sound. Positively while she sat there she had the loud rattle in her ears, and she

wondered during these moments why the others didn't hear it. They didn't stare, they didn't smile, and the fear

in her that I speak of was but her own desire to stop it. That dropped, however, as if the alarm itself had

ceased; she seemed to have seen in a quick though tempered glare that there were two courses for her, one to

leave London again the first thing in the morning, the other to do nothing at all. Well, she would do nothing

at all; she was already doing it; more than that, she had already done it, and her chance was gone. She gave

herself upshe had the strangest sense, on the spot, of so deciding; for she had turned a corner before she

went on again with Lord Mark. Inexpressive but intensely significant, he met as no one else could have done

the very question she had suddenly put to Mrs. (159) Stringham on the Brunig. Should she have it, whatever

she did have, that question had been, for long? "Ah so possibly not," her neighbour appeared to reply;

"therefore, don't you see? I'M the way." It was vivid that he might be, in spite of his absence of flourish; the

way being doubtless just IN that absence. The handsome girl, whom she didn't lose sight of and who, she felt,

kept her also in viewMrs. Lowder's striking niece would perhaps be the way as well, for in her too was the

absence of flourish, though she had little else, so far as one could tell, in common with Lord Mark. Yet how

indeed COULD one tell, what did one understand, and of what was one, for that matter, provisionally

conscious but of their being somehow together in what they represented? Kate Croy, fine but friendly, looked

over at her as really with a guess at Lord Mark's effect on her. If she could guess this effect what then did she

know about it and in what degree had she felt it herself? Did that represent, as between them, anything

particular, and should she have to count with them as duplicating, as intensifying by a mutual intelligence, the

relation into which she was sinking? Nothing was so odd as that she should have to recognise so quickly in

each of these glimpses of an instant the various signs of a relation; and this anomaly itself, had she had more

time to give to it, might well, might almost terribly have suggested to her that her doom was to live fast. It

was queerly a question of the short run and the consciousness proportionately crowded.

These were immense excursions for the spirit of a young person at Mrs. Lowder's mere dinnerparty; (160)

but what was so significant and so admonitory as the fact of their being possible? What could they have been

but just a part, already, of the crowded consciousness? And it was just a part likewise that while plates were

changed and dishes presented and periods in the banquet marked; while appearances insisted and phenomena

multiplied and words reached her from here and there like plashes of a slow thick tide; while Mrs. Lowder

grew somehow more stout and more instituted and Susie, at her distance and in comparison, more thinly

improvised and more differentdifferent, that is, from every one and every thing: it was just a part that

while this process went forward our young lady alighted, came back, taking up her destiny again as if she had

been able by a wave or two of her wings to place herself briefly in sight of an alternative to it. Whatever it

was it had showed in this brief interval as better than the alternative; and it now presented itself altogether in

the image and in the place in which she had left it. The image was that of her being, as Lord Mark had

declared, a success. This depended more or less of course on his idea of the thinginto which at present,

however, she wouldn't go. But, renewing soon, she had asked him what he meant then that Mrs. Lowder

would do with her, and he had replied that this might safely be left. "She'll get back," he pleasantly said, "her

money." He could say it toowhich was singularwithout affecting her either as vulgar or as "nasty"; and

he had soon explained himself by adding: "Nobody here, you know, does anything for nothing."

"Ah if you mean that we shall reward her as hard (161) as ever we can, nothing is more certain. But she's an

idealist," Milly continued, "and idealists, in the long run, I think, DON'T feel that they lose."

Lord Mark seemed, within the limits of his enthusiasm, to find this charming. "Ah she strikes you as an

"She idealises US, my friend and me, absolutely. She sees us in a light," said Milly. "That's all I've got to

"I wouldn't think of such a thing for the world. But do you suppose," he continued as if it were suddenly

She neglected his question for a little, partly because her attention attached itself more and more to the

handsome girl, partly because, placed so near their hostess, she wished not to show as discussing her too

freely. Mrs. Lowder, it was true, steering in the other quarter a course in which she called at subjects as if

they were islets in an archipelago, continued to allow them their ease, and Kate Croy at the same time

steadily revealed herself as interesting. Milly in fact found of a sudden her easefound it all as she

bethought herself that what Mrs. Lowder was really arranging for was a report on her quality and, as perhaps

might be said her value, from Lord Mark. She wished him, the wonderful lady, to have no pretext for not

knowing what he thought of Miss Theale. Why his judgement so mattered remained to be seen; but it was this

divination that in any case now determined Milly's rejoinder. "No. She knows you. She has probably reason

to. And you all here (162) know each otherI see thatso far as you know anything. You know what you're

used to, and it's your being used to itthat, and that onlythat makes you. But there are things you don't

He took it in as if it might fairly, to do him justice, be a point. "Things that i don'twith all the pains I take

Milly thought, and it was perhaps the very truth of his claimits not being negligiblethat sharpened her

impatience and thereby her wit. "You're blase, but you're not enlightened. You're familiar with everything,

Lord Mark at this threw back his head, ranging with his eyes the opposite side of the room and showing

himself at last so much more flagrantly diverted that it fairly attracted their hostess's notice. Mrs. Lowder,

however, only smiled on Milly for a sign that something racy was what she had expected, and resumed, with

a splash of her screw, her cruise among the islands. "Oh I've heard that," the young man replied, "before!"

"There it is then. You've heard everything before. You've heard ME of course before, in my country, often

"Oh never too often," he protested. "I'm sure I hope I shall still hear you again and again."

"But what good then has it done you?" the girl went on as if now frankly to amuse him.

If it established thus that they couldn't or wouldn't mix, why did Milly none the less feel through it a perverse

quickening of the relation to which she had been in spite of herself appointed? What queerer consequence of

their not mixing than their talkingfor it was what they had arrived atalmost intimately? She wished to

get away from him, or indeed, much rather, away from herself so far as she was present to him. She saw

alreadywonderful creature, after all, herself toothat there would be a good deal more of him to come for

her, and that the special sign of their intercourse would be to keep herself out of the question. Everything else

might come inonly never that; and with such an arrangement they would perhaps even go far. This in fact

might quite have begun, on the spot, with her returning again to the topic of the handsome girl. If she was to

keep herself out she could naturally best do so by putting in somebody else. She accordingly put in Kate

Croy, being ready to that extentas she was not at all afraid for herto sacrifice her if necessary. Lord

Mark himself, for that matter, had made it easy by saying a little while before that no one among them did

anything for nothing. "What then"she was aware of being abrupt"does Miss Croy, if she's so interested,

do it for? What has she to gain by HER lovely welcome? Look at her NOW!" Milly broke out with

characteristic freedom of praise, though pulling herself up also with a compunctious "Oh!" as the direction

thus given to their eyes happened to coincide (164) with a turn of Kate's face to them. All she had meant to

do was to insist that this face was fine; but what she had in fact done was to renew again her effect of

showing herself to its possessor as conjoined with Lord Mark for some interested view of it. He had,

"Well, what's my acquaintance to HER? She can care for meshe must feel thatonly by being sorry for

me; and that's why she's lovely: to be already willing to take the trouble to be. It's the height of the

There were more things in this than one that Lord Mark might have taken up; but in a minute he had made his

choice. "Ah then I'm nowhere, for I'm afraid I'M not sorry for you in the least. What do you make then," he

"Why just the great reason of all. It's just because our friend there sees it that she pities me. She understands,"

He appeared struck with this at lastwith the point the girl made of it; to which she came back even after a

diversion created by a dish presented between them. "Beautiful in character, I see. IS she so? You must tell

Milly wondered. "But haven't you known her longer than I? Haven't you seen her for yourself?"

"NoI've failed with her. It's no use. I don't make her out. And I assure you I really should like to." His

assurance had in fact for his companion a positive suggestion of sincerity; he affected her as (165) now

saying something he did feel; and she was the more struck with it as she was still conscious of the failure

even of curiosity he had just shown in respect to herself. She had meant somethingthough indeed for

herself almost onlyin speaking of their friend's natural pity; it had doubtless been a note of questionable

taste, but it had quavered out in spite of her and he hadn't so much as cared to enquire "Why 'natural'?" Not

that it wasn't really much better for her that he shouldn't: explanations would in truth have taken her much too

far. Only she now perceived that, in comparison, her word about this other person really "drew" him; and

there were things in that probably, many things, as to which she would learn more and which glimmered

there already as part and parcel of that larger "real" with which, in her new situation, she was to be beguiled.

It was in fact at the very moment, this element, not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying. "So

you're wrong, you see, as to our knowing all about each other. There are cases where we break down. I at any

rate give HER upup, that is, to you. You must do her for metell me, I mean, when you know more.

"Why shouldn't you have?" Milly asked, observing in this, as she thought, a fine, though for such a man a

surprisingly artless, fatuity. It was as if there might have been a question of her falsifying for the sake of her

own showthat is of the failure of her honesty to be proof against her desire to keep well with him herself.

She didn't, none the less, otherwise (166) protest against his remark; there was something else she was

occupied in seeing. It was the handsome girl alone, one of his own species and his own society, who had

made him feel uncertain; of his certainties about a mere little American, a cheap exotic, imported almost

wholesale and whose habitat, with its conditions of climate, growth and cultivation, its immense profusion

but its few varieties and thin development, he was perfectly satisfied. The marvel was too that Milly

understood his satisfactionfeeling she expressed the truth in presently saying: "Of course; I make out that

she must be difficult; just as I see that I myself must be easy." And that was what, for all the rest of this

occasion, remained with heras the most interesting thing that COULD remain. She was more and more

content herself to be easy; she would have been resigned, even had it been brought straighter home to her, to

passing for a cheap exotic. Provisionally, at any rate, that protected her wish to keep herself, with Lord Mark,

in abeyance. They HAD all affected her as inevitably knowing each other, and if the handsome girl's place

among them was something even their initiation couldn't deal withwhy then she would indeed be a

That sense of quantities, separate or mixed, was really, no doubt, what most prevailed at first for our slightly

gasping American pair; it found utterance for them in their frequent remark to each other that they had no one

but themselves to thank. It dropped from Milly more than once that if she had ever known it was so easy!

though her exclamation mostly ended without completing her idea. This, however, was a trifle to Mrs.

Stringham, who cared little whether she meant that in this case she would have come sooner. She couldn't

have come sooner, and she perhaps on the contrary meantfor it would have been like herthat she

wouldn't have come at all; why it was so easy being at any rate a matter as to which her companion had

begun quickly to pick up views. Susie kept some of these lights for the present to herself, since, freely

communicated, they might have been a little disturbing; with which, moreover, the quantities that we speak

of as surrounding the two ladies were in many cases quantities of thingsand of other thingsto talk about.

Their immediate lesson accordingly was that they just had been caught up by the incalculable strength of a

wave that was actually holding them aloft and that would naturally dash them wherever it liked. They

meanwhile, we hasten to add, made the best of their precarious position, and if Milly had had no other help

(168) for it she would have found not a little in the sight of Susan Shepherd's state. The girl had had nothing

to say to her, for three days, about the "success" announced by Lord Markwhich they saw, besides,

otherwise established; she was too taken up, too touched, by Susie's own exaltation. Susie glowed in the light

of her justified faith; everything had happened that she had been acute enough to think least probable; she had

appealed to a possible delicacy in Maud Manninghama delicacy, mind you, but BARELY possibleand

her appeal had been met in a way that was an honour to human nature. This proved sensibility of the lady of

Lancaster Gate performed verily for both our friends during these first days the office of a fine floating

golddust, something that threw over the prospect a harmonising blur. The forms, the colours behind it were

strong and deepwe have seen how they already stood out for Milly; but nothing, comparatively, had had so

much of the dignity of truth as the fact of Maud's fidelity to a sentiment. That was what Susie was proud of,

much more than of her great place in the world, which she was moreover conscious of not as yet wholly

measuring. That was what was more vivid even than her beingin senses more worldly and in fact almost in

the degree of a revelationEnglish and distinct and positive, with almost no inward but with the finest

Susan Shepherd's word for her, again and again, was that she was "large"; yet it was not exactly a case, as to

the soul, of echoing chambers: she might have been likened rather to a capacious receptacle, (169) originally

perhaps loose, but now drawn as tightly as possible over its accumulated contentsa packed mass, for her

American admirer, of curious detail. When the latter good lady, at home, had handsomely figured her friends

as not smallwhich was the way she mostly figured themthere was a certain implication that they were

spacious because they were empty. Mrs. Lowder, by a different law, was spacious because she was full,

because she had something in common, even in repose, with a projectile, of great size, loaded and ready for

use. That indeed, to Susie's romantic mind, announced itself as half the charm of their renewala charm as

of sitting in springtime, during a long peace, on the daisied grassy bank of some great slumbering fortress.

True to her psychological instincts, certainly, Mrs. Stringham had noted that the "sentiment" she rejoiced in

on her old schoolmate's part was all a matter of action and movement, was not, save for the interweaving of a

more frequent plump "dearest" than she would herself perhaps have used, a matter of much other embroidery.

She brooded with interest on this further mark of race, feeling in her own spirit a different economy. The joy,

for her, was to know why she actedthe reason was half the business; whereas with Mrs. Lowder there

might have been no reason: "why" was the trivial seasoningsubstance, the vanilla or the nutmeg, omittable

from the nutritive pudding without spoiling it. Mrs. Lowder's desire was clearly sharp that their young

companions should also prosper together; and Mrs. Stringham's account of it all to Milly, during the first

days, was that when, at Lancaster (170) Gate, she was not occupied in telling, as it were, about her, she was

They had plenty, on these lines, the two elder women, to give and to take, and it was even not quite clear to

the pilgrim from Boston that what she should mainly have arranged for in London was not a series of thrills

for herself. She had a bad conscience, indeed almost a sense of immorality, in having to recognise that she

was, as she said, carried away. She laughed to Milly when she also said that she didn't know where it would

end; and the principle of her uneasiness was that Mrs. Lowder's life bristled for her with elements that she

was really having to look at for the first time. They represented, she believed, the world, the world that, as a

consequence of the cold shoulder turned to it by the Pilgrim Fathers, had never yet boldly crossed to

Bostonit would surely have sunk the stoutest Cunarderand she couldn't pretend that she faced the

prospect simply because Milly had had a caprice. She was in the act herself of having one, directed precisely

to their present spectacle. She could but seek strength in the thought that she had never had oneor had

never yielded to one, which came to the same thingbefore. The sustaining sense of it all moreover as

literary materialthat quite dropped from her. She must wait, at any rate, she should see: it struck her, so far

as she had got, as vast, obscure, lurid. She reflected in the watches of the night that she was probably just

going to love it for itselfthat is for itself and Milly. The odd thing was that she could think of Milly's (171)

loving it without dreador with dread at least not on the score of conscience, only on the score of peace. It

was a mercy at all events, for the hour, that their two spirits jumped together.

While, for this first week that followed their dinner, she drank deep at Lancaster Gate, her companion was no

less happily, appeared to be indeed on the whole quite as romantically, provided for. The handsome English

girl from the heavy English house had been as a figure in a picture stepping by magic out of its frame: it was

a case in truth for which Mrs. Stringham presently found the perfect image. She had lost none of her grasp,

but quite the contrary, of that other conceit in virtue of which Milly was the wandering princess: so what

could be more in harmony now than to see the princess waited upon at the city gate by the worthiest maiden,

the chosen daughter of the burgesses? It was the real again, evidently, the amusement of the meeting for the

princess too; princesses living for the most part, in such an appeased way, on the plane of mere elegant

representation. That was why they pounced, at city gates, on deputed flowerstrewing damsels; that was why,

after effigies, processions and other stately games, frank human company was pleasant to them. Kate Croy

really presented herself to Millythe latter abounded for Mrs. Stringham in accounts of itas the wondrous

London girl in person (by what she had conceived, from far back, of the London girl; conceived from the

tales of travellers and the anecdotes of New York, from old porings over _Punch_ and a liberal acquaintance

with the fiction of the day). The only thing was (172) that she was nicer, since the creature in question had

rather been, to our young woman, an image of dread. She had thought of her, at her best, as handsome just as

Kate was, with turns of head and tones of voice, felicities of stature and attitude, things "put on" and, for that

matter, put off, all the marks of the product of a packed society who should be at the same time the heroine of

a strong story. She placed this striking young person from the first in a story, saw her, by a necessity of the

imagination, for a heroine, felt it the only character in which she wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the

heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoesas these

things sketched themselves to Millyand something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and

When Milly had settled that the extent of her good will itself made her shy, she had found for the moment

quite a sufficient key, and they were by that time thoroughly afloat together. This might well have been the

happiest hour they were to know, attacking in friendly independence their great Londonthe London of

shops and streets and suburbs oddly interesting to Milly, as well as of museums, monuments, "sights" oddly

unfamiliar to Kate, while their elders pursued a separate course; these two rejoicing not less in their intimacy

and each thinking the other's young woman a great acquisition for her own. Milly expressed to Susan

Shepherd more than once that Kate had some secret, some smothered trouble, besides all the rest of her

history; and that if (173) she had so goodnaturedly helped Mrs. Lowder to meet them this was exactly to

create a diversion, to give herself something else to think about. But on the case thus postulated our young

American had as yet had no light: she only felt that when the light should come it would greatly deepen the

colour; and she liked to think she was prepared for anything. What she already knew moreover was full, to

her vision, of English, of eccentric, of Thackerayan characterKate Croy having gradually become not a

little explicit on the subject of her situation, her past, her present, her general predicament, her small success,

up to the present hour, in contenting at the same time her father, her sister, her aunt and herself. It was Milly's

subtle guess, imparted to her Susie, that the girl had somebody else as well, as yet unnamed, to contentit

being manifest that such a creature couldn't help having; a creature not perhaps, if one would, exactly formed

to inspire passions, since that always implied a certain silliness, but essentially seen, by the admiring eye of

friendship, under the clear shadow of some probably eminent male interest. The clear shadow, from whatever

source projected, hung at any rate over Milly's companion the whole week, and Kate Croy's handsome face

smiled out of it, under bland skylights, in the presence alike of old masters passive in their glory and of

thoroughly new ones, the newest, who bristled restlessly with pins and brandished snipping shears.

It was meanwhile a pretty part of the intercourse of these young ladies that each thought the other more

remarkable than herselfthat each thought (174) herself, or assured the other she did, a comparatively dusty

object and the other a favourite of nature and of fortune and covered thereby with the freshness of the

morning. Kate was amused, amazed, at the way her friend insisted on "taking" her, and Milly wondered if

Kate were sincere in finding her the most extraordinaryquite apart from her being the most

charmingperson she had come across. They had talked, in long drives, and quantities of history had not

been wantingin the light of which Mrs. Lowder's niece might superficially seem to have had the best of the

argument. Her visitor's American references, with their bewildering immensities, their confounding moneyed

New York, their excitements of high pressure, their opportunities of wild freedom, their record of usedup

relatives, parents, clever eager fair slim brothersthese the most lovedall engaged, as well as successive

superseded guardians, in a high extravagance of speculation and dissipation that had left this exquisite being

her black dress, her white face and her vivid hair as the mere last broken link: such a picture quite threw into

the shade the brief biography, however sketchily amplified, of a mere middleclass nobody in Bayswater.

And though that indeed might be but a Bayswater way of putting it, in addition to which Milly was in the

stage of interest in Bayswater ways, this critic so far prevailed that, like Mrs. Stringham herself, she fairly got

her companion to accept from her that she was quite the nearest approach to a practical princess Bayswater

could hope ever to know. It was a factit became one at the end of three daysthat Milly actually (175)

began to borrow from the handsome girl a sort of view of her state; the handsome girl's impression of it was

clearly so sincere. This impression was a tribute, a tribute positively to power, power the source of which was

the last thing Kate treated as a mystery. There were passages, under all their skylights, the succession of their

shops being large, in which the latter's easy yet the least bit dry manner sufficiently gave out that if SHE had

It was not moreover by any means with not having the imagination of expenditure that she appeared to charge

her friend, but with not having the imagination of terror, of thrift, the imagination or in any degree the habit

of a conscious dependence on others. Such moments, when all Wigmore Street, for instance, seemed to rustle

about and the pale girl herself to be facing the different rustlers, usually so undiscriminated, as individual

Britons too, Britons personal, parties to a relation and perhaps even intrinsically remarkablesuch moments

in especial determined for Kate a perception of the high happiness of her companion's liberty. Milly's range

was thus immense; she had to ask nobody for anything, to refer nothing to any one; her freedom, her fortune

and her fancy were her law; an obsequious world surrounded her, she could sniff up at every step its fumes.

And Kate, these days, was altogether in the phase of forgiving her so much bliss; in the phase moreover of

believing that, should they continue to go on together, she would abide in that generosity. She had at such a

point as this no suspicion of a rift within the luteby which we mean not only none (176) of anything's

coming between them, but none of any definite flaw in so much clearness of quality. Yet, all the same, if

Milly, at Mrs. Lowder's banquet, had described herself to Lord Mark as kindly used by the young woman on

the other side because of some faintlyfelt special propriety in it, so there really did match with this,

privately, on the young woman's part, a feeling not analysed but divided, a latent impression that Mildred

Theale was not, after all, a person to change places, to change even chances with. Kate, verily, would perhaps

not quite have known what she meant by this discrimination, and she came near naming it only when she said

to herself that, rich as Milly was, one probably wouldn'twhich was singularever hate her for it. The

handsome girl had, with herself, these felicities and crudities: it wasn't obscure to her that, without some very

particular reason to help, it might have proved a test of one's philosophy not to be irritated by a mistress of

millions, or whatever they were, who, as a girl, so easily might have been, like herself, only vague and cruelly

female. She was by no means sure of liking Aunt Maud as much as SHE deserved, and Aunt Maud's

command of funds was obviously inferior to Milly's. There was thus clearly, as pleading for the latter, some

influence that would later on become distinct; and meanwhile, decidedly, it was enough that she was as

charming as she was queer and as queer as she was charmingall of which was a rare amusement; as well,

for that matter, as further sufficient that there were objects of value she had already pressed on Kate's

acceptance. A week of her society (177) in these conditionsconditions that Milly chose to sum up as

ministering immensely, for a blind vague pilgrim, to aid and comfortannounced itself from an early hour

as likely to become a week of presents, acknowledgements, mementoes, pledges of gratitude and admiration,

that were all on one side. Kate as promptly embraced the propriety of making it clear that she must forswear

shops till she should receive some guarantee that the contents of each one she entered as a humble companion

shouldn't be placed at her feet; yet that was in truth not before she had found herself in possession, under

Great was the absurdity too that there should have come a day, by the end of the week, when it appeared that

all Milly would have asked in definite "return," as might be said, was to be told a little about Lord Mark and

to be promised the privilege of a visit to Mrs. Condrip. Far other amusements had been offered her, but her

eagerness was shamelessly human, and she seemed really to count more on the revelation of the anxious lady

at Chelsea than on the best nights of the opera. Kate admired, and showed it, such an absence of fear: to the

fear of being bored in such a connexion she would have been so obviously entitled. Milly's answer to this was

the plea of her curiositieswhich left her friend wondering as to their odd direction. Some among them, no

doubt, were rather more intelligible, and Kate had heard without wonder that she was blank about Lord Mark.

This young lady's account of him, at the same time, professed (178) itself frankly imperfect; for what they

best knew him by at Lancaster Gate was a thing difficult to explain. One knew people in general by

something they had to show, something that, either for them or against, could be touched or named or proved;

and she could think of no other case of a value taken as so great and yet flourishing untested. His value was

his future, which had somehow got itself as accepted by Aunt Maud as if it had been his good cook or his

steamlaunch. She, Kate, didn't mean she thought him a humbug; he might do great thingsbut they were as

yet, so to speak, all he had done. On the other hand it was of course something of an achievement, and not

open to every one, to have got one's self taken so seriously by Aunt Maud. The best thing about him

doubtless, on the whole, was that Aunt Maud believed in him. She was often fantastic, but she knew a

humbug, andno, Lord Mark wasn't that. He had been a short time in the House, on the Tory side, but had

lost his seat on the first opportunity, and this was all he had to point to. However, he pointed to nothing;

which was very possibly just a sign of his real cleverness, one of those that the really clever had in common

with the really void. Even Aunt Maud frequently admitted that there was a good deal, for her view of him, to

bring up the rear. And he wasn't meanwhile himself indifferentindifferent to himselffor he was working

Lancaster Gate for all it was worth: just as it was, no doubt, working him, and just as the working and the

(179) Kate did explain, for her listening friend; every one who had anything to giveit was true they were

the fewestmade the sharpest possible bargain for it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing

furthermore was that this might be in cases a happy understanding. The worker in one connexion was the

worked in another; it was as broad as it was longwith the wheels of the system, as might be seen,

wonderfully oiled. People could quite like each other in the midst of it, as Aunt Maud, by every appearance,

quite liked Lord Mark, and as Lord Mark, it was to be hoped, liked Mrs. Lowder, since if he didn't he was a

greater brute than one could believe. She, Kate, hadn't yet, it was true, made out what he was doing for

herbesides which the dear woman needed him, even at the most he could do, much less than she imagined;

so far as all of which went, moreover, there were plenty of things on every side she hadn't yet made out. She

believed, on the whole, in any one Aunt Maud took up; and she gave it to Milly as worth thinking of that,

whatever wonderful people this young lady might meet in the land, she would meet no more extraordinary

woman. There were greater celebrities by the million, and of course greater swells, but a bigger PERSON, by

Kate's view, and a larger natural handful every way, would really be far to seek. When Milly enquired with

interest if Kate's belief in HER was primarily on the lines of what Mrs. Lowder "took up," her interlocutress

could handsomely say yes, since by the same principle she believed in herself. Whom but Aunt Maud's niece,

preeminently, had Aunt Maud taken up, and who (180) was thus more in the current, with her, of working

and of being worked? "You may ask," Kate said, "what in the world i have to give; and that indeed is just

what I'm trying to learn. There must be something, for her to think she can get it out of me. She WILL get

ittrust her; and then I shall see what it is; which I beg you to believe I should never have found out for

myself." She declined to treat any question of Milly's own "paying" power as discussable; that Milly would

pay a hundred per centand even to the end, doubtless, through the nosewas just the beautiful basis on

These were fine facilities, pleasantries, ironies, all these luxuries of gossip and philosophies of London and of

life, and they became quickly, between the pair, the common form of talk, Milly professing herself delighted

to know that something was to be done with her. If the most remarkable woman in England was to do it, so

much the better, and if the most remarkable woman in England had them both in hand together why what

could be jollier for each? When she reflected indeed a little on the oddity of her wanting two at once Kate had

the natural reply that it was exactly what showed her sincerity. She invariably gave way to feeling, and

feeling had distinctly popped up in her on the advent of her girlhood's friend. The way the cat would jump

was always, in presence of anything that moved her, interesting to see; visibly enough, moreover, it hadn't for

a long time jumped anything like so far. This in fact, as we already know, remained the marvel for Milly

Theale, who, on sight of Mrs. Lowder, had found fifty links in respect to (181) Susie absent from the chain of

association. She knew so herself what she thought of Susie that she would have expected the lady of

Lancaster Gate to think something quite different; the failure of which endlessly mystified her. But her

mystification was the cause for her of another fine impression, inasmuch as when she went so far as to

observe to Kate that Susan Shepherdand especially Susan Shepherd emerging so uninvited from an

irrelevant pastought by all the proprieties simply to have bored Aunt Maud, her confidant agreed to this

without a protest and abounded in the sense of her wonder. Susan Shepherd at least bored the niecethat

was plain; this young woman saw nothing in hernothing to account for anything, not even for Milly's own

indulgence: which little fact became in turn to the latter's mind a fact of significance. It was a light on the

handsome girlrepresenting more than merely showedthat poor Susie was simply as nought to her. This

was in a manner too a general admonition to poor Susie's companion, who seemed to see marked by it the

direction in which she had best most look out. It just faintly rankled in her that a person who was good

enough and to spare for Milly Theale shouldn't be good enough for another girl; though, oddly enough, she

could easily have forgiven Mrs. Lowder herself the impatience. Mrs. Lowder didn't feel it, and Kate Croy felt

it with ease; yet in the end, be it added, she grasped the reason, and the reason enriched her mind. Wasn't it

sufficiently the reason that the handsome girl was, with twenty other splendid qualities, the least bit brutal

too, and didn't she (182) suggest, as no one yet had ever done for her new friend, that there might be a wild

beauty in that, and even a strange grace? Kate wasn't brutally brutalwhich Milly had hitherto benightedly

supposed the only way; she wasn't even aggressively so, but rather indifferently, defensively and, as might be

said, by the habit of anticipation. She simplified in advance, was beforehand with her doubts, and knew with

singular quickness what she wasn't, as they said in New York, going to like. In that way at least people were

clearly quicker in England than at home; and Milly could quite see after a little how such instincts might

become usual in a world in which dangers abounded. There were clearly more dangers roundabout Lancaster

Gate than one suspected in New York or could dream of in Boston. At all events, with more sense of them,

there were more precautions, and it was a remarkable world altogether in which there could be precautions,

She certainly made up with Susie directly, however, for any allowance she might have had privately to extend

to tepid appreciation; since the late and long talks of these two embraced not only everything offered and

suggested by the hours they spent apart, but a good deal more besides. She might be as detached as the

occasion required at four o'clock in the afternoon, but she used no such freedom to any one about anything as

she habitually used about everything to Susan Shepherd at midnight. All the same, it should with much less

delay than this have been mentioned, she hadn't yethadn't, that is, at the end of six daysproduced any

news for her comrade to compare with an announcement made her by the latter as a result of a drive with

Mrs. Lowder, for a change, in the remarkable Battersea Park. The elder friends had sociably revolved there

while the younger ones followed bolder fancies in the admirable equipage appointed to Milly at the hotela

heavier, more emblazoned, more amusing chariot than she had ever, with "stables" notoriously mismanaged,

known at home; whereby, in the course of the circuit, more than once repeated, it had "come out," as Mrs.

Stringham said, that the couple at Lancaster Gate were, of all people, acquainted with Mildred's other English

friend, the gentleman, the one connected with the English newspaper (Susie hung (184) fire a little over his

name) who had been with her in New York so shortly previous to present adventures. He had been named of

course in Battersea Parkelse he couldn't have been identified; and Susie had naturally, before she could

produce her own share in the matter as a kind of confession, to make it plain that her allusion was to Mr.

Merton Densher. This was because Milly had at first a little air of not knowing whom she meant; and the girl

really kept, as well, a certain control of herself while she remarked that the case was surprising, the chance

one in a thousand. They knew him, both Maud and Miss Croy knew him, she gathered too, rather well,

though indeed it wasn't on any show of intimacy that he had happened to be mentioned. It hadn't beenSusie

made the pointshe herself who brought him in: he had in fact not been brought in at all, but only referred to

as a young journalist known to Mrs. Lowder and who had lately gone to their wonderful countryMrs.

Lowder always said "your wonderful country"on behalf of his journal. But Mrs. Stringham had taken it

upwith the tips of her fingers indeed; and that was the confession: she had, without meaning any harm,

recognised Mr. Densher as an acquaintance of Milly's, though she had also pulled herself up before getting in

too far. Mrs. Lowder had been struck, clearlyit wasn't too much to say; then she also, it had rather seemed,

had pulled herself up; and there had been a little moment during which each might have been keeping

something from the other. "Only," said Milly's informant, "I luckily remembered in time that I had nothing

whatever to (185) keepwhich was much simpler and nicer. I don't know what Maud has, but there it is. She

was interested, distinctly, in your knowing himin his having met you over there with so little loss of time.

But I ventured to tell her it hadn't been so long as to make you as yet great friends. I don't know if I was

Whatever time this explanation might have taken, there had been moments enough in the matter

nowbefore the elder woman's conscience had done itself justiceto enable Milly to reply that although

the fact in question doubtless had its importance she imagined they wouldn't find the importance

overwhelming. It WAS odd that their one Englishman should so instantly fit; it wasn't, however,

miraculousthey surely all had often seen how extraordinarily "small," as every one said, was the world.

Undoubtedly also Susie had done just the plain thing in not letting his name pass. Why in the world should

there be a mystery?and what an immense one they would appear to have made if he should come back and

find they had concealed their knowledge of him! "I don't know, Susie dear," the girl observed, "what you

"It doesn't matter, at a given moment," Mrs. Stringham returned, "what you know or don't know as to what I

think; for you always find out the very next minute, and when you do find out, dearest, you never REALLY

(186) "That YOU haven't I understand; but that your friend hasn't," Susie opined, "may mean something."

"Well," Mrs. Stringham presently brought out, "I tell you all when I tell you that Maud asks me to suggest to

you that it may perhaps be better for the present not to speak of him: not to speak of him to her niece, that is,

Milly was ready to engage for anything; but in respect to the factsas they so far possessed themit all

"NoI gather not; but Maud's state of mind is precautionary. She's afraid of something. Or perhaps it would

Susie had an intense thought and then an effusion. "My dear child, we move in a labyrinth."

"Of course we do. That's just the fun of it!" said Milly with a strange gaiety. Then she added: "Don't tell me

Her friend looked at herit was not unfrequently the casea little harder than the surface of the occasion

seemed to require; and another person present at such times might have wondered to what inner thought of

her own the good lady was trying to fit the speech. It was too much her disposition, no doubt, (187) to treat

her young companion's words as symptoms of an imputed malady. It was none the less, however, her highest

law to be light when the girl was light. She knew how to be quaint with the new quaintnessthe great

Boston gift; it had been happily her note in the magazines; and Maud Lowder, to whom it was new indeed

and who had never heard anything remotely like it, quite cherished her, as a social resource, by reason of it. It

shouldn't therefore fail her now; with it in fact one might face most things. "Ah then let us hope we shall

sound the depthsI'm prepared for the worstof sorrow and sin! But she would like her niecewe're not

Milly had, under her comrade's eyes, a minute of mute detachment. She had lived with Kate Croy for several

days in a state of intimacy as deep as it had been sudden, and they had clearly, in talk, in many directions,

proceeded to various extremities. Yet it now came over her as in a clear cold wave that there was a possible

account of their relations in which the quantity her new friend had told her might have figured as small, as

smallest, beside the quantity she hadn't. She couldn't say at any rate whether or no Kate had made the point

that her aunt designed her for Lord Mark: it had only sufficiently come outwhich had been, moreover,

eminently guessablethat she was involved in her aunt's designs. Somehow, (188) for Milly, brush it over

nervously as she might and with whatever simplifying hand, this abrupt extrusion of Mr. Densher altered all

proportions, had an effect on all values. It was fantastic of her to let it make a difference that she couldn't in

the least have definedand she was at least, even during these instants, rather proud of being able to hide, on

the spot, the difference it did make. Yet all the same the effect for her was, almost violently, of that

gentleman's having been therehaving been where she had stood till now in her simplicitybefore her. It

would have taken but another free moment to make her see abyssessince abysses were what she

wantedin the mere circumstance of his own silence, in New York, about his English friends. There had

really been in New York little time for anything; but, had she liked, Milly could have made it out for herself

that he had avoided the subject of Miss Croy and that Miss Croy was yet a subject it could never be natural to

avoid. It was to be added at the same time that even if his silence had been a labyrinthwhich was absurd in

view of all the other things too he couldn't possibly have spoken ofthis was exactly what must suit her,

since it fell under the head of the plea she had just uttered to Susie. These things, however, came and went,

and it set itself up between the companions, for the occasion, in the oddest way, both that their happening all

to know Mr. Densherexcept indeed that Susie didn't, but probably wouldwas a fact attached, in a world

of rushing about, to one of the common orders of chance; and yet further that it was amusingoh awfully

amusing!to be able (189) fondly to hope that there was "something IN" its having been left to crop up with

such suddenness. There seemed somehow a possibility that the ground or, as it were, the air might in a

manner have undergone some pleasing preparation; though the question of this possibility would probably,

after all, have taken some threshing out. The truth, moreoverand there they were, already, our pair, talking

about it, the "truth"!hadn't in fact quite cropped out. This, obviously, in view of Mrs. Lowder's request to

It was accordingly on Mrs. Lowder's recommendation that nothing should be said to Kateit was on all this

might cover in Aunt Maud that the idea of an interesting complication could best hope to perch; and when in

fact, after the colloquy we have reported, Milly saw Kate again without mentioning any name, her silence

succeeded in passing muster with her as the beginning of a new sort of fun. The sort was all the newer by its

containing measurably a small element of anxiety: when she had gone in for fun before it had been with her

hands a little more free. Yet it WAS, none the less, rather exciting to be conscious of a still sharper reason for

interest in the handsome girl, as Kate continued even now preeminently to remain for her; and a

reasonthis was the great pointof which the young woman herself could have no suspicion. Twice over

thus, for two or three hours together, Milly found herself seeing Kate, quite fixing her, in the light of the

knowledge that it was a face on which Mr. Densher's eyes had more or less familiarly rested and which, by

the same token, had looked, (190) rather MORE beautifully than less, into his own. She pulled herself up

indeed with the thought that it had inevitably looked, as beautifully as one would, into thousands of faces in

which one might one's self never trace it; but just the odd result of the thought was to intensify for the girl

that side of her friend which she had doubtless already been more prepared than she quite knew to think of as

the "other," the not wholly calculable. It was fantastic, and Milly was aware of this; but the other side was

what had, of a sudden, been turned straight toward her by the show of Mr. Densher's propinquity. She hadn't

the excuse of knowing it for Kate's own, since nothing whatever as yet proved it particularly to be such.

Never mind; it was with this other side now fully presented that Kate came and went, kissed her for greeting

and for parting, talked, as usual, of everything butas it had so abruptly become for MillyTHE thing. Our

young woman, it is true, would doubtless not have tasted so sharply a difference in this pair of occasions

hadn't she been tasting so peculiarly her own possible betrayals. What happened was that afterwards, on

separation, she wondered if the matter hadn't mainly been that she herself was so "other," so taken up with the

unspoken; the strangest thing of all being, still subsequently, that when she asked herself how Kate could

have failed to feel it she became conscious of being here on the edge of a great darkness. She should never

know how Kate truly felt about anything such a one as Milly Theale should give her to feel. Kate would

neverand not from ill will nor from duplicity, but from a sort of failure (191) of common termsreduce it

It was as such a one, therefore, that, for three or four days more, Milly watched Kate as just such another; and

it was presently as such a one that she threw herself into their promised visit, at last achieved, to Chelsea, the

quarter of the famous Carlyle, the field of exercise of his ghost, his votaries, and the residence of "poor

Marian," so often referred to and actually a somewhat incongruous spirit there. With our young woman's first

view of poor Marian everything gave way but the sense of how in England, apparently, the social situation of

sisters could be opposed, how common ground for a place in the world could quite fail them: a state of things

sagely perceived to be involved in an hierarchical, an aristocratic order. Just whereabouts in the order Mrs.

Lowder had established her niece was a question not wholly void as yet, no doubt, of ambiguitythough

Milly was withal sure Lord Mark could exactly have fixed the point if he would, fixing it at the same time for

Aunt Maud herself; but it was clear Mrs. Condrip was, as might have been said, in quite another geography.

She wouldn't have been to be found on the same social map, and it was as if her visitors had turned over page

after page together before the final relief of their benevolent "Here!" The interval was bridged of course, but

the bridge verily was needed, and the impression left Milly to wonder if, in the general connexion, it were of

bridges or of intervals that the spirit not locally disciplined would find itself most conscious. It was as if at

home, by contrast, there (192) were neitherneither the difference itself, from position to position, nor, on

either side, and particularly on one, the awfully good manner, the conscious sinking of a consciousness, that

made up for it. The conscious sinking, at all events, and the awfully good manner, the difference, the bridge,

the interval, the skipped leaves of the social atlasthese, it was to be confessed, had a little, for our young

lady, in default of stouter stuff, to work themselves into the light literary legenda mixed wandering echo of

Trollope, of Thackeray, perhaps mostly of Dickensunder favour of which her pilgrimage had so much

appealed. She could relate to Susie later on, late the same evening, that the legend, before she had done with

it, had run clear, that the adored author of "The Newcomes," in fine, had been on the whole the note: the

picture lacking thus more than she had hoped, or rather perhaps showing less than she had feared, a certain

possibility of Pickwickian outline. She explained how she meant by this that Mrs. Condrip hadn't altogether

proved another Mrs. Nickleby, nor evenfor she might have proved almost anything, from the way poor

Mrs. Stringham, in the midnight conference, intimated rather yearningly that, however the event might have

turned, the side of English life such experiences opened to Milly were just those she herself seemed

"booked"as they were all, roundabout her now, always sayingto miss: she had begun to have a little, for

her fellow observer, these moments of fanciful reaction (reaction in which she was once (193) more all Susan

Shepherd) against the high sphere of colder conventions into which her overwhelming connexion with Maud

Manningham had rapt her. Milly never lost sight for long of the Susan Shepherd side of her, and was always

there to meet it when it came up and vaguely, tenderly, impatiently to pat it, abounding in the assurance that

they would still provide for it. They had, however, tonight another matter in hand; which proved to be

presently, on the girl's part, in respect to her hour of Chelsea, the revelation that Mrs. Condrip, taking a few

minutes when Kate was away with one of the children, in bed upstairs for some small complaint, had

suddenly (without its being in the least "led up to") broken ground on the subject of Mr. Densher, mentioned

him with impatience as a person in love with her sister. "She wished me, if I cared for Kate, to know," Milly

Milly had a dim smile. "I think that what she would like is that I should come a good deal to see HER about

The girl had by this time clearly made it out. "Nothing but to admire and make much of her sisterwhom

she doesn't, however, herself in the least understandand give up one's time, and everything else, to it." It

struck the elder friend that she spoke with an almost unprecedented approach to sharpness; (194) as if Mrs.

Condrip had been rather indescribably disconcerting. Never yet so much as just of late had Mrs. Stringham

seen her companion exalted, and by the very play of something within, into a vague golden air that left

irritation below. That was the great thing with Millyit was her characteristic poetry, or at least it was Susan

Shepherd's. "But she made a point," the former continued, "of my keeping what she says from Kate. I'm not

Milly had, she thought, a delay to answersomething that suggested a fuller talk with Mrs. Condrip than she

inclined perhaps to report. "It isn't so much he himself." Then the girl spoke a little as for the romance of it;

one could never tell, with her, where romance would come in. "It's the state of his fortunes."

"He has no 'private means,' and no prospect of any. He has no income, and no ability, according to Mrs.

Condrip, to make one. He's as poor, she calls it, as 'poverty,' and she says she knows what that is."

Again Mrs. Stringham considered, and it presently produced something. "But isn't he brilliantly clever?"

Milly had also then an instant that was not quite fruitless. "I haven't the least idea."

To which, for the time, Susie only replied "Oh!"though by the end of a minute she had followed it (195)

with a slightly musing "I see"; and that in turn with: "It's quite what Maud Lowder thinks."

"Oh yes; I know"Milly had again, in reference to what her friend had already told her of this, her little tone

of a moment before. "But Mrs. Condrip's own great point is that Aunt Maud herself won't hear of any such

person. Mr. Densher, she holdsthat's the way, at any rate, it was explained to mewon't ever be either a

public man or a rich man. If he were public she'd be willing, as I understand, to help him; if he were

richwithout being anything elseshe'd do her best to swallow him. As it is she taboos him."

"In short," said Mrs. Stringham as with a private purpose, "she told you, the sister, all about it. But Mrs.

"Then there it is!" On which, with a drop and one of those sudden slightly sighing surrenders to a vague

reflux and a general fatigue that had recently more than once marked themselves for her companion, Milly

turned away. Yet the matter wasn't left so, that night, between them, albeit neither perhaps could afterwards

have said which had first come back to it. Milly's own nearest approach at least, for a little, to doing so, was

to remark that they appeared allevery one they sawto think tremendously of money. This prompted in

Susie a laugh, not untender, (196) the innocent meaning of which was that it came, as a subject for

indifference, money did, easier to some people than to others: she made the point in fairness, however, that

you couldn't have told, by any too crude transparency of air, what place it held for Maud Manningham. She

did her worldliness with grand proper silencesif it mightn't better be put perhaps that she did her

detachment with grand occasional pushes. However Susie put it, in truth, she was really, in justice to herself,

thinking of the difference, as favourites of fortune, between her old friend and her new. Aunt Maud sat

somehow in the midst of her money, founded on it and surrounded by it, even if with a masterful high manner

about it, her manner of looking, hard and bright, as if it weren't there. Milly, about hers, had no manner at

allwhich was possibly, from a point of view, a fault: she was at any rate far away on the edge of it, and you

hadn't, as might be said, in order to get at her nature, to traverse, by whatever avenue, any piece of her

property. It was clear, on the other hand, that Mrs. Lowder was keeping her wealth as for purposes,

imaginations, ambitions, that would figure as large, as honourably unselfish, on the day they should take

effect. She would impose her will, but her will would be only that a person or two shouldn't lose a benefit by

not submitting if they could be made to submit. To Milly, as so much younger, such far views couldn't be

imputed: there was nobody she was supposable as interested for. It was too soon, since she wasn't interested

for herself. Even the richest woman, at her age, lacked motive, and Milly's motive doubtless (197) had plenty

of time to arrive. She was meanwhile beautiful, simple, sublime without itwhether missing it and vaguely

reaching out for it or not; and with it, for that matter, in the event, would really be these things just as much.

Only then she might very well have, like Aunt Maud, a manner. Such were the connexions, at all events, in

which the colloquy of our two ladies freshly flickered upin which it came round that the elder asked the

younger if she had herself, in the afternoon, named Mr. Densher as an acquaintance.

"Oh noI said nothing of having seen him. I remembered," the girl explained, "Mrs. Lowder's wish."

"Mrs. Condrip must?" Milly thought. "What she would like most is that her sister should be brought to think

ill of him; and if anything she can tell her will help that" But the girl dropped suddenly here, as if her

Her companion's interest, however, was all for what she herself saw. "You mean she'll immediately speak?"

Mrs. Stringham gathered that this was what Milly meant, but it left still a question. "How will it be against

"Oh how can I say? It won't be so much one's knowing him as one's having kept it out of sight."

(198) "Ah," said Mrs. Stringham as for comfort, "YOU haven't kept it out of sight. Isn't it much rather Miss

"Ah but," said the girl, not perhaps with marked consequence, "she has a right to do as she likes."

Milly looked at her as if she were almost venerably simple, but also as if this were what one loved her for.

"I only meant," Mrs. Stringham explained, "that I don't see what Mrs. Condrip would gain."

"By her being able to tell Kate?" Milly thought. "I only meant that I don't see what I myself should gain."

"He'll find you both here, and he can hardly be looked to, I take it, to 'cut' either of you for the sake of the

This placed the question at last on a basis more distinctly cheerful. "I might get at him somehow beforehand,"

the girl suggested; "I might give him what they call here the 'tip'that he's not to know me when we meet.

It was, oddly enough, an idea Milly seemed half to accept. "I don't know WHAT I want to run away from!"

It dispelled, on the spotsomething, to the elder woman's ear, in the sad, sweet sound of itany ghost of

any need of explaining. The sense was constant for her that their relation might have been afloat, like some

island of the south, in a great warm sea that represented, for every conceivable chance, a margin, an outer

sphere, of general emotion; and the effect of the occurrence of anything in particular was to make the sea

submerge the island, the margin flood the text. The great wave now for a moment swept over. "I'll go

"You're notand it's vain to pretend," said dear old Susie, who had been taking her in, "as sound and strong

"Insist, insistthe more the better. But the day I LOOK as sound and strong as that, you know," Milly went

on"on that day I shall be just sound and strong enough to take leave of you sweetly for ever. That's where

one is," she continued thus agreeably to embroider, "when even one's MOST 'beaux moments' aren't such as

to qualify, so far as appearance goes, for anything gayer than a handsome cemetery. Since I've lived all these

years as if I were dead, I shall die, no doubt, as if I were alivewhich will (200) happen to be as you want

me. So, you see," she wound up, "you'll never really know where I am. Except indeed when I'm gone; and

"No, abroadto Switzerland, Italy, anywhere. I mean by your staying 'here' for me," Milly pursued, "your

staying with me wherever I may be, even though we may neither of us know at the time where it is. No," she

insisted, "I DON'T know where I am, and you never will, and it doesn't matterand I dare say it's quite

true," she broke off, "that everything will have to come out." Her friend would have felt of her that she joked

about it now, hadn't her scale from grave to gay been a thing of such unnameable shades that her contrasts

were never sharp. She made up for failures of gravity by failures of mirth; if she hadn't, that is, been at times

as earnest as might have been liked, so she was certain not to be at other times as easy as she would like

herself. "I must face the music. It isn't at any rate its 'coming out,' " she added; "it's that Mrs. Condrip would

(201) "I mean if, trusted by her in strange countries, he forgets her so far as to make up to other people."

The amendment, however, brought Susie in, as with gaiety, for a comfortable end. "Did he make up, the false

"That, given the fact of his having evidently more or less followed up his acquaintance with you, to say

nothing of your obvious weird charm, he must have been all ready if you had a little bit led him on?"

Milly neither accepted nor qualified this; she only said after a moment and as with a conscious excess of the

pensive: "No, I don't think she'd quite wish to suggest that I made up to HIM; for that I should have had to do

so would only bring out his constancy. All I mean is," she addedand now at last, as with a supreme

impatience"that her being able to make him out a little a person who could give cause for jealousy would

evidently help her, since she's afraid of him, to do him in her sister's mind a useful ill turn."

Susan Shepherd perceived in this explanation such signs of an appetite for motive as would have sat

gracefully even on one of her own New England heroines. It was seeing round several corners; but that was

what New England heroines did, and it was moreover interesting for the moment to make out how many her

young friend had actually undertaken to see round. Finally, too, weren't they braving the deeps? They got

their amusement where they could. "Isn't it only," she asked, "rather probable she'd (202) see that Kate's

"Well, might but do what that often doesby all OUR blessed little laws and arrangements at least: excite

The idea was bright, yet the girl but beautifully stared. "Kate's own sentiment? Oh she didn't speak of that. I

don't think," she added as if she had been unconsciously giving a wrong impression, "I don't think Mrs.

"Well, only the fact of Mr. Densher's possibly himself keeping it upthe fear of some final result from

At this, however, Milly threw off another of her sudden vague "sports." "Noit's only we who do."

"Certainly not"the girl promptly assented. A certain interest nevertheless remained; she appeared to wish

(203) It was still as if, for an instant, Milly had to be sure of what she meant; but there it presently was. "If

What Susan Shepherd seemed hereupon for a little to wonder was why then they had been talking so. "But

Milly, however, easily explained that she wouldn't have asked her for the world.

Lord Mark looked at her today in particular as if to wring from her a confession that she had originally done

him injustice; and he was entitled to whatever there might be in it of advantage or merit that his intention

really in a manner took effect: he cared about something, after all, sufficiently to make her feel absurdly as if

she WERE confessingall the while it was quite the case that neither justice nor injustice was what had been

in question between them. He had presented himself at the hotel, had found her and had found Susan

Shepherd at home, had been "civil" to Susanit was just that shade, and Susan's fancy had fondly caught it;

and then had come again and missed them, and then had come and found them once more: besides letting

them easily see that if it hadn't by this time been the end of everythingwhich they could feel in the

exhausted air, that of the season at its last gaspthe places they might have liked to go to were such as they

would have had only to mention. Their feeling wasor at any rate their modest general pleathat there was

no place they would have liked to go to; there was only the sense of finding they liked, wherever they were,

the place to which they had been brought. Such was highly the case as to their current consciousnesswhich

could be indeed, in an equally eminent degree, but a matter of course; impressions this afternoon having by a

(208) happy turn of their wheel been gathered for them into a splendid cluster, an offering like an armful of

the rarest flowers. They were in presence of the offeringthey had been led up to it; and if it had been still

their habit to look at each other across distances for increase of unanimity his hand would have been silently

named between them as the hand applied to the wheel. He had administered the touch that, under light

analysis, made the differencethe difference of their not having lost, as Susie on the spot and at the hour

phrased it again and again, both for herself and for such others as the question might concern, so beautiful

and interesting an experience; the difference also, in fact, of Mrs. Lowder's not having lost it either, though it

was superficially with Mrs. Lowder they had come, and though it was further with that lady that our young

woman was directly engaged during the halfhour or so of her most agreeably inward response to the scene.

The great historic house had, for Milly, beyond terrace and garden, as the centre of an almost extravagantly

grand Watteaucomposition, a tone as of old gold kept "down" by the quality of the air, summer fullflushed

but attuned to the general perfect taste. Much, by her measure, for the previous hour, appeared, in connexion

with this revelation of it, to have happened to hera quantity expressed in introductions of charming new

people, in walks through halls of armour, of pictures, of cabinets, of tapestry, of teatables, in an assault of

reminders that this largeness of style was the sign of APPOINTED felicity. The largeness of style was the

great containing vessel, (209) while everything else, the pleasant personal affluence, the easy murmurous

welcome, the honoured age of illustrious host and hostess, all at once so distinguished and so plain, so public

and so shy, became but this or that element of the infusion. The elements melted together and seasoned the

draught, the essence of which might have struck the girl as distilled into the small cup of iced coffee she had

vaguely accepted from somebody, while a fuller flood somehow kept bearing her upall the freshness of

response of her young life, the freshness of the first and only prime. What had perhaps brought on just now a

kind of climax was the fact of her appearing to make out, through Aunt Maud, what was really the matter. It

couldn't be less than a climax for a poor shaky maiden to find it put to her of a sudden that she herself was the

matterfor that was positively what, on Mrs. Lowder's part, it came to. Everything was great, of course, in

great pictures, and it was doubtless precisely a part of the brilliant lifesince the brilliant life, as one had

faintly figured it, just WAS humanly ledthat all impressions within its area partook of its brilliancy; still,

letting that pass, it fairly stamped an hour as with the official seal for one to be able to take in so comfortably

one's companion's broad blandness. "You must stay among usyou must stay; anything else is impossible

and ridiculous; you don't know yet, no doubtyou can't; but you will soon enough: you can stay in ANY

position." It had been as the murmurous consecration to follow the murmurous welcome; and even if it were

but part of Aunt Maud's own spiritual ebrietyfor the dear (210) woman, one could see, was spiritually

"keeping" the dayit served to Milly, then and afterwards, as a highwater mark of the imagination.

It was to be the end of the short parenthesis which had begun but the other day at Lancaster Gate with Lord

Mark's informing her that she was a "success"the key thus again struck; and though no distinct, no

numbered revelations had crowded in, there had, as we have seen, been plenty of incident for the space and

the time. There had been thrice as much, and all gratuitous and genialif, in portions, not exactly hitherto

THE revelationas three unprepared weeks could have been expected to produce. Mrs. Lowder had

improvised a "rush" for them, but out of elements, as Milly was now a little more freely aware, somewhat

roughly combined. Therefore if at this very instant she had her reasons for thinking of the parenthesis as

about to closereasons completely personalshe had on behalf of her companion a divination almost as

deep. The parenthesis would close with this admirable picture, but the admirable picture still would show

Aunt Maud as not absolutely sure either if she herself were destined to remain in it. What she was doing,

Milly might even not have escaped seeming to see, was to talk herself into a sublimer serenity while she

ostensibly talked Milly. It was fine, the girl fully felt, the way she did talk HER, little as, at bottom, our

young woman needed it or found other persuasions at fault. It was in particular during the minutes of her

grateful absorption of iced coffeequalified by a sharp doubt of her wisdomthat she most had in view

Lord Mark's relation to her (211) being there, or at least to the question of her being amused at it. It wouldn't

have taken much by the end of five minutes quite to make her feel that this relation was charming. It might,

once more, simply have been that everything, anything, was charming when one was so justly and completely

charmed; but, frankly, she hadn't supposed anything so serenely sociable could settle itself between them as

the friendly understanding that was at present somehow in the air. They were, many of them together, near

the marquee that had been erected on a stretch of sward as a temple of refreshment and that happened to have

the propertywhich was all to the goodof making Milly think of a "durbar"; her iced coffee had been a

consequence of this connexion, through which, further, the bright company scattered about fell thoroughly

into place. Certain of its members might have represented the contingent of "native princes"familiar, but

scarce the less grandly gregarious term!and Lord Mark would have done for one of these even though for

choice he but presented himself as a supervisory friend of the family. The Lancaster Gate family, he clearly

intended, in which he included its American recruits, and included above all Kate Croya young person

blessedly easy to take care of. She knew people, and people knew her, and she was the handsomest thing

therethis last a declaration made by Milly, in a sort of soft midsummer madness, a straight skylarkflight

Kate had for her new friend's eyes the extraordinary and attaching property of appearing at a given (212)

moment to show as a beautiful stranger, to cut her connexions and lose her identity, letting the imagination

for the time make what it would of themmake her merely a person striking from afar, more and more

pleasing as one watched, but who was above all a subject for curiosity. Nothing could have given her, as a

party to a relation, a greater freshness than this sense, which sprang up at its own hours, of one's being as

curious about her as if one hadn't known her. It had sprung up, we have gathered, as soon as Milly had seen

her after hearing from Mrs. Stringham of her knowledge of Merton Densher; she had LOOKED then other

and, as Milly knew the real critical mind would call it, more objective; and our young woman had foreseen it

of her on the spot that she would often look so again. It was exactly what she was doing this afternoon; and

Milly, who had amusements of thought that were like the secrecies of a little girl playing with dolls when

conventionally "too big," could almost settle to the game of what one would suppose her, how one would

place her, if one didn't know her. She became thus, intermittently, a figure conditioned only by the great facts

of aspect, a figure to be waited for, named and fitted. This was doubtless but a way of feeling that it was of

her essence to be peculiarly what the occasion, whatever it might be, demanded when its demand was

highest. There were probably ways enough, on these lines, for such a consciousness; another of them would

be for instance to say that she was made for great social uses. Milly wasn't wholly sure she herself knew what

great social uses might beunless, as a good example, (213) to exert just that sort of glamour in just that sort

of frame were one of them: she would have fallen back on knowing sufficiently that they existed at all events

for her friend. It imputed a primness, all round, to be reduced but to saying, by way of a translation of one's

amusement, that she was always so RIGHTsince that, too often, was what the _insupportables_ themselves

were; yet it was, in overflow to Aunt Maud, what she had to content herself withalsave for the lame

enhancement of saying she was lovely. It served, despite everything, the purpose, strengthened the bond that

for the time held the two ladies together, distilled in short its drop of rosecolour for Mrs. Lowder's own

view. That was really the view Milly had, for most of the rest of the occasion, to give herself to immediately

taking in; but it didn't prevent the continued play of those swift crosslights, odd beguilements of the mind, at

Mrs. Lowder herself found it enough simply to reply, in respect to Kate, that she was indeed a luxury to take

about the world: she expressed no more surprise than that at her "rightness" today. Didn't it by this time

sufficiently shine out that it was precisely AS the very luxury she was proving that she had, from far back,

been appraised and waited for? Crude elation, however, might be kept at bay, and the circumstance none the

less made clear that they were all swimming together in the blue. It came back to Lord Mark again, as he

seemed slowly to pass and repass and conveniently to linger before them; he was personally the note of the

bluelike a suspended skein of silk within reach of the broiderer's hand. (214) Aunt Maud's freemoving

shuttle took a length of him at rhythmic intervals; and one of the accessory truths that flickered across to

Milly was that he ever so consentingly knew he was being worked in. This was almost like an understanding

with her at Mrs. Lowder's expense, which she would have none of; she wouldn't for the world have had him

make any such point as that he wouldn't have launched them at Matchamor whatever it was he HAD

doneonly for Aunt Maud's beaux yeux. What he had done, it would have been guessable, was something

he had for some time been desired in vain to do; and what they were all now profiting by was a change

comparatively sudden, the cessation of hope delayed. What had caused the cessation easily showed itself as

none of Milly's business; and she was luckily, for that matter, in no real danger of hearing from him directly

that her individual weight had been felt in the scale. Why then indeed was it an effect of his diffused but

subdued participation that he might absolutely have been saying to her "Yes, let the dear woman take her own

tone"? "Since she's here she may stay," he might have been adding"for whatever she can make of it. But

you and I are different." Milly knew SHE was different in truthhis own difference was his own affair; but

also she knew that after all, even at their distinctest, Lord Mark's "tips" in this line would be tacit. He

practically placed herit came round again to thatunder no obligation whatever. It was a matter of equal

ease, moreover, her letting Mrs. Lowder take a tone. She might have taken twentythey would have spoiled

(215) "You must stay on with us; you CAN, you know, in any position you like; any, any, ANY, my dear

child"and her emphasis went deep. "You must make your home with us; and it's really open to you to

make the most beautiful one in the world. You mustn't be under a mistakeunder any of any sort; and you

must let us all think for you a little, take care of you and watch over you. Above all you must help me with

Kate, and you must stay a little FOR her; nothing for a long time has happened to me so good as that you and

she should have become friends. It's beautiful; it's great; it's everything. What makes it perfect is that it

should have come about through our dear delightful Susie, restored to me, after so many years, by such a

miracle. Nothat's more charming to me than even your hitting it off with Kate. God has been good to

onepositively; for I couldn't, at my age, have made a new friendundertaken, I mean, out of whole cloth,

the real thing. It's like changing one's bankersafter fifty: one doesn't do that. That's why Susie has been

kept for me, as you seem to keep people in your wonderful country, in lavender and pink papercoming

back at last as straight as out of a fairytale and with you as an attendant fairy." Milly hereupon replied

appreciatively that such a description of herself made her feel as if pink paper were her dress and lavender its

trimming; but Aunt Maud wasn't to be deterred by a weak joke from keeping it up. The young person under

her protection could feel besides that she kept it up in perfect sincerity. She was somehow at this hour a very

happy woman, and a part of her happiness (216) might precisely have been that her affections and her views

were moving as never before in concert. Unquestionably she loved Susie; but she also loved Kate and loved

Lord Mark, loved their funny old host and hostess, loved every one within range, down to the very servant

who came to receive Milly's empty iceplatedown, for that matter, to Milly herself, who was, while she

talked, really conscious of the enveloping flap of a protective mantle, a shelter with the weight of an Eastern

carpet. An Eastern carpet, for wishingpurposes of one's own, was a thing to be on rather than under; still,

however, if the girl should fail of breath it wouldn't be, she could feel, by Mrs. Lowder's fault. One of the last

things she was afterwards to recall of this was Aunt Maud's going on to say that she and Kate must stand

together because together they could do anything. It was for Kate of course she was essentially planning; but

the plan, enlarged and uplifted now, somehow required Milly's prosperity too for its full operation, just as

Milly's prosperity at the same time involved Kate's. It was nebulous yet, it was slightly confused, but it was

comprehensive and genial, and it made our young woman understand things Kate had said of her aunt's

possibilities, as well as characterisations that had fallen from Susan Shepherd. One of the most frequent on

A prime reason, we must add, why sundry impressions were not to be fully present to the girl till later on was

that they yielded at this stage, with an effect of sharp supersession, to a detached quarter of an hourher

only onewith Lord Mark. "Have you seen the picture in the house, the beautiful one that's so like

you?"he was asking that as he stood before her; having come up at last with his smooth intimation that any

wire he had pulled and yet wanted not to remind her of wasn't quite a reason for his having no joy at all.

"I've been through rooms and I've seen pictures. But if I'm 'like' anything so beautiful as most of them seemed

to me!" It needed in short for Milly some evidence which he only wanted to supply. She was the image of

the wonderful Bronzino, which she must have a look at on every ground. He had thus called her off and led

her away; the more easily that the house within was above all what had already drawn round her its mystic

circle. Their progress meanwhile was not of the straightest; it was an advance, without haste, through

innumerable natural pauses and soft concussions, determined for the most part by the appearance before them

of ladies and gentlemen, singly, in couples, in clusters, who brought them to a stand with an inveterate "I say,

Mark." What they said she never quite made out; it was their (218) all so domestically knowing him, and his

knowing them, that mainly struck her, while her impression, for the rest, was but of fellow strollers more

vaguely afloat than themselves, supernumeraries mostly a little battered, whether as jaunty males or as

ostensibly elegant women. They might have been moving a good deal by a momentum that had begun far

back, but they were still brave and personable, still warranted for continuance as long again, and they gave

her, in especial collectively, a sense of pleasant voices, pleasanter than those of actors, of friendly empty

words and kind lingering eyes that took somehow pardonable liberties. The lingering eyes looked her over,

the lingering eyes were what went, in almost confessed simplicity, with the pointless "I say, Mark"; and what

was really most flagrant of all was that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she didn't mind, he seemed to

The odd part was that he made her herself believe, for amusement, in the benefit, measured by him in mere

mannerfor wonderful, of a truth, was, as a means of expression, his slightness of emphasisthat her

present good nature conferred. It was, as she could easily see, a mild common carnival of good naturea

mass of London people together, of sorts and sorts, but who mainly knew each other and who, in their way,

did, no doubt, confess to curiosity. It had gone round that she was there; questions about her would be

passing; the easiest thing was to run the gauntlet with HIMjust as the easiest thing was in fact to trust him

generally. Couldn't she know for (219) herself, passively, how little harm they meant her?to that extent

that it made no difference whether or not he introduced them. The strangest thing of all for Milly was perhaps

the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she could simply give back the particular bland stare that

appeared in such cases to mark civilisation at its highest. It was so little her fault, this oddity of what had

"gone round" about her, that to accept it without question might be as good a way as another of feeling life. It

was inevitable to supply the probable descriptionthat of the awfully rich young American who was so

queer to behold, but nice, by all accounts, to know; and she had really but one instant of speculation as to

fables or fantasies perchance originally launched. She asked herself once only if Susie could, inconceivably,

have been blatant about her; for the question, on the spot, was really blown away for ever. She knew in fact

on the spot and with sharpness just why she had "elected" Susan Shepherd: she had had from the first hour

the conviction of her being precisely the person in the world least possibly a trumpeter. So it wasn't their

fault, it wasn't their fault, and anything might happen that would, and everything now again melted together,

and kind eyes were always kind eyesif it were never to be worse than that! She got with her companion

into the house; they brushed, beneficently, past all their accidents. The Bronzino was, it appeared, deep

within, and the long afternoon light lingered for them on patches of old colour and waylaid them, as they

(220) It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had really had something other than this spoken pretext in

view; as if there were something he wanted to say to her and were onlyconsciously yet not awkwardly, just

delicatelyhanging fire. At the same time it was as if the thing had practically been said by the moment they

came in sight of the picture; since what it appeared to amount to was "Do let a fellow who isn't a fool take

care of you a little." The thing somehow, with the aid of the Bronzino, was done; it hadn't seemed to matter to

her before if he were a fool or no; but now, just where they were, she liked his not being; and it was all

moreover none the worse for coming back to something of the same sound as Mrs. Lowder's so recent

reminder. She too wished to take care of herand wasn't it, a peu pres, what all the people with the kind eyes

were wishing? Once more things melted togetherthe beauty and the history and the facility and the

splendid midsummer glow: it was a sort of magnificent maximum, the pink dawn of an apotheosis coming so

curiously soon. What in fact befell was that, as she afterwards made out, it was Lord Mark who said nothing

in particularit was she herself who said all. She couldn't help thatit came; and the reason it came was

that she found herself, for the first moment, looking at the mysterious portrait through tears. Perhaps it was

her tears that made it just then so strange and fairas wonderful as he had said: the face of a young woman,

all splendidly drawn, down to the hands, and splendidly dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet handsome in

sadness and crowned with a mass of hair, (221) rolled back and high, that must, before fading with time, have

had a family resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her slightly

Michaelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her

brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great personageonly unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead,

dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that had nothing to do with her. "I shall never be better

He smiled for her at the portrait. "Than she? You'd scarce need to be better, for surely that's well enough. But

you ARE, one feels, as it happens, better; because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she was good."

He hadn't understood. She was before the picture, but she had turned to him, and she didn't care if for the

minute he noticed her tears. It was probably as good a moment as she should ever have with him. It was

perhaps as good a moment as she should have with any one, or have in any connexion whatever. "I mean that

everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right

Though he still didn't understand her he was as nice as if he had; he didn't ask for insistence, and that was just

a part of his looking after her. He simply protected her now from herself, and there was a world of practice in

Ah they had already done that, she knew, (222) as much as she ever would; and she was shaking her head at

her pale sister the next moment with a world, on her side, of slowness. "I wish I could see the resemblance.

Of course her complexion's green," she laughed; "but mine's several shades greener."

"Oh you go her, all round, 'one better'which is just what I said. But you're a pair. You must surely catch it,"

he added as if it were important to his character as a serious man not to appear to have invented his plea.

"I don't knowone never knows one's self. It's a funny fancy, and I don't imagine it would have occurred"

"I see it HAS occurred"he had already taken her up. She had her back, as she faced the picture, to one of

the doors of the room, which was open, and on her turning as he spoke she saw that they were in the presence

of three other persons, also, as appeared, interested enquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had

just become aware of her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the best of it, that she was

far from being first in the field. She had brought a lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what

Lord Mark was showing Milly, and he took her straightway as a reenforcement. Kate herself had spoken,

"YOU had noticed too?"she smiled at him without looking at Milly. "Then I'm not original(223) which

one always hopes one has been. But the likeness is so great." And now she looked at Millyfor whom again

it was, all round indeed, kind, kind eyes. "Yes, there you are, my dear, if you want to know. And you're

superb." She took now but a glance at the picture, though it was enough to make her question to her friends

"I brought Miss Theale," Lord Mark explained to the latter, "quite off my own bat."

"Les grands esprits se rencontrent!" laughed her attendant gentleman, a high but slightly stooping, shambling

and wavering person who represented urbanity by the liberal aid of certain prominent front teeth and whom

Lady Aldershaw meanwhile looked at Milly quite as if Milly had been the Bronzino and the Bronzino only

Milly. "Superb, superb. Of course I had noticed you. It IS wonderful," she went on with her back to the

picture, but with some other eagerness which Milly felt gathering, felt directing her motions now. It was

enoughthey were introduced, and she was saying "I wonder if you could give us the pleasure of

coming" She wasn't fresh, for she wasn't young, even though she denied at every pore that she was old; but

she was vivid and much bejewelled for the midsummer daylight; and she was all in the palest pinks and

blues. She didn't think, at this pass, that she could "come" anywhereMilly (224) didn't; and she already

knew that somehow Lord Mark was saving her from the question. He had interposed, taking the words out of

the lady's mouth and not caring at all if the lady minded. That was clearly the right way to treat herat least

for him; as she had only dropped, smiling, and then turned away with him. She had been dealt withit

would have done an enemy good. The gentleman still stood, a little helpless, addressing himself to the

intention of urbanity as if it were a large loud whistle; he had been sighing sympathy, in his way, while the

lady made her overture; and Milly had in this light soon arrived at their identity. They were Lord and Lady

Aldershaw, and the wife was the clever one. A minute or two later the situation had changed, and she knew it

afterwards to have been by the subtle operation of Kate. She was herself saying that she was afraid she must

go now if Susie could be found; but she was sitting down on the nearest seat to say it. The prospect, through

opened doors, stretched before her into other rooms, down the vista of which Lord Mark was strolling with

Lady Aldershaw, who, close to him and much intent, seemed to show from behind as peculiarly expert. Lord

Aldershaw, for his part, had been left in the middle of the room, while Kate, with her back to him, was

standing before her with much sweetness of manner. The sweetness was all for HER; she had the sense of the

poor gentleman's having somehow been handled as Lord Mark had handled his wife. He dangled there, he

shambled a little; then he bethought himself of the Bronzino, before which, with his eyeglass, he hovered. It

drew from him an (225) odd vague sound, not wholly distinct from a grunt, and a "Humphmost

remarkable!" which lighted Kate's face with amusement. The next moment he had creaked away over

polished floors after the others and Milly was feeling as if SHE had been rude. But Lord Aldershaw was in

Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded historic chamber and the presence of the pale personage on the

wall, whose eyes all the while seemed engaged with her own, she found herself suddenly sunk in something

quite intimate and humble and to which these grandeurs were strange enough witnesses. It had come up, in

the form in which she had had to accept it, all suddenly, and nothing about it, at the same time, was more

marked than that she had in a manner plunged into it to escape from something else. Something else, from her

first vision of her friend's appearance three minutes before, had been present to her even through the call

made by the others on her attention; something that was perversely THERE, she was more and more

uncomfortably finding, at least for the first moments and by some spring of its own, with every renewal of

their meeting. "Is it the way she looks to HIM?" she asked herselfthe perversity being how she kept in

remembrance that Kate was known to him. It wasn't a fault in Katenor in him assuredly; and she had a

horror, being generous and tender, of treating either of them as if it had been. To Densher himself she

couldn't make it uphe was too far away; but her secondary (226) impulse was to make it up to Kate. She

did so now with a strange soft energythe impulse immediately acting. "Will you render me tomorrow a

"Then I'm your woman," Kate smiled, "for that's the kind of thing I love. DO let us do something bad. You're

"Ah I shan't perhaps come up to your idea. It's only to deceive Susan Shepherd."

"And for cheating," Kate asked, "my powers will contribute? Well, I'll do my best for you." In accordance

with which it was presently settled between them that Milly should have the aid and comfort of her presence

for a visit to Sir Luke Strett. Kate had needed a minute for enlightenment, and it was quite grand for her

comrade that this name should have said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some days been secretly

saying much. The personage in question was, as she explained, the greatest of medical lightsif she had got

hold, as she believed (and she had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) of the right, the special man.

She had written to him three days before, and he had named her an hour, eleventwenty; only it had come to

her on the eve that she couldn't go alone. Her maid on the other hand wasn't good enough, and Susie was too

good. Kate (227) had listened above all with high indulgence. "And I'm betwixt and between, happy thought!

Milly thought. "Why to be worried if it's nothing. And to be still more worriedI mean before she need

Kate fixed her with deep eyes. "What in the world is the matter with you?" It had inevitably a sound of

impatience, as if it had been a challenge really to produce something; so that Milly felt her for the moment

only as a much older person, standing above her a little, doubting the imagined ailments, suspecting the easy

complaints, of ignorant youth. It somewhat checked her, further, that the matter with her was what exactly as

yet she wanted knowledge about; and she immediately declared, for conciliation, that if she were merely

fanciful Kate would see her put to shame. Kate vividly uttered, in return, the hope that, since she could come

out and be so charming, could so universally dazzle and interest, she wasn't all the while in distress or in

anxietydidn't believe herself to be in any degree seriously menaced. "Well, I want to make outto make

out!" was all that this consistently produced. To which Kate made clear answer: "Ah then let us by all

"I thought," Milly said, "you'd like to help me. But I must ask you, please, for the promise of absolute

"Well, if I am it must of course finally come out. But I can go for a long time." Milly spoke with her (228)

eyes again on her painted sister'salmost as if under their suggestion. She still sat there before Kate, yet not

without a light in her face. "That will be one of my advantages. I think I could die without its being noticed."

"You're an extraordinary young woman," her friend, visibly held by her, declared at last. "What a remarkable

"Well, we won't talk, precisely"Milly got herself together again. "I only wanted to make sure of you."

"Here in the midst of!" But Kate could only sigh for wonderalmost visibly too for pity.

It made a moment during which her companion waited on her word; partly as if from a yearning, shy but

deep, to have her case put to her just as Kate was struck by it; partly as if the hint of pity were already giving

a sense to her whimsical "shot," with Lord Mark, at Mrs. Lowder's first dinner. Exactly thisthe handsome

girl's compassionate manner, her friendly descent from her own strengthwas what she had then foretold.

She took Kate up as if positively for the deeper taste of it. "Here in the midst of what?"

It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more of that; then, however, without waiting, she went on. "We

(229) "No, it's YOU." And Kate seemed struck with the real interest of it. "In three weeks!"

Milly kept it up. "Never were people on such terms! All the more reason," she added, "that I shouldn't

"Oh yes you will: all the same! You'll pity me awfully, but you'll help me very much. And I absolutely trust

you. So there we are." There they were then, since Kate had so to take it; but there, Milly felt, she herself in

particular was; for it was just the point at which she had wished to arrive. She had wanted to prove to herself

that she didn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve; and what better proof could there be than this quite

special confidence? If she desired to show Kate that she really believed Kate liked her, how could she show it

What it really came to, on the morrow, this first timethe time Kate went with herwas that the great man

had, a little, to excuse himself; had, by a rare accidentfor he kept his consultinghours in general

rigorously freebut ten minutes to give her; ten mere minutes which he yet placed at her service in a manner

that she admired still more than she could meet it: so crystalclean the great empty cup of attention that he set

between them on the table. He was presently to jump into his carriage, but he promptly made the point that he

must see her again, see her within a day or two; and he named for her at once another houreasing her off

beautifully too even then in respect to her possibly failing of justice to her errand. The minutes affected her in

fact as ebbing more swiftly than her little army of items could muster, and they would probably have gone

without her doing much more than secure another hearing, hadn't it been for her sense, at the last, that she had

gained above all an impression. The impressionall the sharp growth of the final few momentswas

neither more nor less than that she might make, of a sudden, in quite another world, another straight friend,

and a friend who would moreover be, wonderfully, the most appointed, the most thoroughly adjusted of the

whole collection, inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character scientifically, ponderably, (231)

proveablynot just loosely and sociably. Literally, furthermore, it wouldn't really depend on herself, Sir

Luke Strett's friendship, in the least: perhaps what made her most stammer and pant was its thus queerly

coming over her that she might find she had interested him even beyond her intention, find she was in fact

launched in some current that would lose itself in the sea of science. At the same time that she struggled,

however, she also surrendered; there was a moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, of

explaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supreme pointless quaver that had turned the next

instant to an intensity of interrogative stillness, upon his general good will. His large settled face, though

firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; he looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, half like a

general and half like a bishop, and she was soon sure that, within some such handsome range, what it would

show her would be what was good, what was best for her. She had established, in other words, in this

timesaving way, a relation with it; and the relation was the special trophy that, for the hour, she bore off. It

was like an absolute possession, a new resource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tucked

away under the arm of memory. She hadn't had it when she went in, and she had it when she came out; she

had it there under her cloak, but dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again faced Kate

Croy. That young lady had of course awaited her in another room, where, as the great man was to absent

himself, no one else was in attendance; and she rose for her with such a face (232) of sympathy as might have

graced the vestibule of a dentist. "Is it out?" she seemed to ask as if it had been a question of a tooth; and

Milly was almost gay. "That I'm not to worry about anything in the world, and that if I'll be a good girl and do

Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. "But does he allow then that you're ill?"

"I don't know what he allows, and I don't care. I SHALL know, and whatever it is it will be enough. He

"He asked me scarcely anythinghe doesn't need to do anything so stupid," Milly said. "He can tell. He

knows," she repeated; "and when I go backfor he'll have thought me over a littleit will be all right."

It just pulled her friend up, for even while they talkedat least it was one of the reasonsshe stood there

suddenly, irrelevantly, in the light of her OTHER identity, the identity she would have for Mr. Densher. This

was always, from one instant to another, an incalculable light, which, though it might go off faster than it

came on, necessarily disturbed. It sprang, (233) with a perversity all its own, from the fact that, with the lapse

of hours and days, the chances themselves that made for his being named continued so oddly to fail. There

were twenty, there were fifty, but none of them turned up. This in particular was of course not a juncture at

which the least of them would naturally be present; but it would make, none the less, Milly saw, another day

practically all stamped with avoidance. She saw in a quick glimmer, and with it all Kate's unconsciousness;

and then she shook off the obsession. But it had lasted long enough to qualify her response. No, she had

shown Kate how she trusted her; and that, for loyalty, would somehow do. "Oh, dear thing, now that the ice is

"Without a scruple. Only I shall ask you, please, for your absolute discretion still."

Outside, at a distance from the door, on the wide pavement of the great contiguous square, they had to wait

again while their carriage, which Milly had kept, completed a further turn of exercise, engaged in by the

coachman for reasons of his own. The footman was there and had indicated that he was making the circuit; so

Kate went on while they stood. "But don't you ask a good deal, darling, in proportion to what you give?"

This pulled Milly up still shorterso short in fact that she yielded as soon as she had taken it in. But she

"I don't want to 'tell,' " said Kate. "I'll be as silent as the tomb if I can only have the truth from (234) you. All

I want is that you shouldn't keep from me how you find out that you really are."

"Well then I won't ever. But you see for yourself," Milly went on, "how I really am. I'm satisfied. I'm happy."

Kate looked at her long. "I believe you like it. The way things turn out for you!"

Milly met her look now without a thought of anything but the spoken. She had ceased to be Mr. Densher's

image; she stood for nothing but herself, and she was none the less fine. Still, still, what had passed was a fair

bargain and it would do. "Of course I like it. I feelI can't otherwise describe itas if I had been on my

knees to the priest. I've confessed and I've been absolved. It has been lifted off."

"Ohdoctors!" Milly said. "But I hope," she added, "he didn't like me too much." Then as if to escape a little

from her friend's deeper sounding, or as impatient for the carriage, not yet in sight, her eyes, turning away,

took in the great stale square. As its staleness, however, was but that of London fairly fatigued, the late hot

London with its dance all danced and its story all told, the air seemed a thing of blurred pictures and mixed

echoes, and an impression met the sensean impression that broke the next moment through the girl's

tightened lips. "Oh it's a beautiful big world, and every one, yes, every one!" It presently brought her back

to Kate, and she hoped she didn't actually look as much as if she (235) were crying as she must have looked

"Oh," Kate laughed, "we'll pull you through! And won't you now bring Mrs. Stringham?"

But Milly after an instant was again clear about that. "Not till I've seen him once more."

She was to have found this preference, two days later, abundantly justified; and yet when, in prompt

accordance with what had passed between them, she reappeared before her distinguished friendthat

character having for him in the interval built itself up still higherthe first thing he asked her was whether

she had been accompanied. She told him, on this, straightway, everything; completely free at present from

her first embarrassment, disposed evenas she felt she might becometo undue volubility, and conscious

moreover of no alarm from his thus perhaps wishing she had not come alone. It was exactly as if, in the

fortyeight hours that had passed, her acquaintance with him had somehow increased and his own knowledge

in particular received mysterious additions. They had been together, before, scarce ten minutes, but the

relation, the one the ten minutes had so beautifully created, was there to take straight up: and this not, on his

own part, from mere professional heartiness, mere bedside manner, which she would have dislikedmuch

rather from a quiet pleasant air in him of having positively asked about her, asked here and asked there and

found out. Of (236) course he couldn't in the least have asked, or have wanted to; there was no source of

information to his hand, and he had really needed none: he had found out simply by his geniusand found

out, she meant, literally everything. Now she knew not only that she didn't dislike thisthe state of being

found out about; but that on the contrary it was truly what she had come for, and that for the time at least it

would give her something firm to stand on. She struck herself as aware, aware as she had never been, of

really not having had from the beginning anything firm. It would be strange for the firmness to come, after

all, from her learning in these agreeable conditions that she was in some way doomed; but above all it would

prove how little she had hitherto had to hold her up. If she was now to be held up by the mere processsince

that was perhaps on the cardsof being let down, this would only testify in turn to her queer little history.

THAT sense of loosely rattling had been no process at all; and it was ridiculously true that her thus sitting

there to see her life put into the scales represented her first approach to the taste of orderly living. Such was

Milly's romantic versionthat her life, especially by the fact of this second interview, WAS put into the

scales; and just the best part of the relation established might have been, for that matter, that the great grave

charming man knew, had known at once, that it was romantic, and in that measure allowed for it. Her only

doubt, her only fear, was whether he perhaps wouldn't even take advantage of her being a little romantic to

treat her as romantic altogether. This doubtless was her danger with him; (237) but she should see, and

The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the commodious "handsome" room, far back in the fine old

house, soundless from position, somewhat sallow with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at

midsummerthe very place put on for her a look of custom and use, squared itself solidly round her as with

promises and certainties. She had come forth to see the world, and this then was to be the world's light, the

rich dusk of a London "back," these the world's walls, those the world's curtains and carpet. She should be

intimate with the great bronze clock and mantelornaments, conspicuously presented in gratitude and long

ago; she should be as one of the circle of eminent contemporaries, photographed, engraved, signatured, and in

particular framed and glazed, who made up the rest of the decoration, and made up as well so much of the

human comfort; and while she thought of all the clean truths, unfringed, unfingered, that the listening

stillness, strained into pauses and waits, would again and again, for years, have kept distinct, she also

wondered what SHE would eventually decide upon to present in gratitude. She would give something better

at least than the brawny Victorian bronzes. This was precisely an instance of what she felt he knew of her

before he had done with her: that she was secretly romancing at that rate, in the midst of so much else that

was more urgent, all over the place. So much for her secrets with him, none of which really required to be

phrased. It would have been thoroughly a secret for her from any one (238) else that without a dear lady she

had picked up just before coming over she wouldn't have a decently near connexion of any sort, for such an

appeal as she was making, to put forward: no one in the least, as it were, to produce for respectability. But

HIS seeing it she didn't mind a scrap, and not a scrap either his knowing how she had left the dear lady in the

dark. She had come alone, putting her friend off with a fraud: giving a pretext of shops, of a whim, of she

didn't know whatthe amusement of being for once in the streets by herself. The streets by herself were new

to hershe had always had in them a companion or a maid; and he was never to believe moreover that she

couldn't take full in the face anything he might have to say. He was softly amused at her account of her

courage; though he yet showed it somehow without soothing her too grossly. Still, he did want to know

Distinctly he was amused, and it added to his airthe greatest charm of allof giving her lots of time.

It didn't take much computation, but she nevertheless had to think a moment, conscious as she was that he

distinctly WOULD want to fill out his notion of (239) hereven a little, as it were, to warm the air for her.

That howeverand better early than latehe must accept as of no use; and she herself felt for an instant

quite a competent certainty on the subject of any such warming. The air, for Milly Theale, was, from the very

nature of the case, destined never to rid itself of a considerable chill. This she could tell him with authority, if

she could tell him nothing else; and she seemed to see now, in short, that it would importantly simplify. "Yes,

it makes another; but they all together wouldn't makewell, I don't know what to call it but the difference. I

mean when one ISreally alone. I've never seen anything like the kindness." She pulled up a minute while

he waitedwaited again as if with his reasons for letting her, for almost making her, talk. What she herself

wanted was not, for the third time, to cry, as it were, in public. She HAD never seen anything like the

kindness, and she wished to do it justice; but she knew what she was about, and justice was not wronged by

her being able presently to stick to her point. "Only one's situation is what it is. It's ME it concerns. The rest is

delightful and useless. Nobody can really help. That's why I'm by myself today. I WANT to bein spite of

Miss Croy, who came with me last. If you can help, so much the betterand also of course if one can a little

one's self. Except for thatyou and me doing our bestI like you to see me just as I am. Yes, I like itand

I don't exaggerate. Shouldn't one, at the start, show the worstso that anything after that may be better? It

wouldn't make any real differenceit WON'T make (240) any, anything that may happen won'tto any

one. Therefore I feel myself, this way, with you, just as I am; andif you do in the least care to knowit

She put it as to his caring to know, because his manner seemed to give her all her chance, and the impression

was there for her to take. It was strange and deep for her, this impression, and she did accordingly take it

straight home. It showed himshowed him in spite of himselfas allowing, somewhere far within, things

comparatively remote, things in fact quite, as she would have said, outside, delicately to weigh with him;

showed him as interested on her behalf in other questions beside the question of what was the matter with

her. She accepted such an interest as regular in the highest type of scientific mindhis own BEING the

highest, magnificentlybecause otherwise obviously it wouldn't be there; but she could at the same time

take it as a direct source of light upon herself, even though that might present her a little as pretending to

equal him. Wanting to know more about a patient than how a patient was constructed or deranged couldn't be,

even on the part of the greatest of doctors, anything but some form or other of the desire to let the patient

down easily. When that was the case the reason, in turn, could only be, too manifestly, pity; and when pity

held up its telltale face like a head on a pike, in a French revolution, bobbing before a window, what was the

inference but that the patient was bad? He might say what he would nowshe would always have seen the

head at the window; and in fact from (241) this moment she only wanted him to say what he would. He might

say it too with the greater ease to himself as there wasn't one of her divinations thatAS her ownhe would

in any way put himself out for. Finally, if he was making her talk she WAS talking, and what it could at any

rate come to for him was that she wasn't afraid. If he wanted to do the dearest thing in the world for her he

would show her he believed she wasn't; which undertaking of hersnot to have misled himwas what she

counted at the moment as her presumptuous little hint to him that she was as good as himself. It put forward

the bold idea that he could really BE misled; and there actually passed between them for some seconds a sign,

a sign of the eyes only, that they knew together where they were. This made, in their brown old temple of

truth, its momentary flicker; then what followed it was that he had her, all the same, in his pocket; and the

whole thing wound up for that consummation with his kind dim smile. Such kindness was wonderful with

such dimness; but brightnessthat even of sharp steelwas of course for the other side of the business, and

it would all come in for her to one tune or another. "Do you mean," he asked, "that you've no relations at

She shook her head as with the easy habit of an interviewed heroine or a freak of nature at a show. "Nobody

whatever"but the last thing she had come for was to be dreary about it. "I'm a survivora survivor of a

general wreck. You see," she added, "how that's to be taken into accountthat (242) every one else HAS

gone. When I was ten years old there were, with my father and my mother, six of us. I'm all that's left. But

they died," she went on, to be fair all round, "of different things. Still, there it is. And, as I told you before,

I'm American. Not that I mean that makes me worse. However, you'll probably know what it makes me."

"Yes"he even showed amusement for it. "I know perfectly what it makes you. It makes you, to begin with,

She sighed, though gratefully, as if again before the social scene. "Ah there you are!"

"Oh no; there 'we' aren't at all! There I am onlybut as much as you like. I've no end of American friends:

there THEY are, if you please, and it's a fact that you couldn't very well be in a better place than in their

company. It puts you with plenty of othersand that isn't pure solitude." Then he pursued: "I'm sure you've

an excellent spirit; but don't try to bear more things than you need." Which after an instant he further

explained. "Hard things have come to you in youth, but you mustn't think life will be for you all hard things.

You've the right to be happy. You must make up your mind to it. You must accept any form in which

"Oh I'll accept any whatever!" she almost gaily returned. "And it seems to me, for that matter, that I'm

"This is very well so far as it goes. You can depend on me," the great man said, "for unlimited interest. But

I'm only, after all, one element in fifty. We must (243) gather in plenty of others. Don't mind who knows.

"Ah you do want to see some one!" she broke out. "You want to get at some one who cares for me." With

which, however, as he simply met this spontaneity in a manner to show that he had often had it from young

persons of her race, and that he was familiar even with the possibilities of THEIR familiarity, she felt her

freedom rendered vain by his silence, and she immediately tried to think of the most reasonable thing she

could say. This would be, precisely, on the subject of that freedom, which she now quickly spoke of as

complete. "That's of course by itself a great boon; so please don't think I don't know it. I can do exactly what I

likeanything in all the wide world. I haven't a creature to askthere's not a finger to stop me. I can shake

about till I'm black and blue. That perhaps isn't ALL joy; but lots of people, I know, would like to try it." He

had appeared about to put a question, but then had let her go on, which she promptly did, for she understood

him the next moment as having thus taken it from her that her means were as great as might be. She had

simply given it to him so, and this was all that would ever pass between them on the odious head. Yet she

couldn't help also knowing that an important effect, for his judgement, or at least for his amusementwhich

was his feeling, since, marvellously, he did have feelingwas produced by it. All her little pieces had now

then fallen together for him like the morsels of coloured glass that used to make combinations, under the

hand, in the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of (244) childhood. "So that if it's a question of my

"You'll DO anything under the sun? Good." He took that beautifully, ever so pleasantly, for what it was

worth; but time was neededthe minutes or so were needed on the spotto deal even provisionally with the

substantive question. It was convenient, in its degree, that there was nothing she wouldn't do; but it seemed

also highly and agreeably vague that she should have to do anything. They thus appeared to be taking her,

together, for the moment, and almost for sociability, as prepared to proceed to gratuitous extremities; the

upshot of which was in turn that after much interrogation, auscultation, exploration, much noting of his own

sequences and neglecting of hers, had duly kept up the vagueness, they might have struck themselves, or may

at least strike us, as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to the North Pole. Milly was ready,

under orders, for the North Pole; which fact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend's

actual abstention from orders. "No," she heard him again distinctly repeat it, "I don't want you for the present

to do anything at all; anything, that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will be made clear to you, and

It was at first heavenly. "Then you'll see Mrs. Stringham." But she didn't mind a bit now.

"Well, I shan't be afraid of Mrs. Stringham." And he said it once more as she asked once more: "Absolutely

not; I 'send' you nowhere. England's (245) all rightanywhere that's pleasant, convenient, decent, will be all

right. You say you can do exactly as you like. Oblige me therefore by being so good as to do it. There's only

one thing: you ought of course, now, as soon as I've seen you again, to get out of London."

"Then how will you keep seeing me? But perhaps," she quickly added, "you won't want to keep seeing me."

He had it all ready; he had really everything all ready. "I shall follow you up; though if you mean that I don't

It was only just here that he struck her the least bit as stumbling. "Well, see all you can. That's what it comes

to. Worry about nothing. You HAVE at least no worries. It's a great rare chance."

She had got up, for she had had from him both that he would send her something and would advise her

promptly of the date of his coming to her, by which she was virtually dismissed. Yet for herself one or two

"Rather! Whenever you like. But always, when you do come, immediately let me know."

(246) It touched her, the way he controlled his impatience of her; and the fact itself affected her as so

precious that she yielded to the wish to get more from it. "So you don't think I'm out of my mind?"

"My dear young lady," said her distinguished friend, "isn't to 'live' exactly what I'm trying to persuade you to

She had gone out with these last words so in her ears that when once she was well awayback this time in

the great square aloneit was as if some instant application of them had opened out there before her. It was

positively, that effect, an excitement that carried her on; she went forward into space under the sense of an

impulse receivedan impulse simple and direct, easy above all to act upon. She was borne up for the hour,

and now she knew why she had wanted to come by herself. No one in the world could have sufficiently

entered into her state; no tie would have been close enough to enable a companion to walk beside her without

some disparity. She literally felt, in this first flush, that her only company must be the human race at large,

present all round her, but inspiringly impersonal, and that her only field must be, then and there, the grey

immensity of London. Grey immensity had somehow of a sudden become her element; grey immensity was

what her distinguished friend had, for the moment, furnished her world with and what the question of

"living," as he put it to her, living by option, by volition, inevitably took on for its immediate face. She went

straight before her, without weakness, altogether with strength; and still as she went she was more glad to be

alone, for nobodynot Kate Croy, not Susan Shepherd eitherwould have wished to rush with her as she

rushed. She had (248) asked him at the last whether, being on foot, she might go home so, or elsewhere, and

he had replied as if almost amused again at her extravagance: "You're active, luckily, by natureit's

beautiful: therefore rejoice in it. BE active, without follyfor you're not foolish: be as active as you can and

as you like." That had been in fact the final push, as well as the touch that most made a mixture of her

consciousnessa strange mixture that tasted at one and the same time of what she had lost and what had

been given her. It was wonderful to her, while she took her random course, that these quantities felt so equal:

she had been treatedhadn't she?as if it were in her power to live; and yet one wasn't treated sowas

one?unless it had come up, quite as much, that one might die. The beauty of the bloom had gone from the

small old sense of safetythat was distinct: she had left it behind her there for ever. But the beauty of the

idea of a great adventure, a big dim experiment or struggle in which she might more responsibly than ever

before take a hand, had been offered her instead. It was as if she had had to pluck off her breast, to throw

away, some friendly ornament, a familiar flower, a little old jewel, that was part of her daily dress; and to

take up and shoulder as a substitute some queer defensive weapon, a musket, a spear, a

battleaxeconducive possibly in a higher degree to a striking appearance, but demanding all the effort of

She felt this instrument, for that matter, already on her back, so that she proceeded now in very truth after the

fashion of a soldier on a marchproceeded (249) as if, for her initiation, the first charge had been sounded.

She passed along unknown streets, over dusty littery ways, between long rows of fronts not enhanced by the

August light; she felt good for miles and only wanted to get lost; there were moments at corners, where she

stopped and chose her direction, in which she quite lived up to his injunction to rejoice that she was active. It

was like a new pleasure to have so new a reason; she would affirm without delay her option, her volition;

taking this personal possession of what surrounded her was a fair affirmation to start with; and she really

didn't care if she made it at the cost of alarms for Susie. Susie would wonder in due course "whatever," as

they said at the hotel, had become of her; yet this would be nothing either, probably, to wonderments still in

store. Wonderments in truth, Milly felt, even now attended her steps: it was quite as if she saw in people's

eyes the reflexion of her appearance and pace. She found herself moving at times in regions visibly not

haunted by oddlooking girls from New York, duskily draped, sableplumed, all but incongruously shod and

gazing about them with extravagance; she might, from the curiosity she clearly excited in byways, in

sidestreets peopled with grimy children and costermongers' carts, which she hoped were slums, literally

have had her musket on her shoulder, have announced herself as freshly on the warpath. But for the fear of

overdoing the character she would here and there have begun conversation, have asked her way; in spite of

the fact that, as this would help the requirements of adventure, her way was exactly what she wanted not to

know. The (250) difficulty was that she at last accidentally found it; she had come out, she presently saw, at

the Regent's Park, round which on two or three occasions with Kate Croy her public chariot had solemnly

rolled. But she went into it further now; this was the real thing; the real thing was to be quite away from the

pompous roads, well within the centre and on the stretches of shabby grass. Here were benches and smutty

sheep; here were idle lads at games of ball, with their cries mild in the thick air; here were wanderers anxious

and tired like herself; here doubtless were hundreds of others just in the same box. Their box, their great

common anxiety, what was it, in this grim breathingspace, but the practical question of life? They could live

if they would; that is, like herself, they had been told so: she saw them all about her, on seats, digesting the

information, recognising it again as something in a slightly different shape familiar enough, the blessed old

truth that they would live if they could. All she thus shared with them made her wish to sit in their company;

which she so far did that she looked for a bench that was empty, eschewing a still emptier chair that she saw

The last scrap of superiority had soon enough left her, if only because she before long knew herself for more

tired than she had proposed. This and the charm, after a fashion, of the situation in itself made her linger and

rest; there was an accepted spell in the sense that nobody in the world knew where she was. It was the first

time in her life that this had happened; (251) somebody, everybody appeared to have known before, at every

instant of it, where she was; so that she was now suddenly able to put it to herself that that hadn't been a life.

This present kind of thing therefore might bewhich was where precisely her distinguished friend seemed to

be wishing her to come out. He wished her also, it was true, not to make, as she was perhaps doing now, too

much of her isolation; at the same time, however, as he clearly desired to deny her no decent source of

interest. He was interestedshe arrived at thatin her appealing to as many sources as possible; and it

fairly filtered into her, as she sat and sat, that he was essentially propping her up. Had she been doing it

herself she would have called it bolsteringthe bolstering that was simply for the weak; and she thought and

thought as she put together the proofs that it was as one of the weak he was treating her. It was of course as

one of the weak that she had gone to himbut oh with how sneaking a hope that he might pronounce her, as

to all indispensables, a veritable young lioness! What indeed she was really confronted with was the

consciousness that he hadn't after all pronounced her anything: she nursed herself into the sense that he had

beautifully got out of it. Did he think, however, she wondered, that he could keep out of it to the

end?though as she weighed the question she yet felt it a little unjust. Milly weighed, in this extraordinary

hour, questions numerous and strange; but she had happily, before she moved, worked round to a

simplification. Stranger than anything for instance was the effect of its rolling over her that, when one

considered (252) it, he might perhaps have "got out" by one door but to come in with a beautiful beneficent

dishonesty by another. It kept her more intensely motionless there that what he might fundamentally be "up

to" was some disguised intention of standing by her as a friend. Wasn't that what women always said they

wanted to do when they deprecated the addresses of gentlemen they couldn't more intimately go on with? It

was what they, no doubt, sincerely fancied they could make of men of whom they couldn't make husbands.

And she didn't even reason that it was by a similar law the expedient of doctors in general for the invalids of

whom they couldn't make patients: she was somehow so sufficiently aware that HER doctor washowever

fatuous it might soundexceptionally moved. This was the damning little factif she could talk of

damnation: that she could believe herself to have caught him in the act of irrelevantly liking her. She hadn't

gone to him to be liked, she had gone to him to be judged; and he was quite a great enough man to be in the

habit, as a rule, of observing the difference. She could like HIM, as she distinctly didthat was another

matter; all the more that her doing so was now, so obviously for herself, compatible with judgement. Yet it

would have been all portentously mixed had not, as we say, a final and merciful wave, chilling rather, but

It came of a sudden when all other thought was spent. She had been asking herself why, if her case was

graveand she knew what she meant by thathe should have talked to her at all about what she (253)

might with futility "do"; or why on the other hand, if it were light, he should attach an importance to the

office of friendship. She had him, with her little lonely acutenessas acuteness went during the dogdays in

the Regent's Parkin a cleft stick: she either mattered, and then she was ill; or she didn't matter, and then she

was well enough. Now he was "acting," as they said at home, as if she did matteruntil he should prove the

contrary. It was too evident that a person at his high pressure must keep his inconsistencies, which were

probably his highest amusements, only for the very greatest occasions. Her prevision, in fine, of just where

she should catch him furnished the light of that judgement in which we describe her as daring to indulge. And

the judgement it was that made her sensation simple. He HAD distinguished herthat was the chill. He

hadn't knownhow could he?that she was devilishly subtle, subtle exactly in the manner of the suspected,

the suspicious, the condemned. He in fact confessed to it, in his way, as to an interest in her combinations, her

funny race, her funny losses, her funny gains, her funny freedom, and, no doubt, above all, her funny

mannersfunny, like those of Americans at their best, without being vulgar, legitimating amiability and

helping to pass it off. In his appreciation of these redundancies he dressed out for her the compassion he so

signally permitted himself to waste; but its operation for herself was as directly divesting, denuding,

exposing. It reduced her to her ultimate state, which was that of a poor girlwith her rent to pay for

examplestaring before her in a great city. Milly had her rent to pay, her rent (254) for her future;

everything else but how to meet it fell away from her in pieces, in tatters. This was the sensation the great

man had doubtless not purposed. Well, she must go home, like the poor girl, and see. There might after all be

ways; the poor girl too would be thinking. It came back for that matter perhaps to views already presented.

She looked about her again, on her feet, at her scattered melancholy comradessome of them so melancholy

as to be down on their stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrowing; she saw once more, with

them, those two faces of the question between which there was so little to choose for inspiration. It was

perhaps superficially more striking that one could live if one would; but it was more appealing, insinuating,

She found after this, for the day or two, more amusement than she had ventured to count on in the fact, if it

were not a mere fancy, of deceiving Susie; and she presently felt that what made the difference was the mere

fancyas this WAS oneof a countermove to her great man. His taking on himselfshould he do soto

get at her companion made her suddenly, she held, irresponsible, made any notion of her own all right for

her; though indeed at the very moment she invited herself to enjoy this impunity she became aware of new

matter for surprise, or at least for speculation. Her idea would rather have been that Mrs. Stringham would

have looked at her hardher sketch of the grounds of her independent long excursion showing, she could

feel, as almost cynically superficial. Yet the dear woman so failed, in the (255) event, to avail herself of any

right of criticism that it was sensibly tempting to wonder for an hour if Kate Croy had been playing perfectly

fair. Hadn't she possibly, from motives of the highest benevolence, promptings of the finest anxiety, just

given poor Susie what she would have called the straight tip? It must immediately be mentioned, however,

that, quite apart from a remembrance of the distinctness of Kate's promise, Milly, the next thing, found her

explanation in a truth that had the merit of being general. If Susie at this crisis suspiciously spared her, it was

really that Susie was always suspiciously sparing heryet occasionally too with portentous and exceptional

mercies. The girl was conscious of how she dropped at times into inscrutable impenetrable

deferencesattitudes that, though without at all intending it, made a difference for familiarity, for the ease of

intimacy. It was as if she recalled herself to manners, to the law of courtetiquettewhich last note above all

helped our young woman to a just appreciation. It was definite for her, even if not quite solid, that to treat her

as a princess was a positive need of her companion's mind; wherefore she couldn't help it if this lady had her

transcendent view of the way the class in question were treated. Susan had read history, had read Gibbon and

Froude and SaintSimon; she had high lights as to the special allowances made for the class, and, since she

saw them, when young, as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironic and infinitely refined, one must take it for

amusing if she inclined to an indulgence verily Byzantine. If one COULD only be Byzantine!wasn't

THAT what she insidiously (256) led one on to sigh? Milly tried to oblige herfor it really placed Susan

herself so handsomely to be Byzantine now. The great ladies of that raceit would be somewhere in

Gibbonwere apparently not questioned about their mysteries. But oh poor Milly and hers! Susan at all

events proved scarce more inquisitive than if she had been a mosaic at Ravenna. Susan was a porcelain

monument to the odd moral that consideration might, like cynicism, have abysses. Besides, the Puritan finally

disencumbered! What starved generations wasn't Mrs. Stringham, in fancy, going to make up for?

Kate Croy came straight to the hotelcame that evening shortly before dinner; specifically and publicly

moreover, in a hansom that, driven apparently very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost with the

clatter of an accident, a "smash." Milly, alone, as happened, in the great garnished void of their sittingroom,

where, a little, really, like a caged Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer longdrawn almost

sinister delay of night, an effect she yet likedMilly, at the sound, one of the French windows standing

open, passed out to the balcony that overhung, with pretensions, the general entrance, and so was in time for

the look that Kate, alighting, paying her cabman, happened to send up to the front. The visitor moreover had a

shilling back to wait for, during which Milly, from the balcony, looked down at her, and a mute exchange,

but with smiles and nods, took place between them on what had occurred in the morning. It was what Kate

had called for, and the tone was thus almost by accident (257) determined for Milly before her friend came

up. What was also, however, determined for her was, again, yet irrepressibly again, that the image presented

to her, the splendid young woman who looked so particularly handsome in impatience, with the fine freedom

of her signal, was the peculiar property of somebody else's vision, that this fine freedom in short was the fine

freedom she showed Mr. Densher. Just so was how she looked to him, and just so was how Milly was held by

herheld as by the strange sense of seeing through that distant person's eyes. It lasted, as usual, the strange

sense, but fifty seconds; yet in so lasting it produced an effect. It produced in fact more than one, and we take

them in their order. The first was that it struck our young woman as absurd to say that a girl's looking so to a

man could possibly be without connexions; and the second was that by the time Kate had got into the room

She produced this commodity on the spotproduced it in straight response to Kate's frank "Well, what?"

The enquiry bore of course, with Kate's eagerness, on the issue of the morning's scene, the great man's latest

wisdom, and it doubtless affected Milly a little as the cheerful demand for news is apt to affect troubled

spirits when news is not, in one of the neater forms, prepared for delivery. She couldn't have said what it was

exactly that on the instant determined her; the nearest description of it would perhaps have been as the more

vivid impression of all her friend took for granted. The contrast between (258) this free quantity and the maze

of possibilities through which, for hours, she had herself been picking her way, put on, in short, for the

moment, a grossness that even friendly forms scarce lightened: it helped forward in fact the revelation to

herself that she absolutely had nothing to tell. Besides which, certainly, there was something elsean

influence at the particular juncture still more obscure. Kate had lost, on the way upstairs, the lookTHE

lookthat made her young hostess so subtly think and one of the signs of which was that she never kept it

for many moments at once; yet she stood there, none the less, so in her bloom and in her strength, so

completely again the "handsome girl" beyond all others, the "handsome girl" for whom Milly had at first

gratefully taken her, that to meet her now with the note of the plaintive would amount somehow to a

surrender, to a confession. SHE would never in her life be ill; the greatest doctor would keep her, at the

worst, the fewest minutes; and it was as if she had asked just WITH all this practical impeccability for all that

was most mortal in her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly danced their dance; but the vibration

produced and the dust kicked up had lasted less than our account of them. Almost before she knew it she was

answering, and answering beautifully, with no consciousness of fraud, only as with a sudden flare of the

famous "willpower" she had heard about, read about, and which was what her medical adviser had mainly

Kate was splendid, and it would have been clear for Milly now, had the further presumption been (259)

needed, that she had said no word to Mrs. Stringham. "You mean you've been absurd?"

"Absurd." It was a simple word to say, but the consequence of it, for our young woman, was that she felt it, as

"Nothing to worry about. I shall need a little watching, but I shan't have to do anything dreadful, or even in

the least inconvenient. I can do in fact as I like." It was wonderful for Milly how just to put it so made all its

Yet even before the full effect came Kate had seized, kissed, blessed her. "My love, you're too sweet! It's too

dear! But it's as I was sure." Then she grasped the full beauty. "You can do as you like?"

"Ah but catch you," Kate triumphed with gaiety, "NOT doing! And what SHALL you do?"

"For the moment simply enjoy it. Enjoy"Milly was completely luminous"having got out of my scrape."

It was as if Kate had but too conveniently put the words into her mouth. "Learning, I mean, so easily, that I

"Only no one's of course well enough to stay in London now. He can't," Kate went on, "want this of you."

"Oh the duck!"Kate, with her own shades of familiarity, abounded. "But what kind of pleasure?"

"What have I wanted to do but help you," Kate asked, "from the moment I first laid eyes on you?" Yet with

this too Kate had her wonder. "I like your talking, though, about that. What help, with your luck all round, do

Milly indeed at last couldn't say; so that she had really for the time brought it along to the point so oddly

marked for her by her visitor's arrival, the truth that she was enviably strong. She carried this out, from that

evening, for each hour still left her, and the more easily perhaps that the hours were now narrowly numbered.

All she actually waited for was Sir Luke Strett's promised visit; as to her proceeding on which, however, her

mind was quite made up. Since he wanted to get at Susie he should have the freest access, and then perhaps

he would see how he liked it. What was between THEM they might settle as between them, and any pressure

it should lift from her own spirit they were at liberty to convert to their use. If the dear man wished to fire

Susan Shepherd with a still higher ideal, he would only after all, at the worst, have Susan on his hands. If

devotion, in a word, was what it would come up for the interested pair to organise, she was herself ready to

consume it as the dressed and served dish. He had talked to her of her "appetite," her account of which, she

felt, must have been vague. But for devotion, she could now see, this appetite would be of the best. Gross,

greedy, ravenousthese were doubtless the proper names for her: she was at all events resigned in advance

to the machinations of sympathy. The day that followed her lonely excursion was to be the last (262) but two

or three of their stay in London; and the evening of that day practically ranked for them as, in the matter of

outside relations, the last of all. People were by this time quite scattered, and many of those who had so

liberally manifested in calls, in cards, in evident sincerity about visits, later on, over the land, had positively

passed in music out of sight; whether as members, these latter, more especially, of Mrs. Lowder's immediate

circle or as members of Lord Mark'sour friends being by this time able to make the distinction. The

general pitch had thus decidedly dropped, and the occasions still to be dealt with were special and few. One

of these, for Milly, announced itself as the doctor's call already mentioned, as to which she had now had a

note from him: the single other, of importance, was their appointed leavetakingfor the shortest

separationin respect to Mrs. Lowder and Kate. The aunt and the niece were to dine with them alone,

intimately and easilyas easily as should be consistent with the question of their afterwards going on

together to some absurdly belated party, at which they had had it from Aunt Maud that they would do well to

show. Sir Luke was to make his appearance on the morrow of this, and in respect to that complication Milly

The night was at all events hot and stale, and it was late enough by the time the four ladies had been gathered

in, for their small session, at the hotel, where the windows were still open to the high balconies and the

flames of the candles, behind the pink shadesdisposed as for the vigil of watcherswere motionless (263)

in the air in which the season lay dead. What was presently settled among them was that Milly, who betrayed

on this occasion a preference more marked than usual, shouldn't hold herself obliged to climb that evening

the social stair, however it might stretch to meet her, and that, Mrs. Lowder and Mrs. Stringham facing the

ordeal together, Kate Croy should remain with her and await their return. It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to

send Susan Shepherd forth; she saw her go with complacency, liked, as it were, to put people off with her,

and noted with satisfaction, when she so moved to the carriage, the further denudationa markedly ebbing

tideof her little benevolent back. If it wasn't quite Aunt Maud's ideal, moreover, to take out the new

American girl's funny friend instead of the new American girl herself, nothing could better indicate the range

of that lady's merit than the spirit in whichas at the present hour for instanceshe made the best of the

minor advantage. And she did this with a broad cheerful absence of illusion; she did itconfessing even as

much to poor Susiebecause, frankly, she WAS goodnatured. When Mrs. Stringham observed that her

own light was too abjectly borrowed and that it was as a link alone, fortunately not missing, that she was

valued, Aunt Maud concurred to the extent of the remark: "Well, my dear, you're better than nothing."

Tonight furthermore it came up for Milly that Aunt Maud had something particular in mind. Mrs.

Stringham, before adjourning with her, had gone off for some shawl or other accessory, and Kate, as if a little

impatient for their withdrawal, had wandered (264) out to the balcony, where she hovered for the time

unseen, though with scarce more to look at than the dim London stars and the cruder glow, up the street, on a

corner, of a small publichouse in front of which a fagged cabhorse was thrown into relief. Mrs. Lowder

made use of the moment: Milly felt as soon as she had spoken that what she was doing was somehow for use.

"Dear Susan tells me that you saw in America Mr. Densherwhom I've never till now, as you may have

noticed, asked you about. But do you mind at last, in connexion with him, doing something for me?" She had

lowered her fine voice to a depth, though speaking with all her rich glibness; and Milly, after a small

sharpness of surprise, was already guessing the sense of her appeal. "Will you name him, in any way you

like, to HER"and Aunt Maud gave a nod at the window; "so that you may perhaps find out whether he's

Ever so many things, for Milly, fell into line at this; it was a wonder, she afterwards thought, that she could

be conscious of so many at once. She smiled hard, however, for them all. "But I don't know that it's important

to me to 'find out.' " The array of things was further swollen, however, even as she said this, by its striking

her as too much to say. She therefore tried as quickly to say less. "Except you mean of course that it's

important to YOU." She fancied Aunt Maud was looking at her almost as hard as she was herself smiling,

and that gave her another impulse. "You know I never HAVE yet named him to her; so that if I should break

"Why she may wonder what I've been making a mystery of. She hasn't mentioned him, you know," Milly

"No"her friend a little heavily weighed it"she wouldn't. So it's she, you see then, who has made the

Yes, Milly but wanted to see; only there was so much. "There has been of course no particular reason." Yet

that indeed was neither here nor there. "Do you think," she asked, "he IS back?"

"It will be about his time, I gather, and rather a comfort to me definitely to know."

It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience of a puzzled pause. "Do you mean he's an acquaintance of

Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. "I disapprove of HER for the poor young man. She doesn't care for him."

"Too much, too much. And my fear is," said Mrs. Lowder, "that he privately besets her. She keeps it to

herself, but I don't want her worried. Neither, in truth," she both generously and confidentially concluded, "do

"You can find out where they are. If I myself try," Mrs. Lowder explained, "I shall appear to treat them as if I

(266) "And you don't. You don't," Milly mused for her, "suppose them deceiving you."

"Well," said Aunt Maud, whose fine onyx eyes failed to blink even though Milly's questions might have been

taken as drawing her rather further than she had originally meant to go"well, Kate's thoroughly aware of

my views for her, and that I take her being with me at present, in the way she IS with me, if you know what I

mean, for a loyal assent to them. Therefore as my views don't happen to provide a place at all for Mr.

Densher, much, in a manner, as I like him"therefore in short she had been prompted to this step, though

It assisted them for the moment perhaps, however, that Milly was able to pick out of her sense what might

Milly waited, for the question was somehow as the sudden point of something sharp on a nerve that winced.

She just caught her breath, but she had ground for joy afterwards, she felt, in not really having failed to

choose with quickness sufficient, out of fifteen possible answers, the one that would best serve her. She was

then almost proud, as well, that she had cheerfully smiled. "I didthree timesin New York." So came and

went, in these simple words, the speech that was to figure for her, later on, that night, as the one she had ever

uttered that cost her most. She was to lie awake for the gladness of not (267) having taken any line so really

For Mrs. Lowder also moreover her simple words were the right ones; they were at any rate, that lady's laugh

showed, in the natural note of the racy. "You dear American thing! But people may be very good and yet not

"Yes," the girl assented, "even I suppose when what one wants is something very good."

"Oh my child, it would take too long just now to tell you all i want! I want everything at once and

togetherand ever so much for you too, you know. But you've seen us," Aunt Maud continued; "you'll have

"Ah," said Milly, "I DON'T make out;" for againit came that way in rushesshe felt an obscurity in

"Should I conceive her interested in keeping things from me?" Mrs. Lowder did justice to the question. "My

dear, how can you ask? Put yourself in her place. She meets me, but on HER terms. Proud young women are

proud young women. And proud old ones arewell, what i am. Fond of you as we both are, you can help

At this, however, finally, Aunt Maud threw her up. "Oh if you've so many reasons not!"

"I've not so many," Milly smiled"but I've one. If I break out so suddenly on my knowing him, what will

(268) Mrs. Lowder looked blank at it. "Why should you care what she makes? You may have only been

"And for ME," Mrs. Lowder insisted. "She's not therefore so stupid as not to do justice to grounds so marked.

Mrs. Lowder might well have thought, yet, oddly, this pulled her up. "You can't do it without?"

Milly was almost ashamed to be raising so many difficulties. "I'll do what I can if you'll kindly tell me one

thing more." She faltered a littleit was so prying; but she brought it out. "Will he have been writing to

"It's exactly, my dear, what I should like to know!" Mrs. Lowder was at last impatient. "Push in for yourself

Even now, all the same, Milly had not quite fallen back. "It will be pushing in," she continued to smile, "for

YOU." She allowed her companion, however, no time to take this up. "The point will be that if he HAS been

"It isn't subtle, it seems to me, but quite simple," Milly said, "that if she has answered she has very possibly

The girl had a moment, at this, of thinking it natural Mrs. Lowder herself should so fail of subtlety. "It will

make the difference that he'll have written her in reply that he knows me. And that, in turn," our young

"How so, if she's perfectly aware of having given you no opening? The only oddity," Aunt Maud lucidly

And she had uttered it, evidently, in a tone that struck her friend. "Then it HAS troubled you?"

But the enquiry had only to be made to bring the rare colour with fine inconsequence to her face. "Not really

the least little bit!" And, quickly feeling the need to abound in this sense, she was on the point, to cut short, of

declaring that she cared, after all, no scrap how much she obliged. Only she felt at this instant too the

intervention of still other things. Mrs. Lowder was in the first place already beforehand, already affected as

by the sudden vision of her having herself pushed too far. Milly could never judge from her face of her

uppermost motiveit was so little, in its hard smooth sheen, that kind of human countenance. She looked

hard when she spoke fair; the only thing was that when she spoke hard she didn't likewise look soft.

Something, none the less, had arisen in her nowa full appreciable tide, entering by the rupture of some bar.

She announced that if what she (270) had asked was to prove in the least a bore her young friend was not to

dream of it; making her young friend at the same time, by the change in her tone, dream on the spot more

profusely. She spoke, with a belated light, Milly could apprehendshe could always apprehendfrom pity;

and the result of that perception, for the girl, was singular: it proved to her as quickly that Kate, keeping her

secret, had been straight with her. From Kate distinctly then, as to why she was to be pitied, Aunt Maud knew

nothing, and was thereby simply putting in evidence the fine side of her own character. This fine side was

that she could almost at any hour, by a kindled preference or a diverted energy, glow for another interest than

her own. She exclaimed as well, at this moment, that Milly must have been thinking round the case much

more than she had supposed; and this remark could affect the girl as quickly and as sharply as any other form

of the charge of weakness. It was what every one, if she didn't look out, would soon be saying"There's

something the matter with you!" What one was therefore one's self concerned immediately to establish was

that there was nothing at all. "I shall like to help you; I shall like, so far as that goes, to help Kate herself," she

made such haste as she could to declare; her eyes wandering meanwhile across the width of the room to that

dusk of the balcony in which their companion perhaps a little unaccountably lingered. She suggested hereby

her impatience to begin; she almost overtly wondered at the length of the opportunity this friend was giving

themreferring it, however, so far as words went, to the other (271) friend and breaking off with an amused:

It only marked Aunt Maud, none the less, as too preoccupied for her allusion. The onyx eyes were fixed upon

her with a polished pressure that must signify some enriched benevolence. "Let it go, my dear. We shall after

"If he HAS come back we shall certainly see," Milly after a moment replied; "for he'll probably feel that he

can't quite civilly not come to see me. Then THERE," she remarked, "we shall be. It wouldn't then, you see,

come through Kate at allit would come through him. Except," she wound up with a smile, "that he won't

She had the most extraordinary sense of interesting her guest, in spite of herself, more than she wanted; it was

as if her doom so floated her on that she couldn't stopby very much the same trick it had played her with

She neglected the question, wanting only now to get off. "Then," she went on, "you'll deal with Kate

"Shall you run away from HER?" Mrs. Lowder profoundly enquired, while they became aware of Susie's

This affected Milly as giving her but an instant; and suddenly, with it, everything she felt in the connexion

rose to her lips for a question that, even as she put it, she knew she was failing to keep colourless. "Is it your

(272) Aunt Maud took it intook in, that is, everything of the tone that she just wanted her not to; and the

result for some seconds was but to make their eyes meet in silence. Mrs. Stringham had rejoined them and

was asking if Kate had gonean enquiry at once answered by this young lady's reappearance. They saw her

again in the open window, where, looking at them, she had pausedproducing thus on Aunt Maud's part

almost too impressive a "Hush!" Mrs. Lowder indeed without loss of time smothered any danger in a

sweeping retreat with Susie; but Milly's words to her, just uttered, about dealing with her niece directly,

struck our young woman as already recoiling on herself. Directness, however evaded, would be, fully, for

HER; nothing in fact would ever have been for her so direct as the evasion. Kate had remained in the

window, very handsome and upright, the outer dark framing in a highly favourable way her summery

simplicities and lightnesses of dress. Milly had, given the relation of space, no real fear she had heard their

talk; only she hovered there as with conscious eyes and some added advantage. Then indeed, with small

delay, her friend sufficiently saw. The conscious eyes, the added advantage were but those she had now

always at commandthose proper to the person Milly knew as known to Merton Densher. It was for several

seconds again as if the TOTAL of her identity had been that of the person known to hima determination

having for result another sharpness of its own. Kate had positively but to be there just as she was to tell her he

had come back. It seemed to pass between them in fine (273) without a word that he was in London, that he

was perhaps only round the corner; and surely therefore no dealing of Milly's with her would yet have been

It was doubtless because this queer form of directness had in itself, for the hour, seemed so sufficient that

Milly was afterwards aware of having really, all the whileduring the strange indescribable session before

the return of their companionsdone nothing to intensify it. If she was most aware only afterwards, under

the long and discurtained ordeal of the morrow's dawn, that was because she had really, till their evening's

end came, ceased after a little to miss anything from their ostensible comfort. What was behind showed but in

gleams and glimpses; what was in front never at all confessed to not holding the stage. Three minutes hadn't

passed before Milly quite knew she should have done nothing Aunt Maud had just asked her. She knew it

moreover by much the same light that had acted for her with that lady and with Sir Luke Strett. It pressed

upon her then and there that she was still in a current determined, through her indifference, timidity, bravery,

generosityshe scarce could say whichby others; that not she but the current acted, and that somebody

else always was the keeper of the lock or the dam. Kate for example had but to open the floodgate: the

current moved in its massthe current, as it had been, of her doing as Kate wanted. What, somehow, in the

most extraordinary way in the world, HAD Kate wanted but to be, of a sudden, more interesting than she had

ever been? Milly, for their evening then, quite (275) held her breath with the appreciation of it. If she hadn't

been sure her companion would have had nothing, from her moments with Mrs. Lowder, to go by, she would

almost have seen the admirable creature "cutting in" to anticipate a danger. This fantasy indeed, while they

sat together, dropped after a little; even if only because other fantasies multiplied and clustered, making

fairly, for our young woman, the buoyant medium in which her friend talked and moved. They sat together, I

say, but Kate moved as much as she talked; she figured there, restless and charming, just perhaps a shade

perfunctory, repeatedly quitting her place, taking slowly, to and fro, in the trailing folds of her light dress, the

Mrs. Lowder had said to Milly at Matcham that she and her niece, as allies, could practically conquer the

world; but though it was a speech about which there had even then been a vague grand glamour the girl read

into it at present more of an approach to a meaning. Kate, for that matter, by herself, could conquer anything,

and SHE, Milly Theale, was probably concerned with the "world" only as the small scrap of it that most

impinged on her and that was therefore first to be dealt with. On this basis of being dealt with she would

doubtless herself do her share of the conquering: she would have something to supply, Kate something to

takeeach of them thus, to that tune, something for squaring with Aunt Maud's ideal. This in short was what

it came to nowthat the occasion, in the quiet late lamplight, had the quality of (276) a rough rehearsal of

the possible big drama. Milly knew herself dealt withhandsomely, completely: she surrendered to the

knowledge, for so it was, she felt, that she supplied her helpful force. And what Kate had to take Kate took as

freely and to all appearance as gratefully; accepting afresh, with each of her long, slow walks, the relation

between them so established and consecrating her companion's surrender simply by the interest she gave it.

The interest to Milly herself we naturally mean; the interest to Kate Milly felt as probably inferior. It easily

and largely came for their present talk, for the quick flight of the hour before the breach of the spellit all

came, when considered, from the circumstance, not in the least abnormal, that the handsome girl was in

extraordinary "form." Milly remembered her having said that she was at her best late at night; remembered it

by its having, with its fine assurance, made her wonder when SHE was at her best and how happy people

must be who had such a fixed time. She had no time at all; she was never at her bestunless indeed it were

exactly, as now, in listening, watching, admiring, collapsing. If Kate moreover, quite mercilessly, had never

been so good, the beauty and the marvel of it was that she had never really been so frank: being a person of

such a calibre, as Milly would have said, that, even while "dealing" with you and thereby, as it were, picking

her steps, she could let herself go, could, in irony, in confidence, in extravagance, tell you things she had

never told before. That was the impressionthat she was telling things, and quite conceivably for her own

relief as well; almost as if (277) the errors of vision, the mistakes of proportion, the residuary innocence of

spirit still to be remedied on the part of her auditor, had their moments of proving too much for her nerves.

She went at them just now, these sources of irritation, with an amused energy that it would have been open to

Milly to regard as cynical and that was nevertheless called foras to this the other was distinctby the way

that in certain connexions the American mind broke down. It seemed at leastthe American mind as sitting

there thrilled and dazzled in Millynot to understand English society without a separate confrontation with

ALL the cases. It couldn't proceed bythere was some technical term she lacked until Milly suggested both

analogy and induction, and then, differently, instinct, none of which were right: it had to be led up and

introduced to each aspect of the monster, enabled to walk all round it, whether for the consequent

exaggerated ecstasy or for the still more (as appeared to this critic) disproportionate shock. It might, the

monster, Kate conceded, loom large for those born amid forms less developed and therefore no doubt less

amusing; it might on some sides be a strange and dreadful monster, calculated to devour the unwary, to abase

the proud, to scandalise the good; but if one had to live with it one must, not to be for ever sitting up, learn

how: which was virtually in short tonight what the handsome girl showed herself as teaching.

She gave away publicly, in this process, Lancaster Gate and everything it contained; she gave away, hand

over hand, Milly's thrill continued to note, Aunt Maud and Aunt Maud's glories and Aunt Maud's (278)

complacencies; she gave herself away most of all, and it was naturally what most contributed to her candour.

She didn't speak to her friend once more, in Aunt Maud's strain, of how they could scale the skies; she spoke,

by her bright perverse preference on this occasion, of the need, in the first place, of being neither stupid nor

vulgar. It might have been a lesson, for our young American, in the art of seeing things as they werea

lesson so various and so sustained that the pupil had, as we have shown, but receptively to gape. The odd

thing furthermore was that it could serve its purpose while explicitly disavowing every personal bias. It

wasn't that she disliked Aunt Maud, who was everything she had on other occasions declared; but the dear

woman, ineffaceably stamped by inscrutable nature and a dreadful art, wasn'thow COULD she be?what

she wasn't. She wasn't any one. She wasn't anything. She wasn't anywhere. Milly mustn't think itone

couldn't, as a good friend, let her. Those hours at Matcham were inesperees, were pure manna from heaven;

or if not wholly that perhaps, with humbugging old Lord Mark as a backer, were vain as a ground for hopes

and calculations. Lord Mark was very well, but he wasn't THE cleverest creature in England, and even if he

had been he still wouldn't have been the most obliging. He weighed it out in ounces, and indeed each of the

"She has put down YOU," said Milly, attached to the subject still; "and I think what you mean is that, on the

(279) "Lest"Kate took it up"he should suddenly grab me and run? Oh as he isn't ready to run he's much

less ready, naturally, to grab. I AMyou're so far right as thaton the counter, when I'm not in the

shopwindow; in and out of which I'm thus conveniently, commercially whisked: the essence, all of it, of my

position, and the price, as properly, of my aunt's protection." Lord Mark was substantially what she had

begun with as soon as they were alone; the impression was even yet with Milly of her having sounded his

name, having imposed it, as a topic, in direct opposition to the other name that Mrs. Lowder had left in the air

and that all her own look, as we have seen, kept there at first for her companion. The immediate strange effect

had been that of her consciously needing, as it were, an alibiwhich, successfully, she so found. She had

worked it to the end, ridden it to and fro across the course marked for Milly by Aunt Maud, and now she had

quite, so to speak, broken it in. "The bore is that if she wants him so muchwants him, heaven forgive her!

for MEhe has put us all out, since your arrival, by wanting somebody else. I don't mean somebody else

Milly threw off the charm sufficiently to shake her head. "Then I haven't made out who it is. If I'm any part of

Kate appeared for a momentthough that was (280) doubtless but gaiety tooto think. "Haven't we been

"You have perhaps, but I haven't, and I ought to give you the equivalent. At any rate there it is. 'Truly, truly'

"The difficulty really is that he's a person with so many ideas that it's particularly hard to simplify for him.

That's exactly of course what Aunt Maud has been trying. He won't," Kate firmly continued, "make up his

Her friend met it in perfection. "One's DOING thatone IS. But one remains all the same but one of his

"There's no harm in that," Milly returned, "if you come out in the end as the best of them. What's a man," she

"No doubt. The more the merrier." And Kate looked at her grandly. "One can but hope to come out, and do

All of which made for the impression, fantastic or not, of the alibi. The splendour, the grandeur were for

Milly the bold ironic spirit behind it, so interesting too in itself. What, further, was not less interesting was

the fact, as our young woman noted it, that Kate confined her point to the difficulties, so far as SHE was

concerned, raised only by Lord Mark. She (281) referred now to none that her own taste might present; which

circumstance again played its little part. She was doing what she liked in respect to another person, but she

was in no way committed to the other person, and her moreover talking of Lord Mark as not young and not

true were only the signs of her clear selfconsciousness, were all in the line of her slightly hard but scarce the

less graceful extravagance. She didn't wish to show too much her consent to be arranged for, but that was a

different thing from not wishing sufficiently to give it. There was something on it all, as well, that Milly still

found occasion to say. "If your aunt has been, as you tell me, put out by me, I feel she has remained

"Oh but she haswhatever might have happened in that respectplenty of use for you! You put her in, my

dear, more than you put her out. You don't half see it, but she has clutched your petticoat. You can do

anythingyou can do, I mean, lots that WE can't. You're an outsider, independent and standing by yourself;

you're not hideously relative to tiers and tiers of others." And Kate, facing in that direction, went further and

further; wound up, while Milly gaped, with extraordinary words. "We're of no use to youit's decent to tell

you. You'd be of use to us, but that's a different matter. My honest advice to you would be" she went

indeed all lengths"to drop us while you can. It would be funny if you didn't soon see how awfully better

you can do. We've not really done for you the least thing worth speaking ofnothing you mightn't easily

have had in some other way. Therefore you're under no obligation. (282) You won't want us next year; we

shall only continue to want YOU. But that's no reason for you, and you mustn't pay too dreadfully for poor

Mrs. Stringham's having let you in. She has the best conscience in the world; she's enchanted with what she

has done; but you shouldn't take your people from HER. It has been quite awful to see you do it."

Milly tried to be amused, so as notit was too absurdto be fairly frightened. Strange enough indeedif

not natural enoughthat, late at night thus, in a mere mercenary house, with Susie away, a want of

confidence should possess her. She recalled, with all the rest of it, the next day, piecing things together in the

dawn, that she had felt herself alone with a creature who paced like a panther. That was a violent image, but it

made her a little less ashamed of having been scared. For all her scare, none the less, she had now the sense to

It had been at this point, however, that Kate flickered highest. "Oh you may very well loathe me yet!"

Really at last, thus, it had been too much; as, with her own least feeble flare, after a wondering watch, Milly

had shown. She hadn't cared; she had too much wanted to know; and, though a small solemnity of

remonstrance, a sombre strain, had broken into her tone, it was to figure as her nearest approach to serving

This unexpectedly had acted, by a sudden turn of Kate's attitude, as a happy speech. She had risen as she

spoke, and Kate had stopped before her, shining (283) at her instantly with a softer brightness. Poor Milly

hereby enjoyed one of her views of how people, wincing oddly, were often touched by her. "Because you're a

dove." With which she felt herself ever so delicately, so considerately, embraced; not with familiarity or as a

liberty taken, but almost ceremonially and in the manner of an accolade; partly as if, though a dove who

could perch on a finger, one were also a princess with whom forms were to be observed. It even came to her,

through the touch of her companion's lips, that this form, this cool pressure, fairly sealed the sense of what

Kate had just said. It was moreover, for the girl, like an inspiration: she found herself accepting as the right

one, while she caught her breath with relief, the name so given her. She met it on the instant as she would

have met revealed truth; it lighted up the strange dusk in which she lately had walked. THAT was what was

the matter with her. She was a dove. Oh WASN'T she?it echoed within her as she became aware of the

sound, outside, of the return of their friends. There was, the next thing, little enough doubt about it after Aunt

Maud had been two minutes in the room. She had come up, Mrs. Lowder, with Susanwhich she needn't

have done, at that hour, instead of letting Kate come down to her; so that Milly could be quite sure it was to

catch hold, in some way, of the loose end they had left. Well, the way she did catch was simply to make the

point that it didn't now in the least matter. She had mounted the stairs for this, and she had her moment again

with her younger hostess while Kate, on the spot, as the latter at the time noted, gave Susan Shepherd (284)

unwonted opportunities. Kate was in other words, as Aunt Maud engaged her friend, listening with the

handsomest response to Mrs. Stringham's impression of the scene they had just quitted. It was in the tone of

the fondest indulgencealmost, really, that of dove cooing to dovethat Mrs. Lowder expressed to Milly

the hope that it had all gone beautifully. Her "all" had an ample benevolence; it soothed and simplified; she

spoke as if it were the two young women, not she and her comrade, who had been facing the town together.

But Milly's answer had prepared itself while Aunt Maud was on the stair; she had felt in a rush all the reasons

that would make it the most dovelike; and she gave it, while she was about it, as earnest, as candid. "I don't

It gave her straightway the measure of the success she could have as a dove: that was recorded in the long

look of deep criticism, a look without a word, that Mrs. Lowder poured forth. And the word, presently,

bettered it still. "Oh you exquisite thing!" The luscious innuendo of it, almost startling, lingered in the room,

after the visitors had gone, like an oversweet fragrance. But left alone with Mrs. Stringham Milly continued

to breathe it: she studied again the dovelike and so set her companion to mere rich reporting that she averted

That, with the new day, was once more her lawthough she saw before her, of course, as something of a

complication, her need, each time, to decide. She should have to be clear as to how a dove WOULD act. She

settled it, she thought, well enough this (285) morning by quite readopting her plan in respect to Sir Luke

Strett. That, she was pleased to reflect, had originally been pitched in the key of a merely iridescent drab; and

although Mrs. Stringham, after breakfast, began by staring at it as if it had been a priceless Persian carpet

suddenly unrolled at her feet, she had no scruple, at the end of five minutes, in leaving her to make the best of

it. "Sir Luke Strett comes, by appointment, to see me at eleven, but I'm going out on purpose. He's to be told,

please, deceptively, that I'm at home, and you, as my representative, when he comes up, are to see him

instead. He'll like that, this time, better. So do be nice to him." It had taken, naturally, more explanation, and

the mention, above all, of the fact that the visitor was the greatest of doctors; yet when once the key had been

offered Susie slipped it on her bunch, and her young friend could again feel her lovely imagination operate. It

operated in truth very much as Mrs. Lowder's, at the last, had done the night before: it made the air heavy

once more with the extravagance of assent. It might, afresh, almost have frightened our young woman to see

how people rushed to meet her: HAD she then so little time to live that the road must always be spared her? It

was as if they were helping her to take it out on the spot. Susieshe couldn't deny, and didn't pretend

tomight, of a truth, on HER side, have treated such news as a flash merely lurid; as to which, to do Susie

justice, the pain of it was all there. But, none the less, the margin always allowed her young friend was all

there as well; and the proposal now made herwhat was it in short but Byzantine? The vision of (286)

Milly's perception of the propriety of the matter had, at any rate, quickly engulfed, so far as her attitude was

concerned, any surprise and any shock; so that she only desired, the next thing, perfectly to possess the facts.

Milly could easily speak, on this, as if there were only one: she made nothing of such another as that she had

felt herself menaced. The great fact, in fine, was that she KNEW him to desire just now, more than anything

else, to meet, quite apart, some one interested in her. Who therefore so interested as her faithful Susan? The

only other circumstance that, by the time she had quitted her friend, she had treated as worth mentioning was

the circumstance of her having at first intended to keep quiet. She had originally best seen herself as sweetly

secretive. As to that she had changed, and her present request was the result. She didn't say why she had

changed, but she trusted her faithful Susan. Their visitor would trust her not less, and she herself would adore

their visitor. Moreover he wouldn'tthe girl felt suretell her anything dreadful. The worst would be that

he was in love and that he needed a confidant to work it. And now she was going to the National Gallery.

The idea of the National Gallery had been with her from the moment of her hearing from Sir Luke Strett

about his hour of coming. It had been in her mind as a place so meagrely visited, as one of the places that had

seemed at home one of the attractions of Europe and one of its highest aids to culture, but thatthe old

storythe typical frivolous always ended by sacrificing to vulgar pleasures. She had had perfectly, at those

whimsical moments on the Brunig, the halfshamed sense of turning her back on such opportunities for real

improvement as had figured to her, from of old, in connexion with the continental tour, under the general

head of "pictures and things"; and at last she knew for what she had done so. The plea had been explicitshe

had done so for life as opposed to learning; the upshot of which had been that life was now beautifully

provided for. In spite of those few dips and dashes into the manycoloured stream of history for which of late

Kate Croy had helped her to find time, there were possible great chances she had neglected, possible great

moments she should, save for today, have all but missed. She might still, she had felt, overtake one or two

of them among the Titians and the Turners; she had been honestly nursing the hour, and, once she was in the

benignant halls, her faith knew itself justified. It was the air she wanted and the world she would now

exclusively choose; the (288) quiet chambers, nobly overwhelming, rich but slightly veiled, opened out round

her and made her presently say "If I could lose myself HERE!" There were people, people in plenty, but,

admirably, no personal question. It was immense, outside, the personal question; but she had blissfully left it

outside, and the nearest it came, for a quarter of an hour, to glimmering again into view was when she

watched for a little one of the more earnest of the ladycopyists. Two or three in particular, spectacled,

aproned, absorbed, engaged her sympathy to an absurd extent, seemed to show her for the time the right way

to live. She should have been a lady copyistit met so the case. The case was the case of escape, of living

under water, of being at once impersonal and firm. There it was before oneone had only to stick and stick.

Milly yielded to this charm till she was almost ashamed; she watched the ladycopyists till she found herself

wondering what would be thought by others of a young woman, of adequate aspect, who should appear to

regard them as the pride of the place. She would have liked to talk to them, to get, as it figured to her, into

their lives, and was deterred but by the fact that she didn't quite see herself as purchasing imitations and yet

feared she might excite the expectation of purchase. She really knew before long that what held her was the

mere refuge, that something within her was after all too weak for the Turners and Titians. They joined hands

about her in a circle too vast, though a circle that a year before she would only have desired to trace. They

were truly for the larger, not for the smaller life, the life of which the actual (289) pitch, for example, was an

interest, the interest of compassion, in misguided efforts. She marked absurdly her little stations, blinking, in

her shrinkage of curiosity, at the glorious walls, yet keeping an eye on vistas and approaches, so that she

shouldn't be flagrantly caught. The vistas and approaches drew her in this way from room to room, and she

had been through many parts of the show, as she supposed, when she sat down to rest. There were chairs in

scant clusters, places from which one could gaze. Milly indeed at present fixed her eyes more than elsewhere

on the appearance, first, that she couldn't quite, after all, have accounted to an examiner for the order of her

"schools," and then on that of her being more tired than she had meant, in spite of her having been so much

less intelligent. They found, her eyes, it should be added, other occupation as well, which she let them freely

follow: they rested largely, in her vagueness, on the vagueness of other visitors; they attached themselves in

especial, with mixed results, to the surprising stream of her compatriots. She was struck with the

circumstance that the great museum, early in August, was haunted with these pilgrims, as also with that of her

knowing them from afar, marking them easily, each and all, and recognising not less promptly that they had

ever new lights for hernew lights on their own darkness. She gave herself up at last, and it was a

consummation like another: what she should have come to the National Gallery for today would be to watch

the copyists and reckon the Baedekers. That perhaps was the moral of a menaced state of healththat one

would sit in public places (290) and count the Americans. It passed the time in a manner; but it seemed

already the second line of defence, and this notwithstanding the pattern, so unmistakeable, of her

countryfolk. They were cut out as by scissors, coloured, labelled, mounted; but their relation to her failed to

actthey somehow did nothing for her. Partly, no doubt, they didn't so much as notice or know her, didn't

even recognise their community of collapse with her, the sign on her, as she sat there, that for her too Europe

was "tough." It came to her idly thusfor her humour could still playthat she didn't seem then the same

success with them as with the inhabitants of London, who had taken her up on scarce more of an

acquaintance. She could wonder if they would be different should she go back with this glamour attached;

and she could also wonder, if it came to that, whether she should ever go back. Her friends straggled past, at

any rate, in all the vividness of their absent criticism, and she had even at last the sense of taking a mean

There was a finer instant, however, at which three ladies, clearly a mother and daughters, had paused before

her under compulsion of a comment apparently just uttered by one of them and referring to some object on

the other side of the room. Milly had her back to the object, but her face very much to her young compatriot,

the one who had spoken and in whose look she perceived a certain gloom of recognition. Recognition, for

that matter, sat confessedly in her own eyes: she KNEW the three, generically, as easily as a schoolboy with

a crib in his lap would know the (291) answer in class; she felt, like the schoolboy, guilty

enoughquestioned, as honour went, as to her right so to possess, to dispossess, people who hadn't

consciously provoked her. She would have been able to say where they lived, and also how, had the place and

the way been but amenable to the positive; she bent tenderly, in imagination, over marital, paternal Mr.

Whateverhewas, at home, eternally named, with all the honours and placidities, but eternally unseen and

existing only as some one who could be financially heard from. The mother, the puffed and composed

whiteness of whose hair had no relation to her apparent age, showed a countenance almost chemically clean

and dry; her companions wore an air of vague resentment humanised by fatigue; and the three were equally

adorned with short cloaks of coloured cloth surmounted by little tartan hoods. The tartans were doubtless

conceivable as different, but the cloaks, curiously, only thinkable as one. "Handsome? Well, if you choose to

say so." It was the mother who had spoken, who herself added, after a pause during which Milly took the

reference as to a picture: "In the English style." The three pair of eyes had converged, and their possessors

had for an instant rested, with the effect of a drop of the subject, on this last characterisationwith that, too,

of a gloom not less mute in one of the daughters than murmured in the other. Milly's heart went out to them

while they turned their backs; she said to herself that they ought to have known her, that there was something

between them they might have beautifully put together. But she had lost THEM alsothey were cold; they

left her (292) in her weak wonder as to what they had been looking at. The "handsome" disposed her to

turnall the more that the "English style" would be the English school, which she liked; only she saw,

before moving, by the array on the side facing her, that she was in fact among small Dutch pictures. The

action of this was again appreciablethe dim surmise that it wouldn't then be by a picture that the spring in

the three ladies had been pressed. It was at all events time she should go, and she turned as she got on her

feet. She had had behind her one of the entrances and various visitors who had come in while she sat, visitors

single and in pairsby one of the former of whom she felt her eyes suddenly held.

This was a gentleman in the middle of the place, a gentleman who had removed his hat and was for a

moment, while he glanced, absently, as she could see, at the top tier of the collection, tapping his forehead

with his pockethandkerchief. The occupation held him long enough to give Milly time to take for

grantedand a few seconds sufficedthat his face was the object just observed by her friends. This could

only have been because she concurred in their tribute, even qualified; and indeed "the English style" of the

gentlemanperhaps by instant contrast to the Americanwas what had had the arresting power. This

arresting power, at the same timeand that was the marvelhad already sharpened almost to pain, for in

the very act of judging the bared head with detachment she felt herself shaken by a knowledge of it. It was

Merton Densher's own, and he was standing there, standing long enough unconscious (293) for her to fix him

and then hesitate. These successions were swift, so that she could still ask herself in freedom if she had best

let him see her. She could still reply to this that she shouldn't like him to catch her in the effort to prevent it;

and she might further have decided that he was too preoccupied to see anything had not a perception

intervened that surpassed the first in violence. She was unable to think afterwards how long she had looked at

him before knowing herself as otherwise looked at; all she was coherently to put together was that she had

had a second recognition without his having noticed her. The source of this latter shock was nobody less than

Kate CroyKate Croy who was suddenly also in the line of vision and whose eyes met her eyes at their next

movement. Kate was but two yards offMr. Densher wasn't alone. Kate's face specifically said so, for after

a stare as blank at first as Milly's it broke into a far smile. That was what, wonderfullyin addition to the

marvel of their meetingpassed from her for Milly; the instant reduction to easy terms of the fact of their

being there, the two young women, together. It was perhaps only afterwards that the girl fully felt the

connexion between this touch and her already established conviction that Kate was a prodigious person; yet

on the spot she none the less, in a degree, knew herself handled and again, as she had been the night before,

dealt withabsolutely even dealt with for her greater pleasure. A minute in fine hadn't elapsed before Kate

had somehow made her provisionally take everything as natural. The provisional was just the

charmacquiring that character (294) from one moment to the other; it represented happily so much that

Kate would explain on the very first chance. This left moreoverand that was the greatest wonderall due

margin for amusement at the way things happened, the monstrous oddity of their turning up in such a place

on the very heels of their having separated without allusion to it. The handsome girl was thus literally in

control of the scene by the time Merton Densher was ready to exclaim with a high flush or a vivid

blushone didn't distinguish the embarrassment from the joy"Why Miss Theale: fancy!" and "Why Miss

Miss Theale had meanwhile the sense that for him too, on Kate's part, something wonderful and unspoken

was determinant; and this although, distinctly, his companion had no more looked at him with a hint than he

had looked at her with a question. He had looked and was looking only at Milly herself, ever so pleasantly

and consideratelyshe scarce knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, all the same,

that women got out of predicaments better than men. The predicament of course wasn't definite nor

phraseableand the way they let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a

characteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it for granted, insistently, with a small private flare

of passion, because the one thing she could think of to do for him was to show him how she eased him off.

She would really, tired and nervous, have been much disconcerted if the opportunity in question hadn't saved

her. It was what (295) had saved her most, what had made her, after the first few seconds, almost as brave for

Kate as Kate was for her, had made her only ask herself what their friend would like of her. That he was at

the end of three minutes, without the least complicated reference, so smoothly "their" friend was just the

effect of their all being sublimely civilised. The flash in which he saw this was, for Milly, fairly inspiringto

that degree in fact that she was even now, on such a plane, yearning to be supreme. It took, no doubt, a big

dose of inspiration to treat as not funnyor at least as not unpleasantthe anomaly, for Kate, that SHE

knew their gentleman, and for herself, that Kate was spending the morning with him; but everything

continued to make for this after Milly had tasted of her draught. She was to wonder in subsequent reflexion

what in the world they had actually said, since they had made such a success of what they didn't say; the

sweetness of the draught for the time, at any rate, was to feel success assured. What depended on this for Mr.

Densher was all obscurity to her, and she perhaps but invented the image of his need as a short cut to

accommodation. Whatever the facts, their perfect manners, all round, saw them through. The finest part of

Milly's own inspiration, it may further be mentioned, was the quick perception that what would be of most

service was, so to speak, her own native woodnote. She had long been conscious with shame for her thin

blood, or at least for her poor economy, of her unused margin as an American girlclosely indeed as in

English air the text might appear to cover the page. She still had reserves of spontaneity, (296) if not of

comicality; so that all this cash in hand could now find employment. She became as spontaneous as possible

and as American as it might conveniently appeal to Mr. Densher, after his travels, to find her. She said things

in the air, and yet flattered herself that she struck him as saying them not in the tone of agitation but in the

tone of New York. In the tone of New York agitation was beautifully discounted, and she had now a

The help was fairly rendered before they left the place; when her friends presently accepted her invitation to

adjourn with her to luncheon at her hotel it was in Fifth Avenue that the meal might have waited. Kate had

never been there so straight, but Milly was at present taking her; and if Mr. Densher had been he had at least

never had to come so fast. She proposed it as the natural thingproposed it as the American girl; and she

saw herself quickly justified by the pace at which she was followed. The beauty of the case was that to do it

all she had only to appear to take Kate's hint. This had said in its fine first smile "Oh yes, our look's

queerbut give me time"; and the American girl could give time as nobody else could. What Milly thus

gave she therefore made them takeeven if, as they might surmise, it was rather more than they wanted. In

the porch of the museum she expressed her preference for a fourwheeler; they would take their course in

that guise precisely to multiply the minutes. She was more than ever justified by the positive charm that her

spirit imparted even to their use of this conveyance; and she (297) touched her highest pointthat is

certainly for herselfas she ushered her companions into the presence of Susie. Susie was there with

luncheon as well as with her return in prospect; and nothing could now have filled her own consciousness

more to the brim than to see this good friend take in how little she was abjectly anxious. The cup itself

actually offered to this good friend might in truth well be startling, for it was composed beyond question of

ingredients oddly mixed. She caught Susie fairly looking at her as if to know whether she had brought in

guests to hear Sir Luke Strett's report. Well, it was better her companion should have too much than too little

to wonder about; she had come out "anyway," as they said at home, for the interest of the thing; and interest

truly sat in her eyes. Milly was none the less, at the sharpest crisis, a little sorry for her; she could of necessity

extract from the odd scene so comparatively little of a soothing secret. She saw Mr. Densher suddenly

popping up, but she saw nothing else that had happened. She saw in the same way her young friend

indifferent to her young friend's doom, and she lacked what would explain it. The only thing to keep her in

patience was the way, after luncheon, Kate almost, as might be said, made up to her. This was actually

perhaps as well what most kept Milly herself in patience. It had in fact for our young woman a positive

beautywas so marked as a deviation from the handsome girl's previous courses. Susie had been a bore to

the handsome girl, and the change was now suggestive. The two sat together, after they had risen from table,

in the apartment in which they had (298) lunched, making it thus easy for the other guest and his entertainer

to sit in the room adjacent. This, for the latter personage, was the beauty; it was almost, on Kate's part, like a

prayer to be relieved. If she honestly liked better to be "thrown with" Susan Shepherd than with their other

friend, why that said practically everything. It didn't perhaps altogether say why she had gone out with him

for the morning, but it said, as one thought, about as much as she could say to his face.

Little by little indeed, under the vividness of Kate's behaviour, the probabilities fell back into their order.

Merton Densher was in love and Kate couldn't help itcould only be sorry and kind: wouldn't that, without

wild flurries, cover everything? Milly at all events tried it as a cover, tried it hard, for the time; pulled it over

her, in the front, the larger room, drew it up to her chin with energy. If it didn't, so treated, do everything for

her, it did so much that she could herself supply the rest. She made that up by the interest of her great

question, the question of whether, seeing him once more, with all that, as she called it to herself, had come

and gone, her impression of him would be different from the impression received in New York. That had held

her from the moment of their leaving the museum; it kept her company through their drive and during

luncheon; and now that she was a quarter of an hour alone with him it became acute. She was to feel at this

crisis that no clear, no common answer, no direct satisfaction on this point, was to reach her; she was to see

her question itself simply go to pieces. She couldn't tell if he (299) were different or not, and she didn't know

nor care if SHE were: these things had ceased to matter in the light of the only thing she did know. This was

that she liked him, as she put it to herself, as much as ever; and if that were to amount to liking a new person

the amusement would be but the greater. She had thought him at first very quiet, in spite of his recovery from

his original confusion; though even the shade of bewilderment, she yet perceived, had not been due to such

vagueness on the subject of her reintensified identity as the probable sight, over there, of many thousands of

her kind would sufficiently have justified. No, he was quiet, inevitably, for the first half of the time, because

Milly's own lively linethe line of spontaneitymade everything else relative; and because too, so far as

Kate was spontaneous, it was ever so finely in the air among them that the normal pitch must be kept.

Afterwards, when they had got a little more used, as it were, to each other's separate felicity, he had begun to

talk more, clearly bethinking himself at a given moment of what HIS natural lively line would be. It would be

to take for granted she must wish to hear of the States, and to give her in its order everything he had seen and

done there. He abounded, of a suddenhe almost insisted; he returned, after breaks, to the charge; and the

effect was perhaps the more odd as he gave no clue whatever to what he had admired, as he went, or to what

he hadn't. He simply drenched her with his sociable storyespecially during the time they were away from

the others. She had stopped then being Americanall to let him be English; a permission of which (300) he

took, she could feel, both immense and unconscious advantage. She had really never cared less for the States

than at this moment; but that had nothing to do with the matter. It would have been the occasion of her life to

learn about them, for nothing could put him off, and he ventured on no reference to what had happened for

herself. It might have been almost as if he had known that the greatest of all these adventures was her doing

It was at this point that she saw the smash of her great question complete, saw that all she had to do with was

the sense of being there with him. And there was no chill for this in what she also presently sawthat,

however he had begun, he was now acting from a particular desire, determined either by new facts or new

fancies, to be like every one else, simplifyingly "kind" to her. He had caught on already as to mannerfallen

into line with every one else; and if his spirits verily HAD gone up it might well be that he had thus felt

himself lighting on the remedy for all awkwardness. Whatever he did or he didn't Milly knew she should still

like himthere was no alternative to that; but her heart could none the less sink a little on feeling how much

his view of her was destined to have in common withas she now sighed over itTHE view. She could

have dreamed of his not having THE view, of his having something or other, if need be quite viewless, of his

own; but he might have what he could with least trouble, and THE view wouldn't be after all a positive bar to

her seeing him. The defect of it in generalif she might so ungraciously criticisewas that, by its sweet

universality, (301) it made relations rather prosaically a matter of course. It anticipated and superseded

thelikewise sweetoperation of real affinities. It was this that was doubtless marked in her power to keep

him nowthis and her glassy lustre of attention to his pleasantness about the scenery in the Rockies. She

was in truth a little measuring her success in detaining him by Kate's success in "standing" Susan. It wouldn't

be, if she could help it, Mr. Densher who should first break down. Such at least was one of the forms of the

girl's inward tension; but beneath even this deep reason was a motive still finer. What she had left at home on

going out to give it a chance was meanwhile still, was more sharply and actively, there. What had been at the

top of her mind about it and then been violently pushed downthis quantity was again working up. As soon

as their friends should go Susie would break out, and what she would break out upon wouldn't beinterested

in that gentleman as she had more than once shown herselfthe personal fact of Mr. Densher. Milly had

found in her face at luncheon a feverish glitter, and it told what she was full of. She didn't care now for Mr.

Densher's personal facts. [sic. Norton emendation: fact.] Mr. Densher had risen before her only to find his

proper place in her imagination already of a sudden occupied. His personal fact failed, so far as she was

concerned, to BE personal, and her companion noticed the failure. This could only mean that she was full to

the brim of Sir Luke Strett and of what she had had from him. What HAD she had from him? It was indeed

now working upward again that Milly would do well to know, though knowledge looked stiff in the (302)

light of Susie's glitter. It was therefore on the whole because Densher's young hostess was divided from it by

"I say, you know, Kateyou DID stay!" had been Merton Densher's punctual remark on their adventure after

they had, as it were, got out of it; an observation which she not less promptly, on her side, let him see that she

forgave in him only because he was a man. She had to recognise, with whatever disappointment, that it was

doubtless the most helpful he could make in this character. The fact of the adventure was flagrant between

them; they had looked at each other, on gaining the street, as people look who have just rounded together a

dangerous corner, and there was therefore already enough unanimity sketched out to have lighted, for her

companion, anything equivocal in her action. But the amount of light men DID need!Kate could have been

eloquent at this moment about that. What, however, on his seeing more, struck him as most distinct in her

was her sense that, reunited after his absence and having been now half the morning together, it behooved

them to face without delay the question of handling their immediate future. That it would require some

handling, that they should still have to deal, deal in a crafty manner, with difficulties and delays, was the

great matter he had come back to, greater than any but the refreshed consciousness of their personal need of

each other. (4) This need had had twenty minutes, the afternoon before, to find out where it stood, and the

time was fully accounted for by the charm of the demonstration. He had arrived at Euston at five, having

wired her from Liverpool the moment he landed, and she had quickly decided to meet him at the station,

whatever publicity might attend such an act. When he had praised her for it on alighting from his train she

had answered frankly enough that such things should be taken at a jump. She didn't care today who saw her,

and she profited by it for her joy. Tomorrow, inevitably, she should have time to think and then, as

inevitably, would become a baser creature, a creature of alarms and precautions. It was none the less for

tomorrow at an early hour that she had appointed their next meeting, keeping in mind for the present a

particular obligation to show at Lancaster Gate by six o'clock. She had given, with imprecations, her

reasonpeople to tea, eternally, and a promise to Aunt Maud; but she had been liberal enough on the spot

and had suggested the National Gallery for the morning quite as with an idea that had ripened in expectancy.

They might be seen there too, but nobody would know them; just as, for that matter, now, in the

refreshmentroom to which they had adjourned, they would incur the notice but, at the worst, of the

unacquainted. They would "have something" there for the facility it would give. Thus had it already come up

He found himself on English soil with all sorts of feelings, but he hadn't quite faced having to reckon (5) with

a certain ruefulness in regard to that subject as one of the strongest. He was aware later on that there were

questions his impatience had shirked; whereby it actually rather smote him, for want of preparation and

assurance, that he had nowhere to "take" his love. He had taken it thus, at Eustonand on Kate's own

suggestioninto the place where people had beer and buns, and had ordered tea at a small table in the

corner; which, no doubt, as they were lost in the crowd, did well enough for a stopgap. It perhaps did as

well as her simply driving with him to the door of his lodging, which had had to figure as the sole device of

his own wit. That wit, the truth was, had broken down a little at the sharp prevision that once at his door they

would have to hang back. She would have to stop there, wouldn't come in with him, couldn't possibly; and he

shouldn't be able to ask her, would feel he couldn't without betraying a deficiency of what would be called,

even at their advanced stage, respect for her: that again was all that was clear except the further fact that it

was maddening. Compressed and concentrated, confined to a single sharp pang or two, but none the less in

wait for him there on the Euston platform and lifting its head as that of a snake in the garden, was the

disconcerting sense that "respect," in their game, seemed somehowhe scarce knew what to call ita fifth

wheel to the coach. It was properly an inside thing, not an outside, a thing to make love greater, not to make

happiness less. They had met again for happiness, and he distinctly felt, during his most lucid moment or two,

how he must keep watch on anything that (6) really menaced that boon. If Kate had consented to drive away

with him and alight at his house there would probably enough have occurred for them, at the foot of his steps,

one of those strange instants between man and woman that blow upon the red spark, the spark of conflict,

ever latent in the depths of passion. She would have shaken her headoh sadly, divinelyon the question

of coming in; and he, though doing all justice to her refusal, would have yet felt his eyes reach further into

her own than a possible word at such a time could reach. This would have meant the suspicion, the dread of

the shadow, of an adverse will. Lucky therefore in the actual case that the scant minutes took another turn and

that by the halfhour she did in spite of everything contrive to spend with him Kate showed so well how she

could deal with things that maddened. She seemed to ask him, to beseech him, and all for his better comfort,

She had still met it in naming so promptly, for their early convenience, one of the great museums; and indeed

with such happy art that his fully seeing where she had placed him hadn't been till after he left her. His

absence from her for so many weeks had had such an effect upon him that his demands, his desires had

grown; and only the night before, as his ship steamed, beneath summer stars, in sight of the Irish coast, he

had felt all the force of his particular necessity. He hadn't in other words at any point doubted he was on his

way to say to her that really their mistake must end. Their mistake was to have believed that they (7) COULD

hold outhold out, that is, not against Aunt Maud, but against an impatience that, prolonged and

exasperated, made a man ill. He had known more than ever, on their separating in the court of the station,

how ill a man, and even a woman, could feel from such a cause; but he struck himself as also knowing that he

had already suffered Kate to begin finely to apply antidotes and remedies and subtle sedatives. It had a vulgar

soundas throughout, in love, the names of things, the verbal terms of intercourse, were, compared with

love itself, horribly vulgar; but it was as if, after all, he might have come back to find himself "put off,"

though it would take him of course a day or two to see. His letters from the States had pleased whom it

concerned, though not so much as he had meant they should; and he should be paid according to agreement

and would now take up his money. It wasn't in truth very much to take up, so that he hadn't in the least come

back flourishing a chequebook; that new motive for bringing his mistress to terms he couldn't therefore

pretend to produce. The ideal certainty would have been to be able to present a change of prospect as a

warrant for the change of philosophy, and without it he should have to make shift but with the pretext of the

lapse of time. The lapse of timenot so many weeks after all, she might always of course saycouldn't at

any rate have failed to do something for him; and that consideration it was that had just now tided him over,

all the more that he had his vision of what it had done personally for Kate. This had come out for him with a

splendour that almost scared him even in their small corner (8) of the room at Eustonalmost scared him

because it just seemed to blaze at him that waiting was the game of dupes. Not yet had she been so the

creature he had originally seen; not yet had he felt so soundly safely sure. It was all there for him, playing on

his pride of possession as a hidden master in a great dim church might play on the grandest organ. His final

sense was that a woman couldn't be like that and then ask of one the impossible.

She had been like that afresh on the morrow; and so for the hour they had been able to float in the mere joy of

contactsuch contact as their situation in pictured public halls permitted. This poor makeshift for closeness

confessed itself in truth, by twenty small signs of unrest even on Kate's part, inadequate; so little could a

decent interest in the interesting place presume to remind them of its claims. They had met there in order not

to meet in the streets and not again, with an equal want of invention and of style, at a railwaystation; not

again, either, in Kensington Gardens, which, they could easily and tacitly agree, would have had too much of

the taste of their old frustrations. The present taste, the taste that morning in the pictured halls, had been a

variation; yet Densher had at the end of a quarter of an hour fully known what to conclude from it. This fairly

consoled him for their awkwardness, as if he had been watching it affect her. She might be as nobly charming

as she liked, and he had seen nothing to touch her in the States; she couldn't pretend that in such conditions as

those she herself BELIEVED it enough to appease him. She couldn't pretend she believed he (9) would

believe it enough to render her a like service. It wasn't enough for that purposeshe as good as showed him

it wasn't. That was what he could be glad, by demonstration, to have brought her to. He would have said to

her had he put it crudely and on the spot: "NOW am I to understand you that you consider this sort of thing

can go on?" It would have been open to her, no doubt, to reply that to have him with her again, to have him

all kept and treasured, so still, under her grasping hand, as she had held him in their yearning interval, was a

sort of thing that he must allow her to have no quarrel about; but that would be a mere gesture of her grace, a

mere sport of her subtlety. She knew as well as he what they wanted; in spite of which indeed he scarce could

have said how beautifully he mightn't once more have named it and urged it if she hadn't, at a given moment,

blurred, as it were, the accord. They had soon seated themselves for better talk, and so they had remained a

while, intimate and superficial. The immediate things to say had been many, for they hadn't exhausted them

at Euston. They drew upon them freely now, and Kate appeared quite to forgetwhich was prodigiously

becoming to herto look about for surprises. He was to try afterwards, and try in vain, to remember what

speech or what silence of his own, what natural sign of the eyes or accidental touch of the hand, had

precipitated for her, in the midst of this, a sudden different impulse. She had got up, with inconsequence, as if

to break the charm, though he wasn't aware of what he had done at the moment to make the charm a danger.

She had (10) patched it up agreeably enough the next minute by some odd remark about some picture, to

which he hadn't so much as replied; it being quite independently of this that he had himself exclaimed on the

dreadful closeness of the rooms. He had observed that they must go out again to breathe; and it was as if their

common consciousness, while they passed into another part, was that of persons who, infinitely engaged

together, had been startled and were trying to look natural. It was probably while they were so occupiedas

the young man subsequently reconceivedthat they had stumbled upon his little New York friend. He

thought of her for some reason as little, though she was of about Kate's height, to which, any more than to

What was to be in the retrospect more distinct to him was the process by which he had become aware that

Kate's acquaintance with her was greater than he had gathered. She had written of it in due course as a new

and amusing one, and he had written back that he had met over there, and that he much liked, the young

person; whereupon she had answered that he must find out about her at home. Kate, in the event, however,

had not returned to that, and he had of course, with so many things to find out about, been otherwise taken up.

Little Miss Theale's individual history was not stuff for his newspaper; besides which, moreover, he was

seeing but too many little Miss Theales. They even went so far as to impose themselves as one of the groups

of social phenomena that fell into the scheme of his public letters. For this (11) group in especial

perhapsthe irrepressible, the supereminent young personshis best pen was ready. Thus it was that there

could come back to him in London, an hour or two after their luncheon with the American pair, the sense of a

situation for which Kate hadn't wholly prepared him. Possibly indeed as marked as this was his recovered

perception that preparations, of more than one kind, had been exactly what, both yesterday and today, he

felt her as having in hand. That appearance in fact, if he dwelt on it, so ministered to apprehension as to

require some brushing away. He shook off the suspicion to some extent, on their separating first from their

hostesses and then from each other, by the aid of a long and rather aimless walk. He was to go to the office

later, but he had the next two or three hours, and he gave himself as a pretext that he had eaten much too

much. After Kate had asked him to put her into a cabwhich, as an announced, a resumed policy on her

part, he found himself deprecatinghe stood a while by a corner and looked vaguely forth at his London.

There was always doubtless a moment for the absentee recapturedTHE moment, that of the reflux of the

first emotionat which it was beyond disproof that one was back. His full parenthesis was closed, and he

was once more but a sentence, of a sort, in the general text, the text that, from his momentary streetcorner,

showed as a great grey page of print that somehow managed to be crowded without being "fine." The grey,

however, was more or less the blur of a point of view not yet quite seized again; and there would be colour

enough to come out. He was (12) back, flatly enough, but back to possibilities and prospects, and the ground

He walked northward without a plan, without suspicion, quite in the direction his little New York friend, in

her restless ramble, had taken a day or two before. He reached, like Milly, the Regent's Park; and though he

moved further and faster he finally sat down, like Milly, from the force of thought. For him too in this

position, be it addedand he might positively have occupied the same benchvarious troubled fancies

folded their wings. He had no more yet said what he really wanted than Kate herself had found time. She

should hear enough of that in a couple of days. He had practically not pressed her as to what most concerned

them; it had seemed so to concern them during these first hours but to hold each other, spiritually speaking,

close. This at any rate was palpable, that there were at present more things rather than fewer between them.

The explanation about the two ladies would be part of the lot, yet could wait with all the rest. They were not

meanwhile certainly what most made him roamthe missing explanations weren't. That was what she had so

often said before, and always with the effect of suddenly breaking off: "Now please call me a good cab."

Their previous encounters, the times when they had reached in their stroll the south side of the park, had had

a way of winding up with this special irrelevance. It was effectively what most divided them, for he would

generally, but for her reasons, have been able to jump in with her. What did she think he (13) wished to do to

her?it was a question he had had occasion to put. A small matter, however, doubtlesssince, when it

came to that, they didn't depend on cabs good or bad for the sense of union: its importance was less from the

particular loss than as a kind of irritating mark of her expertness. This expertness, under providence, had been

great from the first, so far as joining him was concerned; and he was critical only because it had been still

greater, even from the first too, in respect to leaving him. He had put the question to her again that afternoon,

on the repetition of her appealhad asked her once more what she supposed he wished to do. He recalled, on

his bench in the Regent's Park, the freedom of fancy, funny and pretty, with which she had answered; recalled

the moment itself, while the usual hansom charged them, during which he felt himself, disappointed as he

was, grimacing back at the superiority of her very "humour," in its added grace of gaiety, to the celebrated

solemn American. Their fresh appointment had been at all events by that time made, and he should see what

her choice in respect to ita surprise as well as a reliefwould do toward really simplifying. It meant either

new help or new hindrance, though it took them at least out of the streets. And her naming this privilege had

"Not from me," Kate had replied. "But I shall speak to her now." And she had argued, as with rather a quick

fresh view, that it would now be quite easy. "We've behaved for months so properly that I've margin surely

for my mention of you. You'll (14) come to see HER, and she'll leave you with me; she'll show her good

nature, and her lack of betrayed fear, in that. With her, you know, you've never broken, quite the contrary,

and she likes you as much as ever. We're leaving town; it will be the end; just now therefore it's nothing to

ask. I'll ask tonight," Kate had wound up, "and if you'll leave it to memy cleverness, I assure you, has

He had of course thus left it to her and he was wondering more about it now than he had wondered there in

Brook Street. He repeated to himself that if it wasn't in the line of triumph it was in the line of muddle. This

indeed, no doubt, was as a part of his wonder for still other questions. Kate had really got off without meeting

his little challenge about the terms of their intercourse with her dear Milly. Her dear Milly, it was sensible,

WAS somehow in the picture. Her dear Milly, popping up in his absence, occupiedhe couldn't have said

quite why he felt itmore of the foreground than one would have expected her in advance to find clear. She

took up room, and it was almost as if room had been made for her. Kate had appeared to take for granted he

would know why it had been made; but that was just the point. It was a foreground in which he himself, in

which his connexion with Kate, scarce enjoyed a space to turn round. But Miss Theale was perhaps at the

present juncture a possibility of the same sort as the softened, if not the squared, Aunt Maud. It might be true

of her also that if she weren't a bore she'd be a convenience. It rolled over him of a sudden, after he had (15)

resumed his walk, that this might easily be what Kate had meant. The charming girl adored herDensher

had for himself made out thatand would protect, would lend a hand, to their interviews. These might take

place, in other words, on her premises, which would remove them still better from the streets. THAT was an

explanation which did hang together. It was impaired a little, of a truth, by this fact that their next encounter

was rather markedly not to depend upon her. Yet this fact in turn would be accounted for by the need of more

preliminaries. One of the things he conceivably should gain on Thursday at Lancaster Gate would be a further

It was extraordinary enough that he should actually be finding himself, when Thursday arrived, none so wide

of the mark. Kate hadn't come all the way to this for him, but she had come to a good deal by the end of a

quarter of an hour. What she had begun with was her surprise at her appearing to have left him on Tuesday

anything more to understand. The parts, as he now saw, under her hand, did fall more or less together, and it

wasn't even as if she had spent the interval in twisting and fitting them. She was bright and handsome, not

fagged and worn, with the general clearness; for it certainly stuck out enough that if the American ladies

themselves weren't to be squared, which was absurd, they fairly imposed the necessity of trying Aunt Maud

again. One couldn't say to them, kind as she had been to them: "We'll meet, please, whenever you'll let us, at

your house; but we count on you to help us to keep it secret." They must in other terms inevitably speak to

Aunt Maudit would be of the last awkwardness to ask them not to: Kate had embraced all this in her

choice of speaking first. What Kate embraced altogether was indeed wonderful today for Densher, though

he perhaps struck himself rather as getting it out of her piece by piece than as receiving it in a steady light. He

had always felt, however, that the more he asked of her the more he found her prepared, as he imaged (17) it,

to hand out. He had said to her more than once even before his absence: "You keep the key of the cupboard,

and I foresee that when we're married you'll dole me out my sugar by lumps." She had replied that she

rejoiced in his assumption that sugar would be his diet, and the domestic arrangement so prefigured might

have seemed already to prevail. The supply from the cupboard at this hour was doubtless, of a truth, not

altogether cloyingly sweet; but it met in a manner his immediate requirements. If her explanations at any rate

prompted questions the questions no more exhausted them than they exhausted her patience. And they were

naturally, of the series, the simpler; as for instance in his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do

nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think possible. "If we can't meet here and

we've really exhausted the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some

occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But

if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more nail,

thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He was but too glad without more ado to point the moral.

If she laughed for thisand her spirits seemed really highit was because of the opportunity that, at the

hotel, he had most shown himself as enjoying. "Your idea's beautiful when one remembers that you hadn't a

word except for Milly." But she was as beautifully goodhumoured. "You might of course (18) get used to

heryou WILL. You're quite rightso long as they're with us or near us." And she put it, lucidly, that the

dear things couldn't HELP, simply as charming friends, giving them a lift. "They'll speak to Aunt Maud. but

they won't shut their doors to us: that would be another matter. A friend always helpsand she's a friend."

She had left Mrs. Stringham by this time out of the question; she had reduced it to Milly. "Besides, she

particularly likes us. She particularly likes YOU. I say, old boy, make something of that." He felt her dodging

the ultimatum he had just made sharp, his definite reminder of how little, at the best, they could work it; but

there were certain of his remarksthose mostly of the sharper penetrationthat it had been quite her

practice from the first not formally, not reverently to notice. She showed the effect of them in ways less trite.

This was what happened now: he didn't think in truth that she wasn't really minding. She took him up, none

the less, on a minor question. "You say we can't meet here, but you see it's just what we do. What could be

It wasn't to torment himthat again he didn't believe; but he had to come to the house in some discomfort, so

that he frowned a little at her calling it thus a luxury. Wasn't there an element in it of coming back into

bondage? The bondage might be veiled and varnished, but he knew in his bones how little the very highest

privileges of Lancaster Gate could ever be a sign of their freedom. They were upstairs, in one of the smaller

apartments of state, a room arranged as a boudoir, but visibly unusedit defied (19) familiarityand

furnished in the ugliest of blues. He had immediately looked with interest at the closed doors, and Kate had

met his interest with the assurance that it was all right, that Aunt Maud did them justiceso far, that was, as

this particular time was concerned; that they should be alone and have nothing to fear. But the fresh allusion

to this that he had drawn from her acted on him now more directly, brought him closer still to the question.

They WERE aloneit WAS all right: he took in anew the shut doors and the permitted privacy, the solid

stillness of the great house. They connected themselves on the spot with something made doubly vivid in him

by the whole present play of her charming strong will. What it amounted to was that he couldn't have

herhanged if he could!evasive. He couldn't and he wouldn'twouldn't have her inconvenient and

elusive. He didn't want her deeper than himself, fine as it might be as wit or as character; he wanted to keep

her where their communications would be straight and easy and their intercourse independent. The effect of

She turned a little pale for the tone of truth in itwhich qualified to his sense delightfully the strength of her

will; and the pleasure he found in this was not the less for her breaking out after an instant into a strain that

stirred him more than any she had ever used with him. "Ah do let me try myself! I assure you I see my

wayso don't spoil it: wait for me and give me time. Dear man," Kate said, "only believe in me, and it will

(20) He hadn't come back to hear her talk of his believing in her as if he didn't; but he had come backand it

all was upon him nowto seize her with a sudden intensity that her manner of pleading with him had made,

as happily appeared, irresistible. He laid strong hands upon her to say, almost in anger, "Do you love me, love

me, love me?" and she closed her eyes as with the sense that he might strike her but that she could gratefully

take it. Her surrender was her response, her response her surrender; and, though scarce hearing what she said,

he so profited by these things that it could for the time be ever so intimately appreciable to him that he was

keeping her. The long embrace in which they held each other was the rout of evasion, and he took from it the

certitude that what she had from him was real to her. It was stronger than an uttered vow, and the name he

was to give it in afterthought was that she had been sublimely sincere. THAT was all he askedsincerity

making a basis that would bear almost anything. This settled so much, and settled it so thoroughly, that there

was nothing left to ask her to swear to. Oaths and vows apart, now they could talk. It seemed in fact only now

that their questions were put on the table. He had taken up more expressly at the end of five minutes her plea

for her own plan, and it was marked that the difference made by the passage just enacted was a difference in

favour of her choice of means. Means had somehow suddenly become a detailher province and her care; it

had grown more consistently vivid that her intelligence was one with her passion. "I certainly don't want," he

saidand he could say it (21) with a smile of indulgence"to be all the while bringing it up that I don't trust

He had really at this to make out a little what he thought, and the first thing that put itself in evidence was of

course the oddity, after all, of their game, to which he could but frankly allude. "We're doing, at the best, in

trying to temporise in so special a way, a thing most people would call us fools for." But his visit passed, all

the same, without his again attempting to make "just as he was" serve. He had no more money just as he was

than he had had just as he had been, or than he should have, probably, when it came to that, just as he always

would be; whereas she, on her side, in comparison with her state of some months before, had measureably

more to relinquish. He easily saw how their meeting at Lancaster Gate gave more of an accent to that quantity

than their meeting at stations or in parks; and yet on the other hand he couldn't urge this against it. If Mrs.

Lowder was indifferent her indifference added in a manner to what Kate's taking him as he was would call on

her to sacrifice. Such in fine was her art with him that she seemed to put the question of their still waiting into

quite other terms than the terms of ugly blue, of florid Sevres, of complicated brass, in which their boudoir

expressed it. She said almost all in fact by saying, on this article of Aunt Maud, after he had once more

pressed her, that when he should see her, as must inevitably soon happen, he would understand. "Do you

mean," he asked at this, "that there's any DEFINITE (22) sign of her coming round? I'm not talking," he

explained, "of mere hypocrisies in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after all, that supremely clever

as we are, and as strong a team, I admit, as there is goingremember that she can play with us quite as much

"She doesn't want to play with ME, my dear," Kate lucidly replied; "she doesn't want to make me suffer a bit

more than she need. She cares for me too much, and everything she does or doesn't do has a value. THIS has

a valueher being as she has been about us today. I believe she's in her room, where she's keeping strictly

"What is it then," the young man returned"from the moment it isn't her blessing and a cheque?"

Kate was complete. "It's simply her absence of smallness. There IS something in her above trifles. She

GENERALLY trusts us; she doesn't propose to hunt us into corners: and if we frankly ask for a thingwhy,"

said Kate, "she shrugs, but she lets it go. She has really but one faultshe's indifferent, on such ground as

she has taken about us, to details. However," the girl cheerfully went on, "it isn't in detail we fight her."

"It seems to me," Densher brought out after a moment's thought of this, "that it's in detail we deceive her"a

speech that, as soon as he had uttered it, applied itself for him, as also visibly for his companion, to the

Any confusion attaching to this adventure, however, dropped from Kate, whom, as he could see with (23)

sacred joy, it must take more than that to make compunctious. "I don't say we can do it again. I mean," she

Densher indeed had been wondering where they could do it again. If Lancaster Gate was so limited that issue

"Certainlyto see her. It's she, really," his companion smiled, "who's in love with you."

But it made hima trifle more gravelook at her a moment. "Don't make out, you know, that every one's in

"Well, it comes to the same thing." With which, however, he pursued: "Of course I ought to thank Mrs.

"Ah but, you know, not too much!" She had an ironic gaiety for the implications of his "this," besides wishing

Densher did justice to both considerations. "Yes, I can't very well tell her all."

It was perhaps because he said it so gravely that Kate was again in a manner amused. Yet she gave out light.

"You can't very well 'tell' her anything, and that doesn't matter. Only be nice to her. Please her; make her see

how clever you areonly without letting her see that you're trying. If you're charming to her you've nothing

But she oversimplified too. "I can be 'charming' (24) to her, so far as I see, only by letting her suppose I give

"Of course it's a game. But she'll never suppose you give me upor I give YOUif you keep reminding her

"Then if she has to see us as obstinate and constant," Densher asked, "what good does it do?"

"Does my pleasing herdoes anything. I CAN'T," he impatiently declared, "please her."

Kate looked at him hard again, disappointed at his want of consistency; but it appeared to determine in her

something better than a mere complaint. "Then i can! Leave it to me." With which she came to him under the

compulsion, again, that had united them shortly before, and took hold of him in her urgency to the same

tender purpose. It was her form of entreaty renewed and repeated, which made after all, as he met it, their

great fact clear. And it somehow clarified ALL things so to possess each other. The effect of it was that, once

more, on these terms, he could only be generous. He had so on the spot then left everything to her that she

reverted in the course of a few moments to one of her previousand as positively seemedher most

precious ideas. "You accused me just now of saying that Milly's in love with you. Well, if you come to that, I

do say it. So there you are. That's the good she'll do us. It makes a basis for her seeing youso that she'll

(25) Densher staredshe was wondrous all round. "And what sort of a basis does it make for my seeing

"Well, she won'tso it's nothing not to mind. But how can that 'help,' " he pursued, "with what she knows?"

It took indeed some understanding. "Making nothing of the fact that I love another?"

"That you WON'T get her? She doesn't; but on the other hand she doesn't know you will. Meanwhile she sees

you baffled, for she knows of Aunt Maud's stand. THAT"Kate was lucid"gives her the chance to be nice

"And what does it give ME," the young man none the less rationally asked, "the chance to be? A brute of a

Kate so possessed her facts, as it were, that she smiled at his violence. "You'll extraordinarily like (26) her.

"Well, I'll tell you another time. Those I give you," the girl added, "are enough to go on with."

"Why, to seeing her againsay as soon as you can: which, moreover, on all grounds, is no more than decent

He of course took in her reference, and he had fully in mind what had passed between them in New York. It

had been no great quantity, but it had made distinctly at the time for his pleasure; so that anything in the

nature of an appeal in the name of it could have a slight kindling consequence. "Oh I shall naturally call again

without delay. Yes," said Densher, "her being in love with me is nonsense; but I must, quite independently of

"I don't quite see," he presently returned, "why she should wish to receive YOU for it."

"She receives me for myselfthat is for HER self. She thinks no end of me. That I should have to drum it

Well, Kate could but leave it as she saw it. "She regards me as alreadyin these few weeksher dearest

friend. It's quite separate. We're in, she and I, ever so deep." And it was to confirm this that, (27) as if it had

flashed upon her that he was somewhere at sea, she threw out at last her own real light. "She doesn't of course

know I care for YOU. She thinks I care so little that it's not worth speaking of." That he HAD been

somewhere at sea these remarks made quickly clear, and Kate hailed the effect with surprise. "Have you been

"About our situation? Certainly, if you're such friends as you show meand if you haven't otherwise

represented it to her." She uttered at this such a sound of impatience that he stood artlessly vague. "You

She threw up her arms at his being so backward. " 'Denied it'? My dear man, we've never spoken of you."

This struck him as obscure. "How does she know me but as part and parcel of you?"

"How?" Kate triumphantly asked. "Why exactly to make nothing of it, to have nothing to do with it, to stick

consistently to her line about it. Aunt Maud's line is to keep all reality out of our relationthat is out of my

being in danger from youby not having so much as suspected or heard of it. She'll get rid of it, as she

believes, by ignoring it and sinking itif she only does so hard enough. Therefore SHE, in her manner,

'denies' it if you will. That's how she knows you otherwise than as part and parcel of me. (28) She won't for a

moment have allowed either to Mrs. Stringham or to Milly that I've in any way, as they say, distinguished

"And you don't suppose," said Densher, "that they must have made it out for themselves?"

"No, my dear, I don't; not even," Kate declared, "after Milly's so funnily bumping against us on Tuesday."

"That you're, so to speak, mad about me. Yes, she sees, no doubt, that you regard me with a complacent

eyefor you show it, I think, always too much and too crudely. But nothing beyond that. i don't show it too

much; I don't perhapsto please you completely where others are concernedshow it enough."

It pulled her up a little, but she came out resplendent. "Not where YOU are concerned. Beyond seeing that

you're rather gone," she went on, "Milly only sees that I'm decently good to you."

"Very good indeed then. She easily sees me," Kate smiled, "as very good indeed."

"Then I explain." She was really fine; it came back to her essential plea for her freedom of action and his

(29) "Recognise the difference it must make if she thinks." But here in truth Kate faltered. It was his silence

alone that, for the moment, took up her apparent meaning; and before he again spoke she had returned to

remembrance and prudence. They were now not to forget that, Aunt Maud's liberality having put them on

their honour, they mustn't spoil their case by abusing it. He must leave her in time; they should probably find

"For Aunt Maudas much as you like. But we can't again," said Kate, "play her THIS trick. I can't see you

"You mean you'll manage to be there?" Densher asked. "Say you are, how will that give us privacy?"

"That's precisely what i feel. It strikes me we might manage better." His idea of this was a thing that made

him an instant hesitate; yet he brought it out with conviction. "Why won't you come to ME?"

It was a question her troubled eyes seemed to tell him he was scarce generous in expecting her definitely to

answer, and by looking to him to wait at least she appealed to something that she presently made him feel as

his pity. It was on that special shade of tenderness (30) that he thus found himself thrown back; and while he

asked of his spirit and of his flesh just what concession they could arrange she pressed him yet again on the

subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment. It might have been irritating had she ever struck him

as having in her mind a stupid corner. "You'll see," she said, "the difference it will make."

Well, since she wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who was stupidthe proof of which was that he

would do what she liked. But he made a last effort to understand, her allusion to the "difference" bringing

him round to it. He indeed caught at something subtle but strong even as he spoke. "Is what you meant a

moment ago that the difference will be in her being made to believe you hate me?"

Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of putting it, one of her more marked shows of impatience;

with which in fact she sharply closed their discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, and she

accompanied him to the top of the stairs with an air of having so put their possibilities before him that

questions were idle and doubts perverse. "I verily believe I SHALL hate you if you spoil for me the beauty of

He was really, notwithstanding, to hear more from her of what she saw; and the very next occasion had for

him still other surprises than that. He received from Mrs. Lowder on the morning after his visit to Kate the

telegraphic expression of a hope that he might be free to dine with them that evening; and his freedom

affected him as fortunate even though in some degree qualified by her missive. "Expecting American friends

whom I'm so glad to find you know!" His knowledge of American friends was clearly an accident of which

he was to taste the fruit to the last bitterness. This apprehension, however, we hasten to add, enjoyed for him,

in the immediate event, a certain merciful shrinkage; the immediate event being that, at Lancaster Gate, five

minutes after his due arrival, prescribed him for eightthirty, Mrs. Stringham came in alone. The long

daylight, the postponed lamps, the habit of the hour, made dinners late and guests still later; so that, punctual

as he was, he had found Mrs. Lowder alone, with Kate herself not yet in the field. He had thus had with her

several bewildering momentsbewildering by reason, fairly, of their tacit invitation to him to be

supernaturally simple. This was exactly, goodness knew, what he wanted to be; but he had never had it so

largely and freelySO supernaturally simply, for that matterimputed to him as of easy achievement. (32)

It was a particular in which Aunt Maud appeared to offer herself as an example, appeared to say quite

agreeably: "What I want of you, don't you see? is to be just exactly as i am." The quantity of the article

required was what might especially have caused him to staggerhe liked so, in general, the quantities in

which Mrs. Lowder dealt. He would have liked as well to ask her how feasible she supposed it for a poor

young man to resemble her at any point; but he had after all soon enough perceived that he was doing as she

wished by letting his wonder show just a little as silly. He was conscious moreover of a small strange dread

of the results of discussion with herstrange, truly, because it was her good nature, not her asperity, that he

feared. Asperity might have made him angryin which there was always a comfort; good nature, in his

conditions, had a tendency to make him ashamedwhich Aunt Maud indeed, wonderfully, liking him for

himself, quite struck him as having guessed. To spare him therefore she also avoided discussion; she kept

him down by refusing to quarrel with him. This was what she now proposed to him to enjoy, and his secret

discomfort was his sense that on the whole it was what would best suit him. Being kept down was a bore, but

his great dread, verily, was of being ashamed, which was a thing distinct; and it mattered but little that he was

It was of the essence of his position that in such a house as this the tables could always be turned on him.

"What do you offer, what do you offer?"the place, however muffled in convenience and decorum,

constantly hummed for him with that thick (33) irony. The irony was a renewed reference to obvious bribes,

and he had already seen how little aid came to him from denouncing the bribes as ugly in form. That was

what the precious metalsthey alonecould afford to be; it was vain enough for him accordingly to try to

impart a gloss to his own comparative brummagem. The humiliation of this impotence was precisely what

Aunt Maud sought to mitigate for him by keeping him down; and as her effort to that end had doubtless never

yet been so visible he had probably never felt so definitely placed in the world as while he waited with her for

her halfdozen other guests. She welcomed him genially back from the States, as to his view of which her

few questions, though not coherent, were comprehensive, and he had the amusement of seeing in her, as

through a clear glass, the outbreak of a plan and the sudden consciousness of a curiosity. She became aware

of America, under his eyes, as a possible scene for social operations; the idea of a visit to the wonderful

country had clearly but just occurred to her, yet she was talking of it, at the end of a minute, as her favourite

dream. He didn't believe in it, but he pretended to; this helped her as well as anything else to treat him as

harmless and blameless. She was so engaged, with the further aid of a complete absence of allusions, when

the highest effect was given her method by the beautiful entrance of Kate. The method therefore received

support all round, for no young man could have been less formidable than the person to the relief of whose

shyness her niece ostensibly came. The ostensible, in Kate, struck him altogether, on this occasion, as

prodigious; while (34) scarcely less prodigious, for that matter, was his own reading, on the spot, of the

relation between his companionsa relation lighted for him by the straight look, not exactly loving nor

lingering, yet searching and soft, that, on the part of their hostess, the girl had to reckon with as she advanced.

It took her in from head to foot, and in doing so it told a story that made poor Densher again the least bit sick:

That was the storythat she was always, for her beneficent dragon, under arms; living up, every hour, but

especially at festal hours, to the "value" Mrs. Lowder had attached to her. High and fixed, this estimate ruled

on each occasion at Lancaster Gate the social scene; so that he now recognised in it something like the artistic

idea, the plastic substance, imposed by tradition, by genius, by criticism, in respect to a given character, on a

distinguished actress. As such a person was to dress the part, to walk, to look, to speak, in every way to

express, the part, so all this was what Kate was to do for the character she had undertaken, under her aunt's

roof, to represent. It was made up, the character, of definite elements and touchesthings all perfectly

ponderable to criticism; and the way for her to meet criticism was evidently at the start to be sure her

makeup had had the last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual. Aunt Maud's appreciation of

that tonight was indeed managerial, and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier

on parade. Densher saw himself for the moment as in his purchased stall (35) at the play; the watchful

manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But she PASSED, the

poor performerhe could see how she always passed; her wig, her paint, her jewels, every mark of her

expression impeccable, and her entrance accordingly greeted with the proper round of applause. Such

impressions as we thus note for Densher come and go, it must be granted, in very much less time than

notation demands; but we may none the less make the point that there was, still further, time among them for

him to feel almost too scared to take part in the ovation. He struck himself as having lost, for the minute, his

presence of mindso that in any case he only stared in silence at the older woman's technical challenge and

at the younger one's disciplined face. It was as if the dramait thus came to him, for the fact of a drama

there was no blinkingwas between THEM, them quite preponderantly; with Merton Densher relegated to

mere spectatorship, a paying place in front, and one of the most expensive. This was why his appreciation had

turned for the instant to fearhad just turned, as we have said, to sickness; and in spite of the fact that the

disciplined face did offer him over the footlights, as he believed, the small gleam, fine faint but exquisite, of a

special intelligence. So might a practised performer, even when raked by doublebarrelled glasses, seem to

be all in her part and yet convey a sign to the person in the house she loved best.

The drama, at all events, as Densher saw it, meanwhile went onamplified soon enough by the advent of

two other guests, stray gentlemen both, stragglers (36) in the rout of the season, who visibly presented

themselves to Kate during the next moments as subjects for a like impersonal treatment and sharers in a like

usual mercy. At opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the "figure" that each, in his

way, made, one the expansive, the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch

company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs.

Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her

companion, at the last moment, had been indisposedpositively not well enough, and so had packed her off,

insistently, with excuses, with wild regrets. This circumstance of their charming friend's illness was the first

thing Kate took up with Densher on their being able after dinner, without bravado, to have ten minutes

"naturally," as she called itwhich wasn't what HE didtogether; but it was already as if the young man

had, by an odd impression, throughout the meal, not been wholly deprived of Miss Theale's participation.

Mrs. Lowder had made dear Milly the topic, and it proved, on the spot, a topic as familiar to the enthusiastic

younger as to the sagacious older man. Any knowledge they might lack Mrs. Lowder's niece was moreover

alert to supply, while Densher himself was freely appealed to as the most privileged, after all, of the group.

Wasn't it he who had in a manner invented the wonderful creaturethrough having seen her first, caught her

in her native jungle? Hadn't he more or less paved the way for her by his prompt recognition of her (37)

rarity, by preceding her, in a friendly spiritas he had the "ear" of societywith a sharp flashlight or two?

He met, poor Densher, these enquiries as he could, listening with interest, yet with discomfort; wincing in

particular, dry journalist as he was, to find it seemingly supposed of him that he had put his penoh his

"pen!"at the service of private distinction. The ear of society?they were talking, or almost, as if he had

publicly paragraphed a modest young lady. They dreamt dreams, in truth, he appeared to perceive, that fairly

waked HIM up, and he settled himself in his place both to resist his embarrassment and to catch the full

revelation. His embarrassment came naturally from the fact that if he could claim no credit for Miss Theale's

success, so neither could he gracefully insist on his not having been concerned with her. What touched him

most nearly was that the occasion took on somehow the air of a commemorative banquet, a feast to celebrate

a brilliant if brief career. There was of course more said about the heroine than if she hadn't been absent, and

he found himself rather stupefied at the range of Milly's triumph. Mrs. Lowder had wonders to tell of it; the

two wearers of the waistcoat, either with sincerity or with hypocrisy, professed in the matter an equal

expertness; and Densher at last seemed to know himself in presence of a social "case." It was Mrs. Stringham,

obviously, whose testimony would have been most invoked hadn't she been, as her friend's representative,

rather confined to the function of inhaling the incense; so that Kate, who treated her beautifully, (38) smiling

at her, cheering and consoling her across the table, appeared benevolently both to speak and to interpret for

her. Kate spoke as if she wouldn't perhaps understand THEIR way of appreciating Milly, but would let them

none the less, in justice to their good will, express it in their coarser fashion. Densher himself wasn't

unconscious in respect to this of a certain broad brotherhood with Mrs. Stringham; wondering indeed, while

he followed the talk, how it might move American nerves. He had only heard of them before, but in his recent

tour he had caught them in the remarkable fact, and there was now a moment or two when it came to him that

They quivered, clearly, they hummed and drummed, they leaped and bounded in Mrs. Stringham's typical

organismthis lady striking him as before all things excited, as, in the native phrase, keyedup, to a

perception of more elements in the occasion than he was himself able to count. She was accessible to sides of

it, he imagined, that were as yet obscure to him; for, though she unmistakeably rejoiced and soared, he none

the less saw her at moments as even more agitated than pleasure required. It was a state of emotion in her that

could scarce represent simply an impatience to report at home. Her little dry New England brightnesshe

had "sampled" all the shades of the American complexity, if complexity it werehad its actual reasons for

finding relief most in silence; so that before the subject was changed he perceived (with surprise at the others)

that they had given her enough of it. He had quite had enough of it himself (39) by the time he was asked if it

were true that their friend had really not made in her own country the mark she had chalked so large in

London. It was Mrs. Lowder herself who addressed him that enquiry; while he scarce knew if he were the

more impressed with her launching it under Mrs. Stringham's nose or with her hope that he would allow to

London the honour of discovery. The less expansive of the white waistcoats propounded the theory that they

saw in Londonfor all that was saidmuch further than in the States: it wouldn't be the first time, he urged,

that they had taught the Americans to appreciate (especially when it was funny) some native product. He

didn't mean that Miss Theale was funnythough she was weird, and this was precisely her magic; but it

might very well be that New York, in having her to show, hadn't been aware of its luck. There WERE plenty

of people who were nothing over there and yet were awfully taken up in England; just asto make the

balance right, thank goodnessthey sometimes sent out beauties and celebrities who left the Briton cold.

The Briton's temperature in truth wasn't to be calculateda formulation of the matter that was not reached,

however, without producing in Mrs. Stringham a final feverish sally. She announced that if the point of view

for a proper admiration of her young friend HAD seemed to fail a little in New York, there was no manner of

doubt of her having carried Boston by storm. It pointed the moral that Boston, for the finer taste, left New

York nowhere; and the good lady, as the exponent of this doctrinewhich she set forth at a certain length

(40) made, obviously, to Densher's mind, her nearest approach to supplying the weirdness in which Milly's

absence had left them deficient. She made it indeed effective for him by suddenly addressing him. "You

He hadn't pretended he did, but there was a purity of reproach in Mrs. Stringham's face and tone, a purity

charged apparently with solemn meanings; so that for a little, small as had been his claim, he couldn't but feel

that she exaggerated. He wondered what she did mean, but while doing so he defended himself. "I certainly

don't know enormously muchbeyond her having been most kind to me, in New York, as a poor bewildered

and newly landed alien, and my having tremendously appreciated it." To which he added, he scarce knew

why, what had an immediate success. "Remember, Mrs. Stringham, that you weren't then present."

"Ah there you are!" said Kate with much gay expression, though what it expressed he failed at the time to

"You weren't present THEN, dearest," Mrs. Lowder richly concurred. "You don't know," she continued with

It made the little woman, he could see, really lose her head. She had more things in that head than any of

them in any other; unless perhaps it were Kate, whom he felt as indirectly watching him during this foolish

passage, though it pleased himand because of the foolishnessnot to meet her eyes. He met Mrs.

Stringham's, which affected him: with her he (41) could on occasion clear it upa sense produced by the

mute communion between them and really the beginning, as the event was to show, of something

extraordinary. It was even already a little the effect of this communion that Mrs. Stringham perceptibly

faltered in her retort to Mrs. Lowder's joke. "Oh it's precisely my point that Mr. Densher CAN'T have had

vast opportunities." And then she smiled at him. "I wasn't away, you know, long."

It made everything, in the oddest way in the world, immediately right for him. "And I wasn't THERE long,

either." He positively saw with it that nothing for him, so far as she was concerned, would again be wrong.

"Ah she's a thousand and one things!" replied the good lady, as if now to keep well with him.

He asked nothing better. "She was off with you to these parts before I knew it. I myself was off tooaway

"But you didn't forget her!" Aunt Maud interposed with almost menacing archness.

"No, of course I didn't forget her. One doesn't forget such charming impressions. But I never," he lucidly

"Yet doesn't silence in such a case," Aunt Maud blandly enquired, "very often quite prove the depth of the

He would have been amused, hadn't he been (42) slightly displeased, at all they seemed desirous to fasten on

him. "Well, the impression was as deep as you like. But I really want Miss Theale to know," he pursued for

Mrs. Stringham, "that I don't figure by any consent of my own as an authority about her."

Kate came to his assistanceif assistance it wasbefore their friend had had time to meet this charge.

"You're right about her not being easy to know. One SEES her with intensitysees her more than one sees

almost any one; but then one discovers that that isn't knowing her and that one may know better a person

The discrimination was interesting, but it brought them back to the fact of her success; and it was at that

comparatively gross circumstance, now so fully placed before them, that Milly's anxious companion sat and

lookedlooked very much as some spectator in an oldtime circus might have watched the oddity of a

Christian maiden, in the arena, mildly, caressingly, martyred. It was the nosing and fumbling not of lions and

tigers but of domestic animals let loose as for the joke. Even the joke made Mrs. Stringham uneasy, and her

mute communion with Densher, to which we have alluded, was more and more determined by it. He

wondered afterwards if Kate had made this out; though it was not indeed till much later on that he found

himself, in thought, dividing the things she might have been conscious of from the things she must have

missed. If she actually missed, at any rate, Mrs. Stringham's discomfort, that but showed how her own idea

held her. Her (43) own idea was, by insisting on the fact of the girl's prominence as a feature of the season's

end, to keep Densher in relation, for the rest of them, both to present and to past. "It's everything that has

happened SINCE that makes you naturally a little shy about her. You don't know what has happened since,

but we do; we've seen it and followed it; we've a little been OF it." The great thing for him, at this, as Kate

gave it, WAS in fact quite irresistibly that the case was a real onethe kind of thing that, when one's

patience was shorter than one's curiosity, one had vaguely taken for possible in London, but in which one had

never been even to this small extent concerned. The little American's sudden social adventure, her happy and,

no doubt, harmless flourish, had probably been favoured by several accidents, but it had been favoured above

all by the simple springboard of the scene, by one of those common caprices of the numberless foolish

flock, gregarious movements as inscrutable as oceancurrents. The huddled herd had drifted to her

blindlyit might as blindly have drifted away. There had been of course a signal, but the great reason was

probably the absence at the moment of a larger lion. The bigger beast would come and the smaller would then

incontinently vanish. It was at all events characteristic, and what was of the essence of it was grist to his

scribbling mill, matter for his journalising hand. That hand already, in intention, played over it, the "motive,"

as a sign of the season, a feature of the time, of the purely expeditious and roughandtumble nature of the

social boom. The boom as in ITSELF requiredthat would (44) be the note; the subject of the process a

comparatively minor question. Anything was boomable enough when nothing else was more so: the author of

the "rotten" book, the beauty who was no beauty, the heiress who was only that, the stranger who was for the

most part saved from being inconveniently strange but by being inconveniently familiar, the American whose

Americanism had been long desperately discounted, the creature in fine as to whom spangles or spots of any

So he judged at least, within his limits, and the idea that what he had thus caught in the fact was the trick of

fashion and the tone of society went so far as to make him take up again his sense of independence. He had

supposed himself civilised; but if this was civilisation! One could smoke one's pipe outside when twaddle

was within. He had rather avoided, as we have remarked, Kate's eyes, but there came a moment when he

would fairly have liked to put it across the table, to her: "I say, light of my life, is THIS the great world?"

There came another, it must be addedand doubtless as a result of something that, over the cloth, did hang

between themwhen she struck him as having quite answered: "Dear nofor what do you take me? Not the

least little bit: only a poor silly, though quite harmless, imitation." What she might have passed for saying,

however, was practically merged in what she did say, for she came overtly to his aid, very much as if

guessing some of his thoughts. She enunciated, to relieve his bewilderment, the obvious truth that you

couldn't leave London for three (45) months at that time of the year and come back to find your friends just

where they were. As they had OF COURSE been jigging away they might well be so red in the face that you

wouldn't know them. She reconciled in fine his disclaimer about Milly with that honour of having discovered

her which it was vain for him modestly to shirk. He HAD unearthed her, but it was they, all of them together,

who had developed her. She was always a charmer, one of the greatest ever seen, but she wasn't the person he

Densher was to feel sure afterwards that Kate had had in these pleasantries no conscious, above all no

insolent purpose of making light of poor Susan Shepherd's property in their young friendwhich property,

by such remarks, was very much pushed to the wall; but he was also to know that Mrs. Stringham had

secretly resented them, Mrs. Stringham holding the opinion, of which he was ultimately to have a glimpse,

that all the Kate Croys in Christendom were but dust for the feet of her Milly. That, it was true, would be

what she must reveal only when driven to her last entrenchments and well cornered in her passionthe rare

passion of friendship, the sole passion of her little life save the one other, more imperturbably cerebral, that

she entertained for the art of Guy de Maupassant. She slipped in the observation that her Milly was incapable

of change, was just exactly, on the contrary, the same Milly; but this made little difference in the drift of

Kate's contention. She was perfectly kind to Susie: it was as if she positively knew her as handicapped for

any disagreement by (46) feeling that she, Kate, had "type," and by being committed to admiration of type.

Kate had occasion subsequentlyshe found it somehowto mention to our young man Milly's having

spoken to her of this view on the good lady's part. She would likeMilly had had it from herto put Kate

Croy in a book and see what she could so do with her. "Chop me up fine or serve me whole"it was a way

of being got at that Kate professed she dreaded. It would be Mrs. Stringham's, however, she understood,

because Mrs. Stringham, oddly, felt that with such stuff as the strange English girl was made of, stuff that (in

spite of Maud Manningham, who was full of sentiment) she had never known, there was none other to be

employed. These things were of later evidence, yet Densher might even then have felt them in the air. They

were practically in it already when Kate, waiving the question of her friend's chemical change, wound up

with the comparatively unobjectionable proposition that he must now, having missed so much, take them all

up, on trust, further on. He met it peacefully, a little perhaps as an example to Mrs. Stringham"Oh as far on

as you like!" This even had its effect: Mrs. Stringham appropriated as much of it as might be meant for

herself. The nice thing about her was that she could measure how much; so that by the time dinner was over

The younger of the other men, it afterwards appeared, was most in his element at the piano; so that they had

coffee and comic songs upstairsthe gentlemen, temporarily relinquished, submitting easily in this interest

to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. Our especial young man sat tighter when restored to

the drawingroom; he made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, off and on, foregather without offence.

He had perhaps stronger needs in this general respect than she; but she had better names for the scant risks to

which she consented. It was the blessing of a big house that intervals were large and, of an August night, that

windows were open; whereby, at a given moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs sufficiently sung,

Aunt Maud could hold her little court more freshly. Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side

by side a small sofaa luxury formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism, of their remarkably good

conscience. "To seem not to know each otheronce you're herewould be," the girl said, "to overdo it";

and she arranged it charmingly that they MUST have some passage to put Aunt Maud off the scent. She

would be wondering otherwise what in the world they found their account in. For Densher, none the less, the

profit of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor; there were in particular (48) 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 themand more than he could see on the spotby coming out for him with a

reference to Milly that was not in the key of those made at dinner. "She's not a bit right, you know. I mean in

health. just see her tonight. I mean it looks grave. For you she would have come, you know, if it had been at

He took this in such patience as he could muster. "What in the world's the matter with her?"

But Kate continued without saying. "Unless indeed your being here has been just a reason for her funking it."

Kate cast aboutit would take so long to explain. "And perhaps it's true that she IS bad. She easily may be."

"Quite easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. Stringham, who's visibly preoccupied and worried."

But this question too, on thinking, she neglected. "Why, if it's anything real, doesn't that poor lady go home?

It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit harder; but she was already, in a manner, explaining. "Her

preoccupation is probably on two different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other

"Well then," said the young man between a laugh and a sigh, "I'm glad I felt, downstairs, a kind of 'drawing'

"Awfully nice. You've instincts, you fiend. It's all," Kate declared, "as it should be."

"Except perhaps," he after a moment cynically suggested, "that she isn't getting much good of me now. Will

she report to Milly on THIS?" And then as Kate seemed to wonder what "this" might be: "On our present

"Ah leave appearances to me!" She spoke in her high way. "I'll make them all right. Aunt Maud, moreover,"

she added, "has her so engaged that she won't notice." Densher felt, with this, that his companion had indeed

perceptive flights he couldn't hope to matchhad for instance another when she still subjoined: "And Mrs.

"Well," Densher dropped with some humour, "life's very interesting! I hope it's really as much so for you as

you make it for others; I mean judging by what you make it for me. You seem to me to represent it as

thrilling for ces dames, in a different way for each: Aunt Maud, Susan Shepherd, Milly. But (50) what IS," he

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 ownthe need to make the point that "as ill as she looked" was what Milly scarce

could be. If she had been as ill as she looked she could scarce be a question with them, for her end would in

that case be near. She believed herself neverthelessand Kate couldn't help believing her tooseriously

menaced. There was always the fact that they had been on the point of leaving town, the two ladies, and had

suddenly been pulled up. "We bade them goodbyeor all butAunt Maud and I, the night before Milly,

popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a farewell look, found you and me together. They were

then to get off a day or two later. But they've not got offthey're not getting off. When I see them and I saw

them this morningthey have showy reasons. They do mean to go, but they've postponed it." With which

the girl brought out: "They've postponed it for YOU." He protested so far as a man might without fatuity,

since a protest was itself credulous; but Kate, as ever, understood herself. "You've made Milly change her

mind. She wants not to miss youthough 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 againshe doesn't know she ever may. She doesn't see the future. It has opened out before her in these

(51) Densher wondered. "After the tremendous time you've all been telling me she has had?"

"Some physical breakdown. 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

"Nofor one wouldn't want to. She really," Kate went on, "has been somebody here. Ask Aunt Maudyou

may think me prejudiced," the girl oddly smiled. "Aunt Maud will tell youthe 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 successI mean of course so far as possible in the scrap of timeand she has taken it

like a perfect angel. If you can imagine an angel with a thumping bankaccount you'll have the simplest

expression of the kind of thing. Her fortune's absolutely huge; Aunt Maud has had all the facts, or enough of

them, in the last confidence, from 'Susie,' and Susie speaks by book. Take them then, in the last confidence,

from ME. There she is." Kate expressed above all what it most came to. "It's open to her to make, you see, the

very greatest marriage. I assure you we're not vulgar about her. Her possibilities are quite plain."

Densher showed he neither disbelieved nor grudged them. "But what good then on earth can I do her?"

"For all that, if she's stricken, she must see swept away. I shouldn't care for her if she hadn't so much," Kate

very simply said. And then as it made him laugh not quite happily: "I shouldn't trouble about her if there were

one thing she did have." The girl spoke indeed with a noble compassion. "She has nothing."

"Well we must seesee 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

"YOU have, it strikes me, my dear"and he looked both detached and rueful. "Pray what am I to do with the

"You'll have expected less," Kate wonderfully smiled. "Besides, you WILL be. You'll have expected enough

"I want," said the girl, "to make things pleasant for her. I use, for the purpose, what I have. You're what I

He looked at her long. "I wish I could use YOU a little more." After which, as she continued to smile at him,

Kate showed for a little as if she wished it might be. (53) "Not lungs, I think. Isn't consumption, taken in

"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 thingsbeing, in spite

of her youth, that of a person who has been through all it's conceivable she should be exposed to. She affects

one, I should say, as a creature saved from a shipwreck. Such a creature may surely, in these days, on the

doctrine of chances, go to sea again with confidence. She has HAD her wreckshe has met her adventure."

"Oh I grant you her wreck!"Kate was all response so far. "But do let her have still her adventure. There are

"Wellif there be also adventures that are not wrecks!" Densher in short was willing, but he came back to

his point. "What I mean is that she has none of the effecton one's nerves or whateverof an invalid."

"Yes, she's so wonderful. She won't show for that, any more than your watch, when it's about to stop for want

of being wound up, gives you convenient notice or shows as different from usual. She won't die, she won't

live, by inches. She won't smell, as it were, of drugs. She won't taste, as it were, of medicine. No one will

"Then what," he demanded, frankly mystified (54) now, "are we talking about? In what extraordinary state IS

Kate went on as if, at this, making it out in a fashion for herself. "I believe that if she's ill at all she's very ill. I

believe that if she's bad she's not a LITTLE bad. I can't tell you why, but that's how I see her. She'll really live

or she'll really not. She'll have it all or she'll miss it all. Now I don't think she'll have it all."

Densher had followed this with his eyes upon her, her own having thoughtfully wandered, and as if it were

more impressive than lucid. "You 'think' and you 'don't think,' and yet you remain all the while without an

"No, not without an inkling; but it's a matter in which I don't want knowledge. She moreover herself doesn't

want one to want it: she has, as to what may be preying upon her, a kind of ferocity of modesty, a kind ofI

don't know what to call itintensity of pride. And then and then" But with this she faltered.

"I'm a brute about illness. I hate it. It's well for you, my dear," Kate continued, "that you're as sound as a

"Thank you!" Densher laughed. "It's rather good then for yourself too that you're as strong as the sea."

She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish gladness of their young immunities. It was all they had

together, but they had it at least without a flaweach had the beauty, the physical felicity, the personal (55)

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

"Oh," said Kate, "I'm breaking you in. Let it give you the measure of what I shall expect of you. One can't

She drew away, as from the impression of a stir on the balcony, the hand of which he had a minute before

possessed himself; and the warning brought him back to attention. "You haven't even an idea if it's a case for

"I dare say it may be; that is that if it comes to anything it may come to that. Of course she's in the highest

"She's after THEMit's the same thing. I think I'm free to say it nowshe sees Sir Luke Strett."

It made him quickly wince. "Ah fifty thousand knives!" Then after an instant: "One seems to guess."

(56) For a moment now, in silence, he took it all in, might have had it before him. "What you want of me then

"Ah but you admit yourself that she doesn't affect you as sick. You understand moreover just how

"Well, if you've brought me to it, my dear," she returned, "that has been your way of breaking ME in. Besides

Densher for a little, under this suggestion, might have been seeing their young friend on a pile of cushions

and in a perpetual teagown, amid flowers and with drawn blinds, surrounded by the higher nobility. "Others

She had spoken with impatience, and her suddenly quitting him had sharpened it; in spite of which he kept

"Of course I'm prodigious!"and, as immediately happened, she gave a further sign of it that he fairly sat

watching. The door from the lobby had, as she spoke, been thrown open for a gentleman who, immediately

finding her within his view, advanced to greet her before the announcement of his name could reach her

companion. Densher none the less felt himself brought quickly into relation; Kate's welcome to the visitor

became almost precipitately an (57) appeal to her friend, who slowly rose to meet it. "I don't know whether

you know Lord Mark." And then for the other party: "Mr. Merton Densherwho has just come back from

"Oh!" said the other party while Densher said nothingoccupied as he mainly was on the spot with weighing

the sound in question. He recognised it in a moment as less imponderable than it might have appeared, as

having indeed positive claims. It wasn't, that is, he knew, the "Oh!" of the idiot, however great the superficial

resemblance: it was that of the clever, the accomplished man; it was the very specialty of the speaker, and a

deal of expensive training and experience had gone to producing it. Densher felt somehow that, as a thing of

value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an

awkwardness to which he was conscious of contributing his share; Kate failing to ask Lord Mark to be seated,

but letting him know that he would find Mrs. Lowder, with some others, on the balcony.

"Oh and Miss Theale I suppose?as I seemed to hear outside, from below, Mrs. Stringham's unmistakeable

"Yes, but Mrs. Stringham's alone. Milly's unwell," the girl explained, "and was compelled to disappoint us."

"Ah 'disappoint'rather!" And, lingering a little, he kept his eyes on Densher. "She isn't really bad, I trust?"

Densher, after all he had heard, easily supposed him interested in Milly; but he could imagine him (58) also

interested in the young man with whom he had found Kate engaged and whom he yet considered without

visible intelligence. That young man concluded in a moment that he was doing what he wanted, satisfying

himself as to each. To this he was aided by Kate, who produced a prompt: "Oh dear no; I think not. I've just

been reassuring Mr. Densher," she added"who's as concerned as the rest of us. I've been calming his fears."

"Oh!" said Lord Mark againand again it was just as good. That was for Densher, the latter could see, or

think he saw. And then for the others: "MY fears would want calming. We must take great care of her. This

She went with him a few steps, and while Densher, hanging about, gave them frank attention, presently

paused again for some further colloquy. What passed between them their observer lost, but she was presently

Kate seemed for a little to look at the difference. (59) "To take the measure, do you mean, of my danger?"

He hesitated; then he said: "I'm thinking, I dare say, of Miss Theale's. How does your aunt reconcile his

"With her own interest in you," Densher said while she reflected. "If that interestMrs. Lowder'stakes the

Kate seemed interested in the question, but "Oh he takes them easily," she answered. "The beauty is that she

"Yes," said Kate"that's the way people are. What they think of their enemies, goodness knows, is bad

enough; but I'm still more struck with what they think of their friends. Milly's own state of mind, however,"

she went on, "is lucky. That's Aunt Maud's security, though she doesn't yet fully recognise itbesides being

She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. "You oughtn't to make me say too much. But I'm glad I

(60) "Oh!" Densher answered with a sound like his lordship's own. To which he added: "You absolutely hold

"Ah you know what I hold about that poor girl!" It had made her again impatient.

Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. "You scarcely call him, I suppose, one of the dukes."

"Mercy, nofar from it. He's not, compared with other possibilities, 'in' it. Milly, it's true," she said, to be

exact, "has no natural sense of social values, doesn't in the least understand our differences or know who's

"Precisely. She doesn't resemble me," said Kate, "who at least know what I lose."

Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable interest. "And Aunt Maudwhy shouldn't SHE know? I

mean that your friend there isn't really anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value?"

"Scarcely; save in the sense of being uncle to a duke. That's undeniably something. He's the best moreover

"It isn't Lord Mark's grandeur," she went on without heeding this; "because perhaps in the line of that

aloneas he has no moneymore could be done. But she's not a bit sordid; she only counts with the

sordidness of others. Besides, he's grand enough, with a duke in his family and at the other end of the string.

"In Lord Mark's genius?" Kate, as if for a more final opinion than had yet been asked of her, took a moment

to think. She balanced indeed so that one would scarce have known what to expect; but she came out in time

"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

"Ah but if the effect," said Densher with conscious superficiality, "isn't agreeable?"

"If you mean not for you," Kate returned, "you may have reasonsand men don't count. Women don't know

Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus promptly, easily and above all

amusingly met him with, would have been found, should it have come to an analysis, to "take." Something

suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and overflowedthe 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 differentand then you're different again. No marvel Aunt

Maud builds on youexcept (62) 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 uphillit's

you yourself who are at the top. The women one meetswhat 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

She took it from him with her face again giving out all it had in answer, and they remained once more

confronted and united in their essential wealth of life. "It's you who draw me out. I exist in you. Not in

It had been, however, as if the thrill of their association itself pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp

She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes. "So you think you'll kill ME in time to prevent it?"

She smiled, but he saw her the next instant as smiling through tears; and the instant after this she had got, in

respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come back to another, which was one of her own; her own

were so closely connected that Densher's were at best but parenthetic. Still she had a distance to go. "You do

then see your way?" She put it to him before they joinedas was high timethe others. And she made him

(63) 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

She came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though quite to smooth it down. "All the while

she and I here were growing intimate, you and I were in unmentioned relation? If she knows that, yes, she

"She doesn't. She knows now I did name her. I've told her everything. She's in possession of reasons that will

He watched the others an instant through the window. "What do you mean by going straight?"

(64) "Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as I've told you before, and you'll see. You'll have me perfectly,

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

He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn't the queerness that after another minute was

He wasn't sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had caught his word as it dropped from him;

probably not, he thought, her attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and who

was now, none too soon, taking leave of her. They were followed by Lord Mark and by the other men, but

two or three things happened before any dispersal of the company began. One of these was that Kate found

time to say to him with furtive emphasis: "You must go now!" Another was that she next addressed herself in

all frankness to Lord Mark, drew near to him with an almost reproachful "Come and talk to ME!"a

challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a consciousness of their installation together in an

outoftheway 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 (65) 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 "Goodnight, sir!" as she passed him; a matter as to

which there was now nothing more to be done, thanks to the alertness of the young man he by this time had

appraised as even more harmless than himself. This personage had forestalled him in opening the door for her

and was evidentlywith a view, Densher might have judged, to ulterior designs on Millyproposing to

attend her to her carriage. What further occurred was that Aunt Maud, having released her, immediately had a

word for himself. It was an imperative "Wait a minute," by which she both detained and dismissed him; she

was particular about her minute, but he hadn't yet given her, as happened, a sign of withdrawal.

"If you mean Miss Theale," he said, "I shall certainly not forget her. But you must remember that, so far as

her 'interest' is concerned, I myself discovered, Ias was said at dinnerinvented her."

"Well, one seemed rather to gather that you hadn't taken out the patent. Don't, I only mean, in the press of

Affected, surprised by the coincidence of her appeal with Kate's, he asked himself quickly if it mightn't help

him with her. He at any rate could but try. "You're all looking after my manners. That's exactly, you know,

what Miss Croy has been saying to (66) me. SHE keeps me upshe has had so much to say about them."

He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess an account of his passage with Kate that, while quite

veracious, might be reassuring to herself. But Aunt Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it as if

her confidence were supplied with other props. If she saw his intention in it she yet blinked neither with

doubt nor with acceptance; she only said imperturbably: "Yes, she'll herself do anything for her friend; so that

Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud knew how far Kate's devotion went. He was moreover a little

puzzled by this special harmony; in face of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder had bethought

herself of the American girl as a distraction for him, and if Kate's mastery of the subject were therefore but an

appearance addressed to her aunt. What might really BECOME in all this of the American girl was therefore

a question that, on the latter contingency, would lose none of its sharpness. However, questions could wait,

and it was easy, so far as he understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. "It isn't a bit, all the same, you know, that I

"The only thing is," he went on, "that she'snaturally nowleaving town and, as I take it, going abroad."

Aunt Maud looked indeed an instant as if she herself had been dealing with this difficulty. "She won't (67)

go," she smiled in spite of it, "till she has seen you. Moreover, when she does go" She paused, leaving him

He gave a smile that he himself took for slightly strange. "And what good will that do ME?"

"Ah thank you, thank you!" Merton Densher laughed. She was indeed putting him on his honour, and his

honour winced a little at the use he rather helplessly saw himself suffering her to believe she could make of it.

"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 CANI can smooth your path. She's charming, she's clever and she's good. And her

Ah there she was, Aunt Maud! The pieces fell together for him as he felt her thus buying him off, and buying

himit would have been funny if it hadn't been so gravewith Miss Theale's money. He ventured, derisive,

fairly to treat it as extravagant. "I'm much obliged to you for the handsome offer"

"Of what doesn't belong to me?" She wasn't abashed. "I don't say it doesbut there's no reason it shouldn't to

YOU. Mind you moreover" (68) she kept it up"I'm not one who talks in the air. And you owe me

Distinct he felt her pressure; he felt, given her basis, her consistency; he even felt, to a degree that was

immediately to receive an odd confirmation, her truth. Her truth, for that matter, was that she believed him

bribeable: a belief that for his own mind as well, while they stood there, lighted up the impossible. What then

in this light did Kate believe him? But that wasn't what he asked aloud. "Of course I know I owe you thanks

"Yes, my inviting you tonight's a part of it. But you don't know," she added, "how far I've gone for you."

He felt himself red and as if his honour were colouring up; but he laughed again as he could. "I see how far

"I'm the most honest woman in the world, but I've nevertheless done for you what was necessary." And then

as her now quite sombre gravity only made him stare: "To start you it WAS necessary. From ME it has the

weight." He but continued to stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. "Don't you understand me? I've

told the proper lie for you." Still he only showed her his flushed strained smile; in spite of which, speaking

with force and as if he must with a minute's reflexion see what she meant, she turned away from him. "I

The minute's reflexion he was of course more free (69) to take after he had left the house. He walked up the

Bayswater Road, but he stopped short, under the murky stars, before the modern church, in the middle of the

square that, going eastward, opened out on his left. He had had his brief stupidity, but now he understood.

She had guaranteed to Milly Theale through Mrs. Stringham that Kate didn't care for him. She had affirmed

through the same source that the attachment was only his. He made it out, he made it out, and he could see

what she meant by its starting him. She had described Kate as merely compassionate, so that Milly might be

compassionate too. "Proper" indeed it was, her liethe very properest possible and the most deeply, richly

To see her alone, the poor girl, he none the less promptly felt, was to see her after all very much on the old

basis, the basis of his three visits in New York; the new element, when once he was again face to face with

her, not really amounting to much more than a recognition, with a little surprise, of the positive extent of the

old basis. Everything but that, everything embarrassing fell away after he had been present five minutes: it

was in fact wonderful that their excellent, their pleasant, their permitted and proper and harmless American

relationthe legitimacy of which he could thus scarce express in names enoughshould seem so

unperturbed by other matters. They had both since then had great adventuressuch an adventure for him

was his mental annexation of her country; and it was now, for the moment, as if the greatest of them all were

this acquired consciousness of reasons other than those that had already served. Densher had asked for her, at

her hotel, the day after Aunt Maud's dinner, with a rich, that is with a highly troubled, preconception of the

part likely to be played for him at present, in any contact with her, by Kate's and Mrs. Lowder's so oddly

conjoined and so really superfluous attempts to make her interesting. She had been interesting enough

without themthat appeared today to come back to him; and, admirable and beautiful as was the charitable

zeal of the two (71) ladies, it might easily have nipped in the bud the germs of a friendship inevitably limited

but still perfectly open to him. What had happily averted the need of his breaking off, what would as happily

continue to avert it, was his own good sense and good humour, a certain spring of mind in him which

ministered, imagination aiding, to understandings and allowances and which he had positively never felt such

ground as just now to rejoice in the possession of. Many menhe practically made the reflexionwouldn't

have taken the matter that way, would have lost patience, finding the appeal in question irrational, exorbitant;

and, thereby making short work with it, would have let it render any further acquaintance with Miss Theale

impossible. He had talked with Kate of this young woman's being "sacrificed," and that would have been one

way, so far as he was concerned, to sacrifice her. Such, however, had not been the tune to which his at first

bewildered view had, since the night before, cleared itself up. It wasn't so much that he failed of being the

kind of man who "chucked," for he knew himself as the kind of man wise enough to mark the case in which

chucking might be the minor evil and the least cruelty. It was that he liked too much every one concerned

willingly to show himself merely impracticable. He liked Kate, goodness knew, and he also clearly enough

liked Mrs. Lowder. He liked in particular Milly herself; and hadn't it come up for him the evening before that

he quite liked even Susan Shepherd? He had never known himself so generally merciful. It was a footing, at

all events, whatever accounted for it, on (72) which he should surely be rather a muff not to manage by one

turn or another to escape disobliging. Should he find he couldn't work it there would still be time enough. The

idea of working it crystallised before him in such guise as not only to promise much interestfairly, in case

of success, much enthusiasm; but positively to impart to failure an appearance of barbarity.

Arriving thus in Brook Street both with the best intentions and with a margin consciously left for some

primary awkwardness, he found his burden, to his great relief, unexpectedly light. The awkwardness involved

in the responsibility so newly and so ingeniously traced for him turned round on the spot to present him

another face. This was simply the face of his old impression, which he now fully recoveredthe impression

that American girls, when, rare case, they had the attraction of Milly, were clearly the easiest people in the

world. Had what had happened been that this specimen of the class was from the first so committed to ease

that nothing subsequent COULD ever make her difficult? That affected him now as still more probable than

on the occasion of the hour or two lately passed with her in Kate's society. Milly Theale had recognised no

complication, to Densher's view, while bringing him, with his companion, from the National Gallery and

entertaining them at luncheon; it was therefore scarce supposable that complications had become so soon too

much for her. His pretext for presenting himself was fortunately of the best and simplest; the least he could

decently do, given their happy acquaintance, was to call with an enquiry after (73) learning that she had been

prevented by illness from meeting him at dinner. And then there was the beautiful accident of her other

demonstration; he must at any rate have given a sign as a sequel to the hospitality he had shared with Kate.

Well, he was giving one nowsuch as it was; he was finding her, to begin with, accessible, and very

naturally and prettily glad to see him. He had come, after luncheon, early, though not so early but that she

might already be out if she were well enough; and she was well enough and yet was still at home. He had an

inner glimpse, with this, of the comment Kate would have made on it; it wasn't absent from his thought that

Milly would have been at home by HER account because expecting, after a talk with Mrs. Stringham, that a

certain person might turn up. He evenso pleasantly did things goenjoyed freedom of mind to welcome,

on that supposition, a fresh sign of the beautiful hypocrisy of women. He went so far as to enjoy believing the

girl MIGHT have stayed in for him; it helped him to enjoy her behaving as if she hadn't. She expressed, that

is, exactly the right degree of surprise; she didn't a bit overdo it: the lesson of which was, perceptibly, that, so

far as his late lights had opened the door to any want of the natural in their meetings, he might trust her to

She had begun this, admirably, on his entrance, with her turning away from the table at which she had

apparently been engaged in letterwriting; it was the very possibility of his betraying a concern for her as one

of the afflicted that she had within the first minute conjured away. She was never, neverdid (74) 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

askthere had been time for that, his allusion to her friend's explanatory arrival at Lancaster Gate without

her being inevitable; but she had blown away, and quite as much with the look in her eyes as with the smile

on her lips, every ground for anxiety and every chance for insistence. How was she?why she was as he

thus saw her and as she had reasons of her own, nobody else's business, for desiring to appear. Kate's account

of her as too proud for pity, as fiercely shy about so personal a secret, came back to him; so that he rejoiced

he could take a hint, especially when he wanted to. The question the girl had quickly disposed of"Oh it

was nothing: I'm all right, thank you!"was one he was glad enough to be able to banish. It wasn't at all, in

spite of the appeal Kate had made to him on it, his affair; for his interest had been invoked in the name of

compassion, and the name of compassion was exactly what he felt himself at the end of two minutes

forbidden so much as to whisper. He had been sent to see her in order to be sorry for her, and how sorry he

might be, quite privately, he was yet to make out. Didn't that signify, however, almost not at all?inasmuch

as, whatever his upshot, he was never to (75) give her a glimpse of it. Thus the ground was unexpectedly

cleared; though it was not till a slightly longer time had passed that he read clear, at first with amusement and

then with a strange shade of respect, what had most operated. Extraordinarily, quite amazingly, he began to

see that if his pity hadn't had to yield to still other things it would have had to yield quite definitely to her

own. That was the way the case had turned round: he had made his visit to be sorry for her, but he would

repeat itif he did repeat itin order that she might be sorry for him. His situation made him, she

judgedwhen once one liked hima subject for that degree of tenderness: he felt this judgement in her, and

felt it as something he should really, in decency, in dignity, in common honesty, have very soon to reckon

Odd enough was it certainly that the question originally before him, the question placed there by Kate, should

so of a sudden find itself quite dislodged by another. This other, it was easy to see, came straight up with the

fact of her beautiful delusion and her wasted charity; the whole thing preparing for him as pretty a case of

conscience as he could have desired, and one at the prospect of which he was already wincing. If he was

interesting it was because he was unhappy; and if he was unhappy it was because his passion for Kate had

spent itself in vain; and if Kate was indifferent, inexorable, it was because she had left Milly in no doubt of it.

That above all was what came up for himhow clear an impression of this attitude, how definite an account

of his own failure, Kate must have given her friend. His immediate (76) quarter of an hour there with the girl

lighted up for him almost luridly such an inference; it was almost as if the other party to their remarkable

understanding had been with them as they talked, had been hovering about, had dropped in to look after her

work. The value of the work affected him as different from the moment he saw it so expressed in poor Milly.

Since it was false that he wasn't loved, so his right was quite quenched to figure on that ground as important;

and if he didn't look out he should find himself appreciating in a way quite at odds with straightness the good

faith of Milly's benevolence. THERE was the place for scruples; there the need absolutely to mind what he

was about. If it wasn't proper for him to enjoy consideration on a perfectly false footing, where was the

guarantee that, if he kept on, he mightn't soon himself pretend to the grievance in order not to miss the sweet?

Considerationfrom a charming girlwas soothing on whatever theory; and it didn't take him far to

remember that he had himself as yet done nothing deceptive. It was Kate's description of him, his defeated

state, it was none of his own; his responsibility would begin, as he might say, only with acting it out. The

sharp point was, however, in the difference between acting and not acting: this difference in fact it was that

made the case of conscience. He saw it with a certain alarm rise before him that everything was acting that

was not speaking the particular word. "If you like me because you think SHE doesn't, it isn't a bit true: she

DOES like me awfully!"that would have been the particular word; which there were at the same time but

too palpably (77) such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldn't it be virtually as indelicate to challenge her as

to leave her deluded?and this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would

constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate's design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt

himself shrink from the complications involved in judging it. Not to give away the woman one loved, but to

back her up in her mistakesonce they had gone a certain lengththat was perhaps chief among the

inevitabilities of the abjection of love. Loyalty was of course supremely prescribed in presence of any design

Densher had quite to steady himself not to be awestruck at the immensity of the good his own friend must on

all this evidence have wanted to do him. Of one thing indeed meanwhile he was sure: Milly Theale wouldn't

herself precipitate his necessity of intervention. She would absolutely never say to him: "IS it so impossible

she shall ever care for you seriously?"without which nothing could well be less delicate than for him

aggressively to set her right. Kate would be free to do that if Kate, in some prudence, some contrition, for

some better reason in fine, should revise her plan; but he asked himself what, failing this, HE could do that

wouldn't be after all more gross than doing nothing. This brought him round again to the acceptance of the

fact that the poor girl liked him. She put it, for reasons of her own, on a simple, a beautiful ground, a ground

that already supplied her with the pretext she required. The (78) ground was there, that is, in the impression

she had received, retained, cherished; the pretext, over and above it, was the pretext for acting on it. That she

now believed as she did made her sure at last that she might act; so that what Densher therefore would have

struck at would be the root, in her soul, of a pure pleasure. It positively lifted its head and flowered, this pure

pleasure, while the young man now sat with her, and there were things she seemed to say that took the words

out of his mouth. These were not all the things she did say; they were rather what such things meant in the

light of what he knew. Her warning him for instance off the question of how she was, the quick brave little art

with which she did that, represented to his fancy a truth she didn't utter. "I'm well for YOUthat's all you

have to do with or need trouble about: I shall never be anything so horrid as ill for you. So there you are;

worry about me, spare me, please, as little as you can. Don't be afraid, in short, to ignore my 'interesting' side.

It isn't, you see, even now while you sit here, that there aren't lots of others. Only do THEM justice and we

shall get on beautifully." This was what was folded finely up in her talkall quite ostensibly about her

impressions and her intentions. She tried to put Densher 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

"jawing," he accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having madeat least apparentlymore of a

"set" at their entertainer than he was at all events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing (79) her out

about London, about her vision of life there, and only too glad to treat her as a person with whom he could

easily have other topics than her aches and pains. He spoke to her above all of the evidence offered him at

Lancaster Gate that she had come but to conquer; and when she had met this with full and gay assent"How

could I help being the feature of the season, the whatdoyoucallit, the theme of every tongue?"they

fraternised freely over all that had come and gone for each since their interrupted encounter in New York.

At the same time, while many things in quick succession came up for them, came up in particular for

Densher, nothing perhaps was just so sharp as the odd influence of their present conditions on their view of

their past ones. It was as if they hadn't known how "thick" they had originally become, as if, in a manner,

they had really fallen to remembrance of more passages of intimacy than there had in fact at the time quite

been room for. They were in a relation now so complicated, whether by what they said or by what they didn't

say, that it might have been seeking to justify its speedy growth by reaching back to one of those fabulous

periods in which prosperous states place their beginnings. He recalled what had been said at Mrs. Lowder's

about the steps and stages, in people's careers, that absence caused one to miss, and about the resulting

frequent sense of meeting them further on; which, with some other matters also recalled, he took occasion to

communicate to Milly. The matters he couldn't mention mingled themselves with those he did; so that it

would doubtless have been (80) hard to say which of the two groups now played most of a part. He was kept

face to face with this young lady by a force absolutely resident in their situation and operating, for his nerves,

with the swiftness of the forces commonly regarded by sensitive persons as beyond their control. The current

thus determined had positively become for him, by the time he had been ten minutes in the room, something

that, but for the absurdity of comparing the very small with the very great, he would freely have likened to

the rapids of Niagara. An uncriticised acquaintance between a clever young man and a responsive young

woman could do nothing more, at the most, than go, and his actual experiment went and went and went.

Nothing probably so conduced to make it go as the marked circumstance that they had spoken all the while

not a word about Kate; and this in spite of the fact that, if it were a question for them of what had occurred in

the past weeks, nothing had occurred comparable to Kate's predominance. Densher had but the night before

appealed to her for instruction as to what he must do about her, but he fairly winced to find how little this

came to. She had foretold him of course how little; but it was a truth that looked different when shown him

by Milly. It proved to him that the latter had in fact been dealt with, but it produced in him the thought that

Kate might perhaps again conveniently be questioned. He would have liked to speak to her before going

furtherto 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 (81) brief and never renew it; yet

the strangest thing of all was that the argument against that issue would have sprung precisely from the

Precipitate these well might be, since they emphasised the fact that she was proceeding in the sense of the

assurances she had taken. Over the latter she had visibly not hesitated, for hadn't they had the merit of giving

her a chance? Densher quite saw her, felt her take it; the chance, neither more nor less, of help rendered him

according to her freedom. It was what Kate had left her with: "Listen to him, i? Never! So do as you like."

What Milly "liked" was to do, it thus appeared, as she was doing: our young man's glimpse of which was just

what would have been for him not less a glimpse of the peculiar brutality of shaking her off. The choice

exhaled its shy fragrance of heroism, for it was not aided by any question of parting with Kate. She would be

charming to Kate as well as to Kate's adorer; she would incur whatever pain could dwell for her in the

sightshould she continue to be exposed to the sightof the adorer thrown with the adored. It wouldn't

really have taken much more to make him wonder if he hadn't before him one of those rare cases of

exaltationfood for fiction, food for poetryin which a man's fortune with the woman who doesn't care for

him is positively promoted by the woman who does. It was as if Milly had said to herself: "Well, he can at

least meet her in my society, if that's anything to him; so that my line can only be to make my society

attractive." She certainly couldn't have made a (82) different impression if she HAD so reasoned. All of

which, none the less, didn't prevent his soon enough saying to her, quite as if she were to be whirled into

space: "And now, then, what becomes of you? Do you begin to rush about on visits to countryhouses?"

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 possibilityever, ever perhapsof 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

She looked ever so vague; then as if to correct it: "Oh when the wind turns. And what do you do with your

"Ah I spend it in sordid toil. I drench it with mercenary ink. My work in your country counts for play as well.

You see what's thought of the pleasure your country can give. My holiday's over."

"I'm sorry you had to take it," said Milly, "at such a different time from ours. If you could but have worked

"I might be playing while you play? Oh the distinction isn't great with me. There's a little of each for me, of

work and of play, in either. But you and Mrs. Stringham, with Miss Croy and Mrs. Lowderyou all," he

went on, "have been given up, like navvies or niggers, to real physical toil. Your (83) rest is something you've

He bethought himself. "Then why don't you?since you've got here, as I learn, the whole place in your

"Well, it's a kind of economyI'm saving things up. I've enjoyed so what you speak ofthough your

account of it's fantasticthat I'm watching over its future, that I can't help being anxious and careful. I

wantin the interest itself of what I've had and may still havenot 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

Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise; but she made as if bargaining a little. "Isn't London rather

He had been going to ask her if she meant for the invalid; but he checked the infelicity of this and took the

enquiry as referring to social life. "NoI like it, with one thing and another; it's less of a mob than later on;

and it would have for US the meritshould you come here thenthat we should probably see (84) more of

"Why the determination of your movements. You spoke just now of going somewhere for that."

"For better air?"she remembered. "Oh yes, one certainly wants to get out of London in August."

"Rather, of course!"he fully understood. "Though I'm glad you've hung on long enough for me to catch

It pulled him up an instantrepresenting, as he saw it might have seemed, an allusion to himself as

conjoined with Kate, whom he was proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did. But the issue was

easy. "I mean all of us together, every one you'll find ready to surround you with sympathy."

It made her, none the less, in her odd charming way, challenge him afresh. "Why do you say sympathy?"

"Well, it's doubtless a pale word. What we SHALL feel for you will be much nearer worship."

"As near then as you like!" With which at last Kate's name was sounded. "The people I'd most come back for

are the people you know. I'd do it for Mrs. Lowder, who has been beautifully kind to me."

"So she has to ME," said Densher. "I feel," he added as she at first answered nothing, "that, quite (85)

"i didn't expect it eitherits turning out as it has. But I did," said Milly, "with Kate. I shall come back for her

Looking at him as with conscious clearness while she spoke, she might for the moment have effectively laid a

trap for whatever remains of the ideal straightness in him were still able to pull themselves together and

operate. He was afterwards to say to himself that something had at that moment hung for him by a hair. "Oh I

know what one would do for Kate!"it had hung for him by a hair to break out with that, which he felt he

had really been kept from by an element in his consciousness stronger still. The proof of the truth in question

was precisely in his silence; resisting the impulse to break out was what he WAS doing for Kate. This at the

time moreover came and went quickly enough; he was trying the next minute but to make Milly's allusion

easy for herself. "Of course I know what friends you areand 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 allI mean

He could but accept the appearance of wondering how much he might show he knew. "Ah she's very

(86) "Nothat's not the way. At any rate it isn't hers," he smiled. He remembered, however, then that an

undue acquaintance with Kate's ways was just what he mustn't show; and he pursued the subject no further

than to remark with a good intention that had the further merit of representing a truth: "I don't feel as if I

"Well, if you come to that, I don't either!" she laughed. The words gave him, as soon as they were uttered, a

sense of responsibility for his own; though during a silence that ensued for a minute he had time to recognise

that his own contained after all no element of falsity. Strange enough therefore was it that he could go too

farif it WAS too farwithout being false. His observation was one he would perfectly have made to Kate

herself. And before he again spoke, and before Milly did, he took time for more stillfor feeling how just

here it was that he must break short off if his mind was really made up not to go further. It was as if he had

been at a cornerand fairly put there by his last speech; so that it depended on him whether or no to turn it.

The silence, if prolonged but an instant, might even have given him a sense of her waiting to see what he

would do. It was filled for them the next thing by the sound, rather voluminous for the August afternoon, of

the approach, in the street below them, of heavy carriagewheels and of horses trained to "step." A rumble, a

great shake, a considerable effective clatter, had been apparently succeeded by a pause at the door of the

hotel, which was in turn accompanied by a due display of diminished prancing and stamping. "You've a

"It's only my own carriage; it does thatisn'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,

It was to Densher's eyessave for its absurd heavinessonly 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 carriagewell, 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 drivethat in fact there were always things to do,

that there had been a question for her today of several in particular, and that this in short was why the

carriage had been ordered so early. They perceived, as she said these things, that an enquirer had presented

himself, and, coming back, they found Milly's servant announcing the carriage and prepared to accompany

her. This appeared to have for her the effect of settling the matteron the basis, that is, of Densher's happy

response. Densher's happy response, however, had as yet hung fire, the (88) process we have described in

him operating by this time with extreme intensity. The system of not pulling up, not breaking off, had already

brought him headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actually stood; and just now it was, with a vengeance,

that he must do either one thing or the other. He had been waiting for some moments, which probably seemed

to him longer than they were; this was because he was anxiously watching himself wait. He couldn't keep that

up for ever; and since one thing or the other was what he must do, it was for the other that he presently

became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting it settled itself in the manner of a bump, of

considerable violence, against a firm object in the stream. "Oh yes; I'll go with you with pleasure. It's a

She gave no look to thank himshe 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 somewhereI shall like that. But I must ask

of you timeas little as possibleto get ready." She looked over the room to provide for him, keep him

there. "There are books and thingsplenty; and I dress very quickly." He caught her eyes only as she went,

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 (89) turning his

corner. He was quite round it, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and he stood there alone.

Alone he remained for three minutes moreremained with several very living little matters to think about.

One of these was the phenomenontypical, highly American, he would have saidof Milly's extreme

spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought refugerefuge from another questionin the almost

exclusive contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere; not even to a sound generalisation

about American girls. It was spontaneous for his young friend to have asked him to drive with her

alonesince she hadn't mentioned her companion; but she struck him after all as no more advanced in doing

it than Kate, for instance, who wasn't an American girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate

WOULD have done it, though Kate wasn't at all, in the same sense as Milly, spontaneous. And then in

addition Kate HAD done itor things very like it. Furthermore he was engaged to Kateeven if his

ostensibly not being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any rate, the relation

between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate, was a different one from any he could associate or

cultivate, as to anything, with the girl who had just left him to prepare to give herself up to him. It had never

struck him before, and he moved about the room while he thought of it, touching none of the books placed at

his disposal. Milly was forward, as might be said, but not advanced; whereas Kate was backwardbackward

still, comparatively, as an English girland yet advanced (90) in a high degree. Howeverthough this

didn't straighten it outKate was of course two or three years older; which at their time of life considerably

Thus ingeniously discriminating, Densher continued slowly to wander; yet without keeping at bay for long

the sense of having rounded his corner. He had so rounded it that he felt himself lose even the option of

taking advantage of Milly's absence to retrace his steps. If he might have turned tail, vulgarly speaking, five

minutes before, he couldn't turn tail now; he must simply wait there with his consciousness charged to the

brim. Quickly enough moreover that issue was closed from without; in the course of three minutes more Miss

Theale's servant had returned. He preceded a visitor whom he had met, obviously, at the foot of the stairs and

whom, throwing open the door, he loudly announced as Miss Croy. Kate, on following him in, stopped short

at sight of Densheronly, after an instant, as the young man saw with free amusement, not from surprise and

still less from discomfiture. Densher immediately gave his explanationMiss Theale had gone to prepare to

"0h," she laughed, "my approval's complete!" She was thoroughly consistent and handsome about it.

"What I mean is of course," he went onfor he (91) was sensibly affected by her gaiety"at your so lively

She had looked about the roomshe might have been vaguely looking for signs of the duration, of the

character of his visit, a momentary aid in taking a decision. "Well, instigation then, as much as you like." She

treated it as pleasant, the success of her plea with him; she made a fresh joke of this direct impression of it.

"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 nothingand shall not, I assure you,

Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his words; and he had taken it from her

the next moment that he really needn't get into a state. What in the world was the matter? She asked it, with

Kate's interest grew. "I knew she would." On which she added: "It won't have been really for illness that she

"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

She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered where they were, liable to surprise,

talking with softened voices, even stretching their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite right feeling.

Milly's room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying things! For a moment, none the less, they

kept it up. "Ask HER, if you like; you're freeshe'll tell you. Act as you think best; don't trouble about what

you think I may or mayn't have told. I'm all right with her," said Kate. "So there you are."

"If you mean HERE I am," he answered, "it's unmistakeable. If you also mean that her believing in you is all

I have to do with you're so far right as that she certainly does believe in you."

"She's really doing it for you," Densher continued. "She's driving me out for you."

"In that case," said Kate with her soft tranquillity, "you can do it a little for HER. I'm not afraid," she smiled.

He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it and affected again, as he had already

(93) so often been, by more things in this face and in her whole person and presence than he was, to his relief,

obliged to find words for. It wasn't, under such impressions, a question of words. "I do nothing for any one in

"Why that you do 'like' me. Since it's all for that, you know, that I'm letting you dowell, God knows what

She gave at this, with a stare, a disheartened gesturethe 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 Milly. You might go now," she said, "and I'll stay and explain to her why it is."

"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 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

Kate thought. "Oh I don't know. It will of course greatly upset her. But you needn't trouble about that. She

"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 showimagination, tact,

positively even humour. The circumstance is doubtless odd, but the truth is none the less that the speculation

uppermost with him at this juncture was: "What if I should begin to bore this creature?" And that, within a

She looked about, at door and window, as if he were asking for more than he said. "Here? There's nothing

(95) "Oh ISN'T there?" Her smile itself, with this, had so settled something for him that he had come to her

pleadingly and holding out his hands, which she immediately seized with her own as if both to check him and

to keep him. It was by keeping him thus for a minute that she did check him; she held him long enough,

while, with their eyes deeply meeting, they waited in silence for him to recover himself and renew his

discretion. He coloured as with a return of the sense of where they were, and that gave her precisely one of

her usual victories, which immediately took further form. By the time he had dropped her hands he had again

taken hold, as it were, of Milly's. It was not at any rate with Milly he had broken. "I'll do all you wish," he

declared as if to acknowledge the acceptance of his condition that he had practically, after all, drawn from

hera 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

She had reached the door with itshe 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."

It came back then afresh to that, as it had come (96) before. Milly, three minutes after Kate had gone,

returned in her arrayher big black hat, so little superstitiously in the fashion, her fine black garments

throughout, the swathing of her throat, which Densher vaguely took for an infinite number of yards of

priceless lace, and which, its folded fabric kept in place by heavy rows of pearls, hung down to her feet like

the stole of a priestess. He spoke to her at once of their friend's visit and flight. "She hadn't known she'd find

me," he saidand said at present without difficulty. He had so rounded his corner that it wasn't a question of

She took this account of the matter as quite sufficient; she glossed over whatever might be awkward. "I'm

sorrybut I of course often see HER." He felt the discrimination in his favour and how it justified Kate. This

was Milly's tone when the matter was left to her. Well, it should now be wholly left.

When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her meeting them together and

bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which

the warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again feeling for the sword at his side, carries

his hand straight to the quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two women stood

there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherd had received their great doctor's visit, which had

been clearly no small affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, kept in place, against

communication and betrayal, as she now practically confessed, the barrier of their invited guests. "You've

been too dear. With what I see you're full of you treated them beautifully. ISN'T Kate charming when she

Poor Susie's expression, contending at first, as in a high fine spasm, with different dangers, had now quite let

itself go. She had to make an effort to reach a point in space already so remote. "Miss Croy? Oh she was

Milly braced herselfbut conscious above all, at the moment, of a high compassion for her mate. She made

her out as strugglingstruggling in all her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, (100) given her

nature, could only be a torment. Milly gathered from the struggle how much there was of the pity, and how

therefore it was both in her tenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered. Wonderful and

beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadied the girl. Ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease,

with the drop of their barrier, they were to find themselves together, she felt the question met with a relief

that was almost joy. The basis, the inevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, to all

appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a manner to be sorry for HER. Mrs.

Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs. Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor girl, at

all events, on the spot, five minutes of exaltation in which she turned the tables on her friend with a pass of

the hand, a gesture of an energy that made a wind in the air. "Kate knew," she asked, "that you were full of

"She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice; she seemed to want to help me through." Which the good

lady had no sooner said, however, than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She glared at Milly with a

pretended pluck. "What I mean is that she saw one had been taken up with something. When I say she knows

I should say she's a person who guesses." And her grimace was also, on its side, heroic. "But SHE doesn't

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 (101) ill that I wasn't here to see him? Wasn't it really just what

"Didn't he awfully like you," Milly went on, "and didn't he think you the most charming person I could

possibly have referred him to for an account of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together and in fact fall

quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for you to have me as a common ground? You're

"My own child, my own child!" Mrs. Stringham pleadingly murmured; yet showing as she did so that she

"Isn't he beautiful and good too himself ?altogether, whatever he may say, a lovely acquaintance to have

made? You're just the right people for meI see it now; and do you know what, between you, you must do?"

Then as Susie still but stared, wonderstruck and holding herself: "You must simply see me through. Any way

you choose. Make it out together. I, on my side, will be beautiful too, and we'll bethe three of us, with

whatever others, oh as many as the case requires, any one you like!a sight for the gods. I'll be as easy for

you as carrying a feather." Susie took it for a moment in such silence that her young friend almost saw

herand scarcely withheld the observationas taking it for "a part of the disease." This accordingly helped

Milly to be, as she judged, definite and wise. "He's at any rate (102) awfully interesting, isn't he?which is

so much to the good. We haven't at leastas we might have, with the way we tumbled into itgot hold of

"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."

"No, my precious, not like all the world. Very much more deeply and intelligently."

"Ah there you are!" Milly laughed. "That's the way, Susie, I want you. So 'buck' up, my dear. We'll have

"I'm not worrying, Milly." And poor Susie's face registered the sublimity of her lie.

It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her companion went to her, met by her with an embrace in which

things were said that exceeded speech. Each held and clasped the other as if to console her for this unnamed

woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham of learning the torment of helplessness, the woe for Milly of having HER, at

such a time, to think of. Milly's assumption was immense, and the difficulty for her friend was that of not

being able to gainsay it without bringing it more to the proof than tenderness and vagueness could permit.

Nothing in fact came to the proof between them but that they could thus cling togetherexcept 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 (103) 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 freelyfor 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 enoughfor the purposethat you yourself should

know: that is with him to show you how. I'll make it charming for youthat'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 youof 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 dreadfulnothing,

nothing, nothing," the poor lady passionately protested. "Only that you must do as you like and as he tells

"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

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 (104) for me, and what I'm sure he really wants of meto help

"And also a little, won't it be," Milly laughed, "to save me from the consequences? Of course," she added,

"Oh I think you'll find some," Mrs. Stringham more bravely said. "I think there ARE someas for instance

Milly thought. "Just as if I wanted you comfortable about HIM, and him the same about you? YesI shall

Susan Shepherd appeared to wander from this into a slight confusion. "Which of them are you talking of?"

Milly wondered an instantthen had a light. "I'm not talking of Mr. Densher." With which moreover she

showed amusement. "Though if you can be comfortable about Mr. Densher too so much the better."

"Oh you meant Sir Luke Strett? Certainly he's a fine type. Do you know," Susie continued, "whom he

Milly recognised Dr. Buttrick of Boston, but she dropped him after a tributary pause. "What do you think,

It was not till after consideration, with her eyes fixed on her friend's, that Susie produced her answer. "I think

Milly remained smiling at her, though putting on a little the manner of a teacher with a pupil. "Well, (105)

Milly shook her head for the "plenty." "The best is not to knowthat includes them all. I don'tI don't

know. Nothing about anythingexcept that you're WITH me. Remember that, please. There won't be

The effect of it by this time was fairly, as intended, to sustain Susie, who dropped in spite of herself into the

reassuring. "Most certainly it's all right. I think you ought to understand that he sees no reason"

"Why I shouldn't have a grand long life?" Milly had taken it straight up, as to understand it and for a moment

consider it. But she disposed of it otherwise. "Oh of course I know THAT." She spoke as if her friend's point

Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. "Well, what I mean is that he didn't say to me anything that he hasn't said

"Really?I would in his place!" She might have been disappointed, but she had her good humour. "He tells

"My dear," the girl presently said, "I don't 'want,' as I assure you, anything. Still," she added, "I AM living.

It put them again face to face, but it had wound (106) Mrs. Stringham up. "So am I then, you'll see!"she

spoke with the note of her recovery. Yet it was her wisdom nowmeaning by it as much as she didnot to

say more than that. She had risen by Milly's aid to a certain command of what was before them; the ten

minutes of their talk had in fact made her more distinctly aware of the presence in her mind of a new idea. It

was really perhaps an old idea with a new value; it had at all events begun during the last hour, though at first

but feebly, to shine with a special light. That was because in the morning darkness had so suddenly

descendeda sufficient shade of night to bring out the power of a star. The dusk might be thick yet, but the

sky had comparatively cleared; and Susan Shepherd's star from this time on continued to twinkle for her. It

was for the moment, after her passage with Milly, the one spark left in the heavens. She recognised, as she

continued to watch it, that it had really been set there by Sir Luke Strett's visit and that the impressions

immediately following had done no more than fix it. Milly's reappearance with Mr. Densher at her heelsor,

so oddly perhaps, at Miss Croy's heels, Miss Croy being at Milly'shad contributed to this effect, though it

was only with the lapse of the greater obscurity that Susie made that out. The obscurity had reigned during

the hour of their friends' visit, faintly clearing indeed while, in one of the rooms, Kate Croy's remarkable

advance to her intensified the fact that Milly and the young man were conjoined in the other. If it hadn't

acquired on the spot all the intensity of which it was capable, this was because the poor lady still sat (107) in

her primary gloom, the gloom the great benignant doctor had practically left behind him.

The intensity the circumstance in question MIGHT wear to the informed imagination would have been

sufficiently revealed for us, no doubtand with other things to our purposein two or three of those

confidential passages with Mrs. Lowder that she now permitted herself. She hadn't yet been so glad that she

believed in her old friend: for if she hadn't had, at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she should

certainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist of silence; silence was gross and thick,

whereas wisdom should taper, however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gate the

morning after the colloquy just noted; and there, in Maud Manningham's own sanctum, she gradually found

relief in giving an account of herself. An account of herself was one of the things that she had long been in

the habit of expecting herself regularly to givethe regularity depending of course much on such tests of

merit as might, by laws beyond her control, rise in her path. She never spared herself in short a proper

sharpness of conception of how she had behaved, and it was a statement that she for the most part found

herself able to make. What had happened at present was that nothing, as she felt, was left of her to report to;

she was all too sunk in the inevitable and the abysmal. To give an account of herself she must give it to

somebody else, and her first instalment of it to her hostess was that she must please let her cry. She couldn't

cry, with Milly in observation, at the hotel, which she had accordingly left for (108) that purpose; and the

power happily came to her with the good opportunity. She cried and cried at firstshe confined herself to

that; it was for the time the best statement of her business. Mrs. Lowder moreover intelligently took it as

such, though knocking off a note or two more, as she said, while Susie sat near her table. She could resist the

contagion of tears, but her patience did justice to her visitor's most vivid plea for it. "I shall never be able, you

know, to cry againat least not ever with HER; so I must take it out when I can. Even if she does herself it

won't be for me to give away; for what would that be but a confession of despair? I'm not with her for

"She won't even if she does have occasion. She won't shed a tear. There's something that will prevent her."

"Yes, her pride," Mrs. Stringham explained in spite of her friend's doubt, and it was with this that her

communication took consistent form. It had never been pride, Maud Manningham had hinted, that kept HER

from crying when other things made for it; it had only been that these same things, at such times, made still

more for business, arrangements, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the marshalling of servants, the taking

of decisions. "I might be crying now," she said, "if I weren't writing letters"and this quite without

harshness for her anxious companion, (109) to whom she allowed just the administrative margin for

difference. She had interrupted her no more than she would have interrupted the pianotuner. It gave poor

Susie time; and when Mrs. Lowder, to save appearances and catch the post, had, with her addressed and

stamped notes, met at the door of the room the footman summoned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the

case were sufficiently ready for her. It took but two or three, however, given their importance, to lay the

ground for the great oneMrs. Stringham's interview of the day before with Sir Luke, who had wished to

"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

"It isn't, at least," Mrs. Stringham explained, "the case she believed it to bethought it at any rate MIGHT

bewhen, without my knowledge, she went to see him. She went because there was something she was

afraid of, and he examined her thoroughlyhe has made sure. She's wrongshe hasn't what she thought."

(110) "I asked nothing," said poor Susie"I only took what he gave me. He gave me no more than he had

"He must have been interested in YOU, dear," Maud Manningham observed with kindness.

Her visitor met it with candour. "Yes, love, I think he IS. I mean that he sees what he can do with me."

"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.

"It's surely the great thing for every one. Why, therefore," Mrs. Lowder handsomely asked, "should we cry so

"Only," poor Susie wailed, "that it's so strange, so beyond us. I mean if she can't be."

Mrs. Lowder faced a moment, in her massive way, what Sir Luke Strett thought. She sat back there, her knees

apart, not unlike a picturesque earringed matron at a marketstall; while her friend, before her, dropped

their items, tossed the separate truths of the matter one by one, into her capacious apron. "But is that all he

"That she must be MADE sothat's the point. It seemed enough, as he told me," Mrs. Stringham went (111)

"I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave it to me, that is, as MY part. The rest's his own."

Everything in Mrs. Stringham confessed to the extent of it. "It's only that it isn't THE case she herself

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 itbecause he does, I feel, trust me. He's considering," she repeated.

"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

(112) It roused Susie a little, Susie being already enrolled in the great doctor's cause. This came out at least in

Mrs. Lowder was rather stiff for it. "Yes; it scares ME. I'm always scaredI may call it sotill I

She had really said it so that her friend had to take it; which the latter in fact after a moment showed herself

as having done. A strange light humour in the matter even perhaps suddenly aiding, she met it with a certain

accommodation. "Well, say one seems to see. The point is!" But, fairly too full now of her question, she

Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth, which operatedand happily

tooas a challenge to her visitor's spirit. "Oh of course we don't ask his leave to fall. But it's something to

(113) "My dear woman," Mrs. Lowder cried, "it strikes me we know it without him. So that when THAT'S all

"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

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

"You had SEEN, apparently, in three minutes. And now that he's here, now that I've met him and had my

impression of him, I feel," said Mrs. Stringham, "that you've been magnificent."

"Of course I've been magnificent. When," asked Maud Manningham, "was I anything else? But Milly won't

"Oh it's always magnificent to marry the man one loves. But we're going fast!" Mrs. Stringham woefully

"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 (114) what I feltI knew in my bones the man had returned."

"That's just where, as I say, you're magnificent. But wait," said Mrs. Stringham, "till you've seen him."

"I shall see him immediately"Mrs. Lowder took it up with decision. "What IS then," she asked, "your

Mrs. Stringham's impression seemed lost in her doubts. "How can he ever care for her?"

Her companion, in her companion's heavy manner, sat on it. "By being put in the way of it."

"For God's sake then," Mrs. Stringham wailed, "PUT him in the way! You have him, one feels, in your hand."

Maud Lowder's eyes at this rested on her friend's. "Is that your impression of him?"

Mrs. Lowder's eyes still rested, and Susan Shepherd now felt, for a wonder, not less sincere by seeing that she

It suggested something that her visitor hadn't yet had from hersomething the sense of which made Mrs.

That fact the lady of Lancaster Gate had up to this moment, as we know, enshrouded, and her friend's quick

question had produced a change in her face. She blinkedthen looked at the question hard; after which,

whether she had inadvertently betrayed (115) herself or had only reached a decision and then been affected

by the quality of Mrs. Stringham's surprise, she accepted all results. What took place in her for Susan

Shepherd was not simply that she made the best of them, but that she suddenly saw more in them to her

purpose than she could have imagined. A certain impatience in fact marked in her this transition: she had

been keeping back, very hard, an important truth and wouldn't have liked to hear that she hadn't concealed it

cleverly. Susie nevertheless felt herself pass as not a little of a fool with her for not having thought of it. What

Susie indeed, however, most thought of at present, in the quick, new light of it, was the wonder of Kate's

dissimulation. She had time for that view while she waited for an answer to her cry. "Kate thinks she cares.

But she's mistaken. And no one knows it." These things, distinct and responsible, were Mrs. Lowder's retort.

Yet they weren't all of it. "YOU don't know itthat must be your line. Or rather your line must be that you

"Deny that she so much as thinks that she does. Positively and absolutely. Deny that you've so much as heard

"i lie well, thank God," Mrs. Lowder almost snorted, "when, as sometimes will happen, there's nothing else

so good. One must always do the best. But without lies then," she went on, "perhaps we can work it out." Her

interest had risen; her friend saw her, as within some minutes, more enrolled and inflamedpresently felt in

her what had made the difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried this at the time but dimly; she only

made out at first that Maud had found a reason for helping her. The reason was that, strangely, she might help

Maud too, for which she now desired to profess herself ready even to lying. What really perhaps most came

out for her was that her hostess was a little disappointed at her doubt of the social solidity of this appliance;

and that in turn was to become a steadier light. The truth about Kate's delusion, as her aunt presented it, the

delusion about the state of her affections, which might be removedthis was apparently the ground on

which they now might more intimately meet. Mrs. Stringham saw herself recruited for the removal of Kate's

delusionby arts, however, in truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass. Or was it perhaps to be only for

the removal of Mr. Densher's?success in which indeed might entail other successes. Before that job,

unfortunately, her heart had already failed. She felt that she believed in her bones what Milly believed, and

what would now make working for Milly such a dreadful upward tug. All this within her was confusedly

presenta cloud of questions out of which (117) 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 comeor at any rate the sense did, a sense all accordant with the insufflation

she had just seen working. "Yes," the sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall be

helped, by its doing so, for Kate"a view into which Mrs. Stringham could now sufficiently enter. She

found herself of a sudden, strange to say, quite willing to operate to Kate's harm, or at least to Kate's good as

Mrs. Lowder with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herself in short not caring what became of

Kateonly convinced at bottom of the predominance of Kate's star. Kate wasn't in danger. Kate wasn't

pathetic; Kate Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate Croy. She saw moreover by this time that

her friend was travelling even beyond her own speed. Mrs. Lowder had already, in mind, drafted a rough plan

of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said: "You must stay on a few days, and you must

immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by an

instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, to prepare that ground. "The poor child,

when I was with her there while you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away to me."

"Oh I remember how you afterwards put it to me. Though it was nothing more," Susie did herself the justice

But Mrs. Lowder fronted her so on this that she (118) wondered what she had said. "I suppose I ought to be

Her hostess showed impatience, turning again with some stiffness to her great brassbound cylinderdesk

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 heras it

seems to be turning outshe doesn't want them. So what's one to do? I assure you I've had many dreams.

Mrs. Stringham's tone in these last words gave so fully her meaning that Mrs. Lowder could but show herself

as taking it in. They sat a moment longer confronted on it. "Her having what she does want?"

Mrs. Lowder seemed to think what it might do; but she spoke for the instant of something else. "It does

provoke me a bit, you knowfor of course I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet it doesn't

"And we must take Mr. Densher as HE is." With (119) which Mrs. Lowder gave a sombre laugh. "It's a pity

"Well, if he were better," her friend rejoined, "you'd have liked him for your niece; and in that case Milly

"She interferes with me as it isnot that it matters now. But I saw Kate and herreally as soon as you came

to meset up side by side. I saw your girlI don't mind telling youhelping my girl; and when I say that,"

Mrs. Lowder continued, "you'll probably put in for yourself that it was part of the reason of my welcome to

you. So you see what I give up. I do give it up. But when I take that line," she further set forth, "I take it

handsomely. So goodbye to it all. Goodday to Mrs. Densher! Heavens!" she growled.

"Yes, she won't be nobody. Besides," said Mrs. Lowder, "we're talking in the air."

"It's nevertheless interesting." And Mrs. Lowder had another thought. "HE'S not quite nobody either." It

brought her back to the question she had already put and which her friend hadn't at the time dealt with. "What

Susan Shepherd, at this, for reasons not clear even to herself, was moved a little to caution. So she remained

She had met Mrs. Lowder's eyes with that extreme (120) pointedness in her own to which people resort when

they are not quite candida circumstance that had its effect. "Yes; he's charming."

The effect of the words, however, was equally marked; they almost determined in Mrs. Stringham a return of

Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend also got up. "I like him, my dear, for myself."

"Well, it's one way. He's not good enough for my niece, and he's not good enough for you. One's an aunt,

But her companion kept on. "One lives for others. YOU do that. If I were living for myself I shouldn't at all

But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. "Ah if I find him charming it's however I'm living."

Well, it broke Mrs. Lowder down. She hung fire but an instant, giving herself away with a laugh. "Of course

"That's all I contend," Susie said with more reserve; and the note in questionwhat Merton Densher was "in

himself"closed practically, with some inconsequence, this first of their councils.

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

happenif Milly, that is, could have her thoughts taken off herselfit wouldn't do any harm and might

conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happenif, anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves,

conjoined, could do nothing to contribute to itthey would be in no worse a box than before. Only in this

latter case the girl would have had her free range for the summer, for the autumn; she would have done her

best in the sense enjoined on her, and, coming back at the end to her eminent man, wouldbesides having

more to show himfind him more ready to go on with her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherdas

well as being ground for a second report to her old friendthat Milly did her part for a working view of the

general case, inasmuch as she mentioned frankly and promptly that she meant to go and say goodbye to Sir

(122) Luke Strett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for, his having been so easy

"You see I didn't know thatfor the liberty I tookI shouldn't afterwards get a stiff note from him."

So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. "Oh you'll never get a stiff note from him in

She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her young friend's question. "Why not, as well as any one else who

"Well, because he doesn't regard it as a trick. He could understand your action. It's all right, you see."

"YesI do see. It IS all right. He's easier with me than with any one else, because that's the way to let me

Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie grasped at her only advantage. "Do you really

She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave hera strange halfamused perception of what

"He doesn't pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. "He justthe same as any one elselikes you."

(123) Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. "Ah there you are!" Mrs. Stringham

coloured, for there indeed she was again. But Milly let her off. "Work for me, all the samework for me! It's

of course what I want." Then as usual she embraced her friend. "I'm not going to be as nasty as this to HIM."

"I'm sure I hope not!"and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. "I've no doubt, however, he'd take it from

Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. "No, so that people can take anything from

me." And what Mrs. Stringham did indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any

account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between them of an odd independencean

independence positively of action and customon the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate

ways with the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what she had so wonderfully put in her plea

for after Mrs. Stringham's first encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or was to

have other encountersprivate pointed personal; she favoured every idea, but most of all the idea that she

herself was to go on as if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would be her way; and

though her companions [Norton emendation: companion] learned from herself nothing of it this was in the

event her way with her medical adviser. She put her visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to

tell him how touched she had been (124) by his good nature. That required little explaining, for, as Mrs.

Stringham had said, he quite understood he could but reply that it was all right.

"I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got good friends."

"So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think," Milly went on, "of all of them together.

You're excellent for each other. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me."

There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her impressions, which was at the same time one of

the finest of her alarmsthe glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, she might perhaps

deprive their relation of facility if not of value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He

would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every point, embarrass his exercise of a

kindness that, no doubt, rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her, since Susie

positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea that she might somehow so do her good. Such,

however, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. He

wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to

face there with her smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling as

she had known in her crucial talk with Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help

her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would assist also to make this right. (125) It

wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, almost to reverse for her their characters of

patient and physician. What WAS he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the moment she

embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety?

She would leave the subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no doubt, would in time

enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine that the inward success of these reflexions flushed her for

the minute, to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health; and what verily next

occurred was that he gave colour to the presumption. "Every little helps, no doubt!"he noticed

goodhumouredly 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'tif this was present to himhave arrived at it save by his own acuteness. That

acuteness was therefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of leaving him to, his portion

would be none so bad. Neither, for that matter, would hers bewhich she was even actually enjoying. She

wondered if really then there mightn't be something for her. She hadn't been sure in coming to him that she

was "better," and he hadn't used, he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term about her;

(126) in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for the amiable sympathy of it, "Yes, I

MUST be," for he had this unaided sense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided,

because who could have told him of anything? Susie, she was certain, hadn't yet seen him again, and there

were things it was impossible she could have told him the first time. Since such was his penetration,

therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept the new circumstance, the one he was

clearly wanting to congratulate her on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause tenderly enough it might

produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way of nursing. "You gave me the other day," she went

on, "plenty to think over, and I've been doing thatthinking it overquite 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.

"Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his answer, convinced as she was that if

she HAD been difficult it would be the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as I like."

"Then it's as i like. But you must really, though we're having such a decent month, get straight (127) away."

In pursuance of which, when she had replied with promptitude that her departurefor the Tyrol and then for

Venicewas quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with alacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, for we

shall meet there. I've a dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; three weeks during

which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me

where she prefers. I heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice."

"That's lovely then. I shall expect you there. And anything that, in advance or in any way, I can do for

"Oh thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, does for me. But it will be capital to find you there."

"I think it ought to make you feel," she said after a moment, "that I AM easy to treat."

But he shook his head again; he wouldn't have it. "You've not come to that YET."

"Well, I don't think I've ever come to itto 'ease' of treatment. I doubt if it's possible. I've not, if it is, found

They had an odd friendly, but perhaps the least bit awkward pause on it; after which Sir Luke asked: "And

"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

"No, two other friends; two ladies of whom we've seen more here than of any one and who are just the right

"Ah," said Milly, "we're widows and orphans. But I think," she added as if to say what she saw would

reassure him, "that we shall not be unattractive, as we move, to gentlemen. When you talk of 'life' I suppose

"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

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"

(129) "Oh I shall like to see any one who's devoted to you, for clearly it will be jolly to be 'in' it. So that if

"We must arrange itI shan't fail. She moreover has a friend who may also be there"Milly found herself

"So she tells me she fears. For if he is there he'll be constantly about with her."

"Oh no; I quite recognise the chance of gentlemen. But he won't," Milly pursued in the same wondrous way,

"Can't YOU?" Milly after a moment quaintly asked. Then for the joke of it she explained. "I'm putting you,

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 (130) ofwhat do you call her?Miss Croy's. Unless indeed you

"Then that's all right. But what, pray," Sir Luke next asked, "have I to do with him?"

"Nothing," said Milly, "except that if you're to be there, so may he be. And also that we shan't in that case be

He considered her as if at this point she a little tried his patience. "YOU'RE the least 'dreary' woman I've ever,

ever seen. Ever, do you know? There's no reason why you shouldn't have a really splendid life."

"The convictionstrong already when I had seen you onceis strengthened in me by having seen your

"Nothing that wouldn't have given you pleasure. We talked about youand freely. I don't deny that. But it

"Nothing, for you," he went on, "IS impossible. So go on." He repeated it againwanting her so to feel that

She had given him her hand for goodbye, 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

"Yesbut his case isn't so dreadful." She had within a minute got away from that.

"No doubtif YOU take an interest." She had got away, but it was as if he made out in her eyesthough

they also had rather got awaya 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."

Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink into possession; gratefully glad that the warmth of

the Southern summer was still in the high florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard cool pavements took

reflexions in their lifelong polish, and where the sun on the stirred seawater, flickering up through open

windows, played over the painted "subjects" in the splendid ceilingsmedallions of purple and brown, of

brave old melancholy colour, medals as of old reddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time

and all flourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great moulded and figured concavity (a nest of

white cherubs, friendly creatures of the air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller lights,

straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with the Baedekers and photographs of Milly's

party dreadfully meeting the eye, to make of the place an apartment of state. This at last only, though she had

enjoyed the palace for three weeks, seemed to count as effective occupation; perhaps because it was the first

time she had been alonereally to call alonesince she had left London, it ministered to her first full and

unembarrassed sense of what the great Eugenio had done for her. The great Eugenio, recommended by

granddukes and Americans, had entered her service during the last hours of allhad crossed from Paris,

after (133) multiplied pourparlers with Mrs. Stringham, to whom she had allowed more than ever a free hand,

on purpose to escort her to the Continent and encompass her there, and had dedicated to her, from the

moment of their meeting, all the treasures of his experience. She had judged him in advancepolyglot and

universal, very dear and very deepas probably but a swindler finished to the fingertips; for he was for

ever carrying one wellkept Italian hand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket, which, as

she had instantly observed him to recognise, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable thing was that these

elements of their common consciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructible link, formed the ground

of a happy relation; being by this time, strangely, grotesquely, delightfully, what most kept up confidence

She had seen quickly enough what was happeningthe usual thing again, yet once again. Eugenio had, in an

interview of five minutes, understood her, had got hold, like all the world, of the idea not so much of the care

with which she must be taken up as of the care with which she must be let down. All the world understood

her, all the world had got hold; but for nobody yet, she felt, would the idea have been so close a tie or won

from herself so patient a surrender. Gracefully, respectfully, consummately enoughalways with hands in

position and the look, in his thick neat white hair, smooth fat face and black professional, almost theatrical

eyes, as of some famous tenor grown too old to make love, but with an art still to make moneydid he on

occasion convey to her (134) 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 Susiewhom she was

now pitying more than ever for having to be herself so sorry and to say so little about it. Eugenio had the

general tact of a residuary legateewhich was a character that could be definitely worn; whereas she could

see Susie, in the event of her death, in no character at all, Susie being insistently, exclusively concerned in her

mere makeshift duration. This principle, for that matter, Milly at present, with a renewed flare of fancy, felt

she should herself have liked to believe in. Eugenio had really done for her more than he probably knewhe

didn't after all know everythingin having, for the windup 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 managedyou know what I meansome fine

old rooms, wholly independent, for a series of months. Plenty of them too, and the more interesting the better:

part of a palace, historic and picturesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall (135) be to ourselves, with a

cook, don't you know?with servants, frescoes, tapestries, antiquities, the thorough makebelieve of a

The proof of how he better and better understood her was in all the place; as to his masterly acquisition of

which she had from the first asked no questions. She had shown him enough what she thought of it, and her

forbearance pleased him; with the part of the transaction that mainly concerned her she would soon enough

become acquainted, and his connexion with such values as she would then find noted could scarce help

growing, as it were, still more residuary. Charming people, conscious Venicelovers, evidently, had given up

their house to her, and had fled to a distance, to other countries, to hide their blushes alike over what they

had, however briefly, alienated, and over what they had, however durably, gained. They had preserved and

consecrated, and she nowher part of it was shamelessappropriated and enjoyed. Palazzo Leporelli held

its history still in its great lap, even like a painted idol, a solemn puppet hung about with decorations. Hung

about with pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the ineffaceable character, was here the presence

revered and served: which brings us back to our truth of a moment agothe fact that, more than ever, this

October morning, awkward novice though she might be, Milly moved slowly to and fro as the priestess of the

worship. Certainly it came from the sweet taste of solitude, caught again and cherished for the hour; always a

need of her nature, moreover, when things spoke to her with penetration. It was mostly in stillness they spoke

to (136) her best; amid voices she lost the sense. Voices had surrounded her for weeks, and she had tried to

listen, had cultivated them and had answered back; these had been weeks in which there were other things

they might well prevent her from hearing. More than the prospect had at first promised or threatened she had

felt herself going on in a crowd and with a multiplied escort; the four ladies pictured by her to Sir Luke Strett

as a phalanx comparatively closed and detached had in fact proved a rolling snowball, condemned from day

to day to cover more ground. Susan Shepherd had compared this portion of the girl's excursion to the

Empress Catherine's famous progress across the steppes of Russia; improvised settlements appeared at each

turn of the road, villagers waiting with addresses drawn up in the language of London. Old friends in fine

were in ambush, Mrs. Lowder's, Kate Croy's, her own; when the addresses weren't in the language of London

they were in the more insistent idioms of American centres. The current was swollen even by Susie's social

connexions; so that there were days, at hotels, at Dolomite picnics, on lake steamers, when she could almost

repay to Aunt Maud and Kate with interest the debt contracted by the London "success" to which they had

Mrs. Lowder's success and Kate's, amid the shock of Milly's and Mrs. Stringham's compatriots, failed but

little, really, of the concertpitch; 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 (137) appraising

them; it being throughout a case mainly of ladies, of a dozen at once sometimes, in Milly's apartment,

pointing, also at once, that moral and many others. Milly's companions were acclaimed not only as perfectly

fascinating in themselves, the nicest people yet known to the acclaimers, but as obvious helping hands,

socially speaking, for the eccentric young woman, evident initiators and smoothers of her path, possible

subduers of her eccentricity. Short intervals, to her own sense, stood now for great differences, and this

renewed inhalation of her native air had somehow left her to feel that she already, that she mainly, struck the

compatriot as queer and dissociated. She moved such a critic, it would appear, as to rather an odd suspicion, a

benevolence induced by a want of complete trust: all of which showed her in the light of a person too plain

and too illclothed for a thorough good time, and yet too rich and too befriendedan intuitive cunning

within her managing this lastfor a thorough bad one. The compatriots, in short, by what she made out,

approved her friends for their expert wisdom with her; in spite of which judicial sagacity it was the

compatriots who recorded themselves as the innocent parties. She saw things in these days that she had never

seen before, and she couldn't have said why save on a principle too terrible to name; whereby she saw that

neither Lancaster Gate was what New York took it for, nor New York what Lancaster Gate fondly fancied it

in coquetting with the plan of a series of American visits. The plan might have been, humorously, on Mrs.

Lowder's part, for the improvement of her social (138) positionand it had verily in that direction lights that

were perhaps but half a century too prompt; at all of which Kate Croy assisted with the cool controlled

facility that went so well, as the others said, with her particular kind of good looks, the kind that led you to

expect the person enjoying them WOULD dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very

neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless,

like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that SHE should like to go to America; it

was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the

theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that made up for their public grimaces and amid which,

These puttingsoff of the mask had finally quite become the form taken by their moments together, moments

indeed not increasingly frequent and not prolonged, thanks to the consciousness of fatigue on Milly's side

whenever, as she herself expressed it, she got out of harness. They flourished their masks, the independent

pair, as they might have flourished Spanish fans; they smiled and sighed on removing them; but the gesture,

the smiles, the sighs, strangely enough, might have been suspected the greatest reality in the business.

Strangely enough, we say, for the volume of effusion in general would have been found by either on

measurement to be scarce proportional to the paraphernalia of relief. It was when they called each other's

attention to their ceasing to pretend, it (139) was then that what they were keeping back was most in the air.

There was a difference, no doubt, and mainly to Kate's advantage: Milly didn't quite see what her friend could

keep back, was possessed of, in fine, that would be so subject to retention; whereas it was comparatively

plain sailing for Kate that poor Milly had a treasure to hide. This was not the treasure of a shy, an abject

affectionconcealment, on that head, belonging to quite another phase of such states; it was much rather a

principle of pride relatively bold and hard, a principle that played up like a fine steel spring at the lightest

pressure of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was the truth about the girl's own conception of her

validity; thus was a wondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from the far side of the moat

she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of the connexion of these young women show for us, such is the

twilight that gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in a Maeterlinck play; we have positively

the image, in the delicate dusk, of the figures so associated and yet so opposed, so mutually watchful: that of

the angular pale princess, ostrichplumed, blackrobed, hung about with amulets, reminders, relics, mainly

seated, mainly still, and that of the upright restless slowcircling lady of her court who exchanges with her,

across the black water streaked with evening gleams, fitful questions and answers. The upright lady, with

thick dark braids down her back, drawing over the grass a more embroidered train, makes the whole circuit,

and makes it again, and the broken talk, brief and sparingly allusive, seems (140) more to cover than to free

their sense. This is because, when it fairly comes to not having others to consider, they meet in an air that

appears rather anxiously to wait for their words. Such an impression as that was in fact grave, and might be

tragic; so that, plainly enough, systematically at last, they settled to a care of what they said.

There could be no gross phrasing to Milly, in particular, of the probability that if she wasn't so proud she

might be pitied with more comfortmore to the person pitying; there could be no spoken proof, no sharper

demonstration than the consistently considerate attitude, that this marvellous mixture of her weakness and of

her strength, her peril, if such it were, and her option, made her, kept her, irresistibly interesting. Kate's

predicament in the matter was, after all, very much Mrs. Stringham's own, and Susan Shepherd herself

indeed, in our Maeterlinck picture, might well have hovered in the gloaming by the moat. It may be declared

for Kate, at all events, that her sincerity about her friend, through this time, was deep, her compassionate

imagination strong; and that these things gave her a virtue, a good conscience, a credibility for herself, so to

speak, that were later to be precious to her. She grasped with her keen intelligence the logic of their common

duplicity, went unassisted through the same ordeal as Milly's other hushed follower, easily saw that for the

girl to be explicit was to betray divinations, gratitudes, glimpses of the felt contrast between her fortune and

her fearall of which would have contradicted her systematic bravado. That was it, Kate wonderingly (141)

saw: to recognise was to bring down the avalanchethe avalanche Milly lived so in watch for and that might

be started by the lightest of breaths; though less possibly the breath of her own stifled plaint than that of the

vain sympathy, the mere helpless gaping inference of others. With so many suppressions as these, therefore,

between them, their withdrawal together to unmask had to fall back, as we have hinted, on a nominal

motivewhich 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 harnessthat was the moral of their meetings; but the

moral of this, in turn, was that they couldn't so much as ask each other why harness need be worn. Milly wore

She was out of it at present, for some reason, as she hadn't been for weeks; she was always out of it, that is,

when alone, and her companions had never yet so much as just now affected her as dispersed and suppressed.

It was as if still again, still more tacitly and wonderfully, Eugenio had understood her, taking it from her

without a word and just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, of the beautiful day: "Yes, get me an

hour alone; take them offI 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 himSusie who would have drowned (142) 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

sameweren't they?those experiments tried with the truth that consisted, at the worst, but in practising on

one's self. She was now playing with the thought that Eugenio might INCLUSIVELY assist her: he had

brought home to her, and always by remarks that were really quite soundless, the conception, hitherto

ungrasped, of some complete use of her wealth itself, some use of it as a countermove to fate. It had passed

between them as preposterous that with so much money she should just stupidly and awkwardly

WANTany more want a life, a career, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage or a cook. It was as if

she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure of what he was in a position, at a stretch, to

undertake for her; the thoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare with a looseness on

Sir Luke Strett's part thatat least in Palazzo Leporelli when mornings were fineshowed as almost

amateurish. Sir Luke hadn't said to her "Pay enough money and leave the rest to ME"which was distinctly

what Eugenio did say. Sir Luke had appeared indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a

different sort of cash. Those were amounts not to be named nor reckoned, and such moreover as she wasn't

sure of having at her command. Eugeniothis was the differencecould name, could reckon, and prices of

HIS kind were things she had never suffered (143) to scare her. She had been willing, goodness knew, to pay

enough for anything, for everything, and here was simply a new view of the sufficient quantity. She amused

herselffor it came to that, since Eugenio was there to sign the receiptwith 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

elseif such were points at which your most trusted servant failedwas the use of being, as the dear Susies

She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, noble and peaceful while the summer sea, stirring here and

there a curtain or an outer blind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging to it; that perhaps

Eugenio could manage. She was IN it, as in the ark of her deluge, and filled with such a tenderness for it that

why shouldn't this, in common mercy, be warrant enough? She would never, never leave itshe would

engage to that; would ask nothing more than to sit tight in it and float on and on. The beauty and intensity, the

real momentary relief of this conceit, reached their climax in the positive purpose to put the question to

Eugenio on his return as she had not yet put it; though the design, it must be added, dropped a little when,

coming back to the great saloon from which she had started on her pensive progress, she found Lord Mark, of

whose arrival in Venice she had been unaware, and who had nowwhile a servant was following her

through empty roomsbeen asked, in her absence, to wait. He had waited then, Lord Mark, he was

waitingoh unmistakeably; (144) never before had he so much struck her as the man to do that on occasion

with patience, to do it indeed almost as with gratitude for the chance, though at the same time with a sort of

notifying firmness. The odd thing, as she was afterwards to recall, was that her wonder for what had brought

him was not immediate, but had come at the end of five minutes; and also, quite incoherently, that she felt

almost as glad to see him, and almost as forgiving of his interruption of her solitude, as if he had already been

in her thought or acting at her suggestion. He was somehow, at the best, the end of a respite; one might like

him very much and yet feel that his presence tempered precious solitude more than any other known to one:

in spite of all of which, as he was neither dear Susie, nor dear Kate, nor dear Aunt Maud, nor even, for the

least, dear Eugenio in person, the sight of him did no damage to her sense of the dispersal of her friends. She

hadn't been so thoroughly alone with him since those moments of his showing her the great portrait at

Matcham, the moments that had exactly made the highwatermark of her security, the moments during

which her tears themselves, those she had been ashamed of, were the sign of her consciously rounding her

protective promontory, quitting the blue gulf of comparative ignorance and reaching her view of the troubled

sea. His presence now referred itself to his presence then, reminding her how kind he had been, altogether, at

Matcham, and telling her, unexpectedly, at a time when she could particularly feel it, that, for such kindness

and for the beauty of what they remembered together, she hadn't lost him (145) 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 itthese things were so pleasant for the first

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 heardwhat more

natural?from their friends, Milly's and his. He mentioned this betimes, but it was with his mention,

singularly, that the girl became conscious of her inner question about his reason. She noticed his plural,

which added to Mrs. Lowder or added to Kate; but she presently noticed also that it didn't affect her as

explaining. Aunt Maud had written to him, Kate apparentlyand this was interestinghad written to him;

but their design presumably hadn't been that he should come and sit there as if rather relieved, so far as

THEY were concerned, at postponements. He only said "Oh!" and again "Oh!" when she sketched their

probable morning for him, under Eugenio's care and Mrs. Stringham'ssounding it quite as if any suggestion

that he should overtake them at the Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs would leave him temporarily cold. This

precisely it was that, after a little, operated for Milly as an obscure (146) but still fairly direct check to

confidence. He had known where they all were from the others, but it was not for the others that, in his actual

dispositions, he had come. That, strange to say, was a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have shown

him more confidence if he himself had had less intention. His intention so chilled her, from the moment she

found herself divining it, that, just for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of their

remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of her fortune, she could have fallen to

pleading with him and to reasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There had been, for ten minutes, with the

directness of her welcome to him and the way this clearly pleased him, something of the grace of amends

made, even though he couldn't know itamends for her not having been originally sure, for instance at that

first dinner of Aunt Maud's, that he was adequately human. That first dinner of Aunt Maud's added itself to

the hour at Matcham, added itself to other things, to consolidate, for her present benevolence, the ease of their

relation, making it suddenly delightful that he had thus turned up. He exclaimed, as he looked about, on the

charm of the place: "What a temple to taste and an expression of the pride of life, yet, with all that, what a

jolly HOME!"so that, for his entertainment, she could offer to walk him about though she mentioned that

she had just been, for her own purposes, in a general prowl, taking everything in more susceptibly than

before. He embraced her offer without a scruple and seemed to rejoice that he was to find her susceptible.

She couldn't have said what it was, in the conditions, that renewed the whole solemnity, but by the end of

twenty minutes a kind of wistful hush had fallen upon them, as before something poignant in which her

visitor also participated. That was nothing verily but the perfection of the charmor nothing rather but their

excluded disinherited state in the presence of it. The charm turned on them a face that was cold in its beauty,

that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke with an ironic smile of a possible but forbidden life. It

all rolled afresh over Milly: "Oh the impossible romance!" The romance for her, yet once more, would be

to sit there for ever, through all her time, as in a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down,

of remaining aloft in the divine dustless air, where she would hear but the plash of the water against stone.

The great floor on which they moved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. "Ah not to go

"But why shouldn't you," he asked, "with that tremendous old staircase in your court? There ought of course

always to be people at top and bottom, in Veronese costumes, to watch you do it."

She shook her head both lightly and mournfully enough at his not understanding. "Not even (148) for people

in Veronese costumes. I mean that the positive beauty is that one needn't go down. I don't move in fact," she

added"now. I've not been out, you know. I stay up. That's how you happily found me."

She looked over the place, the storey above the apartments in which she had received him, the sala

corresponding to the sala below and fronting the great canal with its gothic arches. The casements between

the arches were open, the ledge of the balcony broad, the sweep of the canal, so overhung, admirable, and the

flutter toward them of the loose white curtain an invitation to she scarce could have said what. But there was

no mystery after a moment; she had never felt so invited to anything as to make that, and that only, just where

she was, her adventure. It would beto this it kept coming backthe adventure of not stirring. "I go about

They were at the window, pausing, lingering, with the fine old faded palaces opposite and the slow Adriatic

tide beneath; but after a minute, and before she answered, she had closed her eyes to what she saw and

unresistingly dropped her face into her arms, which rested on the coping. She had fallen to her knees on the

cushion of the windowplace, and she leaned there, in a long silence, with her forehead down. She knew that

her silence was itself too straight an (149) answer, but it was beyond her now to say that she saw her way.

She would have made the question itself impossible to othersimpossible for example to such a man as

Merton Densher; and she could wonder even on the spot what it was a sign of in her feeling for Lord Mark

that from his lips it almost tempted her to break down. This was doubtless really because she cared for him so

little; to let herself go with him thus, suffer his touch to make her cup overflow, would be the reliefsince it

was actually, for her nerves, a question of reliefthat would cost her least. If he had come to her moreover

with the intention she believed, or even if this intention had but been determined in him by the spell of their

situation, he mustn't be mistaken about her valuefor what value did she now have? It throbbed within her

as she knelt there that she had none at all; though, holding herself, not yet speaking, she tried, even in the act,

to recover what might be possible of it. With that there came to her a light: wouldn't her value, for the man

who should marry her, be precisely in the ravage of her disease? SHE mightn't last, but her money would. For

a man in whom the vision of her money should be intense, in whom it should be most of the ground for

"making up" to her, any prospective failure on her part to be long for this world might easily count as a

positive attraction. Such a man, proposing to please, persuade, secure her, appropriate her for such a time,

shorter or longer, as nature and the doctors should allow, would make the best of her, ill, damaged,

disagreeable though she might be, for the sake of eventual benefits: she being (150) clearly a person of the

sort esteemed likely to do the handsome thing by a stricken and sorrowing husband.

She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habits her youth might form, that of seeing an

interested suitor in every bush should certainly never grow to be one of theman attitude she had early

judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in fact as little to do with it as possible and she

scarce knew why at the present moment she should have had to catch herself in the act of imputing an ugly

motive. It didn't sit, the ugly motive, in Lord Mark's cool English eyes; the darker side of it at any rate

showed, to her imagination, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, simplified itself: there was a beautiful

reasonindeed there were twowhy her companion's motive shouldn't matter. One was that even should he

desire her without a penny she wouldn't marry him for the world; the other was that she felt him, after all,

perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and humanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing

to be well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her as threatened, haunted, blighted; but they

were melting together for him, making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, as he probably

called it to himself, he liked her. That was presently what remained with herhis really doing it; and with

the natural and proper incident of being conciliated by her weakness. Would she really have had himshe

could ask herself thatdisconcerted or disgusted by it? If he could only be touched (151) enough to do what

she preferred, not to raise, not to press any question, he might render her a much better service than by merely

enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it was strange, but he figured to her for the moment as the one safe

sympathiser. It would have made her worse to talk to others, but she wasn't afraid with him of how he might

wince and look pale. She would keep him, that is, her one easy relationin the sense of easy for himself.

Their actual outlook had meanwhile such charm, what surrounded them within and without did so much

toward making appreciative stillness as natural as at the opera, that she could consider she hadn't made him

hang on her lips when at last, instead of saying if she were well or ill, she repeated: "I go about here. I don't

get tired of it. I never shouldit suits me so. I adore the place," she went on, "and I don't want in the least to

"Neither should I if I had your luck. Still, with that luck, for one's ALL! Should you positively like to live

Which made him, precisely, laugh. That was what she wanted when a person did care: it was the pleasant

human way, without depths of darkness. "Oh it's not good enough for THAT! That requires picking. But can't

you keep it? It is, you know, the sort of place to see you in; you carry out the note, fill it, people it, quite by

yourself, and you might do much worseI mean for your friendsthan show yourself here a while, three or

four months, every (152) year. But it's not my notion for the rest of the time. One has quite other uses for

"Well, I've seen you and I'm afraid. You're too much for metoo many. England bristles with questions.

"Oho, oho!"he laughed again as if to humour her. "Can't you then buy itfor a price? Depend upon it

"I've exactly," she said, "been wondering if they won't. I think I shall try. But if I get it I shall cling to it."

They were talking sincerely. "It will be my lifepaid for as that. It will become my great gilded shell; so that

"Well, not quite extinct perhaps, but shrunken, wasted, wizened; rattling about here like the dried kernel of a

"Oh," Lord Mark returned, "we, much as you mistrust us, can do better for you than that."

He let her see now that she worried him, and after a look at her, of some duration, without his

glasseswhich always altered the expression of his eyeshe resettled the nippers on his nose and went

back to the view. But the view, in turn, soon enough released him. "Do you remember something I said to

"Certainly it will beI mean the kind of thing: what I then wanted it to represent for you. Matcham, you

know," he continued, "is symbolic. I think I tried to rub that into you a little."

She met him with the full memory of what he had triednot an inch, not an ounce of which was lost to her.

"Oh for me it comes in better. Perhaps a part of what makes me remember it," he pursued, "is that I was quite

aware of what might have been said about what I was doing. I wanted you to take it from me that I should

perhaps be able to look after youwell, rather better. Rather better, of course, than certain other persons in

It amused her even with what she had else to think of; and she could show him at all events how little, in spite

of the hundred years, she had lost what he alluded to. The way he was with her at this moment made in fact

the other moment so vivid as almost to start again the tears it had started at the time. "You could do so much

"I wanted, you see," he despite this explained, (154) "to FIX your confidence. I mean, you know, in the right

"Well, Lord Mark, you didit's just exactly now, my confidence, where you put it then. The only

difference," said Milly, "is that I seem now to have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, "I do seem to

He took no more notice of these last words than if she hadn't said them, only watching her at present as with a

To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making out his light was a little a light for herself. "Don't say, don't try

He looked straight at it and then straight over it. "It's too monstrous that one can't ask you as a friend what

"What is it you want to know?" She spoke, as by a sudden turn, with a slight hardness. "Do you want to know

The sound of it in truth, though from no raising of her voice, invested the idea with a kind of terror, but a

terror all for others. Lord Mark winced and flushedclearly couldn't help it; but he kept his attitude together

and spoke even with unwonted vivacity. "Do you imagine I can see you suffer and not say a word?"

"You won't see me sufferdon't be afraid. I shan't be a public nuisance. That's why I should have liked

THIS: it's so beautiful in itself and yet it's (155) out of the gangway. You won't know anything about

anything," she added; and then as if to make with decision an end: "And you DON'T! No, not even you." He

faced her through it with the remains of his expression, and she saw him as clearlyfor HIMbewildered;

which made her wish to be sure not to have been unkind. She would be kind once for all; that would be the

"I do everything. Everything's THIS," she smiled. "I'm doing it now. One can't do more than live."

"Ah than live in the right way, no. But is THAT what you do? Why haven't you advice?"

He had looked about at the rococo elegance as if there were fifty things it didn't give her, so that he suggested

with urgency the most absent. But she met his remedy with a smile. "I've the best advice in the world. I'm

acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, in talking with you thus. One can't, as I tell you, do more

"Well, it's immense for ME." She finally spoke as if for amusement; now that she had uttered her truth, that

he had learnt it from herself as no one had yet done, her emotion had, by the fact, dried up. There she was;

but it was as if she would never speak again. "I shan't," she added, "have missed everything."

"Why should you have missed ANYTHING?" She felt, as he sounded this, to what, within the minute, he had

made up his mind. "You're the person in the world for whom that's least necessary; for whom (156) one

would call it in fact most impossible; for whom 'missing' at all will surely require an extraordinary amount of

misplaced good will. Since you believe in advice, for God's sake take MINE. I know what you want."

Oh she knew he would know it. But she had brought it on herselfor almost. Yet she spoke with kindness.

"You want to be adored." It came at last straight. "Nothing would worry you less. I mean as I shall do it. It IS

Well, she didn't after all mock at him. "I see what you mean. That full good of it which consists in finding

one's self forced to love in return." She had grasped it, but she hesitated. "Your idea is that I might find

"Oh 'forced'!" He was so fine and so expert, so awake to anything the least ridiculous, and of a type with

which the preaching of passion somehow so ill consortedhe was so much all these things that he had

absolutely to take account of them himself. And he did so, in a single intonation, beautifully. Milly liked him

again, liked him for such shades as that, liked him so that it was woeful to see him spoiling it, and still more

woeful to have to rank him among those minor charms of existence that she gasped at moments to remember

"Oh I shouldn't have to!" he quickly declared. The prompt neat accent, however, his manner of disposing of

her question, failed of real expression, as he himself the next moment intelligently, helplessly, almost

comically sawa failure pointed moreover by the laugh into which Milly was immediately startled. As a

suggestion to her of a healing and uplifting passion it WAS in truth deficient; it wouldn't do as the

communication of a force that should sweep them both away. And the beauty of him was that he too, even in

the act of persuasion, of selfpersuasion, could understand that, and could thereby show but the better as

fitting into the pleasant commerce of prosperity. The way she let him see that she looked at him was a thing

to shut him out, of itself, from services of danger, a thing that made a discrimination against him never yet

mademade at least to any consciousness of his own. Born to float in a sustaining air, this would be his first

encounter with a judgement formed in the sinister light of tragedy. The gathering dusk of HER personal

world presented itself to him, in her eyes, as an element in which it was vain for him to pretend he could find

himself at home, since it was charged with depressions and with dooms, with the chill of the losing game.

Almost without her needing to speak, and simply by the fact that there could be, in such a case, no decent

(158) substitute for a felt intensity, he had to take it from her that practically he was afraidwhether afraid to

protest falsely enough, or only afraid of what might be eventually disagreeable in a compromised alliance,

being a minor question. She believed she made out besides, wonderful girl, that he had never quite expected

to have to protest about anything beyond his natural conveniencemore, in fine, than his disposition and

habits, his education as well, his personal moyens, in short, permitted. His predicament was therefore one he

couldn't like, and also one she willingly would have spared him hadn't he brought it on himself. No man, she

was quite aware, could enjoy thus having it from her that he wasn't good for what she would have called her

reality. It wouldn't have taken much more to enable her positively to make out in him that he was virtually

capable of hintinghad his innermost feeling spokenat the propriety rather, in his interest, of some cutting

down, some dressing up, of the offensive real. He would meet that halfway, but the real must also meet HIM.

Milly's sense of it for herself, which was so conspicuously, so financially supported, couldn't, or wouldn't, so

accommodate him, and the perception of that fairly showed in his face after a moment like the smart of a

blow. It had marked the one minute during which he could again be touching to her. By the time he had tried

By this time she had turned from their window to make a diversion, had walked him through other rooms,

appealing again to the inner charm of the (159) place, going even so far for that purpose as to point afresh her

independent moral, to repeat that if one only had such a house for one's own and loved it and cherished it

enough, it would pay one back in kind, would close one in from harm. He quite grasped for the quarter of an

hour the perch she held out to himgrasped it with one hand, that is, while she felt him attached to his own

clue with the other; he was by no means either so sore or so stupid, to do him all justice, as not to be able to

behave more or less as if nothing had happened. It was one of his merits, to which she did justice too, that

both his native and his acquired notion of behaviour rested on the general assumption that nothingnothing

to make a deadly difference for himever COULD happen. It was, socially, a working view like another,

and it saw them easily enough through the greater part of the rest of their adventure. Downstairs again,

however, with the limit of his stay in sight, the sign of his smarting, when all was said, reappeared for

herbreaking out moreover, with an effect of strangeness, in another quite possibly sincere allusion to her

state of health. He might for that matter have been seeing what he could do in the way of making it a

grievance that she should snub him for a charity, on his own part, exquisitely roused. "It's true, you know, all

the same, and I don't care a straw for your trying to freeze one up." He seemed to show her, poor man,

bravely, how little he cared. "Everybody knows affection often makes things out when indifference doesn't

"Are you sure you've got it right?" the girl smiled. (160) "I thought rather that affection was supposed to be

"And are my extremely private worries, my entirely domestic complications, which I'm ashamed to have

"Yes, for those who care for youas every one does. Everything about you is a beauty. Besides which I

don't believe," he declared, "in the seriousness of what you tell me. It's too absurd you should have ANY

trouble about which something can't be done. If you can't get the right thing, who CAN, in all the world, I

should like to know? You're the first young woman of your time. I mean what I say." He looked, to do him

justice, quite as if he did; not ardent, but clearsimply so competent, in such a position, to compare, that his

quiet assertion had the force not so much perhaps of a tribute as of a warrant. "We're all in love with you. I'll

put it that way, dropping any claim of my own, if you can bear it better. I speak as one of the lot. You weren't

born simply to torment usyou were born to make us happy. Therefore you must listen to us."

She shook her head with her slowness, but this time with all her mildness. "No, I mustn't listen to youthat's

just what I mustn't do. The reason is, please, that it simply kills me. I must be as attached to you as you will,

since you give that lovely account of yourselves. I give you in return the fullest possible belief of what it

would be" (161) And she pulled up a little. "I give and give and givethere you are; stick to me as close

as you like and see if I don't. Only I can't listen or receive or acceptI can't AGREE. I can't make a bargain.

I can't really. You must believe that from me. It's all I've wanted to say to you, and why should it spoil

He let her question fallthough clearly, it might have seemed, because, for reasons or for none, there was so

much that WAS spoiled. "You want somebody of your own." He came back, whether in good faith or in bad,

to that; and it made her repeat her headshake. He kept it up as if his faith were of the best. "You want

She was to wonder afterwards if she hadn't been at this juncture on the point of saying something emphatic

and vulgar"Well, I don't at all events want YOU!" What somehow happened, nevertheless, the pity of it

being greater than the irritationthe sadness, to her vivid sense, of his being so painfully astray, wandering

in a desert in which there was nothing to nourish himwas that his error amounted to positive wrongdoing.

She was moreover so acquainted with quite another sphere of usefulness for him that her having suffered him

to insist almost convicted her of indelicacy. Why hadn't she stopped him off with her first impression of his

purpose? She could do so now only by the allusion she had been wishing not to make. "Do you know I don't

think you're doing very right?and as a thing quite apart, I mean, from my listening to you. That's not right

(162) eitherexcept that I'm NOT listening. You oughtn't to have come to Venice to see MEand in fact

you've not come, and you mustn't behave as if you had. You've much older friends than I, and ever so much

better. Really, if you've come at all, you can only have comeproperly, and if I may say so honourablyfor

When once she had said it he took it, oddly enough, as if he had been more or less expecting it. Still, he

looked at her very hard, and they had a moment of this during which neither pronounced a name, each

apparently determined that the other should. It was Milly's fine coercion, in the event, that was the stronger.

It might have been difficult to make out that she smiled. "Mrs. Lowder." He did make out something, and

then fairly coloured for its attestation of his comparative simplicity. "I call HER on the whole the best. I can't

Still with his eyes on her he turned it over. "Do you want me to marry Mrs. Lowder?"

At which it seemed to her that it was he who was almost vulgar! But she wouldn't in any way have that. "You

know, Lord Mark, what I mean. One isn't in the least turning you out into the cold world. There's no cold

world for you at all, I think," she went on; "nothing but a very warm and watchful and expectant world that's

He never budged, but they were standing on the polished concrete and he had within a few minutes (163)

"Mrs. Lowder wants itI do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and she understands moreover that you know

Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn't obscure to her, on her side, that it was a

comfort to deal with a gentleman. "It's ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what's the

Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. "Because she's the handsomest and cleverest and most

charming creature I ever saw, and because if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as it is." It

"Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can't further the case of ALL."

"Ah," she went on, "I know about 'people.' If the case of one's bad, the case of another's good. I don't see

what you have to fear from any one else," she said, "save through your being foolish, this way, about ME."

So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of what she didn't see. "Is it your

ideasince we're talking of these things in these waysthat the young lady you describe in such superlative

"Well, Lord Mark, try. She IS a great person. But don't be humble." She was almost gay.

It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. "But don't you really KNOW?"

As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence (164) she could pretend to, it made her of course

wish to be fair. "I 'know,' yes, that a particular person's very much in love with her."

"Then you must know by the same token that she's very much in love with a particular person."

"Ah I beg your pardon!"and Milly quite flushed at having so crude a blunder imputed to her. "You're

"As sure as one can be"and Milly's manner could match it"when one has every assurance. I speak on the

"Oh I thought you were just now saying," he laughed, "that everything about her's so good."

"Good for you"she was perfectly clear. "For you," she went on, "let her authority be the best. She doesn't

believe what you mention, and you must know yourself how little she makes of it. So you can take it from

"Of no one at all." Then, with her intensity, she went on. "She has given me her word for it."

(165) It made Milly, on her side, starethough perhaps partly but with the instinct of gaining time for the

consciousness that she was already a little further "in" than she had designed. "Why, Lord Mark, what should

Well, it threw her on her defencea defence that she felt, however, especially as of Kate. "We're very

intimate," she said in a moment; "so that, without prying into each other's affairs, she naturally tells me

Lord Mark smiled as at a lame conclusion. "You mean then she made you of her own movement the

Milly thought again, though with hindrance rather than help in her sense of the way their eyes now metmet

as for their each seeing in the other more than either said. What she most felt that she herself saw was the

strange disposition on her companion's part to disparage Kate's veracity. She could be only concerned to

Milly didn't quite see why he should so catechise her; but she met it again for Kate. "She left me in no doubt

At this Lord Mark did look at her, though he continued to smile. "And thereby in no doubt of YOUR being

too?" It was as if as soon as he had said it, (166) however, he felt it as something of a mistake, and she

couldn't herself have told by what queer glare at him she had instantly signified that. He at any rate gave her

glare no time to act further; he fell back on the spot, and with a light enough movement, within his rights.

"That's all very well, but why in the world, dear lady, should she be swearing to you?"

She had to take this "dear lady" as applying to herself; which disconcerted her when he might now so

gracefully have used it for the aspersed Kate. Once more it came to her that she must claim her own part of

"0h," said Lord Mark, who for the moment looked as if that might have stood rather for an absence of such

rigours. He was going, however, as if he had in a manner, at the last, got more or less what he wanted. Milly

felt, while he addressed his next few words to leavetaking, that she had given rather more than she intended

or than she should be able, when once more getting herself into hand, theoretically to defend. Strange enough

in fact that he had had from her, about herselfand, under the searching spell of the place, infinitely

straightwhat no one else had had: neither Kate, nor Aunt Maud, nor Merton Densher, nor Susan Shepherd.

He had made her within a minute, in particular, she was aware, lose her presence of mind, and she now

wished he would take himself off, so that she might either recover it or bear the loss better in solitude. If he

paused, however, she almost at the same time saw, it was because of his watching the approach, from the end

of the sala, of (167) one of the gondoliers, who, whatever excursions were appointed for the party with the

attendance of the others, always, as the most decorative, most sashed and starched, remained at the palace on

the theory that she might whimsically want himwhich she never, in her caged freedom, had yet done.

Brown Pasquale, slipping in white shoes over the marble and suggesting to her perpetually charmed vision

she could scarce say what, either a mild Hindoo, too noiseless almost for her nerves, or simply a barefooted

seaman on the deck of a shipPasquale offered to sight a small salver, which he obsequiously held out to

her with its burden of a visitingcard. Lord Markand as if also for admiration of himdelayed his

departure to let her receive it; on which she read it with the instant effect of another blow to her presence of

mind. This precarious quantity was indeed now so gone that even for dealing with Pasquale she had to do her

best to conceal its disappearance. The effort was made, none the less, by the time she had asked if the

gentleman were below and had taken in the fact that he had come up. He had followed the gondolier and was

"I'll see him with pleasure." To which she added for her companion, while Pasquale went off: "Mr. Merton

"0h!" said Lord Markin a manner that, making it resound through the great cool hall, might have carried it

even to Densher's car as a judgement of his identity heard and noted once before.

Densher became aware, afresh, that he disliked his hoteland all the more promptly that he had had

occasion of old to make the same discrimination. The establishment, choked at that season with the polyglot

herd, cockneys of all climes, mainly German, mainly American, mainly English, it appeared as the

corresponding sensitive nerve was touched, sounded loud and not sweet, sounded anything and everything

but Italian, but Venetian. The Venetian was all a dialect, he knew; yet it was pure Attic beside some of the

dialects at the bustling inn. It made, "abroad," both for his pleasure and his pain that he had to feel at almost

any point how he had been through everything before. He had been three or four times, in Venice, during

other visits, through this pleasant irritation of paddling awayaway from the concert of false notes in the

vulgarised hall, away from the amiable American families and overfed German porters. He had in each case

made terms for a lodging more private and not more costly, and he recalled with tenderness these shabby but

friendly asylums, the windows of which he should easily know again in passing on canal or through campo.

The shabbiest now failed of an appeal to him, but he found himself at the end of fortyeight hours forming

views in respect to a small independent quartiere, far down the Grand Canal, which he had once occupied for

a month with (172) a sense of pomp and circumstance and yet also with a growth of initiation into the

homelier Venetian mysteries. The humour of those days came back to him for an hour, and what further

befell in this interval, to be brief, was that, emerging on a traghetto in sight of the recognised house, he made

out on the green shutters of his old, of his young windows the strips of white pasted paper that figure in

Venice as an invitation to tenants. This was in the course of his very first walk apart, a walk replete with

impressions to which he responded with force. He had been almost without cessation, since his arrival, at

Palazzo Leporelli, where, as happened, a turn of bad weather on the second day had kept the whole party

continuously at home. The episode had passed for him like a series of hours in a museum, though without the

fatigue of that; and it had also resembled something that he was still, with a stirred imagination, to find a

name for. He might have been looking for the name while he gave himself up, subsequently, to the

ramblehe saw that even after years he couldn't lose his waycrowned with his stare across the water at

He was to dine at the palace in an hour or two, and he had lunched there, at an early luncheon, that morning.

He had then been out with the three ladies, the three being Mrs. Lowder, Mrs. Stringham and Kate, and had

kept afloat with them, under a sufficient Venetian spell, until Aunt Maud had directed him to leave them and

return to Miss Theale. Of two circumstances connected with this disposition of his person he was even now

not unmindful; the first being (173) that the lady of Lancaster Gate had addressed him with high publicity and

as if expressing equally the sense of her companions, who had not spoken, but who might have been

takenyes, Susan Shepherd quite equally with Katefor inscrutable parties to her plan. What he could as

little contrive to forget was that he had, before the two others, as it struck himthat was to say especially

before Katedone exactly as he was bidden; gathered himself up without a protest and retraced his way to

the palace. Present with him still was the question of whether he looked a fool for it, of whether the

awkwardness he felt as the gondola rocked with the business of his leaving itthey could but make, in

submission, for a landingplace that was none of the besthad furnished his friends with such entertainment

as was to cause them, behind his back, to exchange intelligent smiles. He had found Milly Theale twenty

minutes later alone, and he had sat with her till the others returned to tea. The strange part of this was that it

had been very easy, extraordinarily easy. He knew it for strange only when he was away from her, because

when he was away from her he was in contact with particular things that made it so. At the time, in her

presence, it was as simple as sitting with his sister might have been, and not, if the point were urged, very

much more thrilling. He continued to see her as he had first seen herthat remained ineffaceably behind.

Mrs. Lowder, Susan Shepherd, his own Kate, might, each in proportion, see her as a princess, as an angel, as

a star, but for himself, luckily, she hadn't as yet complications to any point of discomfort: (174) the princess,

the angel, the star, were muffled over, ever so lightly and brightly, with the little American girl who had been

kind to him in New York and to whom certainlythough without making too much of it for either of

themhe was perfectly willing to be kind in return. She appreciated his coming in on purpose, but there was

nothing in thatfrom the moment she was always at homethat they couldn't easily keep up. The only note

the least bit high that had even yet sounded between them was this admission on her part that she found it

best to remain within. She wouldn't let him call it keeping quiet, for she insisted that her palacewith all its

romance and art and historyhad set up round her a whirlwind of suggestion that never dropped for an hour.

It wasn't therefore, within such walls, confinement, it was the freedom of all the centuries: in respect to which

Densher granted goodhumouredly that they were then blown together, she and he, as much as she liked,

Kate had found on the present occasion a moment to say to him that he suggested a clever cousin calling on a

cousin afflicted, and bored for his pains; and though he denied on the spot the "bored" he could so far see it as

an impression he might make that he wondered if the same image wouldn't have occurred to Milly. As soon

as Kate appeared again the difference came upthe oddity, as he then instantly felt it, of his having sunk so

deep. It was sinking because it was all doing what Kate had conceived for him; it wasn't in the least

doingand that had been his notion of his lifeanything he himself had conceived. (175) The difference,

accordingly, renewed, sharp, sore, was the irritant under which he had quitted the palace and under which he

was to make the best of the business of again dining there. He said to himself that he must make the best of

everything; that was in his mind, at the traghetto, even while, with his preoccupation about changing quarters,

he studied, across the canal, the look of his former abode. It had done for the past, would it do for the

present? would it play in any manner into the general necessity of which he was conscious? That necessity of

making the best was the instinctas he indeed himself knewof a man somehow aware that if he let go at

one place he should let go everywhere. If he took off his hand, the hand that at least helped to hold it together,

the whole queer fabric that built him in would fall away in a minute and admit the light. It was really a matter

of nerves; it was exactly because he was nervous that he COULD go straight; yet if that condition should

increase he must surely go wild. He was walking in short on a high ridge, steep down on either side, where

the proprietiesonce he could face at all remaining therereduced themselves to his keeping his head. It

was Kate who had so perched him, and there came up for him at moments, as he found himself planting one

foot exactly before another, a sensible sharpness of irony as to her management of him. It wasn't that she had

put him in dangerto be in real danger with her would have had another quality. There glowed for him in

fact a kind of rage at what he wasn't having; an exasperation, a resentment, begotten truly by the very

impatience of desire, in respect (176) to his postponed and relegated, his so extremely manipulated state. It

was beautifully done of her, but what was the real meaning of it unless that he was perpetually bent to her

will? His idea from the first, from the very first of his knowing her, had been to be, as the French called it,

bon prince with her, mindful of the good humour and generosity, the contempt, in the matter of confidence,

for small outlays and small savings, that belonged to the man who wasn't generally afraid. There were things

enough, goodness knewfor it was the moral of his plightthat he couldn't afford; but what had had a

charm for him if not the notion of living handsomely, to make up for it, in another way? of not at all events

reading the romance of his existence in a cheap edition. All he had originally felt in her came back to him,

was indeed actually as present as everhow he had admired and envied what he called to himself her pure

talent for life, as distinguished from his own, a poor weak thing of the occasion, amateurishly patched up;

only it irritated him the more that this was exactly what was now, ever so characteristically, standing out in

It was thanks to her pure talent for life, verily, that he was just where he was and that he was above all just

HOW he was. The proof of a decent reaction in him against so much passivity was, with no great richness,

that he at least knewknew, that is, how he was, and how little he liked it as a thing accepted in mere

helplessness. He was, for the moment, wistfulthat above all described it; that was so large a part of the

force that, as the autumn afternoon closed in, kept him, on his traghetto, positively throbbing with (177) his

question. His question connected itself, even while he stood, with his special smothered soreness, his sense

almost of shame; and the soreness and the shame were less as he let himself, with the help of the conditions

about him, regard it as serious. It was born, for that matter, partly of the conditions, those conditions that Kate

had so almost insolently braved, had been willing, without a pang, to see him ridiculouslyridiculously so

far as just complacentlyexposed to. How little it COULD be complacently he was to feel with the last

thoroughness before he had moved from his point of vantage. His question, as we have called it, was the

interesting question of whether he had really no will left. How could he knowthat was the pointwithout

putting the matter to the test? It had been right to be bon prince, and the joy, something of the pride, of

having lived, in spirit, handsomely, was even now compatible with the impulse to look into their account; but

he held his breath a little as it came home to him with supreme sharpness that, whereas he had done

absolutely everything that Kate had wanted, she had done nothing whatever that he had. So it was in fine that

his idea of the test by which he must try that possibility kept referring itself, in the warm early dusk, the

approach of the Southern night"conditions" these, such as we just spoke ofto the glimmer, more and

more ghostly as the light failed, of the little white papers on his old green shutters. By the time he looked at

his watch he had been for a quarter of an hour at this post of observation and reflexion; but by the time he

walked away again he had found his answer to the idea that had grown so importunate. (178) Since a proof of

his will was wanted it was indeed very exactly in wait for himit lurked there on the other side of the Canal.

A ferryman at the little pier had from time to time accosted him; but it was a part of the play of his

nervousness to turn his back on that facility. He would go over, but he walked, very quickly, round and

round, crossing finally by the Rialto. The rooms, in the event, were unoccupied; the ancient padrona was

there with her smile all a radiance but her recognition all a fable; the ancient rickety objects too, refined in

their shabbiness, amiable in their decay, as to which, on his side, demonstrations were tenderly veracious; so

He was amusing about it that evening at dinnerin spite of an odd first impulse, which at the palace quite

melted away, to treat it merely as matter for his own satisfaction. This need, this propriety, he had taken for

granted even up to the moment of suddenly perceiving, in the course of talk, that the incident would minister

to innocent gaiety. Such was quite its effect, with the aid of his picturean evocation of the quaint, of the

humblest rococo, of a Venetian interior in the true old note. He made the point for his hostess that her own

high chambers, though they were a thousand grand things, weren't really this; made it in fact with such

success that she presently declared it his plain duty to invite her on some near day to tea. She had expressed

as yethe could feel it as felt among them allno such clear wish to go anywhere, not even to make an

effort for a parish feast, or an autumn sunset, nor to descend her staircase for Titian or (179) Gianbellini. It

was constantly Densher's view that, as between himself and Kate, things were understood without saying, so

that he could catch in her, as she but too freely could in him, innumerable signs of it, the whole soft breath of

consciousness meeting and promoting consciousness. This view was so far justified tonight as that Milly's

offer to him of her company was to his sense taken up by Kate in spite of her doing nothing to show it. It fell

in so perfectly with what she had desired and foretold that she wasand this was what most struck

himsufficiently gratified and blinded by it not to know, from the false quality of his response, from his

tone and his very look, which for an instant instinctively sought her own, that he had answered inevitably,

almost shamelessly, in a mere timegaining sense. It gave him on the spot, her failure of perception, almost a

beginning of the advantage he had been planning forthat is at least if she too were not darkly dishonest.

She might, he was not unaware, have made out, from some deep part of her, the bearing, in respect to herself,

of the little fact he had announced; for she was after all capable of that, capable of guessing and yet of

simultaneously hiding her guess. It wound him up a turn or two further, none the less, to impute to her now a

weakness of vision by which he could himself feel the stronger. Whatever apprehension of his motive in

shifting his abode might have brushed her with its wings, she at all events certainly didn't guess that he was

giving their friend a hollow promise. That was what she had herself imposed on him; there had been in the

prospect from the first a definite particular point at which hollowness, to call (180) it by its least

compromising name, would have to begin. Therefore its hour had now charmingly sounded.

Whatever in life he had recovered his old rooms for, he had not recovered them to receive Milly Theale:

which made no more difference in his expression of happy readiness than if he had beenjust what he was

trying not to befully hardened and fully base. So rapid in fact was the rhythm of his inward drama that the

quick vision of impossibility produced in him by his hostess's direct and unexpected appeal had the effect,

slightly sinister, of positively scaring him. It gave him a measure of the intensity, the reality of his now

mature motive. It prompted in him certainly no quarrel with these things, but it made them as vivid as if they

already flushed with success. It was before the flush of success that his heart beat almost to dread. The dread

was but the dread of the happiness to be compassed; only that was in itself a symptom. That a visit from

Milly should, in this projection of necessities, strike him as of the last incongruity, quite as a hateful idea, and

above all as spoiling, should one put it grossly, his gamethe adoption of such a view might of course have

an identity with one of those numerous ways of being a fool that seemed so to abound for him. It would

remain none the less the way to which he should be in advance most reconciled. His mature motive, as to

which he allowed himself no grain of illusion, had thus in an hour taken imaginative possession of the place:

that precisely was how he saw it seated there, already unpacked and settled, for Milly's innocence, for Milly's

beauty, no matter how short a time, (181) to be housed with. There were things she would never recognise,

never feel, never catch in the air; but this made no difference in the fact that her brushing against them would

do nobody any good. The discrimination and the scruple were for HIM. So he felt all the parts of the case

together, while Kate showed admirably as feeling none of them. Of course, howeverwhen hadn't it to be

That came up in all connexions during the rest of these first days; came up in especial under pressure of the

fact that each time our plighted pair snatched, in its passage, at the good fortune of half an hour together, they

were doomedthough Densher felt it as all by HIS actto spend a part of the rare occasion in wonder at

their luck and in study of its queer character. This was the case after he might be supposed to have got, in a

manner, used to it; it was the case after the girlready always, as we say, with the last wordhad given him

the benefit of her righting of every wrong appearance, a support familiar to him now in reference to other

phases. It was still the case after he possibly might, with a little imagination, as she freely insisted, have made

out, by the visible working of the crisis, what idea on Mrs. Lowder's part had determined it. Such as the idea

wasand that it suited Kate's own book she openly professedhe had only to see how things were turning

out to feel it strikingly justified. Densher's reply to all this vividness was that of course Aunt Maud's

intervention hadn't been occult, even for HIS vividness, from the moment she had written him, with

characteristic concentration, that if (182) he should see his way to come to Venice for a fortnight she should

engage he would find it no blunder. It took Aunt Maud really to do such things in such ways; just as it took

him, he was ready to confess, to do such others as he must now strike them alldidn't he?as committed

to. [sic] Mrs. Lowder's admonition had been of course a direct reference to what she had said to him at

Lancaster Gate before his departure the night Milly had failed them through illness; only it had at least

matched that remarkable outbreak in respect to the quantity of good nature it attributed to him. The young

man's discussions of his situationwhich were confined to Kate; he had none with Aunt Maud

herselfsuffered a little, it may be divined, by the sense that he couldn't put everything off, as he privately

expressed it, on other people. His ears, in solitude, were apt to burn with the reflexion that Mrs. Lowder had

simply tested him, seen him as he was and made out what could be done with him. She had had but to whistle

for him and he had come. If she had taken for granted his good nature she was as justified as Kate declared.

This awkwardness of his conscience, both in respect to his general plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity,

within limits, to be a mode of life like anothercertainly better than some, and particularly in respect to such

confusion as might reign about what he had really come forthis inward ache was not wholly dispelled by

the style, charming as that was, of Kate's poetic versions. Even the high wonder and delight of Kate couldn't

set him right with himself when there was something quite distinct from these things that kept him wrong.

(183) In default of being right with himself he had meanwhile, for one thing, the interest of seeingand

quite for the first time in his lifewhether, on a given occasion, that might be quite so necessary to

happiness as was commonly assumed and as he had up to this moment never doubted. He was engaged

distinctly in an adventurehe who had never thought himself cut out for them, and it fairly helped him that

he was able at moments to say to himself that he mustn't fall below it. At his hotel, alone, by night, or in the

course of the few late strolls he was finding time to take through dusky labyrinthine alleys and empty campi,

overhung with mouldering palaces, where he paused in disgust at his want of ease and where the sound of a

rare footstep on the enclosed pavement was like that of a retarded dancer in a banquethall desertedduring

these interludes he entertained cold views, even to the point, at moments, on the principle that the shortest

follies are the best, of thinking of immediate departure as not only possible but as indicated. He had however

only to cross again the threshold of Palazzo Leporelli to see all the elements of the business compose, as

painters called it, differently. It began to strike him then that departure wouldn't curtail, but would signally

coarsen his folly, and that above all, as he hadn't really "begun" anything, had only submitted, consented, but

too generously indulged and condoned the beginnings of others, he had no call to treat himself with

superstitious rigour. The single thing that was clear in complications was that, whatever happened, one was to

behave as a gentlemanto which was added indeed the perhaps slightly less shining (184) truth that

complications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study of the question of how a gentleman

would behave. This question, I hasten to add, was not in the last resort Densher's greatest worry. Three

women were looking to him at once, and, though such a predicament could never be, from the point of view

of facility, quite the ideal, it yet had, thank goodness, its immediate workable law. The law was not to be a

brutein return for amiabilities. He hadn't come all the way out from England to be a brute. He hadn't

thought of what it might give him to have a fortnight, however handicapped, with Kate in Venice, to be a

brute. He hadn't treated Mrs. Lowder as if in responding to her suggestion he had understood herhe hadn't

done that either to be a brute. And what he had prepared least of all for such an anticlimax was the prompt

and inevitable, the achieved surrenderAS a gentleman, oh that indubitably!to the unexpected impression

made by poor pale exquisite Milly as the mistress of a grand old palace and the dispenser of an hospitality

This spectacle had for him an eloquence, an authority, a felicityhe scarce knew by what strange name to

call itfor which he said to himself that he had not consciously bargained. Her welcome, her frankness,

sweetness, sadness, brightness, her disconcerting poetry, as he made shift at moments to call it, helped as it

was by the beauty of her whole setting and by the perception at the same time, on the observer's part, that this

element gained from (185) her, in a manner, for effect and harmony, as much as it gaveher whole attitude

had, to his imagination, meanings that hung about it, waiting upon her, hovering, dropping and quavering

forth again, like vague faint snatches, mere ghosts of sound, of oldfashioned melancholy music. It was

positively well for him, he had his times of reflecting, that he couldn't put it off on Kate and Mrs. Lowder, as

a gentleman so conspicuously wouldn't, thatwell, that he had been rather taken in by not having known in

advance! There had been now five days of it all without his risking even to Kate alone any hint of what he

ought to have known and of what in particular therefore had taken him in. The truth was doubtless that really,

when it came to any free handling and naming of things, they were living together, the five of them, in an air

in which an ugly effect of "blurting out" might easily be produced. He came back with his friend on each

occasion to the blest miracle of renewed propinquity, which had a double virtue in that favouring air. He

breathed on it as if he could scarcely believe it, yet the time had passed, in spite of this privilege, without his

quite committing himself, for her ear, to any such comment on Milly's high style and state as would have

corresponded with the amount of recognition it had produced in him. Behind everything for him was his

renewed remembrance, which had fairly become a habit, that he had been the first to know her. This was

what they had all insisted on, in her absence, that day at Mrs. Lowder's; and this was in especial what had

made him feel its influence on his immediately paying her a second (186) visit. Its influence had been all

there, been in the highhung, rumbling carriage with them, from the moment she took him to drive, covering

them in together as if it had been a rug of softest silk. It had worked as a clear connexion with something

lodged in the past, something already their own. He had more than once recalled how he had said to himself

even at that moment, at some point in the drive, that he was not THERE, not just as he was in so doing it,

through Kate and Kate's idea, but through Milly and Milly's own, and through himself and HIS own,

unmistakeablyas well as through the little facts, whatever they had amounted to, of his time in New York.

There was at last, with everything that made for it, an occasion when he got from Kate, on what she now

spoke of as his eternal refrain, an answer of which he was to measure afterwards the precipitating effect. His

eternal refrain was the way he came back to the riddle of Mrs. Lowder's view of her profita view so hard to

reconcile with the chances she gave them to meet. Impatiently, at this, the girl denied the chances, wanting to

know from him, with a fine irony that smote him rather straight, whether he felt their opportunities as

anything so grand. He looked at her deep in the eyes when she had sounded this note; it was the least he could

let her off with for having made him visibly flush. For some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped out of

her tone, which became sweet and sincere. " 'Meet,' my dear man," she expressively echoed; "does it strike

"On the contrarythey're starvation diet. All I mean isand it's all I've meant from the day I camethat

"Exactly soand it's what I don't understand that keeps me so fascinated with the question. SHE gives me no

(188) "She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my reflexions about you. There's every

appearance for her," Kate went on, "that what she had made her mind up to as possible IS possible; that what

she had thought more likely than not to happen IS happening. The very essence of her, as you surely by this

time have made out for yourself, is that when she adopts a view shewell, to her own sense, really brings

the thing about, fairly terrorises with her view any other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who

represent that. I've often thought success comes to her"Kate continued to study the phenomenon"by the

spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not to prove the right one. One has seen it so again and again, in the

Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the largest response. "Ah my dear child, if you can explain I of

course needn't not 'understand.' I'm condemned to that," he on his side presently explained, "only when

understanding fails." He took a moment; then he pursued: "Does she think she terrorises US?" To which he

added while, without immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does she believe anything so stiff

as that you've really changed about me?" He knew now that he was probing the girl deepsomething told

him so; but that was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that you dislike me?"

To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong. "You could yourself easily put it there!"

(189) "No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask that of you."

There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist the impulse to take up. "I'm perfectly

justified in what I've asked," she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes again intimately

"It doesn't practically showwhich is enough for Aunt Maud. You're wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate

said; "and if you really want to know whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectly that I

see it coming." With which, by a quick transition, as if she had settled the case, she asked him the hour.

"Oh only twelveten"he had looked at his watch. "We've taken but thirteen minutes; we've time yet."

Densher, from where they had been standing, measured the long reach of the Square. "They're still in their

This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, a

smoothfloored, blueroofed chamber of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the middle,

but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse after leaving the great mosquelike (190)

church. It rose now, domed and pinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast empty

space, enclosed by its arcades, to which at that hour movement and traffic were mostly confined. Venice was

at breakfast, the Venice of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for the parties of importunate

pigeons picking up the crumbs of perpetual feasts, their prospect was clear and they could see their

companions hadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorged by the laceshop, in one of

the loggie, where, shortly before, they had left them for a lookinthe expression was artfully

Densher'sat Saint Mark's. Their morning had happened to take such a turn as brought this chance to the

surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, hadn't been an overstatement of their general opportunity. The

worst that could be said of their general opportunity was that it was essentially in presencein presence of

every one; every one consisting at this juncture, in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and

Milly. But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could become special was furnished precisely by

this view of the compatibility of their comfort with a certain amount of lingering. The others had assented to

their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the least the others could do. What had really helped them this

morning was the fact that, on his turning up, as he always called it, at the palace, Milly had not, as before,

been able to present herself. Custom and use had hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day

after dayeight days had (191) been now so conveniently markedtheir friends, Milly's and his,

conveniently dispersed and left him to sit with her till luncheon. Such was the perfect operation of the scheme

on which he had been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly there was that amount of

justification for Kate's vision of success. He HAD, for Mrs. Lowderhe couldn't help it while sitting

therethe air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate sufficiently deep to be alarming.

He had failed their young hostess each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only today that she

That had made a mark, all round; the mark was in the way in which, gathered in the room of state, with the

place, from the right time, all bright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent, theythe

rest of themsimply looked at each other. It was luridlurid, in all probability, for each of them

privatelythat they had uttered no common regrets. It was strange for our young man above all that, if the

poor girl was indisposed to THAT degree, the hush of gravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort,

should be the most the casethat of the guestscould permit itself. The hush, for that matter, continued

after the party of four had gone down to the gondola and taken their places in it. Milly had sent them word

that she hoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and this indeed had produced a second remarkable

look, a look as of their knowing, one quite as well as the other, what such a message meant as provision for

the alternative beguilement (192) of Densher. She wished not to have spoiled his morning, and he had

therefore, in civility, to take it as pleasantly patched up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs.

Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their friend better than any of them. She knew her so well that

she knew herself as acting in exquisite compliance with conditions comparatively obscure, approximately

awful to them, by not thinking it necessary to stay at home. She had corrected that element of the perfunctory

which was the slight fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had invented a preference for Mrs. Lowder

and herself; she had remembered the fond dreams of the visitation of lace that had hitherto always been

brushed away by accidents, and it had come up as well for her that Kate had, the day before, spoken of the

part played by fatality in her own failure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher's sense

of Susan Shepherd's conscious intervention had by this time a corner of his mind all to itself; something that

had begun for them at Lancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action, ineffably discreet,

had at all events a way of affecting him as for the most part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own

interest. They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were too many persons, at least three, and

too many things, between them; but meanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. He

scarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour when it would be a service to do so, that

she had all the while understood him. He even had a presentiment (193) of a juncture at which the

understanding of every one else would fail and this deep little person's alone survive.

Such was today, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, that hung about our young friends; these had

been the small accidents and quiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in some sort

enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they stayed their course again; the splendid Square,

which had so notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than any equal area in Europe,

furnished them, in their remoteness from earshot, with solitude and security. It was as if, being in possession,

they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence of that, each had an apprehension of

what the other wanted to say. It was most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated on their

lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for their cars was the flutter of the doves, begot in the heart

of each a fear. There might have been a betrayal of that in the way Densher broke the silence resting on her

last words. "What did you mean just now that I can do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if

you will, I don't see, from the moment I can't lie to her, what else there IS but lying."

Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome and sincere to her about Millywhom you

honestly like so much. That wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You don't, you

know, say much about her." (194) And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know,

"And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?" Then as the girl, for answer, only seemed to bethink

His look, while their eyes met, marked him as disposed to hear more about them; but there was something in

her own, apparently, that defeated the opportunity. He questioned her in a moment on a different matter,

which had been in his mind a week, yet in respect to which he had had no chance so good as this. "Do you

happen to know then, as such wonderful things pass between you, what she makes of the incident, the other

day, of Lord Mark's so very superficial visit?his having spent here, as I gather, but the two or three hours

necessary for seeing our friend and yet taken no time at all, since he went off by the same night's train, for

seeing any one else. What can she make of his not having waited to see YOU, or to see herselfwith all he

"Oh of course," said Kate, "she understands. He came to make Milly his offer of marriagehe came for

nothing but that. As Milly wholly declined it his business was for the time at an end. He couldn't quite on the

Kate had looked surprised that, as a matter of taste on such an adventurer's part, Densher shouldn't see it. But

Densher was lost in another thought. "Do you mean that when, turning up myself, I found him (195) leaving

"What sort of a blundering weathercock then IS he?" the young man went on in his wonder.

"Oh don't make too little of him!" Kate smiled. "Do you pretend that Milly didn't tell you?"

He gave her another long look. "Why, since she has refused him, should my opinion of Lord Mark show it?

I'm not obliged, however, to think well of him for such treatment of the other persons I've mentioned, and I

"She doesn'tbut she doesn't care," Kate explained. "You know perfectly the terms on which lots of London

people live together even when they're supposed to live very well. He's not committed to ushe was having

"And come back afterwards, with confidence in a welcome, to the victim of his inconstancy?"

Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought of as a victim. "Oh but he has HAD his try at ME. So it's all

She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wondered if pure historic truth were (196) to

suffer a slight strain. But she dropped on the right side. "I haven't let it come to that. I've been too

discouraging. Aunt Maud," she went onnow as lucid as ever"considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge

from him in respect to me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him. As the case

"It's still his merit, my dear, that he's Lord Mark. He's just what he was, and what he knew he was. It's not for

"I'm glad," she smiled, "that you can still be jealous." But before he could take it up she had more to say. "I

don't see why it need puzzle you that Milly's so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud more than anything else can

displease her. What does she see but that Milly herself recognises her situation with you as too precious to be

spoiled? Such a recognition as that can't but seem to her to involve in some degree your own recognition. Out

of which she therefore gets it that the more you have for Milly the less you have for me."

There were moments againwe know that from the first they had been numerouswhen he felt with a

strange mixed passion the mastery of her mere way of putting things. There was something in it that bent him

at once to conviction and to reaction. And this effect, however it be named, now broke into his (197) tone.

It wasn't ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may really consider she doesn't. So

"Well," he presently said, "I take from you what you give me, and I suppose that, to be consistentto stand

on my feet where I do stand at allI ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems to me,

more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. It seems to me more than anything else what

you expect of me. It never seems to me somehow what I may expect of YOU. There's so much you DON'T

She considered with surprise. "Am I not doing THIS for you? Do you call this nothing?"

They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. "I thought you exactly contend that, with your

It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that he had seen her at a loss. He judged the

next instant moreover that she didn't like it (198) either the being so or the being seen, for she soon spoke

with an impatience that showed her as wounded; an appearance that produced in himself, he no less quickly

The appeal from danger touched him, but all to make him, as he would have said, worse. "What I wish is to

be loved. How can I feel at this rate that I AM?" Oh she understood him, for all she might so bravely disguise

it, and that made him feel straighter than if she hadn't. Deep, always, was his sense of life with herdeep as

it had been from the moment of those signs of life that in the dusky London of two winters ago they had

originally exchanged. He had never taken her for unguarded, ignorant, weak; and if he put to her a claim for

some intenser faith between them this was because he believed it could reach her and she could meet it. "I

She looked away from him now, and it showed him how she understood. "We ought to be thereI mean

"They WON'T come outnot yet. And I don't care if they do." To which he straightway added, as if to deal

with the charge of selfishness that his words, sounding for himself, struck him as enabling her to make: "Why

not have done with it all and face the music as we are?" It broke from him in perfect sincerity. "Good God, if

It brought her eyes round to him again, and he (199) could see how, after all, somewhere deep within, she felt

his rebellion more sweet than bitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold her an instant.

"We've gone too far," she none the less pulled herself together to reply. "Do you want to kill her?"

He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he had naturally, none the less, to take the look

Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had already risen to his lips. "Rather than lay myself

He knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that what was in the air for him, and

disconcertingly, was not the violence, but much rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her.

They walked on together, and it was for a minute as if their difference had become of a sudden, in all truth, a

splitas if the basis of his departure had been settled. Then, incoherently and still more suddenly, recklessly

moreover, since they now might easily, from under the arcades, be observed, he passed his hand into her arm

with a force that produced for (200) them another pause. "I'll tell any lie you want, any your idea requires, if

She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his uncertainty, a wonder in her being so equal to him. "To my

rooms, which are perfectly possible, and in taking which, the other day, I had you, as you must have felt, in

view. We can arrange itwith two grains of courage. People in our case always arrange it." She listened as

for the good information, and there was support for himsince it was a question of his going step by

stepin the way she took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He had in truth not expected of her that

particular vulgarity, but the absence of it only added the thrill of a deeper reason to his sense of possibilities.

For the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely to SEE her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for

him in all the light of the day and of his admirable merciless meaning. Her mere listening in fact made him

even understand himself as he hadn't yet done. Idea for idea, his own was thus already, and in the germ,

beautiful. "There's nothing for me possible but to feel that I'm not a fool. It's all I have to say, but you must

know what it means. WITH you I can do itI'll go as far as you demand or as you will yourself. Without

She listened so well that she was really listening after he had ceased to speak. He had kept his grasp of her,

drawing her close, and though they had again, (201) for the time, stopped walking, his talkfor others at a

distancemight have been, in the matchless place, that of any impressed tourist to any slightly more

detached companion. On possessing himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that they faced afresh to

Saint Mark's, over the great presence of which his eyes moved while she twiddled her parasol. She now,

however, made a motion that confronted them finally with the opposite end. Then only she spoke"Please

take your hand out of my arm." He understood at once: she had made out in the shade of the gallery the issue

of the others from their place of purchase. So they went to them side by side, and it was all right. The others

had seen them as well and waited for them, complacent enough, under one of the arches. They themselves

toohe argued that Kate would arguelooked perfectly ready, decently patient, properly accommodating.

They themselves suggested nothing worsealways by Kate's systemthan a pair of the children of a

supercivilised age making the best of an awkwardness. They didn't nevertheless hurrythat would overdo it;

so he had time to feel, as it were, what he felt. He felt, ever so distinctlyit was with this he faced Mrs.

Lowderthat he was already in a sense possessed of what he wanted. There was more to comeeverything;

he had by no means, with his companion, had it all out. Yet what he was possessed of was realthe fact that

she hadn't thrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Of this he had had so sore a fear

that its being dispelled was in itself of the nature of bliss. The danger (202) had droppedit was behind him

She was good enough, as it proved, for him to put to her that evening, and with further ground for it, the next

sharpest question that had been on his lips in the morningwhich his other preoccupation had then, to his

consciousness, crowded out. His opportunity was again made, as befell, by his learning from Mrs. Stringham,

on arriving, as usual, with the close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail them again at dinner, but would

to all appearance be able to come down later. He had found Susan Shepherd alone in the great saloon, where

even more candles than their friend's large common allowanceshe grew daily more splendid; they were all

struck with it and chaffed her about itlighted up the pervasive mystery of Style. He had thus five minutes

with the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and Kate appearedminutes illumined indeed to a longer reach than

He had asked that in the wonderment always stirred in him by glimpsesrare as were theseof the inner

truth about the girl. There was of course a question of healthit was in the air, it was in the ground he trod,

in the food he tasted, in the sounds he heard, it was everywhere. But it was everywhere with the effect of a

request to himto his very delicacy, (204) to the common discretion of others as well as his ownthat no

allusion to it should be made. There had practically been none, that morning, on her explained

nonappearancethe absence of it, as we know, quite monstrous and awkward; and this passage with Mrs.

Stringham offered him his first licence to open his eyes. He had gladly enough held them closed; all the more

that his doing so performed for his own spirit a useful function. If he positively wanted not to be brought up

with his nose against Milly's facts, what better proof could he have that his conduct was marked by

straightness? It was perhaps pathetic for her, and for himself was perhaps even ridiculous; but he hadn't even

the amount of curiosity that he would have had about an ordinary friend. He might have shaken himself at

moments to try, for a sort of dry decency, to have it; but that too, it appeared, wouldn't come. In what

therefore was the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feelingsit being so established that he had none

at all. They were all for Kate, without a feather's weight to spare. He was acting for Katenot, by the

deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would

have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been

purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and

his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short tonight of spoiling his little talk with Susan

Shepherd. One glimpseit was as if she had wished to give him that; and it was as if, (205) for himself, on

current terms, he could oblige her by accepting it. She not only permitted, she fairly invited him to open his

eyes. "I'm so glad you're here." It was no answer to his question, but it had for the moment to serve. And the

He smiled at her and presently found himself, as a kind of consequence of communion with her, talking her

"Well"and her raised face shone up at him"that's all I want you to feel about it. If I weren't afraid," she

"Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Besides, I don't, you know, seem to have the chance. You're

He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his fixed smile; which was the more fixed as he felt in these last

words an exact description of his course. It was an odd thing to have come to, but he WAS always with her.

Mrs. Stringham waited. "She has been marvellousthat's what she has been. She IS marvellous. But she's

"Oh then if she's really better!" But he (206) checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it and above

all not to appear engaged to the point of mystification. "We shall miss her the more at dinner."

Susan Shepherd, however, was all there for him. "She's keeping herself. You'll see. You'll not really need to

"Well, it IS lovely, isn't it? I want the whole thing. She's lodged for the first time as she ought, from her type,

to be; and doing itI mean bringing out all the glory of the placemakes her really happy. It's a Veronese

picture, as near as can bewith me as the inevitable dwarf, the small blackamoor, put into a corner of the

foreground for effect. If I only had a hawk or a hound or something of that sort I should do the scene more

honour. The old housekeeper, the woman in charge here, has a big red cockatoo that I might borrow and

perch on my thumb for the evening." These explanations and sundry others Mrs. Stringham gave, though not

all with the result of making him feel that the picture closed him in. What part was there for HIM, with his

attitude that lacked the highest style, in a composition in which everything else would have it? "They won't,

however, be at dinner, the few people she expectsthey come round afterwards from their respective hotels;

and Sir Luke Strett and his niece, the principal ones, will have arrived from London but an hour or two ago.

It's for HIM she has wanted to do somethingto let it begin at once. We shall see more (207) of him,

because she likes him; and I'm so gladshe'll be glad toothat YOU'RE to see him." The good lady, in

connexion with it, was urgent, was almost unnaturally bright. "So I greatly hope!" But her hope fairly lost

He considered a little this appearance, while she let him, he thought, into still more knowledge than she

"Do you mean after dinner?" She meant, he seemed to feel, so much that he could scarce tell where it ended

"Oh that, of course. Why we're to have musicbeautiful instruments and songs; and not Tasso declaimed as

in the guidebooks either. She has arranged itor at least I have. That is Eugenio has. Besides, you're in the

"You'll be the grand young man who surpasses the others and holds up his head and the winecup. What we

hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "is that you'll be faithful to usthat you've not come for a mere foolish few

Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, without comfort, he was conscious, at this

touch, in the artificial repose he had in his anxiety about them but halfmanaged to induce. The way smooth

ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese pictures, talked to plain embarrassed workingmen,

engaged in an unprecedented (208) sacrifice of time and of the opportunity for modest acquisition! The things

they took for granted and the general misery of explaining! He couldn't tell them how he had tried to work,

how it was partly what he had moved into rooms for, only to find himself, almost for the first time in his life,

stricken and sterile; because that would give them a false view of the source of his restlessness, if not of the

degree of it. It would operate, indirectly perhaps, but infallibly, to add to that weight as of expected

performance which these very moments with Mrs. Stringham caused more and more to settle on his heart. He

had incurred it, the expectation of performance; the thing was done, and there was no use talking; again,

again the cold breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best he floundered. "I'm afraid you won't

understand when I say I've very tiresome things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The pinch, the

But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and the pressure and showed how they had been her

own very element. "Oh the daily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No one knows better

than I how they haunt one in the flight of the precious deceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have

given up? I've given up all to follow HER. I wish you could feel as I do. And can't you," she asked, "write

He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did; and he smiled for her kindly. "Do YOU

"No; but I wouldoh wouldn't I?if I hadn't (209) so completely given up. She's, you know, my princess,

It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many places at once. "I quite understand that she's

yours. Only you see she's not mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had the moral

certainty she wouldn't repeat it and least of all to Mrs. Lowder, who would find in it a disturbing implication.

This was part of what he liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave him a delicate

sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a

relation, beneficent and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could see. Yet even as he

afresh made this out he felt how strange it all was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same

thing Kate wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, in so different a way and from a motive so

different, even though scarce less deep. Then Mrs. Lowder wanted, by so odd an evolution of her exuberance,

exactly what each of the others did; and he was between them all, he was in the midst. Such perceptions made

occasionswell, occasions for fairly wondering if it mightn't be best just to consent, luxuriously, to BE the

ass the whole thing involved. Trying not to be and yet keeping in it was of the two things the more asinine.

He was glad there was no male witness; it was a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked a man to see him.

He only had for a moment a sharp thought (210) of Sir Luke Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate

in London had spoken of Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such a distance, just

announced to him, required some accounting for. He had a vision of great London surgeonsif this one was

a surgeonas incisive all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the ironic attention of

his own sex. The most he might be able to do was not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in.

It was a train, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. Lord Mark had caught him twice in

the factthe fact of his absurd posture; and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to

His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm her discretion, on the matter of Milly's

It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "I see. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her

cheer was for the time in eclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as in the wonder of what

It made him on the spot feel a brute. "Of course she has. No one could be more charming. She has treated me

as if i were somebody. Call her my hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with you

altogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do see that it's quite court life."

(211) She promptly showed how this was almost all she wanted of him. "That's all I mean, if you understand

it of such a court as never was: one of the courts of heaven, the court of a reigning seraph, a sort of a

"Oh well then I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, you know," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay."

"Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beauty here; it's why she's the great and only

princess. With her, at her court," said Mrs. Stringham, "it does pay." Then as if she had quite settled it for

He waited a moment, but said nothing to discourage her. "I think you were right just now. One must do

Oh well, she seemed to say, if he would have it so! "You can do everything, you know."

"Everything" was rather too much for him to take up gravely, and he modestly let it alone, speaking the next

moment, to avert fatuity, of a different but a related matter. "Why has she sent for Sir Luke Strett if, as you

"She hasn't sent. He has come of himself," Mrs. Stringham explained. "He has wanted to come."

"He was coming, from the first, for his holiday. She has known that these several weeks." After (212) which

"i can?" he candidly wondered. It was truly the circle of petticoats. "What have I to do with it for a man like

"How do you know," said his friend, "what he's like? He's not like any one you've ever seen. He's a great

"What I think of Miss Theale?" Densher stared. It was, as they said, a large order. But he found the right note.

It did seem a moment for Mrs. Stringham too the right note. She fixed him at least with an expression still

bright, but searching, that showed almost to excess what she saw in it; though what this might be he was not

to make out till afterwards. "Say THAT to him then. Anything will do for him as a means of getting at you."

All of which, on Mrs. Stringham's part, sharpened his sense of immersion in an element rather more strangely

than agreeably warma sense that was moreover, during the next two or three hours, to be fed to satiety by

several other impressions. Milly came down after dinner, half a dozen friendsobjects of interest mainly, it

appeared, to the ladies of (213) Lancaster Gatehaving by that time arrived; and with this call on her

attention, the further call of her musicians ushered by Eugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and

the supreme opportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came last of all, he felt her diffuse in

wide warm waves the spell of a general, a beatific mildness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for

some than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that he seemed to stand in it up to his neck. He

moved about in it and it made no plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it, and they were all together, for

that matter, like fishes in a crystal pool. The effect of the place, the beauty of the scene, had probably much to

do with it; the golden grace of the high rooms, chambers of art in themselves, took care, as an influence, of

the general manner, and made people bland without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs.

Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their

Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let

loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something that made

them more finely genial; so that if the Veronese picture of which he had talked with Mrs. Stringham was not

quite constituted, the comparative prose of the previous hours, the traces of insensibility qualified by "beating

down," were at last almost nobly disowned. There was perhaps something for him in the accident of his

seeing her for the first time in white, but she hadn't yet had occasioncirculating with a clearness (214)

intensifiedto strike him as so happily pervasive. She was different, younger, fairer, with the colour of her

braided hair more than ever a not altogether lucky challenge to attention; yet he was loth wholly to explain it

by her having quitted this once, for some obscure yet doubtless charming reason, her almost monastic, her

hitherto inveterate black. Much as the change did for the value of her presence, she had never yet, when all

was said, made it for HIM; and he was not to fail of the further amusement of judging her determined in the

matter by Sir Luke Strett's visit. If he could in this connexion have felt jealous of Sir Luke Strett, whose

strong face and type, less assimilated by the scene perhaps than any others, he was anon to study from the

other side of the saloon, that would doubtless have been most amusing of all. But he couldn't be invidious,

even to profit by so high a tide; he felt himself too much "in" it, as he might have said: a moment's reflexion

put him more in than any one. The way Milly neglected him for other cares while Kate and Mrs. Lowder,

without so much as the attenuation of a joke, introduced him to English ladiesthat was itself a proof; for

nothing really of so close a communion had up to this time passed between them as the single bright look and

the three gay words (all ostensibly of the last lightness) with which her confessed consciousness brushed by

She was acquitting herself tonight as hostess, he could see, under some supreme idea, an inspiration which

was half her nerves and half an inevitable harmony; but what he especially recognised was the (215)

character that had already several times broken out in her and that she so oddly appeared able, by choice or

by instinctive affinity, to keep down or to display. She was the American girl as he had originally found

herfound her at certain moments, it was true, in New York, more than at certain others; she was the

American girl as, still more than then, he had seen her on the day of her meeting him in London and in Kate's

company. It affected him as a large though queer social resource in hersuch as a man, for instance, to his

diminution, would never in the world be able to command; and he wouldn't have known whether to see it in

an extension or a contraction of "personality," taking it as he did most directly for a confounding extension of

surface. Clearly too it was the right thing this evening all round: that came out for him in a word from Kate as

she approached him to wreak on him a second introduction. He had under cover of the music melted away

from the lady toward whom she had first pushed him; and there was something in her to affect him as telling

evasively a tale of their talk in the Piazza. To what did she want to coerce him as a form of penalty for what

he had done to her there? It was thus in contact uppermost for him that he had done something; not only

caused her perfect intelligence to act in his interest, but left her unable to get away, by any mere private

effort, from his inattackable logic. With him thus in presence, and near himand it had been as

unmistakeable through dinnerthere was no getting away for her at all, there was less of it than ever: so she

could only either deal with the question straight, either frankly (216) yield or ineffectually struggle or

insincerely argue, or else merely express herself by following up the advantage she did possess. It was part of

that advantage for the houra brief fallacious makeweight to his pressurethat there were plenty of things

left in which he must feel her will. They only told him, these indications, how much she was, in such close

quarters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again that her very aspect, as great a variation in its way as

Milly's own, gave him back the sense of his action. It had never yet in life been granted him to know, almost

materially to taste, as he could do in these minutes, the state of what was vulgarly called conquest. He had

lived long enough to have been on occasion "liked," but it had never begun to be allowed him to be liked to

any such tune in any such quarter. It was a liking greater than Milly'sor it would be: he felt it in him to

answer for that. So at all events he read the case while he noted that Kate was somehowfor Katewanting

in lustre. As a striking young presence she was practically superseded; of the mildness that Milly diffused she

had assimilated all her share; she might fairly have been dressed tonight in the little black frock,

superficially indistinguishable, that Milly had laid aside. This represented, he perceived, the opposite pole

from such an effect as that of her wonderful entrance, under her aunt's eyeshe had never forgotten itthe

day of their younger friend's failure at Lancaster Gate. She was, in her accepted effacementit was actually

her acceptance that made the beauty and repaired the damageunder her aunt's eyes now; but whose eyes

were not (217) effectually preoccupied? It struck him none the less certainly that almost the first thing she

said to him showed an exquisite attempt to appear if not unconvinced at least selfpossessed.

Almost heedless of the danger of overt freedoms, she eyed Milly from where they stood, noted her in

renewed talk, over her further wishes, with the members of her little orchestra, who had approached her with

demonstrations of deference enlivened by native humoursthings quite in the line of old Venetian comedy.

The girl's idea of music had been happya real solvent of shyness, yet not drastic; thanks to the

intermissions, discretions, a general habit of mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the good manners of

its interpreters, representatives though these might be but of the order in which taste was natural and melody

rank. It was easy at all events to answer Kate. "Ah my dear, you know how good I think her!"

"But she's TOO nice," Kate returned with appreciation. "Everything suits her soespecially her pearls. They

go so with her old lace. I'll trouble you really to look at them." Densher, though aware he had seen them

before, had perhaps not "really" looked at them, and had thus not done justice to the embodied poetryhis

mind, for Milly's aspects, kept coming back to thatwhich owed them part of its style. Kate's face, as she

considered them, struck him: the long, priceless chain, wound twice round the neck, hung, heavy and pure,

down the front of the wearer's breastso far down that Milly's (218) trick, evidently unconscious, of holding

and vaguely fingering and entwining a part of it, conduced presumably to convenience. "She's a dove," Kate

went on, "and one somehow doesn't think of doves as bejewelled. Yet they suit her down to the ground."

"Yesdown to the ground is the word." Densher saw now how they suited her, but was perhaps still more

aware of something intense in his companion's feeling about them. Milly was indeed a dove; this was the

figure, though it most applied to her spirit. Yet he knew in a moment that Kate was just now, for reasons

hidden from him, exceptionally under the impression of that element of wealth in her which was a power,

which was a great power, and which was dovelike only so far as one remembered that doves have wings and

wondrous flights, have them as well as tender tints and soft sounds. It even came to him dimly that such

wings could in a given caseHAD, truly, in the case with which he was concernedspread themselves for

protection. Hadn't they, for that matter, lately taken an inordinate reach, and weren't Kate and Mrs. Lowder,

weren't Susan Shepherd and he, wasn't HE in particular, nestling under them to a great increase of immediate

ease? All this was a brighter blur in the general light, out of which he heard Kate presently going on.

As she saw herself, suddenly, he saw hershe (219) would have been splendid; and with it he felt more what

she was thinking of. Milly's royal ornament hadunder pressure now not wholly occulttaken on the

character of a symbol of differences, differences of which the vision was actually in Kate's face. It might have

been in her face too that, well as she certainly would look in pearls, pearls were exactly what Merton Densher

would never be able to give her. Wasn't THAT the great difference that Milly tonight symbolised? She

unconsciously represented to Kate, and Kate took it in at every pore, that there was nobody with whom she

had less in common than a remarkably handsome girl married to a man unable to make her on any such lines

as that the least little present. Of these absurdities, however, it was not till afterwards that Densher thought.

He could think now, to any purpose, only of what Mrs. Stringham had said to him before dinner. He could

but come back to his friend's question of a minute ago. "She's certainly good enough, as you call it, in the

sense that I'm assured she's better. Mrs. Stringham, an hour or two since, was in great feather to me about it.

"I don't call it anything to any one but you. I'm not 'against' them!" Kate added as with just a fresh breath of

It made her wait a little. "She isn't better. She's worse. But that has nothing to do with it."

But she was clear. "Nothing to do with US. Except of course that we're doing our best for her. We're making

her want to live." And Kate again watched her. "Tonight she does want to live." She spoke with a kindness

that had the strange property of striking him as inconsequentso much, and doubtless so unjustly, had all

her clearness been an implication of the hard. "It's wonderful. It's beautiful."

He hated somehow the helplessness of his own note; but she had given it no heed. "She's doing it for

HIM"and she nodded in the direction of Milly's medical visitor. "She wants to be for him at her best. But

Densher had been looking too; which made him say in a moment: "And do you think YOU can? I mean, if

he's to be with us here, about your sentiments. If Aunt Maud's so thick with him!"

Aunt Maud now occupied in fact a place at his side and was visibly doing her best to entertain him, though

this failed to prevent such a direction of his own eyesdetermined, in the way such things happen, precisely

by the attention of the othersas Densher became aware of and as Kate promptly marked. "He's looking at

"Then let him. Be right with him. I don't need," Kate went on in answer to the previous question, "to deceive

him. Aunt Maud, if it's necessary, will (221) do that. I mean that, knowing nothing about me, he can see me

"For not caring for YOU? Perfectly. As a brilliant young man driven by it into your relation with Millyas

"Well," said Densher sincerely enough, "I think I can thank you for leaving me to some one easier perhaps

She had been looking about again meanwhile, the lady having changed her place, for the friend of Mrs.

Lowder's to whom she had spoken of introducing him. "All the more reason why I should commit you then to

"Oh but wait." It was not only that he distinguished Lady Wells from afar, that she inspired him with no

eagerness, and that, somewhere at the back of his head, he was fairly aware of the question, in germ, of

whether this was the kind of person he should be involved with when they were married. It was furthermore

that the consciousness of something he had not got from Kate in the morning, and that logically much

concerned him, had been made more keen by these very momentsto say nothing of the consciousness that,

with their general smallness of opportunity, he must squeeze each stray instant hard. If Aunt Maud, over there

with Sir Luke, noted him as a little "attentive," that might pass for a futile demonstration on the part of a

gentleman who had to confess to having, not very gracefully, changed his mind. Besides, just now, he didn't

care for Aunt (222) Maud except in so far as he was immediately to show. "How can Mrs. Lowder think me

disposed of with any finality, if I'm disposed of only to a girl who's dying? If you're right about that, about the

state of the case, you're wrong about Mrs. Lowder's being squared. If Milly, as you say," he lucidly pursued,

"can't deceive a great surgeon, or whatever, the great surgeon won't deceive other peoplenot those, that is,

who are closely concerned. He won't at any rate deceive Mrs. Stringham, who's Milly's greatest friend; and it

Kate showed him at this the cold glow of an idea that really was worth his having kept her for. "Why will it

Mere curiosity even, about his companion, had now for him its quick, its slightly quaking intensities. He had

compared her once, we know, to a "new book," an uncut volume of the highest, the rarest quality; and his

emotion (to justify that) was again and again like the thrill of turning the page. "Well, you know how deeply I

"It doesn't in the least follow," Kate went on, "that anything in the nature of what you call deception on Mrs.

(223) Kate turned her head away as if really at last almost tired of his density. But she looked at him again as

she spoke. "Well then to please Milly." And before he could question: "Don't you feel by this time that there's

He had verily after an instant to take it in, so sharply it corresponded with the good lady's recent reception of

him. It was queerer than anything again, the way they all came together round him. But that was an old story,

and Kate's multiplied lights led him on and on. It was with a reserve, however, that he confessed this. "She's

Densher for an instant, but only for an instant, hung fire. "Oh the difficulty is that I don't, upon my honour,

"It helps youput it then," said Kate very simply"to serve ME. It gains you time."

"For everything!" She spoke at first, once more, with impatience; then as usual she qualified. "For anything

Densher had a smile, but he felt it himself as strained. "You're cryptic, love!"

It made her keep her eyes on him, and he could thus see that, by one of those incalculable motions in her

without which she wouldn't have been a quarter so interesting, they halffilled with tears from some source

he had too roughly touched. "I'm taking a (224) trouble for you I never dreamed I should take for any human

Oh it went home, making him flush for it; yet he soon enough felt his reply on his lips. "Well, isn't my whole

insistence to you now that I can conjure trouble away?" And he let it, his insistence, come out again; it had so

constantly had, all the week, but its step or two to make. "There NEED be none whatever between us. There

It had only the effect at first that her eyes grew dry while she took up again one of the so numerous links in

"You can tell her about US. I mean," she wonderfully pursued, "that you do still like me."

It was indeed so wonderful that it amused him. "Only not that you still like me."

"You don't quite see. Neither to Aunt Maud nor to any one else." Kate then, he saw, was always seeing Milly

much more, after all, than he was; and she showed it again as she went on. "THERE, accordingly, is your

She did at last make him think, and it was fairly as if light broke, though not quite all at once. "You must let

me say I DO see. Time for something in particular that I understand you regard as possible. Time too that, I

(225) "Time indeed for me as well." And encouraged visibly by his glow of concentration, she looked at him

as through the air she had painfully made clear. Yet she was still on her guard. "Don't think, however, I'll do

He had quite, within the minute, been turning names over; and there was only one, which at last stared at him

It struck him even at the moment as fine in her that she met it with no wincing nor mincing. She might for the

grace of silence, for favour to their conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. But her lips bravely

"So that when her death has taken place I shall in the natural course have money?"

It was before him enough now, and he had nothing more to ask; he had only to turn, on the spot, considerably

cold with the thought that all alongto his stupidity, his timidityit had been, it had been only, what she

meant. Now that he was in possession moreover she couldn't forbear, strangely enough, to pronounce the

words she hadn't pronounced: they broke through her controlled and colourless voice as if she should be

ashamed, to the very end, to have flinched. "You'll in the natural course have money. We shall in the natural

(226) He never budgedthere was too much else. "I'm to propose it thenmarriageon the spot?"

There was no ironic sound he needed to give it; the more simply he spoke the more he seemed ironic. But she

remained consummately proof. "Oh I can't go into that with you, and from the moment you don't wash your

hands of me I don't think you ought to ask me. You must act as you like and as you can."

He thought again. "I'm faras I sufficiently showed you this morningfrom washing my hands of you."

But he had had to see in a moment that it wasn't what she meant. "You'll have a free hand, a clear field, a

"Your descriptions"her "ideal" was such a touch!"are prodigious. And what I don't make out is how,

"I don't like it, but I'm a person, thank goodness, who can do what I don't like."

It wasn't till afterwards that, going back to it, he was to read into this speech a kind of heroic ring, a note of

character that belittled his own incapacity for action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time the greatness of

knowing so well what one wanted. At the time too, moreover, he next reflected that he after all knew what

HE did. But something else on his lips was uppermost. "What I don't make out then is how you can even bear

"Well, when you know me better you'll find out (227) how much I can bear." And she went on before he

could take up, as it were, her too many implications. That it was left to him to know her, spiritually, "better"

after his long sacrifice to knowledgethis for instance was a truth he hadn't been ready to receive so full in

the face. She had mystified him enough, heaven knew, but that was rather by his own generosity than by hers.

And what, with it, did she seem to suggest she might incur at his hands? In spite of these questions she was

It gave him all he could take in to think of. "Then what becomes of Miss Theale?"

She had a smile that was apparently for his tone. "You're old enoughwith plenty of Mrs. Stringham."

Nothing might have been so odd for him now, could he have measured it, as his being able to feel, quite

while he drew from her these successive cues, that he was essentially "seeing what she would say"an

instinct compatible for him therefore with that absence of a need to know her better to which she had a

moment before done injustice. If it hadn't been appearing to him in gleams that she would somewhere (228)

break down, he probably couldn't have gone on. Still, as she wasn't breaking down there was nothing for him

"Very much indeed. Of course again you see what it does for us. And I don't," she added, "refer only to our

"I see again, as you say," Densher said after a moment. "It makes everything fit."

The word, for a little, held the air, and he might have seemed the while to be looking, by no means dimly

now, at all it stood for. But he had in fact been looking at something else. "You leave her here then to die?"

"Ah she believes she won't die. Not if you stay. I mean," Kate explained, "Aunt Maud believes."

Still indeed she didn't break down. "Didn't we long ago agree that what she believes is the principal thing for

He recalled it, under her eyes, but it came as from long ago. "Oh yes. I can't deny it." Then he added: "So that

Kate gave it an emphasis that might have appeared to leave him nothing more; and he might in fact well have

found nothing if he hadn't presently found: "But what if she doesn't accept me?"

(229) It produced in her a look of weariness that made the patience of her tone the next moment touch him.

"Naturally I can but try. Only, you see, one has to try a little hard to propose to a dying girl."

"She isn't for you as if she's dying." It had determined in Kate the flash of justesse he could perhaps most, on

consideration, have admired, since her retort touched the truth. There before him was the fact of how Milly

tonight impressed him, and his companion, with her eyes in his own and pursuing his impression to the

depths of them, literally now perched on the fact in triumph. She turned her head to where their friend was

again in range, and it made him turn his, so that they watched a minute in concert. Milly, from the other side,

happened at the moment to notice them, and she sent across toward them in response all the candour of her

smile, the lustre of her pearls, the value of her life, the essence of her wealth. It brought them together again

with faces made fairly grave by the reality she put into their plan. Kate herself grew a little pale for it, and

they had for a time only a silence. The music, however, gay and vociferous, had broken out afresh and

protected more than interrupted them. When Densher at last spoke it was under cover.

Well, he looked as if he almost were. "It will be for me then to accept. But that's the way it must come."

Kate's silence, so far, let it pass; but presently said: "You'll, on your honour, stay then?"

His answer made her wait, but when it came it was distinct. "Without you, you mean?"

It made three days. "Well," he said, "I'll stay, on my honour, if you'll come to me. On YOUR honour."

Again, as before, this made her momentarily rigid, with a rigour out of which, at a loss, she vaguely cast

about her. Her rigour was more to him, nevertheless, than all her readiness; for her readiness was the woman

herself, and this other thing a mask, a stopgap and a "dodge." She cast about, however, as happened, and not

for the instant in vain. Her eyes, turned over the room, caught at a pretext. "Lady Wells is tired of waiting:

Densher saw in fact, but there was a distance for their visitor to cross, and he still had time. "If you (231)

He was to have afterwards the sense of her having then, as the phrase wasand for vulgar triumphs

tooseen he meant it. She looked again at Lady Wells, who was nearer, but she quickly came back. "And if

She found anew a pretext in her approaching friend: he was fairly playing with her pride. He had never, he

then knew, tasted, in all his relation with her, of anything so sharptoo sharp for mere sweetnessas the

vividness with which he saw himself master in the conflict. "Well, I understand."

It was after they had gone that he truly felt the difference, which was most to be felt moreover in his faded

old rooms. He had recovered from the first a part of his attachment to this scene of contemplation, within

sight, as it was, of the Rialto bridge, on the hither side of that arch of associations and the left going up the

Canal; he had seen it in a particular light, to which, more and more, his mind and his hands adjusted it; but

the interest the place now wore for him had risen at a bound, becoming a force that, on the spot, completely

engaged and absorbed him, and relief from whichif relief was the namehe could find only by getting

away and out of reach. What had come to pass within his walls lingered there as an obsession importunate to

all his senses; it lived again, as a cluster of pleasant memories, at every hour and in every object; it made

everything but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It remained, in a word, a conscious watchful presence, active on

its own side, for ever to be reckoned with, in face of which the effort at detachment was scarcely less futile

than frivolous. Kate had come to him; it was only onceand this not from any failure of their need, but from

such impossibilities, for bravery alike and for subtlety, as there was at the last no blinking; yet she had come,

that once, to stay, as people called it; and what survived of her, what reminded and insisted, was something

he (236) couldn't have banished if he had wished. Luckily he didn't wish, even though there might be for a

man almost a shade of the awful in so unqualified a consequence of his act. It had simply WORKED, his

idea, the idea he had made her accept; and all erect before him, really covering the ground as far as he could

see, was the fact of the gained success that this represented. It was, otherwise, but the fact of the idea as

directly applied, as converted from a luminous conception into an historic truth. He had known it before but

as desired and urged, as convincingly insisted on for the help it would render; so that at present, WITH the

help rendered, it seemed to acknowledge its office and to set up, for memory and faith, an insistence of its

own. He had in fine judged his friend's pledge in advance as an inestimable value, and what he must now

know his case for was that of a possession of the value to the full. Wasn't it perhaps even rather the value that

possessed HIM, kept him thinking of it and waiting on it, turning round and round it and making sure of it

It played for himcertainly in this prime afterglowthe part of a treasure kept at home in safety and

sanctity, something he was sure of finding in its place when, with each return, he worked his heavy old key in

the lock. The door had but to open for him to be with it again and for it to be all there; so intensely there that,

as we say, no other act was possible to him than the renewed act, almost the hallucination, of intimacy.

Wherever he looked or sat or stood, to whatever aspect he gave for the instant the advantage, it was in view

as nothing of the moment, (237) nothing begotten of time or of chance could be, or ever would; it was in view

as, when the curtain has risen, the play on the stage is in view, night after night, for the fiddlers. He remained

thus, in his own theatre, in his single person, perpetual orchestra to the ordered drama, the confirmed "run";

playing low and slow, moreover, in the regular way, for the situations of most importance. No other visitor

was to come to him; he met, he bumped occasionally, in the Piazza or in his walks, against claimants to

acquaintance, remembered or forgotten, at present mostly effusive, sometimes even inquisitive; but he gave

no address and encouraged no approach; he couldn't for his life, he felt, have opened his door to a third

person. Such a person would have interrupted him, would have profaned his secret or perhaps have guessed

it; would at any rate have broken the spell of what he conceived himselfin the absence of anything "to

show"to be inwardly doing. He was giving himself upthat was quite enoughto the general feeling of

his renewed engagement to fidelity. The force of the engagement, the quantity of the article to be supplied,

the special solidity of the contract, the way, above all, as a service for which the price named by him had

been magnificently paid, his equivalent office was to take effectsuch items might well fill his

consciousness when there was nothing from outside to interfere. Never was a consciousness more rounded

and fastened down over what filled it; which is precisely what we have spoken of as, in its degree, the

oppression of success, the somewhat chilled statetending to the solitaryof supreme recognition. (238) If

it was slightly awful to feel so justified, this was by the loss of the warmth of the element of mystery. The

lucid reigned instead of it, and it was into the lucid that he sat and stared. He shook himself out of it a dozen

times a day, tried to break by his own act his constant still communion. It wasn't still communion she had

meant to bequeath him; it was the very different business of that kind of fidelity of which the other name was

Nothing, he perfectly knew, was less like careful action than the immersion he enjoyed at home. The actual

grand queerness was that to be faithful to Kate he had positively to take his eyes, his arms, his lips straight off

herhe had to let her alone. He had to remember it was time to go to the palacewhich in truth was a

mercy, since the check was not less effectual than imperative. What it came to, fortunately, as yet, was that

when he closed the door behind him for an absence he always shut her in. Shut her outit came to that

rather, when once he had got a little away; and before he reached the palace, much more after hearing at his

heels the bang of the greater portone, he felt free enough not to know his position as oppressively false. As

Kate was ALL in his poor rooms, and not a ghost of her left for the grander, it was only on reflexion that the

falseness came out; so long as he left it to the mercy of beneficent chance it offered him no face and made of

him no claim that he couldn't meet without aggravation of his inward sense. This aggravation had been his

original horror; yet whatin Milly's presence, each daywas horror doing with him but virtually letting

him off? (239) He shouldn't perhaps get off to the end; there was time enough still for the possibility of

shame to pounce. Still, however, he did constantly a little more what he liked best, and that kept him for the

time more safe. What he liked best was, in any case, to know WHY things were as he felt them; and he knew

it pretty well, in this case, ten days after the retreat of his other friends. He then fairly perceived thateven

putting their purity of motive at its highestit was neither Kate nor he who made his strange relation to

Milly, who made her own, so far as it might be, innocent; it was neither of them who practically purged itif

practically purged it was. Milly herself did everythingso far at least as he was concernedMilly herself,

and Milly's house, and Milly's hospitality, and Milly's manner, and Milly's character, and, perhaps still more

than anything else, Milly's imagination, Mrs. Stringham and Sir Luke indeed a little aiding: whereby he knew

the blessing of a fair pretext to ask himself what more he had to do. Something incalculable wrought for

themfor him and Kate; something outside, beyond, above themselves, and doubtless ever so much better

than they: which wasn't a reason, howeverits being so much betterfor them not to profit by it. Not to

profit by it, so far as profit could be reckoned, would have been to go directly against it; and the spirit of

generosity at present engendered in Densher could have felt no greater pang than by his having to go directly

To go WITH her was the thing, so far as she could herself go; which, from the moment her tenure of (240)

her loved palace stretched on, was possible but by his remaining near her. This remaining was of course on

the face of it the most "marked" of demonstrationswhich was exactly why Kate had required it; it was so

marked that on the very evening of the day it had taken effect Milly herself hadn't been able not to reach out

to him, with an exquisite awkwardness, for some account of it. It was as if she had wanted from him some

name that, now they were to be almost alone together, they could, for their further ease, know it and call it

byit being, after all, almost rudimentary that his presence, of which the absence of the others made quite a

different thing, couldn't but have for himself some definite basis. She only wondered about the basis it would

have for himself, and how he would describe it; that would quite do for herit even would have done for

her, he could see, had he produced some reason merely trivial, had he said he was waiting for money or

clothes, for letters or for orders from Fleet Street, without which, as she might have heard, newspaper men

never took a step. He hadn't in the event quite sunk to that; but he had none the less had there with her, that

night, on Mrs. Stringham's leaving them aloneMrs. Stringham proved really prodigioushis acquaintance

with a shade of awkwardness darker than any Milly could know. He had supposed himself beforehand, on the

question of what he was doing or pretending, in possession of some tone that would serve; but there were

three minutes of his feeling incapable of promptness quite in the same degree in which a gentleman whose

pocket has been picked feels incapable (241) of purchase. It even didn't help him, oddly, that he was sure

Kate would in some way have spoken for himor rather not so much in some way as in one very particular

way. He hadn't asked her, at the last, what she might, in the connexion, have said; nothing would have

induced him to put such a question after she had been to see him: his lips were so sealed by that passage, his

spirit in fact so hushed, in respect to any charge upon her freedom. There was something he could only

therefore read back into the probabilities, and when he left the palace an hour afterwards it was with a sense

Just this perception it was, however, that had made him for the time ugly to himself in his awkwardness. It

was horrible, with this creature, to BE awkward; it was odious to be seeking excuses for the relation that

involved it. Any relation that involved it was by the very fact as much discredited as a dish would be at

dinner if one had to take medicine as a sauce. What Kate would have said in one of the young women's last

talks was thatif Milly absolutely must have the truth about itMr. Densher was staying because she had

really seen no way but to require it of him. If he stayed he didn't follow heror didn't appear to her aunt to

be doing so; and when she kept him from following her Mrs. Lowder couldn't pretend, in scenes, the renewal

of which at this time of day was painful, that she after all didn't snub him as she might. She did nothing in

fact BUT snub himwouldn't that have been part of the story?only Aunt Maud's suspicions were of the

sort that had repeatedly (242) to be dealt with. He had been, by the same token, reasonable enoughas he

now, for that matter, well might; he had consented to oblige them, aunt and niece, by giving the plainest sign

possible that he could exist away from London. To exist away from London was to exist away from Kate

Croywhich was a gain, much appreciated, to the latter's comfort. There was a minute, at this hour, out of

Densher's three, during which he knew the terror of Milly's uttering some such allusion to their friend's

explanation as he must meet with words that wouldn't destroy it. To destroy it was to destroy everything, to

destroy probably Kate herself, to destroy in particular by a breach of faith still uglier than anything else the

beauty of their own last passage. He had given her his word of honour that if she would come to him he

would act absolutely in her sense, and he had done so with a full enough vision of what her sense implied.

What it implied for one thing was that tonight in the great saloon, noble in its halflighted beauty, and

straight in the white face of his young hostess, divine in her trust, or at any rate inscrutable in her

mercywhat it implied was that he should lie with his lips. The single thing, of all things, that could save

him from it would be Milly's letting him off after having thus scared him. What made her mercy inscrutable

was that if she had already more than once saved him it was yet apparently without knowing how nearly he

These were transcendent motions, not the less blest for being obscure; whereby yet once more he was to feel

the pressure lighten. He was kept on his (243) feet in short by the felicity of her not presenting him with

Kate's version as a version to adopt. He couldn't stand up to liehe felt as if he should have to go down on

his knees. As it was he just sat there shaking a little for nervousness the leg he had crossed over the other. She

was sorry for his suffered snub, but he had nothing more to subscribe to, to perjure himself about, than the

three or four inanities he had, on his own side, feebly prepared for the crisis. He scrambled a little higher than

the reference to money and clothes, letters and directions from his manager; but he brought out the beauty of

the chance for himthere before him like a temptress painted by Titianto do a little quiet writing. He was

vivid for a moment on the difficulty of writing quietly in London; and he was precipitate, almost explosive,

She was so full of interest that he shouldn't perhaps after all be too easily let off. "I tried to think a few days

Scarcely anything, it was indeed clear, could have let him in deeper. "I'm afraid we've made an awful mess of

"Of course you have. But what I'm hanging on for now is precisely to repair that ravage."

(244) "You'll see," he tried to say with ease, "how little I shall mind anything."

He thought a moment: he did what he could to wreathe it in smiles. "Oh I shall make shift with the worst part.

The best will be for YOU." And he wished Kate could hear him. It didn't help him moreover that he visibly,

even pathetically, imaged to her by such touches his quest for comfort against discipline. He was to bury

Kate's so signal snub, and also the hard law she had now laid on him, under a high intellectual effort. This at

least was his crucifixionthat Milly was so interested. She was so interested that she presently asked him if

he found his rooms propitious, while he felt that in just decently answering her he put on a brazen mask. He

should need it quite particularly were she to express again her imagination of coming to tea with himan

extremity that he saw he was not to be spared. "We depend on you, Susie and I, you know, not to forget we're

coming"the extremity was but to face that remainder, yet it demanded all his tact. Facing their visit

itselfto that, no matter what he might have to do, he would never consent, as we know, to be pushed; and

this even though it might be exactly such a demonstration as would figure for him at the top of Kate's list of

his proprieties. He could wonder freely enough, deep within, if Kate's view of that especial propriety had not

been modified by a subsequent occurrence; but his deciding that it was quite likely not to have been had no

effect on his own preference (245) for tact. It pleased him to think of "tact" as his present prop in doubt; that

glossed his predicament over, for it was of application among the sensitive and the kind. He wasn't inhuman,

in fine, so long as it would serve. It had to serve now, accordingly, to help him not to sweeten Milly's hopes.

He didn't want to be rude to them, but he still less wanted them to flower again in the particular connexion; so

that, casting about him in his anxiety for a middle way to meet her, he put his foot, with unhappy effect, just

in the wrong place. "Will it be safe for you to break into your custom of not leaving the house?"

" 'Safe'?" She had for twenty seconds an exquisite pale glare. Oh but he didn't need it, by that time, to

wince; he had winced for himself as soon as he had made his mistake. He had done what, so unforgettably,

she had asked him in London not to do; he had touched, all alone with her here, the supersensitive nerve of

which she had warned him. He had not, since the occasion in London, touched it again till now; but he saw

himself freshly warned that it was able to bear still less. So for the moment he knew as little what to do as he

had ever known it in his life. He couldn't emphasise that he thought of her as dying, yet he couldn't pretend he

thought of her as indifferent to precautions. Meanwhile too she had narrowed his choice. "You suppose me so

He turned, in his pain, within himself; but by the time the colour had mounted to the roots of his hair he had

He had clumsily brought it on himself, but he hesitated with all the pity of it. "Ah then THAT I believe."

"I will, I will," she declared; yet with the weight of it somehow turned for him to mere light and sound.

It brought her straight again to the fact. "Well then, if you say it, why mayn't we pay you our visit?"

"Every little helps," she laughed; "and it's very little for me, in general, to stay at home. Only I shan't want to

It was amazing what so brief an exchange had at this point done with him. His great scruple suddenly broke,

giving way to something inordinately strange, something of a nature to become clear to him only (247) when

What had taken place for him, howeverthe drop, almost with violence, of everything but a sense of her

own realityapparently showed in his face or his manner, and even so vividly that she could take it for

something else. "I see how you feelthat I'm an awful bore about it and that, sooner than have any such

It was beautiful how she spoke for Mrs. Stringham. Whatever it was, at any rate, he shook his head. "I won't

"Nonever now. It's over. But it's all right. I mean, apart from that," she went on, "that I won't do anything I

"Oh who can ever force you?" he asked with his handtomouth way, at all times, of speaking for her

On which again, in spite of himself, it let him in. "No I know you don't complain."

As soon as he had said it he had himself heard the pity in it. His telling her she had "everything" was (248)

extravagant kind humour, whereas his knowing so tenderly that she didn't complain was terrible kind gravity.

Milly felt, he could see, the difference; he might as well have praised her outright for looking death in the

face. This was the way she just looked HIM again, and it was of no attenuation that she took him up more

"Oh that's success. If what one has is good," Densher said at random, "it's enough to try for."

"Well, it's my limit. I'm not trying for more." To which then she added with a change: "And now about your

"The one you're now to understand that nothing will induce either Susie or me to run the risk of spoiling."

It made her visibly grave; so that, disconcerted in another way, he was afraid of what she would see in it. She

saw in fact exactly what he feared, but again his honour, as he called it, was saved even while she didn't know

she had threatened it. Taking his words for a betrayal of the sense that he, on his side, MIGHT (249)

complain, what she clearly wanted was to urge on him some such patience as he should be perhaps able to

arrive at with her indirect help. Still more clearly, however, she wanted to be sure of how far she might

"I mean with your London workwith all you have to do. Isn't it rather empty for you?"

"Empty for me?" He remembered how Kate had held that she might propose marriage, and he wondered if

this were the way she would naturally begin it. It would leave him, such an incident, he already felt, at a loss,

and the note of his finest anxiety might have been in the vagueness of his reply. "Oh well!"

"I ask too many questions?" She settled it for herself before he could protest. "You stay because you've got

He grasped at it. "I stay because I've got to." And he couldn't have said when he had uttered it if it were loyal

to Kate or disloyal. It gave her, in a manner, away; it showed the tip of the ear of her plan. Yet Milly took it,

he perceived, but as a plain statement of his truth. He was waiting for what Kate would have told her ofthe

permission from Lancaster Gate to come any nearer. To remain friends with either niece or aunt he mustn't

stir without it. All this Densher read in the girl's sense of the spirit of his reply; so that it made him feel he

was lying, and he had to think of something to correct that. What he thought of was, in an instant, "Isn't it

enough, (250) whatever may be one's other complications, to stay after all for YOU?"

He was by this time on his feet to take leave, and was also at last too restless. The speech in question at least

wasn't disloyal to Kate; that was the very tone of their bargain. So was it, by being loyal, another kind of lie,

the lie of the uncandid profession of a motive. He was staying so little "for" Milly that he was staying

positively against her. He didn't, none the less, know, and at last, thank goodness, didn't care. The only thing

he could say might make it either better or worse. "Well then, so long as I don't go, you must think of me all

He didn't go home, on leaving herhe didn't want to; he walked instead, through his narrow ways and his

campi with gothic arches, to a small and comparatively sequestered cafe where he had already more than

once found refreshment and comparative repose, together with solutions that consisted mainly and pleasantly

of further indecisions. It was a literal fact that those awaiting him there tonight, while he leaned back on his

velvet bench with his head against a florid mirror and his eyes not looking further than the fumes of his

tobacco, might have been regarded by him as a little less limp than usual. This wasn't because, before getting

to his feet again, there was a step he had seen his way to; it was simply because the acceptance of his position

took sharper effect from his sense of what he had just had to deal with. When half an hour before, at the

palace, he had turned about to Milly on the question of the impossibility so inwardly felt, turned about on the

spot and under her eyes, he had acted, by the sudden force of his seeing much further, seeing how little, how

not at all, impossibilities mattered. It wasn't a case for pedantry; when people were at HER pass everything

was allowed. And her pass was now, as by the sharp click of a spring, just completely his ownto the extent,

as he felt, of her deep dependence on him. Anything he should do or shouldn't would have close reference

(252) to her life, which was thus absolutely in his handsand ought never to have reference to anything else.

It was on the cards for him that he might kill herthat was the way he read the cards as he sat in his

customary corner. The fear in this thought made him let everything go, kept him there actually, all

motionless, for three hours on end. He renewed his consumption and smoked more cigarettes than he had

ever done in the time. What had come out for him had come out, with this first intensity, as a terror; so that

action itself, of any sort, the right as well as the wrongif the difference even survivedhad heard in it a

vivid "Hush!" the injunction to keep from that moment intensely still. He thought in fact while his vigil lasted

of several different ways for his doing so, and the hour might have served him as a lesson in going on tiptoe.

What he finally took home, when he ventured to leave the place, was the perceived truth that he might on any

other system go straight to destruction. Destruction was represented for him by the idea of his really bringing

to a point, on Milly's side, anything whatever. Nothing so "brought," he easily argued, but MUST be in one

way or another a catastrophe. He was mixed up in her fate, or her fate, if that should be better, was mixed up

in HIM, so that a single false motion might either way snap the coil. They helped him, it was true, these

considerations, to a degree of eventual peace, for what they luminously amounted to was that he was to do

nothing, and that fell in after all with the burden laid on him by Kate. He was only not to budge without the

girl's leavenot, (253) oddly enough at the last, to move without it, whether further or nearer, any more than

without Kate's. It was to this his wisdom reduced itselfto the need again simply to be kind. That was the

same as being stillas studying to create the minimum of vibration. He felt himself as he smoked shut up to

a room on the wall of which something precious was too precariously hung. A false step would bring it down,

and it must hang as long as possible. He was aware when he walked away again that even Fleet Street

wouldn't at this juncture successfully touch him. His manager might wire that he was wanted, but he could

easily be deaf to his manager. His money for the idle life might be none too much; happily, however, Venice

was cheap, and it was moreover the queer fact that Milly in a manner supported him. The greatest of his

expenses really was to walk to the palace to dinner. He didn't want, in short, to give that up, and he should

probably be able, he felt, to stay his breath and his hand. He should be able to be still enough through

He tried that for three weeks, with the sense after a little of not having failed. There had to be a delicate art in

it, for he wasn't tryingquite the contraryto be either distant or dull. That would not have been being

"nice," which in its own form was the real law. That too might just have produced the vibration he desired to

avert; so that he best kept everything in place by not hesitating or fearing, as it were, to let himself gogo in

the direction, that is to say, of staying. It depended on where he went; which was what he meant by taking

care. When one went on (254) tiptoe one could turn off for retreat without betraying the manoeuvre. Perfect

tactthe necessity for which he had from the first, as we know, happily recognisedwas to keep all

intercourse in the key of the absolutely settled. It was settled thus for instance that they were indissoluble

good friends, and settled as well that her being the American girl was, just in time and for the relation they

found themselves concerned in, a boon inappreciable. If, at least, as the days went on, she was to fall short of

her prerogative of the great national, the great maidenly ease, if she didn't diviningly and responsively desire

and labour to record herself as possessed of it, this wouldn't have been for want of Densher's keeping her,

with his idea, well up to itwouldn't have been in fine for want of his encouragement and reminder. He

didn't perhaps in so many words speak to her of the quantity itself as of the thing she was least to intermit; but

he talked of it, freely, in what he flattered himself was an impersonal way, and this held it there before

hersince he was careful also to talk pleasantly. It was at once their idea, when all was said, and the most

marked of their conveniences. The type was so elastic that it could be stretched to almost anything; and yet,

not stretched, it kept down, remained normal, remained properly within bounds. And he HAD meanwhile,

thank goodness, without being too much disconcerted, the sense, for the girl's part of the business, of the

queerest conscious compliance, of her doing very much what he wanted, even though without her quite

seeing why. She fairly touched this once in saying: "Oh yes, you like us to be as we are because it's (255) a

kind of facilitation to you that we don't quite measure: I think one would have to be English to measure

it!"and that too, strangely enough, without prejudice to her good nature. She might have been conceived as

doingthat is of beingwhat he liked in order perhaps only to judge where it would take them. They really

as it went on SAW each other at the game; she knowing he tried to keep her in tune with his conception, and

he knowing she thus knew it. Add that he again knew she knew, and yet that nothing was spoiled by it, and

we get a fair impression of the line they found most completely workable. The strangest fact of all for us must

be that the success he himself thus promoted was precisely what figured to his gratitude as the something

above and beyond him, above and beyond Kate, that made for daily decency. There would scarce have been

felicitycertainly too little of the right lubricanthad not the national character so invoked been, not less

inscrutably than entirely, in Milly's chords. It made up her unity and was the one thing he could unlimitedly

He did so then, daily, for twenty days, without deepened fear of the undue vibration that was keeping him

watchful. He knew in his nervousness that he was living at best from day to day and from hand to mouth; yet

he had succeeded, he believed, in avoiding a mistake. All women had alternatives, and Milly's would

doubtless be shaky too; but the national character was firm in her, whether as all of her, practically, by this

time, or but as a part; the national character that, in a woman still so young, made of the air (256) breathed a

virtual nonconductor. It wasn't till a certain occasion when the twenty days had passed that, going to the

palace at teatime, he was met by the information that the signorina padrona was not "receiving." The

announcement met him, in the court, on the lips of one of the gondoliers, met him, he thought, with such a

conscious eye as the knowledge of his freedoms of access, hitherto conspicuously shown, could scarce fail to

beget. Densher had not been at Palazzo Leporelli among the mere receivable, but had taken his place once for

all among the involved and included, so that on being so flagrantly braved he recognised after a moment the

propriety of a further appeal. Neither of the two ladies, it appeared, received, and yet Pasquale was not

prepared to say that either was poco bene. He was yet not prepared to say that either was anything, and he

would have been blank, Densher mentally noted, if the term could ever apply to members of a race in whom

vacancy was but a nest of darknessesnot a vain surface, but a place of withdrawal in which something

obscure, something always ominous, indistinguishably lived. He felt afresh indeed at this hour the force of

the veto laid within the palace on any mention, any cognition, of the liabilities of its mistress. The state of her

health was never confessed to there as a reason. How much it might deeply be taken for one was another

matter; of which he grew fully aware on carrying his question further. This appeal was to his friend Eugenio,

whom he immediately sent for, with whom, for three rich minutes, protected from the weather, he was

confronted in the (257) gallery that led from the watersteps to the court, and whom he always called, in

meditation, his friend; seeing it was so elegantly presumable he would have put an end to him if he could.

That produced a relation which required a name of its own, an intimacy of consciousness in truth for

eachan intimacy of eye, of ear, of general sensibility, of everything but tongue. It had been, in other words,

for the five weeks, far from occult to our young man that Eugenio took a view of him not less finely formal

than essentially vulgar, but which at the same time he couldn't himself raise an eyebrow to prevent. It was all

in the air now again; it was as much between them as ever while Eugenio waited on him in the court.

The weather, from early morning, had turned to storm, the first seastorm of the autumn, and Densher had

almost invidiously brought him down the outer staircasethe massive ascent, the great feature of the court,

to Milly's piano nobile. This was to pay himit was the one chancefor all imputations; the imputation in

particular that, clever, tanto bello and not rich, the young man from London wasby the obvious

waypressing Miss Theale's fortune hard. It was to pay him for the further ineffable intimation that a

gentleman must take the young lady's most devoted servant (interested scarcely less in the high attraction) for

a strangely casual appendage if he counted in such a connexion on impunity and prosperity. These

interpretations were odious to Densher for the simple reason that they might have been so true of the attitude

of an inferior man, and three things alone, accordingly, had kept him from (258) righting himself. One of

these was that his critic sought expression only in an impersonality, a positive inhumanity, of politeness; the

second was that refinements of expression in a friend's servant were not a thing a visitor could take action on;

and the third was the fact that the particular attribution of motive did him after all no wrong. It was his own

fault if the vulgar view, the view that might have been taken of an inferior man, happened so incorrigibly to

fit him. He apparently wasn't so different from inferior men as that came to. If therefore, in fine, Eugenio

figured to him as "my friend" because he was conscious of his seeing so much of him, what he made him see

on the same lines in the course of their present interview was ever so much more. Densher felt that he marked

himself, no doubt, as insisting, by dissatisfaction with the gondolier's answer, on the pursuit taken for granted

in him; and yet felt it only in the augmented, the exalted distance that was by this time established between

them. Eugenio had of course reflected that a word to Miss Theale from such a pair of lips would cost him his

place; but he could also bethink himself that, so long as the word never cameand it was, on the basis he

had arranged, impossiblehe enjoyed the imagination of mounting guard. He had never so mounted guard,

Densher could see, as during these minutes in the damp loggia where the stormgusts were strong; and there

came in fact for our young man, as a result of his presence, a sudden sharp sense that everything had turned to

the dismal. Something had happenedhe didn't know what; and it wasn't Eugenio who would tell him. What

(259) Eugenio told him was that he thought the ladiesas if their liability had been equalwere a "leetle"

fatigued, just a "leetle leetle," and without any cause named for it. It was one of the signs of what Densher

felt in him that, by a profundity, a true deviltry of resource, he always met the latter's Italian with English and

his English with Italian. He now, as usual, slightly smiled at him in the processbut ever so slightly this

time, his manner also being attuned, our young man made out, to the thing, whatever it was, that constituted

This manner, while they stood a long minute facing each other over all they didn't say, played a part as well

in the sudden jar to Densher's protected state. It was a Venice all of evil that had broken out for them alike, so

that they were together in their anxiety, if they really could have met on it; a Venice of cold lashing rain from

a low black sky, of wicked wind raging through narrow passes, of general arrest and interruption, with the

people engaged in all the waterlife huddled, stranded and wageless, bored and cynical, under archways and

bridges. Our young man's mute exchange with his friend contained meanwhile such a depth of reference that,

had the pressure been but slightly prolonged, they might have reached a point at which they were equally

weak. Each had verily something in mind that would have made a hash of mutual suspicion and in presence

of which, as a possibility, they were more united than disjoined. But it was to have been a moment for

Densher that nothing could ease offnot even the formal propriety with which his interlocutor finally

attended him to the portone (260) and bowed upon his retreat. Nothing had passed about his coming back,

and the air had made itself felt as a nonconductor of messages. Densher knew of course, as he took his way

again, that Eugenio's invitation to return was not what he missed; yet he knew at the same time that what had

happened to him was part of his punishment. Out in the square beyond the fondamenta that gave access to the

landgate of the palace, out where the wind was higher, he fairly, with the thought of it, pulled his umbrella

closer down. It couldn't be, his consciousness, unseen enough by othersthe base predicament of having, by

a concatenation, just to TAKE such things: such things as the fact that one very acute person in the world,

whom he couldn't dispose of as an interested scoundrel, enjoyed an opinion of him that there was no

attacking, no disproving, no (what was worst of all) even noticing. One had come to a queer pass when a

servant's opinion so mattered. Eugenio's would have mattered even if, as founded on a low vision of

appearances, it had been quite wrong. It was the more disagreeable accordingly that the vision of appearances

Such as it was, at any rate, Densher shook it off with the more impatience that he was independently restless.

He had to walk in spite of weather, and he took his course, through crooked ways, to the Piazza, where he

should have the shelter of the galleries. Here, in the high arcade, half Venice was crowded close, while, on

the Molo, at the limit of the expanse, the old columns of the Saint Theodore and of the Lion were the frame

of a door wide open to the storm. It was (261) odd for him, as he moved, that it should have made such a

differenceif the difference wasn't only that the palace had for the first time failed of a welcome. There was

more, but it came from that; that gave the harsh note and broke the spell. The wet and the cold were now to

reckon with, and it was to Densher precisely as if he had seen the obliteration, at a stroke, of the margin on a

faith in which they were all living. The margin had been his name for itfor the thing that, though it had

held out, could bear no shock. The shock, in some form, had come, and he wondered about it while, threading

his way among loungers as vague as himself, he dropped his eyes sightlessly on the rubbish in shops. There

were stretches of the gallery paved with squares of red marble, greasy now with the salt spray; and the whole

place, in its huge elegance, the grace of its conception and the beauty of its detail, was more than ever like a

great drawingroom, the drawingroom of Europe, profaned and bewildered by some reverse of fortune. He

brushed shoulders with brown men whose hats askew, and the loose sleeves of whose pendent jackets, made

them resemble melancholy maskers. The tables and chairs that overflowed from the cafes were gathered, still

with a pretence of service, into the arcade, and here and there a spectacled German, with his coatcollar up,

partook publicly of food and philosophy. These were impressions for Densher too, but he had made the whole

circuit thrice before he stopped short, in front of Florian's, with the force of his sharpest. His eye had caught a

face within the cafehe had spotted an acquaintance behind the glass. The person (262) he had thus paused

long enough to look at twice was seated, well within range, at a small table on which a tumbler, halfemptied

and evidently neglected, still remained; and though he had on his knee, as he leaned back, a copy of a French

newspaperthe heading of the _Figaro_ was visiblehe stared straight before him at the little opposite

rococo wall. Densher had him for a minute in profile, had him for a time during which his identity produced,

however quickly, all the effect of establishing connexionsconnexions startling and direct; and then, as if it

were the one thing more needed, seized the look, determined by a turn of the head, that might have been a

prompt result of the sense of being noticed. This wider view showed him ALL Lord MarkLord Mark as

encountered, several weeks before, the day of the first visit of each to Palazzo Leporelli. For it had been all

Lord Mark that was going out, on that occasion, as he came inhe had felt it, in the hall, at the time; and he

was accordingly the less at a loss to recognise in a few seconds, as renewed meeting brought it to the surface,

It was a matter, the whole passageit could only bebut of a few seconds; for as he might neither stand

there to stare nor on the other hand make any advance from it, he had presently resumed his walk, this time to

another pace. It had been for all the world, during his pause, as if he had caught his answer to the riddle of the

day. Lord Mark had simply faced himas he had faced HIM, not placed by him, not at firstas one of the

damp shuffling crowd. Recognition, though hanging fire, had then clearly (263) come; yet no light of

salutation had been struck from these certainties. Acquaintance between them was scant enough for neither to

take it up. That neither had done so was not, however, what now mattered, but that the gentleman at Florian's

should be in the place at all. He couldn't have been in it long; Densher, as inevitably a haunter of the great

meetingground, would in that case have seen him before. He paid short visits; he was on the wing; the

question for him even as he sat there was of his train or of his boat. He had come back for somethingas a

sequel to his earlier visit; and whatever he had come back for it had had time to be done. He might have

arrived but last night or that morning; he had already made the difference. It was a great thing for Densher to

get this answer. He held it close, he hugged it, quite leaned on it as he continued to circulate. It kept him

going and goingit made him no less restless. But it explainedand that was much, for with explanations

he might somehow deal. The vice in the air, otherwise, was too much like the breath of fate. The weather had

changed, the rain was ugly, the wind wicked, the sea impossible, BECAUSE of Lord Mark. It was because of

him, a fortiori, that the palace was closed. Densher went round again twice; he found the visitor each time as

he had found him first. Once, that is, he was staring before him; the next time he was looking over his

_Figaro_, which he had opened out. Densher didn't again stop, but left him apparently unconscious of his

passageon another repetition of which Lord Mark had disappeared. He had spent but the day; he would be

off that night; he had now gone to his hotel for (264) arrangements. These things were as plain to Densher as

if he had had them in words. The obscure had cleared for himif cleared it was; there was something he

didn't see, the great thing; but he saw so round it and so close to it that this was almost as good. He had been

looking at a man who had done what he had come for, and for whom, as done, it temporarily sufficed. The

man had come again to see Milly, and Milly had received him. His visit would have taken place just before or

just after luncheon, and it was the reason why he himself had found her door shut.

He said to himself that evening, he still said even on the morrow, that he only wanted a reason, and that with

this perception of one he could now mind, as he called it, his business. His business, he had settled, as we

know, was to keep thoroughly still; and he asked himself why it should prevent this that he could feel, in

connexion with the crisis, so remarkably blameless. He gave the appearances before him all the benefit of

being critical, so that if blame were to accrue he shouldn't feel he had dodged it. But it wasn't a bit he who,

that day, had touched her, and if she was upset it wasn't a bit his act. The ability so to think about it amounted

for Densher during several hours to a kind of exhilaration. The exhilaration was heightened fairly, besides, by

the visible conditionssharp, striking, ugly to himof Lord Mark's return. His constant view of it, for all

the next hours, of which there were many, was as a demonstration on the face of it sinister even to his own

actual ignorance. He didn't need, for seeing it as evil, (265) seeing it as, to a certainty, in a high degree

"nasty," to know more about it than he had so easily and so wonderfully picked up. You couldn't drop on the

poor girl that way without, by the fact, being brutal. Such a visit was a descent, an invasion, an aggression,

constituting precisely one or other of the stupid shocks he himself had so decently sought to spare her.

Densher had indeed drifted by the next morning to the reflexionwhich he positively, with occasion, might

have brought straight outthat the only delicate and honourable way of treating a person in such a state was

to treat her as HE, Merton Densher, did. With time, actuallyfor the impression but deepenedthis sense

of the contrast, to the advantage of Merton Densher, became a sense of relief, and that in turn a sense of

escape. It was for all the worldand he drew a long breath on itas if a special danger for him had passed.

Lord Mark had, without in the least intending such a service, got it straight out of the way. It was HE, the

brute, who had stumbled into just the wrong inspiration and who had therefore produced, for the very person

he had wished to hurt, an impunity that was comparative innocence, that was almost like purification. The

person he had wished to hurt could only be the person so unaccountably hanging about. To keep still

meanwhile was, for this person, more comprehensively, to keep it all up; and to keep it all up was, if that

seemed on consideration best, not, for the day or two, to go back to the palace.

The day or two passedstretched to three days; and with the effect, extraordinarily, that Densher felt (266)

himself in the course of them washed but the more clean. Some sign would come if his return should have the

better effect; and he was at all events, in absence, without the particular scruple. It wouldn't have been meant

for him by either of the women that he was to come back but to face Eugenio. That was impossiblethe

being again denied; for it made him practically answerable, and answerable was what he wasn't. There was

no neglect either in absence, inasmuch as, from the moment he didn't get in, the one message he could send

up would be some hope on the score of health. Since accordingly that sort of expression was definitely

forbidden him he had only to waitwhich he was actually helped to do by his feeling with the lapse of each

day more and more wound up to it. The days in themselves were anything but sweet; the wind and the

weather lasted, the fireless cold hinted at worse; the broken charm of the world about was broken into smaller

pieces. He walked up and down his rooms and listened to the windlistened also to tinkles of bells and

watched for some servant of the palace. He might get a note, but the note never came; there were hours when

he stayed at home not to miss it. When he wasn't at home he was in circulation again as he had been at the

hour of his seeing Lord Mark. He strolled about the Square with the herd of refugees; he raked the

approaches and the cafes on the chance the brute, as he now regularly imaged him, MIGHT be still there. He

could only be there, he knew, to be received afresh; and thatone had but to think of itwould be indeed

stiff. He had gone, howeverit was proved; (267) though Densher's care for the question either way only

added to what was most acrid in the taste of his present ordeal. It all came round to what he was doing for

Millyspending days that neither relief nor escape could purge of a smack of the abject. What was it but

abject for a man of his parts to be reduced to such pastimes? What was it but sordid for him, shuffling about

in the rain, to have to peep into shops and to consider possible meetings? What was it but odious to find

himself wondering what, as between him and another man, a possible meeting would produce? There

recurred moments when in spite of everything he felt no straighter than another man. And yet even on the

third day, when still nothing had come, he more than ever knew that he wouldn't have budged for the world.

He thought of the two women, in their silence, at lasthe at all events thought of Millyas probably, for

her reasons, now intensely wishing him to go. The cold breath of her reasons was, with everything else, in the

air; but he didn't care for them any more than for her wish itself, and he would stay in spite of her, stay in

spite of odium, stay in spite perhaps of some final experience that would be, for the pain of it, all but

unbearable. That would be his one way, purified though he was, to mark his virtue beyond any mistake. It

would be accepting the disagreeable, and the disagreeable would be a proof; a proof of his not having stayed

for the thingthe agreeable, as it werethat Kate had named. The thing Kate had named was not to have

been the odium of staying in spite of hints. It was part of (268) the odium as actual too that Kate was, for her

comfort, just now well aloof. These were the first hours since her flight in which his sense of what she had

done for him on the eve of that event was to incur a qualification. It was strange, it was perhaps base, to be

thinking such things so soon; but one of the intimations of his solitude was that she had provided for herself.

She was out of it all, by her act, as much as he was in it; and this difference grew, positively, as his own

intensity increased. She had said in their last sharp snatch of talksharp though thickly muffled, and with

every word in it final and deep, unlike even the deepest words they had ever yet spoken: "Letters?

NeverNOW. Think of it. Impossible." So that as he had sufficiently caught her senseinto which he read,

all the same, a strange inconsequencethey had practically wrapped their understanding in the breach of

their correspondence. He had moreover, on losing her, done justice to her law of silence; for there was

doubtless a finer delicacy in his not writing to her than in his writing as he must have written had he spoken

of themselves. That would have been a turbid strain, and her idea had been to be noble; which, in a degree,

was a manner. Only it left her, for the pinch, comparatively at ease. And it left HIM, in the conditions,

peculiarly alone. He was alone, that is, till, on the afternoon of his third day, in gathering dusk and renewed

rain, with his shabby rooms looking doubtless, in their confirmed dreariness, for the mere eyes of others, at

their worst, the grinning padrona threw open the door and introduced Mrs. Stringham. That made at a bound

(269) a difference, especially when he saw that his visitor was weighted. It appeared part of her weight that

she was in a wet waterproof, that she allowed her umbrella to be taken from her by the good woman without

consciousness or care, and that her face, under her veil, richly rosy with the driving wind, wasand the veil

They came to it almost immediately; he was to wonder afterwards at the fewness of their steps. "She has

The poor lady stood there as she had stopped; Densher had, in the instant flare of his eagerness, his curiosity,

all responsive at sight of her, waved away, on the spot, the padrona, who had offered to relieve her of her

mackintosh. She looked vaguely about through her wet veil, intensely alive now to the step she had taken and

wishing it not to have been in the dark, but clearly, as yet, seeing nothing. "I don't know HOW she isand

"I'm glad enough you've come," he said, "and it's quiteyou make me feelas if I had been wretchedly

She showed him again her blurred eyesshe had caught at his word. "Have you been wretched?"

Now, however, on his lips, the word expired. It would have sounded for him like a complaint, and before

something he already made out in his visitor he knew his own trouble as small. Hers, under her damp

draperies, which shamed his lack of a fire, was great, and he felt she had brought it all with her. He answered

that he had been patient and above all that he had been still. "As still as a mouseyou'll (271) have seen it

for yourself. Stiller, for three days together, than I've ever been in my life. It has seemed to me the only

This qualification of it as a policy or a remedy was straightway for his friend, he saw, a light that her own

light could answer. "It has been best. I've wondered for you. But it has been best," she said again.

"I don't know. I've been afraid you were gone." Then as he gave a headshake which, though slow, was deeply

She thought of it, and he could see even more of the relief she was taking from him. His presence, his face,

his voice, the old rooms themselves, so meagre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been to

himthese things counted for her, now she had them, as the help she had been wanting: so that she still only

stood there taking them all in. With it however popped up characteristically a throb of her conscience. What

she thus tasted was almost a personal joy. It told Densher of the three days she on her side had spent. "Well,

She looked at him a minute as if he were the fact itself that he expressed. "Then you know?"

(272) Mrs. Stringham waitedher face seemed to sound him. Then her own reply was strange. "She hasn't

"No more," she simply went on, "than if it were all over. Not even by the faintest allusion."

It was a tone that, for the minute, imposed itself in its dry despair; it represented, in the bleak place, which

had no life of its own, none but the life Kate had leftthe sense of which, for that matter, by mystic

channels, might fairly be reaching the visitorthe very impotence of their extinction. And Densher had

It made her, however, as if these were crudities, almost material pangs, only say as before: "Then you know?"

"Yes," he at last returned, "I know. But the marvel to me is that YOU do. I've no right in fact to imagine or to

Her eyes, through her veil, kept pressing him. "Nonot everything. That's why I've come."

"That I shall really tell you?" With which, as she (273) hesitated and it affected him, he brought out in a

groan a doubting "Oh, oh!" It turned him from her to the place itself, which was a part of what was in him,

was the abode, the worn shrine more than ever, of the fact in possession, the fact, now a thick association, for

which he had hired it. THAT was not for telling, but Susan Shepherd was, none the less, so decidedly

wonderful that the sense of it might really have begun, by an effect already operating, to be a part of her

knowledge. He saw, and it stirred him, that she hadn't come to judge him; had come rather, so far as she

might dare, to pity. This showed him her own abasementthat, at any rate, of grief; and made him feel with

a rush of friendliness that he liked to be with her. The rush had quickened when she met his groan with an

It was his own good impulse in herself. "It's what I've ventured to feel. It's much." She replied in effect,

silently, that it was whatever he liked; on which, so far as he had been afraid for anything, he knew his fear

had dropped. The comfort was huge, for it gave back to him something precious, over which, in the effort of

recovery, his own hand had too imperfectly closed. Kate, he remembered, had said to him, with her sole and

single boldnessand also on grounds he hadn't then measuredthat Mrs. Stringham was a person who

WOULDN'T, at a pinch, in a stretch of confidence, wince. It was but another of the cases in which Kate was

(274) And her answer was the more valuable that it came without nervous effusionquite as if she

understood what he might conceivably have believed. She turned over in fact what she thought, and that was

It made him aware the next moment of how they had been planted there. She took off her cloak with his aid,

though when she had also, accepting a seat, removed her veil, he recognised in her personal ravage that the

words she had just uttered to him were the one flower she had to throw. They were all her consolation for

him, and the consolation even still depended on the event. She sat with him at any rate in the grey clearance,

as sad as a winter dawn, made by their meeting. The image she again evoked for him loomed in it but the

He saw with the last vividness, and it was as if, in their silences, they were simply so leaving what he saw.

"Of nothingof no one." And she went on, Susan Shepherd, giving it out as she had had to take it. "She

doesn't WANT to die. Think of her age. Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. Think of all she is.

Think of all she HAS. She lies there stiffening herself and clinging to it all. So I thank God!" the poor lady

"She's more than quiet. She's grim. It's what (275) she has never been. So you seeall these days. I can't tell

"How she doesn't want to die? Of course she doesn't want it." He had a long pause, and they might have been

thinking together of what they could even now do to prevent it. This, however, was not what he brought out.

Milly's "grimness" and the great hushed palace were present to him; present with the little woman before him

as she must have been waiting there and listening. "Only, what harm have YOU done her?"

Mrs. Stringham looked about in her darkness. "I don't know. I come and talk of her here with you."

His friend, after all, helped him, and he turned it, so far as he could, all over. "Would she see me again?"

"You mean as you describe her?" He felt her surprise, and it took him some time. "No."

She had for the moment her vision of this, but it collapsed. "I don't see what you can do."

The very decision of her despairit was after all so lucidkindled in him a heat. "But the doctor, all the

"Tacchini? Oh he's kind. He comes. He's proud of having been approved and coached by a great London

man. He hardly in fact goes away; so that I scarce know what becomes of his other patients. He thinks her,

justly enough, a great personage; he treats her like royalty; he's waiting on events. But she has barely

consented to see him, and, though she has told him, generouslyfor she THINKS of me, dear creaturethat

he may come, that he may stay, for my sake, he spends most of his time only hovering at her door, prowling

through the rooms, trying to entertain me, in that ghastly saloon, with the gossip of Venice, and meeting me,

in doorways, in the sala, on the staircase, with an agreeable intolerable smile. We don't," said Susan

"Absolutely. I don't do what she doesn't wish. We talk of the price of provisions."

(277) "Absolutely. She named it to me as a subject when she said, the first time, that if it would be any

"None whatever. That, however," she added, "isn't his fault. Nothing's any comfort."

"Well then call it that." But she looked at him a moment with eyes filled full, and something came up in her

"You came at bottom of course for our friend herself. But if it's, as you say, too late for me to do anything?"

She continued to look at him, and with an irritation, which he saw grow in her, from the truth itself. "So I did

say. But, with you here"and she turned her vision again strangely about her"with you here, and with

"How do you mean I 'won't,' if she abandons ME? What can I do if she won't see me?"

"I said I shouldn't like it in the light of what you tell me. I shouldn't like it only to see her as you make (278)

me. I should like it if I could help her. But even then," Densher pursued without faith, "she would have to

want it first herself. And there," he continued to make out, "is the devil of it. She WON'T want it herself. She

He had got up in his impatience of it, and she watched him while he helplessly moved. "There's one thing you

can do. There's only that, and even for that there are difficulties. But there IS that." He stood before her with

his hands in his pockets, and he had soon enough, from her eyes, seen what was coming. She paused as if

waiting for his leave to utter it, and as he only let her wait they heard in the silence, on the Canal, the renewed

downpour of rain. She had at last to speak, but, as if still with her fear, she only halfspoke. "I think you

He did know what it was, and with it even, as she saidrather!there were difficulties. He turned away on

them, on everything, for a moment; he moved to the other window and looked at the sheeted channel, wider,

like a river, where the houses opposite, blurred and belittled, stood at twice their distance. Mrs. Stringham

said nothing, was as mute in fact, for the minute, as if she had "had" him, and he was the first again to speak.

When he did so, however, it was not in straight answer to her last remarkhe only started from that. He said,

as he came back to her, "Let me, you know, SEEone must understand," almost as if he had for the time

accepted it. And what he wished to understand was where, on the essence of the question, was the voice of

Sir Luke (279) Strett. If they talked of not giving her up shouldn't HE be the one least of all to do it? "Aren't

"Oh," said Mrs. Stringham, "it's he who has kept me going. I wired the first night, and he answered like an

angel. He'll come like one. Only he can't arrive, at the nearest, till Thursday afternoon."

"Rather! I can see it still, the face with which, when he was here in Octoberthat night when she was in

white, when she had people there and those musiciansshe committed him to my care. It was beautiful for

both of usshe put us in relation. She asked me, for the time, to take him about; I did so, and we quite hit it

"You ought to then. He went with you to galleries and churches; you saved his time for him, showed him the

choicest things, and you perhaps will remember telling me myself that if he hadn't been a great surgeon he

"Well," the young man admitted, "that's what he isin having judged HER. He hasn't," he went on, "judged

her for nothing. His interest in herwhich we must make the most ofcan only be supremely beneficent."

He still roamed, while he spoke, with his hands in (280) his pockets, and she saw him, on this, as her eyes

sufficiently betrayed, trying to keep his distance from the recognition he had a few moments before partly

There was something for him in the sound of it. "Well, I do no more, dear lady, than you do yourself. Surely

"Yes, but I seem to feel I know what he thinks. And I should think, with all the time you spent with him,

Densher stopped short, though at first without a word. "We never spoke of her. Neither of us mentioned her,

even to sound her name, and nothing whatever in connexion with her passed between us."

Mrs. Stringham stared up at him, surprised at this picture. But she had plainly an idea that after an instant

"Precisely. But it was also my sense of that virtue in him, and it was something more besides." And he spoke

"Except to you." The ghost of her smile, a gleam of significance, had waited on her words, and it kept him,

for honesty, looking at her. For honesty toothat is for his own wordshe had quickly coloured: he was

sinking so, at a stroke, the burden of his discourse (281) with Kate. His visitor, for the minute, while their

eyes met, might have been watching him hold it down. And he HAD to hold it downthe effort of which,

precisely, made him red. He couldn't let it come up; at least not yet. She might make what she would of it. He

attempted to repeat his statement, but he really modified it. "Sir Luke, at all events, had nothing to tell me,

"And REAL"she had taken him right up with a huge emphasis"was more impossible still." No

doubthe didn't deny it; and she had straightway drawn her conclusion. "Then that proves what I saythat

"You were neither of you thinking of any one else. That's why you kept together."

Well, that too, if she desired, he took from her; but he came straight back to what he had originally said. "I

haven't a notion, all the same, of what he thinks." She faced him, visibly, with the question into which he had

already observed that her special shade of earnestness was perpetually flowering, right and left"Are you

VERY sure?"and he could only note her apparent difference from himself. "You, I judge, believe that he

"Well, we shall see"and he felt almost basely superficial. More and more, for the last five minutes, (282)

had he known she had brought something with her, and never in respect to anything had he had such a wish

to postpone. He would have liked to put everything off till Thursday; he was sorry it was now Tuesday; he

wondered if he were afraid. Yet it wasn't of Sir Luke, who was coming; nor of Milly, who was dying; nor of

Mrs. Stringham, who was sitting there. It wasn't, strange to say, of Kate either, for Kate's presence affected

him suddenly as having swooned or trembled away. Susan Shepherd's, thus prolonged, had cast on it some

influence under which it had ceased to act. She was as absent to his sensibility as she had constantly been,

since her departure, absent, as an echo or a reference, from the palace; and it was the first time, among the

objects now surrounding him, that his sensibility so noted her. He knew soon enough that it was of himself he

was afraid, and that even, if he didn't take care, he should infallibly be more so. "Meanwhile," he added for

She slowly rose at the words, which might almost have conveyed to her the hint of his taking care. She stood

there as if she had in fact seen him abruptly moved to dismiss her. But the abruptness would have been in this

case so marked as fairly to offer ground for insistence to her imagination of his state. It would take her

moreover, she clearly showed him she was thinking, but a minute or two to insist. Besides, she had already

said it. "Will you do it if HE asks you? I mean if Sir Luke himself puts it to you. And will you give him"oh

Densher felt himselfas had already once befallen him in the quarter of an hourturn red to the top of his

forehead. Turning red had, however, for him, as a sign of shame, been, so to speak, discounted: his

consciousness of it at the present moment was rather as a sign of his fear. It showed him sharply enough of

Hesitation, on the demand, revived in her, for hadn't he all along been letting her see that he knew? "Why,

Mrs. Stringham had a look of bewildermentof seeing him as suddenly perverse. "I've been judging that you

It quickened his pity for her, but he was beset too by other things. "Then YOU know"

He had faltered again, but all she knew she now wanted to say. "I'm speaking," she said soothingly, "of what

It appeared to have for her, he saw the next moment, the quality of relief, as if he had supposed her thinking

of something else. Thereupon, straightway, (284) that lightened it. "Oh you thought I've known it for TRUE!"

Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw that he had betrayed himself. Not, however, that it mattered,

as he immediately saw still better. There it was now, all of it at last, and this at least there was no postponing.

They were left with her ideathe one she was wishing to make him recognise. He had expressed ten minutes

before his need to understand, and she was acting after all but on that. Only what he was to understand was

He took again one of his turns, not meeting what she had last said; he mooned a minute, as he would have

called it, at a window; and of course she could see that she had driven him to the wall. She did clearly,

without delay, see it; on which her sense of having "caught" him became as promptly a scruple, which she

spoke as if not to press. "What I mean is that he told her you've been all the while engaged to Miss Croy."

He gave a jerk round; it was almostto hear itthe touch of a lash; and he saididiotically, as he

"Oh it's not I who say it." She spoke in gentleness. "I only repeat to you what he told her."

Densher, from whom an impatience had escaped, had already caught himself up. "Pardon my brutality. Of

course I know what you're talking about. I saw him, toward the evening," he further explained, "in the Piazza;

only just saw himthrough the (285) glass at Florian'swithout any words. In fact I scarcely know

himthere wouldn't have been occasion. It was but once, moreoverhe must have gone that night. But I

knew he wouldn't have come for nothing, and I turned it overwhat he would have come for."

Densher approved. "He came to let her know that he knows better than she for whom it was she had a couple

"The good, he thinks, if he has patiencenot too muchmay be to come. He doesn't know what he has

"She was ableI'm sure of itnot to show anything. He dealt her his blow, and she took it without a sign."

Mrs. Stringham, it was plain, spoke by book, and it brought into play again her appreciation of what she

"An idiot of idiots." For a moment, on it all, on the stupid doom in it, they looked at each other. "Yet he's

"So awfullyit's Maud Lowder's own view. (286) And he was nice, in London," said Mrs. Stringham, "to

"Yes, but it wasn'tI could see from the only few things she first told methat he meant HER the least

"That's always the ass at his worst," Densher returned. "He only of course meant harm to me."

"And good to himselfhe thought that would come. He had been unable to swallow," Mrs. Stringham

pursued, "what had happened on his other visit. He had been then too sharply humiliated."

"Yes, and he also saw you. He saw you received, as it were, while he was turned away."

"Perfectly," Densher said"I've filled it out. And also that he has known meanwhile for WHAT I was then

"Preciselyit was more than he could bear. But he has it," said Mrs. Stringham, "to think of still."

"Only, after all," asked Densher, who himself somehow, at this point, was having more to think of even than

he had yet had"only, after all, how has he happened to know? That is, to know enough."

He had gone on without heeding her question; but, face to face as they were, something had none (287) the

less passed between them. It was this that, after an instant, made her again interrogative. "What do you mean

"I think he has been back to England. He came in fact, I've reason to believe, straight from there."

"Well, to try againwith the help perhaps of a new fact. To make himself possibly right with hera

different attempt from the other. He had at any rate something to tell her, and he didn't know his opportunity

would reduce itself to half an hour. Or perhaps indeed half an hour would be just what was most effective. It

Her companion took it in, understanding but too well; yet as she lighted the matter for him more, really, than

his own courage had quite daredputting the absent dots on several i'she saw new questions swarm. They

had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he

"I've given her none that hasn't been decently good. This will have been the first."

He thought a moment longer. "What has Mrs. Lowder written about him? Has she written that he has been

"She has mentioned him but onceit was in her letter before the last. Then she said something."

Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. "Well it was in reference to Miss Croy. That she thought Kate was

thinking of him. Or perhaps I should say rather that he was thinking of HERonly it seemed this time to

Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but he presently raised them to speak, and there was that in his

face which proved him aware of a queerness in his question. "Does she mean he has been encouraged to

"Of course not"he recovered himself; "and I oughtn't to seem to trouble you to piece together what I can't

It was one of the things in herand his conscious face took it from her as suchthat from the moment of

her coming in had seemed to mark for him, as to what concerned him, the long jump of her perception. They

had parted four days earlier (289) with many things, between them, deep down. But these things were now on

their troubled surface, and it wasn't he who had brought them so quickly up. Women were wonderfulat

least this one was. But so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so, most of all, was his very Kate. Well, he

already knew what he had been feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all SUCH petticoats! It was

just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that, in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with

his putting to his visitor a question that quite passed over her remark. "Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to

"Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, "HER friend also. But not a single word that I know of."

He had taken it for certain she hadn'tthe thing being after all but a shade more strange than his having

himself, with Milly, never for six weeks mentioned the young lady in question. It was for that matter but a

shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of which, and however inconsequently, he

blushed anew for Kate's silence. He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he could

get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been judging. "How did he manage to get AT her? She

"Oh she was disposed to kindness. She was easier," the good lady explained with a slight embarrassment,

"Exactly not the difference of her having to be harsh. Perfectly. She could afford to be the opposite." With

which, as he said nothing, she just impatiently completed her sense. "She had had YOU here for six weeks."

"Besides, I think he must have written her firstwritten I mean in a tone to smooth his way. That it would be

It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, though quickening, as for hope, the intensity of her look at him.

"Then it WAS mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the bargain," the young man asked"didn't he,

weeks before, see her, judge her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a few months

Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and it gave more force to what she then

remarkably added. "He has doubtless been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been

"The hound!" Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a hot face, as soon as he (291) had

spoken, conscious again of an intention in his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once

more taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion. "Shall we have lightsa lamp or

He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a thought. "He WILL have proposed

"Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done so tooonly SHE, poor lady, wrong. Miss Croy's refusal of

him will have struck him"Densher continued to make it out"as a phenomenon requiring a reason."

"Not too clearsince I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact to make his descent on Miss Theale

relevant. But clear enough. He has believed," said Densher bravely, "that I may have been a reason at

"Which of course," Mrs. Stringham observed, "is a monstrous supposition." Her companion, after a stiff

minutesensibly long for eachfell away (292) from her again, and then added to it another minute, which

he spent once more looking out with his hands in his pockets. This was no answer, he perfectly knew, to what

she had dropped, and it even seemed to state for his own ears that no answer was possible. She left him to

himself, and he was glad she had declined, for their further colloquy, the advantage of lights. These would

have been an advantage mainly to herself. Yet she got her benefit too even from the absence of them. It came

out in her very tone when at last she addressed himso differently, for confidencein words she had

already used. "If Sir Luke himself asks it of you as something you can do for HIM, will you deny to Milly

Oh how he knew he hung back! But at last he said: "You're absolutely certain then that she does believe it?"

He was conscious that his own appeal pressed her hard; it eased him a little that her answer must be a pain to

her discretion. She answered none the less, and he was truly the harder pressed. "What I believe will

inevitably depend more or less on your action. You can perfectly settle itif you care. I promise to believe

"But a denial, when it comes to thatconfound the whole thing, don't you see!of exactly what?"

(293) It was as if he were hoping she would narrow; but in fact she enlarged. "Of everything."

Everything had never even yet seemed to him so incalculably much. "Oh!" he simply moaned into the gloom.

The near Thursday, coming nearer and bringing Sir Luke Strett, brought also blessedly an abatement of other

rigours. The weather changed, the stubborn storm yielded, and the autumn sunshine, baffled for many days,

but now hot and almost vindictive, came into its own again and, with an almost audible paean, a suffusion of

bright sound that was one with the bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed and plashed and

called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the scattered pinks, yellows, blues, seagreens,

were like a hangingout of vivid stuffs, a layingdown of fine carpets. Densher rejoiced in this on the

occasion of his going to the station to meet the great doctor. He went after consideration, which, as he was

constantly aware, was at present his imposed, his only, way of doing anything. That was where the event had

landed himwhere no event in his life had landed him before. He had thought, no doubt, from the day he

was born, much more than he had acted; except indeed that he remembered thoughtsa few of

themwhich at the moment of their coming to him had thrilled him almost like adventures. But anything

like his actual state he had not, as to the prohibition of impulse, accident, rangethe prohibition in other

words of freedomhitherto known. The great oddity was that if he had felt his arrival, so few weeks back,

especially (295) as an adventure, nothing could now less resemble one than the fact of his staying. It would

be an adventure to break away, to depart, to go back, above all, to London, and tell Kate Croy he had done so;

but there was something of the merely, the almost meanly, obliged and involved sort in his going on as he

was. That was the effect in particular of Mrs. Stringham's visit, which had left him as with such a taste in his

mouth of what he couldn't do. It had made this quantity clear to him, and yet had deprived him of the sense,

It was but a small makebelieve of freedom, he knew, to go to the station for Sir Luke. Nothing equally free,

at all events, had he yet turned over so long. What then was his odious position but that again and again he

was afraid? He stiffened himself under this consciousness as if it had been a tax levied by a tyrant. He hadn't

at any time proposed to himself to live long enough for fear to preponderate in his life. Such was simply the

advantage it had actually got of him. He was afraid for instance that an advance to his distinguished friend

might prove for him somehow a pledge or a committal. He was afraid of it as a current that would draw him

too far; yet he thought with an equal aversion of being shabby, being poor, through fear. What finally

prevailed with him was the reflexion that, whatever might happen, the great man had, after that occasion at

the palace, their young woman's brief sacrifice to societyand the hour of Mrs. Stringham's appeal had

brought it well to the surfaceshown him (296) marked benevolence. Mrs. Stringham's comments on the

relation in which Milly had placed them made himit was unmistakeablefeel things he perhaps hadn't

felt. It was in the spirit of seeking a chance to feel again adequately whatever it was he had missedit was,

no doubt, in that spirit, so far as it went a stroke for freedom, that Densher, arriving betimes, paced the

platform before the train came in. Only, after it had come and he had presented himself at the door of Sir

Luke's compartment with everything that followedonly, as the situation developed, the sense of an

anticlimax to so many intensities deprived his apprehensions and hesitations even of the scant dignity they

might claim. He could scarce have said if the visitor's manner less showed the remembrance that might have

suggested expectation, or made shorter work of surprise in presence of the fact.

Sir Luke had clean forgottenso Densher readthe rather remarkable young man he had formerly gone

about with, though he picked him up again, on the spot, with one large quiet look. The young man felt

himself so picked, and the thing immediately affected him as the proof of a splendid economy. Opposed to all

the waste with which he was now connected the exhibition was of a nature quite nobly to admonish him. The

eminent pilgrim, in the train, all the way, had used the hours as he needed, thinking not a moment in advance

of what finally awaited him. An exquisite case awaited himof which, in this queer way, the remarkable

young man was an outlying part; but the single motion of his face, the motion into which Densher, from the

platform, (297) lightly stirred its stillness, was his first renewed cognition. If, however, he had suppressed the

matter by leaving Victoria he would at once suppress now, in turn, whatever else suited. The perception of

this became as a symbol of the whole pitch, so far as one might one's self be concerned, of his visit. One saw,

our friend further meditated, everything that, in contact, he appeared to acceptif only, for much, not to

trouble to sink it: what one missed was the inward use he made of it. Densher began wondering, at the great

watersteps outside, what use he would make of the anomaly of their having there to separate. Eugenio had

been on the platform, in the respectful rear, and the gondola from the palace, under his direction, bestirred

itself, with its attaching mixture of alacrity and dignity, on their coming out of the station together. Densher

didn't at all mind now that, he himself of necessity refusing a seat on the deep black cushions beside the guest

of the palace, he had Milly's three emissaries for spectators; and this susceptibility, he also knew, it was

something to have left behind. All he did was to smile down vaguely from the stepsthey could see him, the

donkeys, as shut out as they would. "I don't," he said with a sad headshake, "go there now."

"0h!" Sir Luke Strett returned, and made no more of it; so that the thing was splendid, Densher fairly thought,

as an inscrutability quite inevitable and unconscious. His friend appeared not even to make of it that he

supposed it might be for respect to the crisis. He didn't moreover afterwards make much more of

anythingafter the classic craft, that (298) is, obeying in the main Pasquale's inimitable stroke from the

poop, had performed the manoeuvre by which it presented, receding, a back, so to speak, rendered positively

graceful by the high black hump of its felze. Densher watched the gondola out of sighthe heard Pasquale's

cry, borne to him across the water, for the sharp firm swerve into a sidecanal, a short cut to the palace. He

had no gondola of his own; it was his habit never to take one; and he humblyas in Venice it IS

humblewalked away, though not without having for some time longer stood as if fixed where the guest of

the palace had left him. It was strange enough, but he found himself as never yet, and as he couldn't have

reckoned, in presence of the truth that was the truest about Milly. He couldn't have reckoned on the force of

the difference instantly madefor it was all in the air as he heard Pasquale's cry and saw the boat

disappearby the mere visibility, on the spot, of the personage summoned to her aid. He hadn't only never

been near the facts of her conditionwhich counted so as a blessing for him; he hadn't only, with all the

world, hovered outside an impenetrable ring fence, within which there reigned a kind of expensive vagueness

made up of smiles and silences and beautiful fictions and priceless arrangements, all strained to breaking; but

he had also, with every one else, as he now felt, actively fostered suppressions which were in the direct

interest of every one's good manner, every one's pity, every one's really quite generous ideal. It was a

conspiracy of silence, as the cliche went, to which no one had made an exception, the great smudge (299) of

mortality across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, finding in no quarter a surface of spirit or of

speech that consented to reflect it. "The mere aesthetic instinct of mankind!" our young man had more than

once, in the connexion, said to himself; letting the rest of the proposition drop, but touching again thus

sufficiently on the outrage even to taste involved in one's having to SEE. So then it had beena general

conscious fool's paradise, from which the specified had been chased like a dangerous animal. What therefore

had at present befallen was that the specified, standing all the while at the gate, had now crossed the threshold

as in Sir Luke Strett's person and quite on such a scale as to fill out the whole precinct. Densher's nerves,

absolutely his heartbeats too, had measured the change before he on this occasion moved away.

The facts of physical suffering, of incurable pain, of the chance grimly narrowed, had been made, at a stroke,

intense, and this was to be the way he was now to feel them. The clearance of the air, in short, making vision

not only possible but inevitable, the one thing left to be thankful for was the breadth of Sir Luke's shoulders,

which, should one be able to keep in line with them, might in some degree interpose. It was, however, far

from plain to Densher for the first day or two that he was again to see his distinguished friend at all. That he

couldn't, on any basis actually serving, return to the palacethis was as solid to him, every whit, as the other

feature of his case, the fact of the publicity attaching to his proscription through his not having taken himself

off. (300) He had been seen often enough in the Leporelli gondola. As, accordingly, he was not on any

presumption destined to meet Sir Luke about the town, where the latter would have neither time nor taste to

lounge, nothing more would occur between them unless the great man should surprisingly wait upon him. His

doing that, Densher further reflected, wouldn't even simply depend on Mrs. Stringham's having decided

toas they might sayturn him on. It would depend as wellfor there would be practically some

difference to heron her actually attempting it; and it would depend above all on what Sir Luke would make

of such an overture. Densher had for that matter his own view of the amount, to say nothing of the particular

sort, of response it might expect from him. He had his own view of the ability of such a personage even to

understand such an appeal. To what extent could he be prepared, and what importance in fine could he

attach? Densher asked himself these questions, in truth, to put his own position at the worst. He should miss

the great man completely unless the great man should come to see him, and the great man could only come to

see him for a purpose unsupposable. Therefore he wouldn't come at all, and consequently there was nothing

It wasn't in the least that Densher invoked this violence to all probability; but it pressed on him that there

were few possible diversions he could afford now to miss. Nothing in his predicament was so odd as that,

incontestably afraid of himself, he was not afraid of Sir Luke. He had an impression, which he clung to, based

on a previous taste of the visitor's (301) company, that HE would somehow let him off. The truth about Milly

perched on his shoulders and sounded in his tread, became by the fact of his presence the name and the form,

for the time, of everything in the place; but it didn't, for the difference, sit in his face, the face so squarely and

easily turned to Densher at the earlier season. His presence on the first occasion, not as the result of a

summons, but as a friendly whim of his own, had had quite another value; and though our young man could

scarce regard that value as recoverable he yet reached out in imagination to a renewal of the old contact. He

didn't propose, as he privately and forcibly phrased the matter, to be a hog; but there was something he after

all did want for himself. It was somethingthis stuck to himthat Sir Luke would have had for him if it

hadn't been impossible. These were his worst days, the two or three; those on which even the sense of the

tension at the palace didn't much help him not to feel that his destiny made but light of him. He had never

been, as he judged it, so down. In mean conditions, without books, without society, almost without money, he

had nothing to do but to wait. His main support really was his original idea, which didn't leave him, of

waiting for the deepest depth his predicament could sink him to. Fate would invent, if he but gave it time,

some refinement of the horrible. It was just inventing meanwhile this suppression of Sir Luke. When the third

day came without a sign he knew what to think. He had given Mrs. Stringham during her call on him no such

answer as would have armed her faith, and the ultimatum she had described (302) as ready for him when HE

should be ready was thereforeif on no other ground than her want of this power to answer for himnot to

That was not, either, we hasten to declareas Densher then soon enough sawthe idea with which Sir Luke

finally stood before him again. For stand before him again he finally did; just when our friend had gloomily

embraced the belief that the limit of his power to absent himself from London obligations would have been

reached. Four or five days, exclusive of journeys, represented the largest supposable sacrificeto a head not

crownedon the part of one of the highest medical lights in the world; so that really when the personage in

question, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in the doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision

that for the instant cut like a knife. It spoke, the fact, and in a single dreadful word, of the magnitudehe

shrank from calling it anything elseof Milly's case. The great man had not gone then, and an immense

surrender to her immense need was so expressed in it that some effect, some help, some hope, were flagrantly

part of the expression. It was for Densher, with his reaction from disappointment, as if he were conscious of

ten things at oncethe foremost being that just conceivably, since Sir Luke WAS still there, she had been

saved. Close upon its heels, however, and quite as sharply, came the sense that the crisisplainly even now

to be prolonged for himwas to have none of that sound simplicity. Not only had his visitor not (303)

dropped in to gossip about Milly, he hadn't dropped in to mention her at all; he had dropped in fairly to show

that during the brief remainder of his stay, the end of which was now in sight, as little as possible of that was

to be looked for. The demonstration, such as it was, was in the key of their previous acquaintance, and it was

their previous acquaintance that had made him come. He was not to stop longer than the Saturday next at

hand, but there were things of interest he should like to see again meanwhile. It was for these things of

interest, for Venice and the opportunity of Venice, for a prowl or two, as he called it, and a turn about, that he

had looked his young man upproducing on the latter's part, as soon as the case had, with the lapse of a

further twentyfour hours, so defined itself, the most incongruous, yet most beneficent revulsion. Nothing

could in fact have been more monstrous on the surfaceand Densher was well aware of itthan the relief

he found during this short period in the tacit drop of all reference to the palace, in neither hearing news nor

asking for it. That was what had come out for him, on his visitor's entrance, even in the very seconds of

suspense that were connecting the fact also directly and intensely with Milly's state. He had come to say he

had saved herhe had come, as from Mrs. Stringham, to say how she might BE savedhe had come, in

spite of Mrs. Stringham, to say she was lost: the distinct throbs of hope, of fear, simultaneous for all their

distinctness, merged their identity in a bound of the heart just as immediate and which remained after they

had passed. It simply (304) did wonders for himthis was the truththat Sir Luke was, as he would have

The result of it was the oddest consciousness as of a blest calm after a storm. He had been trying for weeks,

as we know, to keep superlatively still, and trying it largely in solitude and silence; but he looked back on it

now as on the heat of fever. The real, the right stillness was this particular form of society. They walked

together and they talked, looked up pictures again and recovered impressionsSir Luke knew just what he

wanted; haunted a little the dealers in old wares; sat down at Florian's for rest and mild drinks; blessed above

all the grand weather, a bath of warm air, a pageant of autumn light. Once or twice while they rested the great

man closed his eyeskeeping them so for some minutes while his companion, the more easily watching his

face for it, made private reflexions on the subject of lost sleep. He had been up at night with herhe in

person, for hours; but this was all he showed of it and was apparently to remain his nearest approach to an

allusion. The extraordinary thing was that Densher could take it in perfectly as evidence, could turn cold at

the image looking out of it; and yet that he could at the same time not intermit a throb of his response to

accepted liberation. The liberation was an experience that held its own, and he continued to know why, in

spite of his deserts, in spite of his folly, in spite of everything, he had so fondly hoped for it. He had hoped

for it, had sat in his room there waiting for it, because he had thus divined in it, should it come, some power

to let him off. He was BEING let off; dealt (305) with in the only way that didn't aggravate his responsibility.

The beauty was also that this wasn't on system or on any basis of intimate knowledge; it was just by being a

man of the world and by knowing life, by feeling the real, that Sir Luke did him good. There had been in all

the case too many women. A man's sense of it, another man's, changed the air; and he wondered what man,

had he chosen, would have been more to his purpose than this one. He was large and easythat was the

benediction; he knew what mattered and what didn't; he distinguished between the essence and the shell, the

just grounds and the unjust for fussing. One was thusif one were concerned with him or exposed to him at

allin his hands for whatever he should do, and not much less affected by his mercy than one might have

been by his rigour. The grand thingit did come to thatwas the way he carried off, as one might fairly call

it, the business of making odd things natural. Nothing, if they hadn't taken it so, could have exceeded the

unexplained oddity, between them, of Densher's now complete detachment from the poor ladies at the palace;

nothing could have exceeded the no less marked anomaly of the great man's own abstentions of speech. He

made, as he had done when they met at the station, nothing whatever of anything; and the effect of it,

Densher would have said, was a relation with him quite resembling that of doctor and patient. One took the

cue from him as one might have taken a doseexcept that the cue was pleasant in the taking.

That was why one could leave it to his tacit discretion, (306) why for the three or four days Densher again

and again did so leave it; merely wondering a little, at the most, on the eve of Saturday, the announced term

of the episode. Waiting once more on this latter occasion, the Saturday morning, for Sir Luke's reappearance

at the station, our friend had to recognise the drop of his own borrowed ease, the result, naturally enough, of

the prospect of losing a support. The difficulty was that, on such lines as had served them, the support was Sir

Luke's personal presence. Would he go without leaving some substitute for that?and without breaking,

either, his silence in respect to his errand? Densher was in still deeper ignorance than at the hour of his call,

and what was truly prodigious at so supreme a moment was thatas had immediately to appearno gleam

of light on what he had been living with for a week found its way out of him. What he had been doing was

proof of a huge interest as well as of a huge fee; yet when the Leporelli gondola again, and somewhat tardily,

approached, his companion, watching from the watersteps, studied his fine closed face as much as ever in

vain. It was like a lesson, from the highest authority, on the subject of the relevant, so that its blankness

affected Densher of a sudden almost as a cruelty, feeling it quite awfully compatible, as he did, with Milly's

having ceased to exist. And the suspense continued after they had passed together, as time was short, directly

into the station, where Eugenio, in the field early, was mounting guard over the compartment he had secured.

The strain, though probably lasting, at the carriagedoor, but a couple of minutes, prolonged itself so for our

poor gentleman's (307) nerves that he involuntarily directed a long look at Eugenio, who met it, however, as

only Eugenio could. Sir Luke's attention was given for the time to the right bestowal of his numerous effects,

about which he was particular, and Densher fairly found himself, so far as silence could go, questioning the

representative of the palace. It didn't humiliate him now; it didn't humiliate him even to feel that that

personage exactly knew how little he satisfied him. Eugenio resembled to that extent Sir Luketo the extent

of the extraordinary things with which his facial habit was compatible. By the time, however, that Densher

had taken from it all its possessor intended Sir Luke was free and with a hand out for farewell. He offered the

hand at first without speech; only on meeting his eyes could our young man see that they had never yet so

completely looked at him. It was never, with Sir Luke, that they looked harder at one time than at another; but

they looked longer, and this, even a shade of it, might mean on his part everything. It meant, Densher for ten

seconds believed, that Milly Theale was dead; so that the word at last spoken made him start.

"I shall come back within the month," Sir Luke repeated without heeding the question. He had dropped

Densher's hand, but he held him otherwise still. "I bring you a message from Miss Theale," he said as if they

(308) Densher's rebound from his supposition had a violence that his stare betrayed. "SHE asks me?"

Sir Luke had got into the carriage, the door of which the guard had closed; but he spoke again as he stood at

the window, bending a little but not leaning out. "She told me she'd like it, and I promised that, as I expected

Densher, on the platform, took it from him, but what he took brought the blood into his face quite as what he

had had to take from Mrs. Stringham. And he was also bewildered. "Then she can receive?"

"I see, I see," said Densher, who indeed did seesaw the sense of his friend's words and saw beyond it as

well. What Mrs. Stringham had announced, and what he had yet expected not to have to face, HAD then

come. Sir Luke had kept it for the last, but there it was, and the colourless compact form it was now

takingthe tone of one man of the world to another, who, after what had happened, would understandwas

but the characteristic manner of his appeal. Densher was to understand remarkably much; and the great thing

certainly was to show that he did. "I'm particularly obliged, [sic] I'll go today." He brought that out, but in

his pause, while they continued to look at each other, the train had slowly creaked into motion. There was

time but for one more word, and the young man chose it, out of twenty, with intense concentration. "Then

(309) Sir Luke's face was wonderful. "Yes, she's better." And he kept it at the window while the train

receded, holding him with it still. It was to be his nearest approach to the utter reference they had hitherto so

successfully avoided. If it stood for everything; [sic] never had a face had to stand for more. So Densher, held

after the train had gone, sharply reflected; so he reflected, asking himself into what abyss it pushed him, even

"Then it has beenwhat do you say? a whole fortnight?without your making a sign?"

Kate put that to him distinctly, in the December dusk of Lancaster Gate and on the matter of the time he had

been back; but he saw with it straightway that she was as admirably true as ever to her instinctwhich was a

system as wellof not admitting the possibility between them of small resentments, of trifles to trip up their

general trust. That by itself, the renewed beauty of it, would at this fresh sight of her have stirred him to his

depths if something else, something no less vivid but quite separate, hadn't stirred him still more. It was in

seeing her that he felt what their interruption had been, and that they met across it even as persons whose

adventures, on either side, in time and space, of the nature of perils and exiles, had had a peculiar strangeness.

He wondered if he were as different for her as she herself had immediately appeared: which was but his way

indeed of taking in, with his thrill, thateven going by the mere first lookshe had never been so

handsome. That fact bloomed for him, in the firelight and lamplight that glowed their welcome through the

London fog, as the flower of her difference; just as her difference itselfpart of which was her striking him

as older in a degree for which no mere couple of months could (314) accountwas the fruit of their intimate

relation. If she was different it was because they had chosen together that she should be, and she might now,

as a proof of their wisdom, their success, of the reality of what had happenedof what in fact, for the spirit

of each, was still happeningbeen showing it to him for pride. His having returned and yet kept, for

numbered days, so still, had been, he was quite aware, the first point he should have to tackle; with which

consciousness indeed he had made a clean breast of it in finally addressing Mrs. Lowder a note that had led to

his present visit. He had written to Aunt Maud as the finer way; and it would doubtless have been to be noted

that he needed no effort not to write to Kate. Venice was three weeks behind himhe had come up slowly;

but it was still as if even in London he must conform to her law. That was exactly how he was able, with his

faith in her steadiness, to appeal to her feeling for the situation and explain his stretched delicacy. He had

come to tell her everything, so far as occasion would serve them; and if nothing was more distinct than that

his slow journey, his waits, his delay to reopen communication had kept pace with this resolve, so the

inconsequence was doubtless at bottom but one of the elements of intensity. He was gathering everything up,

everything he should tell her. That took time, and the proof was that, as he felt on the spot, he couldn't have

brought it all with him before this afternoon. He HAD brought it, to the last syllable, and, out of the quantity

it wouldn't be hardas he in fact foundto produce, for Kate's understanding, his first reason.

(315) "A fortnight, yesit was a fortnight Friday; but I've only been, keeping in, you see, with our

wonderful system." He was so easily justified as that this of itself plainly enough prevented her saying she

didn't see. Their wonderful system was accordingly still vivid for her; and such a gage of its equal vividness

for himself was precisely what she must have asked. He hadn't even to dot his i's beyond the remark that on

the very face of it, she would remember, their wonderful system attached no premium to rapidities of

transition. "I couldn't quitedon't you know?take my rebound with a rush; and I suppose I've been

instinctively hanging off to minimise, for you as well as for myself, the appearances of rushing. There's a sort

of fitness. But I knew you'd understand." It was presently as if she really understood so well that she almost

appealed from his insistenceyet looking at him too, he was not unconscious, as if this mastery of fitnesses

was a strong sign for her of what she had done to him. He might have struck her as expert for contingencies

in the very degree of her having in Venice struck HIM as expert. He smiled over his plea for a renewal with

stages and steps, a thing shaded, as they might say, and graduated; thoughfinely as she must respondshe

met the smile but as she had met his entrance five minutes before. Her soft gravity at that momentwhich

was yet not solemnity, but the look of a consciousness charged with life to the brim and wishing not to

overflowhad not qualified her welcome; what had done this being much more the presence in the room, for

a couple of minutes, of the footman (316) who had introduced him and who had been interrupted in preparing

Mrs. Lowder's reply to Densher's note had been to appoint the teahour, five o'clock on Sunday, for his

seeing them. Kate had thereafter wired him, without a signature, "Come on Sunday BEFORE teaabout a

quarter of an hour, which will help us"; and he had arrived therefore scrupulously at twenty minutes to five.

Kate was alone in the room and hadn't delayed to tell him that Aunt Maud, as she had happily gathered, was

to be, for the intervalnot long but preciousengaged with an old servant, retired and pensioned, who had

been paying her a visit and who was within the hour to depart again for the suburbs. They were to have the

scrap of time, after the withdrawal of the footman, to themselves, and there was a moment when, in spite of

their wonderful system, in spite of the proscription of rushes and the propriety of shades, it proclaimed itself

indeed precious. And all without prejudicethat was what kept it nobleto Kate's high sobriety and her

beautiful selfcommand. If he had his discretion she had her perfect manner, which was HER decorum. Mrs.

Stringham, he had, to finish with the question of his delay, furthermore observed, Mrs. Stringham would have

written to Mrs. Lowder of his having quitted the place; so that it wasn't as if he were hoping to cheat them.

Her face showed a wonder. "Up to within a day or two I believe. But haven't YOU?"

"NoI've heard nothing." And it was now that he felt how much he had to tell her. "I don't get letters. But

I've been sure Mrs. Lowder does." With which he added: "Then of course you know." He waited as if she

would show what she knew; but she only showed in silence the dawn of a surprise that she couldn't control.

"How should I, my dearin the absence of everything?" And he himself stared as for light. "She's dead?"

Then as with her eyes on him she slowly shook her head he uttered a strange "Not yet?"

It came out in Kate's face that there were several questions on her lips, but the one she presently put was: "Is

"The manner of her so consciously and helplessly dying?" He had to think a moment. "Well, yessince you

ask me: very terrible to MEso far as, before I came away, I had any sight of it. But I don't think," he went

on, "thatthough I'll tryI CAN quite tell you what it was, what it is, for me. That's why I probably just

She gave him her quietest attention, but he by this time saw that, so far as telling her all was concerned, she

would be divided between the wish and the reluctance to hear it; between the curiosity that, not unnaturally,

would consume her and the opposing (318) scruple of a respect for misfortune. The more she studied him

tooand he had never so felt her closely attached to his facethe more the choice of an attitude would

become impossible to her. There would simply be a feeling uppermost, and the feeling wouldn't be eagerness.

This perception grew in him fast, and he even, with his imagination, had for a moment the quick forecast of

her possibly breaking out at him, should he go too far, with a wonderful: "What horrors are you telling me?"

It would have the soundwouldn't it be open to him fairly to bring that out himself?of a repudiation, for

pity and almost for shame, of everything that in Venice had passed between them. Not that she would confess

to any return upon herself; not that she would let compunction or horror give her away; but it was in the air

for himyesthat she wouldn't want details, that she positively wouldn't take them, and that, if he would

generously understand it from her, she would prefer to keep him down. Nothing, however, was more definite

for him than that at the same time he must remain down but so far as it suited him. Something rose strong

within him against his not being free with her. She had been free enough about it all, three months before,

with HIM. That was what she was at present only in the sense of treating him handsomely. "I can believe,"

she said with perfect consideration, "how dreadful for you much of it must have been."

He didn't however take this up; there were things about which he wished first to be clear. "There's no other

possibility, by what you now know? I mean (319) for her life." And he had just to insistshe would say as

It was strange to him, in the matter of Milly, that Lancaster Gate could make him any surer; yet what in the

world, in the matter of Milly, wasn't strange? Nothing was so much so as his own behaviourhis present as

well as his past. He could but do as he must. "Has Sir Luke Strett," he asked, "gone back to her?"

She took it in silence for whatever he deemed it to be; but she spoke otherwise after a minute. "You won't

"It's perhaps only I who haven't. It was on Aunt Maud's trying again three days ago to see him that she heard

"He won't leave her then"Densher had turned it over"while she lives. He'll stay to the end. He's

(320) It had made them again look at each other long; and what it drew from him rather oddly was: "Oh you

It was somehow, with her handsome demur, the answer he had least expected of her; and it fanned with its

breath, for a brief instant, his old sense of her variety. "I see. You would have been sure of it. You WERE

And a pause again, with this, fell upon them; which Densher, however, presently broke. "If you don't think

"Why everything. It was his visit that she couldn't standit was what then took place that simply killed her."

"Oh!" Kate seriously breathed. But she had turned pale, and he saw that, whatever her degree of ignorance of

He observed none the less that she didn't ask what had then taken place; and he went on with his contribution

to her knowledge. "The way it affected her was (321) that it made her give up. She has given up beyond all

"One can see now that she was living by willwhich was very much what you originally told me of her."

"Well then her will, at a given moment, broke down, and the collapse was determined by that fellow's

dastardly stroke. He told her, the scoundrel, that you and I are secretly engaged."

"That doesn't matter. SHE did by the time he had left her. Besides," Densher added, "he does know it. When,"

He watched her take it init so added to her sombre beauty. Then he spoke as Mrs. Stringham had spoken.

Slight as it was, her beauty somehow gave it style; so that he continued consistently: "She learned it, you see,

too soonsince of course one's idea had been that she might never even learn it at all. And she HAD felt

surethrough everything we had doneof there not being between us, so far at least as you were

She took another moment for thought. "It wasn't through anything YOU didwhatever that may have (322)

Her look and her tone made him for the instant regret his comment, which indeed had been the first that rose

to his lips as an effect absolutely of what they would have called between them her straightness. Her

straightness, visibly, was all his own loyalty could ask. Still, that was comparatively beside the mark. "Of

course I don't suppose anything but that we're together in our recognitions, our responsibilitieswhatever we

choose to call them. It isn't a question for us of apportioning shares or distinguishing invidiously among such

He met this with a smile that he himself felt, in its strained character, as queer. "Don't go into that!"

It was perhaps not as going into it that she had another ideaan idea born, she showed, of the vision he had

just evoked. "Wouldn't it have been possible then to deny the truth of the information? I mean of Lord

Densher staredhe was stupefied; the "possible" thus glanced at by Kate being exactly the alternative (323)

he had had to face in Venice and to put utterly away from him. Nothing was stranger than such a difference in

their view of it. "And to lie myself, you mean, to do it? We ARE, my dear child," he said, "I suppose, still

He took in for a little the way she talked of it. Of course, it was to be remembered, she had always simplified,

and it brought back his sense of the degree in which, to her energy as compared with his own, many things

were easy; the very sense that so often before had moved him to admiration. "Well, if you must knowand I

want you to be clear about itI didn't even seriously think of a denial to her face. The question of itAS

possibly saving herwas put to me definitely enough; but to turn it over was only to dismiss it. Besides," he

"You mean she would have had no faith in your correction?" She had spoken with a promptitude that affected

him of a sudden as almost glib; but he himself paused with the overweight of all he meant, and she

Kate maintained her wonderful manner, the manner of at once having it all before her and yet keeping it all at

It made him also think, but with a difference. "She had turned her face to the wall."

(324) This again for a moment hushed her, and they were both too grave now for parenthetic pity. But her

interest came out for at least the minimum of light. "She refused even to let you speak to her?"

"And it didn't prevent? No," Densher admitted, "it didn't; and I don't pretend that she's not magnificent."

He looked at her a moment. "So are you, my dear. But that's how it is," he wound up; "and there we are."

His idea had been in advance that she would perhaps sound him much more deeply, asking him above all two

or three specific things. He had fairly fancied her even wanting to know and trying to find out how far, as the

odious phrase was, he and Milly had gone, and how near, by the same token, they had come. He had asked

himself if he were prepared to hear her do that, and had had to take for answer that he was prepared of course

for everything. Wasn't he prepared for her ascertaining if her two or three prophecies had found time to be

made true? He had fairly believed himself ready to say whether or no the overture on Milly's part promised

according to the boldest of them had taken place. But what was in fact blessedly coming to him was that so

far as such things were concerned his readiness wouldn't be taxed. Kate's pressure on the question of what

had taken place remained so admirably general that even her present (325) enquiry kept itself free of

It was what he had been all the while coming to. "No; we met onceso far as it could be called a meeting. I

"Precisely"he felt himself wonderful; "and I wanted to be no less. She sent for me, I went to her, and that

"To refute Lord Mark's story? No, not even if before her there I had wanted to. What did it signify either? She

"Well," Kate in a manner persisted, "why not just BECAUSE she was dying?" She had however all her

"Of course seeing her I could judge. And I did see her! If I had denied you moreover," Densher said with his

She took for a moment the intention of his face. "You mean that to convince her you'd have insisted or

"I wouldn't have made my denial, in such conditions, only to take it back afterwards."

With this quickly light came for her, and with it (326) also her colour flamed. "Oh you'd have broken with me

to make your denial a truth? You'd have 'chucked' me"she embraced it perfectly"to save your

"I couldn't have done anything else," said Merton Densher. "So you see how right I was not to commit

myself, and how little I could dream of it. If it ever again appears to you that I MIGHT have done so,

Kate again considered, but not with the effect at once to which he pointed. "You've fallen in love with her."

"Well then say sowith a dying woman. Why need you mind and what does it matter?"

It came from him, the question, straight out of the intensity of relation and the facetoface necessity into

which, from the first, from his entering the room, they had found themselves thrown; but it gave them their

most extraordinary moment. "Wait till she IS dead! Mrs. Stringham," Kate added, "is to telegraph." After

which, in a tone still different, "For what then," she asked, "did Milly send for you?"

"It was what I tried to make out before I went. I must tell you moreover that I had no doubt of its really being

to give me, as you say, a chance. She believed, I suppose, that I MIGHT deny; and what, to my own mind,

was before me in going to her was the certainty that she'd put me to my test. She wanted from my own

lipsso I saw itthe truth. But I was with her for twenty minutes, and she never asked me for it."

"She never wanted the truth"Kate had a high (327) headshake. "She wanted YOU. She would have taken

from you what you could give her and been glad of it, even if she had known it false. You might have lied to

her from pity, and she have seen you and felt you lie, and yetsince it was all for tendernessshe would

have thanked you and blessed you and clung to you but the more. For that was your strength, my dear

"Otherwise, since she had sent for you, what was it to ask of you?" And thenquite without ironyas he

"She had nothing to ask of menothing, that is, but not to stay any longer. She did to that extent want to see

me. She had supposed at firstafter he had been with herthat I had seen the propriety of taking myself

off. Then since I hadn'tseeing my propriety as I did in another wayshe found, days later, that I was still

Again she struck him, for all her dignity, as glib. "If it was somehow for HER I was still staying, she wished

that to end, she wished me to know how little there was need of it. And as a manner of farewell she wished

"No, Kate," he returned with all their mutual consideration; (328) "not as I did. I hadn't desired it in the least."

"I mean you did quite the right thing. You did it especially in having stayed. But that was all?" Kate went on.

"Ah kindness naturally: from the moment she asked of you such awell, such an effort. That you mustn't

He thought a little. "I didn't time it to a second. I paid her the visitjust like another."

"Oh!" said Kate. Which had apparently the effect of slightly arresting his speechan arrest she took

advantage of to continue; making with it indeed her nearest approach to an enquiry of the kind against which

"Not she," said Merton Densher. "She received me just as usual: in that glorious great salone, in the dress she

always wears, from her inveterate corner of her sofa." And his face for the moment conveyed the scene, just

as hers equally embraced it. "Do you remember what you originally said to me of her?"

"That she wouldn't smell of drugs, that she wouldn't taste of medicine. Well, she didn't."

It took him a long time to answer, occupied as he partly was in feeling how nobody but Kate could have

invested such a question with the tone that was perfectly right. She meanwhile, however, patiently waited. "I

don't think I can attempt to say now what it was. Some dayperhaps. For it would be worth it for us."

"Some daycertainly." She seemed to record the promise. Yet she spoke again abruptly. "She'll recover."

She had the air an instant of trying to. "Did she show anything of her feeling? I mean," Kate explained, "of

She didn't press hard, surely; but he had just mentioned that he would have rather to glide. "She showed

He seemed to look about for a use he could name; but he had soon given it up. "She must die, my dear, in her

"Naturally. But I don't see then what proof you have that she was ever alienated."

"That hadn't prevented heras you yourself a (330) moment ago saidduring the previous time. If it had

"Because she has seen for herself. I've told her nothing. She's a person who does see."

Kate thought. "That's by her liking you too. She as well is prodigious. You see what interest in a man does. It

Kate moved from her place then, looking at the clock, which marked five. She gave her attention to the

teatable, where Aunt Maud's huge silver kettle, which had been exposed to its lamp and which she had not

soon enough noticed, was hissing too hard. "Well, it's all most wonderful!" she exclaimed as she rather too

profuselya sign her friend noticedladled tea into the pot. He watched her a moment at this occupation,

coming nearer the table while she put in the steaming water. "You'll have some?"

"For Aunt Maud?" She saw what he meant (331) the deprecation, by their old law, of betrayals of the

Densher mechanically accepted his tea. He was thinking of something else, and his thought in a moment

"Ah," said Kate with a gleam of gaiety, "you've done it to please ME." But she was already, with her gleam,

"What I don't understand," she went on when she had helped him, "is what it was that had occurred to bring

her round again. If she gave you up for days and days, what brought her back to you?"

She asked the question with her own cup in her hand, but it found him ready enough in spite of his sense of

the ironic oddity of their going into it over the teatable. "It was Sir Luke Strett who brought her back. His

"Ah, and made HER understand? I see," she went on as he said nothing. "But how did he convince her?"

He stood looking at the fire and there was a time without sound. "The great thing," Kate then resumed, "is

that she's satisfied. Which," she continued, looking across at him, "is what I've worked for."

"Of having BEEN loved," she went on. "That is. Of having," she wound up, "realised her passion. She

Lucid and always grave, she gave this out with a beautiful authority that he could for the time meet with no

words. He could only again look at her, though with the sense in so doing that he made her more than he

intended take his silence for assent. (333) Quite indeed as if she did so take it she quitted the table and came

to the fire. "You may think it hideous that I should now, that I should YET"she made a point of the

She was once more close to him, close as she had been the day she came to him in Venice, the quickly

returning memory of which intensified and enriched the fact. He could practically deny in such conditions

nothing that she said, and what she said was, with it, visibly, a fruit of that knowledge. "We've succeeded."

She spoke with her eyes deep in his own. "She won't have loved you for nothing." It made him wince, but she

He was to remain for several days under the deep impression of this inclusive passage, so luckily prolonged

from moment to moment, but interrupted at its climax, as may be said, by the entrance of Aunt Maud, who

found them standing together near the fire. The bearings of the colloquy, however, sharp as they were, were

less sharp to his intelligence, strangely enough, than those of a talk with Mrs. Lowder alone for which she

soon gave himor for which perhaps rather Kate gave himfull occasion. What had happened on her at

last joining them was to conduce, he could immediately see, to her desiring to have him to herself. Kate and

he, no doubt, at the opening of the door, had fallen apart with a certain suddenness, so that she had turned her

hard fine eyes from one to the other; but the effect of this lost itself, to his mind, the next minute, in the effect

of his companion's rare alertness. She instantly spoke to her aunt of what had first been uppermost for herself,

inviting her thereby intimately to join them, and doing it the more happily also, no doubt, because the fact she

resentfully named gave her ample support. "Had you quite understood, my dear, that it's full three weeks?"

And she effaced herself as if to leave Mrs. Lowder to deal from her own point of view with this extravagance.

Densher of course straightway noted that his cue for the protection of Kate was (335) to make, no less, all of

it he could; and their tracks, as he might have said, were fairly covered by the time their hostess had taken

afresh, on his renewed admission, the measure of his scant eagerness. Kate had moved away as if no great

showing were needed for her personal situation to be seen as delicate. She had been entertaining their visitor

on her aunt's behalfa visitor she had been at one time suspected of favouring too much and who had now

come back to them as the stricken suitor of another person. It wasn't that the fate of the other person, her

exquisite friend, didn't, in its tragic turn, also concern herself: it was only that her acceptance of Mr. Densher

as a source of information could scarcely help having an awkwardness. She invented the awkwardness under

Densher's eyes, and he marvelled on his side at the instant creation. It served her as the fine cloud that hangs

about a goddess in an epic, and the young man was but vaguely to know at what point of the rest of his visit

He was taken up promptly with another matterthe truth of the remarkable difference, neither more nor less,

that the events of Venice had introduced into his relation with Aunt Maud and that these weeks of their

separation had caused quite richly to ripen for him. She had not sat down to her teatable before he felt

himself on terms with her that were absolutely new, nor could she press on him a second cup without her

seeming herself, and quite wittingly, so to define and establish them. She regretted, but she quite understood,

that what was taking place had (336) obliged him to hang off; they hadafter hearing of him from poor

Susan as gonebeen hoping for an early sight of him; they would have been interested, naturally, in his

arriving straight from the scene. Yet she needed no reminder that the scene preciselyby which she meant

the tragedy that had so detained and absorbed him, the memory, the shadow, the sorrow of itwas what

marked him for unsociability. She thus presented him to himself, as it were, in the guise in which she had

now adopted him, and it was the element of truth in the character that he found himself, for his own part,

adopting. She treated him as blighted and ravaged, as frustrate and already bereft; and for him to feel that this

opened for him a new chapter of frankness with her he scarce had also to perceive how it smoothed his

approaches to Kate. It made the latter accessible as she hadn't yet begun to be; it set up for him at Lancaster

Gate an association positively hostile to any other legend. It was quickly vivid to him that, were he minded,

he could "work" this association: he had but to use the house freely for his prescribed attitude and he need

hardly ever be out of it. Stranger than anything moreover was to be the way that by the end of a week he

stood convicted to his own sense of a surrender to Mrs. Lowder's view. He had somehow met it at a point that

had brought him onbrought him on a distance that he couldn't again retrace. He had private hours of

wondering what had become of his sincerity; he had others of simply reflecting that he had it all in use. His

only want of candour was Aunt Maud's wealth of sentiment. She was hugely sentimental, and the (337) worst

he did was to take it from her. He wasn't so himselfeverything was too real; but it was none the less not

It was in particular not false for instance that when she had said to him, on the Sunday, almost cosily, from

her sofa behind the tea, "I want you not to doubt, you poor dear, that I'm WITH you to the end!" his meeting

her halfway had been the only course open to him. She was with him to the endor she might bein a way

Kate wasn't; and even if it literally made her society meanwhile more soothing he must just brush away the

question of why it shouldn't. Was he professing to her in any degree the possession of an aftersense that

wasn't real? How in the world COULD he, when his aftersense, day by day, was his greatest reality? Such

only was at bottom what there was between them, and two or three times over it made the hour pass. These

were occasionstwo and a scrapon which he had come and gone without mention of Kate. Now that

almost as never yet he had licence to ask for her, the queer turn of their affair made it a false note. It was

another queer turn that when he talked with Aunt Maud about Milly nothing else seemed to come up. He

called upon her almost avowedly for that purpose, and it was the queerest turn of all that the state of his

nerves should require it. He liked her better; he was really behaving, he had occasion to say to himself, as if

he liked her best. The thing was absolutely that she met HIM halfway. Nothing could have been broader than

her vision, than her loquacity, than her sympathy. It appeared to gratify, to satisfy her to see him as he (338)

was; that too had its effect. It was all of course the last thing that could have seemed on the cards, a change by

which he was completely FREE with this lady; and it wouldn't indeed have come about iffor another

monstrosityhe hadn't ceased to be free with Kate. Thus it was that on the third time in especial of being

alone with her he found himself uttering to the elder woman what had been impossible of utterance to the

younger. Mrs. Lowder gave him in fact, on the ground of what he must keep from her, but one uneasy

moment. That was when, on the first Sunday, after Kate had suppressed herself, she referred to her regret that

he mightn't have stayed to the end. He found his reason difficult to give her, but she came after all to his help.

"Besides what?" He had been going to say morethen he saw dangers; luckily however she had again

assisted him. "Besidesoh I know!men haven't, in many relations, the courage of women."

"Kate or I would have stayed," she declared"if we hadn't come away for the special reason that you so

Densher had said nothing about his appreciation: hadn't his behaviour since the hour itself sufficiently shown

it? But he presently saidhe couldn't help going so far: "I don't doubt, certainly, that Miss Croy would have

stayed." And he saw again into the bargain what a marvel was Susan Shepherd. She did (339) nothing but

protect himshe had done nothing but keep it up. In copious communication with the friend of her youth she

had yet, it was plain, favoured this lady with nothing that compromised him. Milly's act of renouncement she

had described but as a change for the worse; she had mentioned Lord Mark's descent, as even without her it

might be known, so that she mustn't appear to conceal it; but she had suppressed explanations and

connexions, and indeed, for all he knew, blessed Puritan soul, had invented commendable fictions. Thus it

was absolutely that he WAS at his ease. Thus it was that, shaking for ever, in the unrest that didn't drop, his

crossed leg, he leaned back in deep yellow satin chairs and took such comfort as came. She asked, it was true,

Aunt Maud, questions that Kate hadn't; but this was just the difference, that from her he positively liked

them. He had taken with himself on leaving Venice the resolution to regard Milly as already dead to

himthat being for his spirit the only thinkable way to pass the time of waiting. He had left her because it

was what suited her, and it wasn't for him to go, as they said in America, behind this; which imposed on him

but the sharper need to arrange himself with his interval. Suspense was the ugliest ache to him, and he would

have nothing to do with it; the last thing he wished was to be unconscious of herwhat he wished to ignore

was her own consciousness, tortured, for all he knew, crucified by its pain. Knowingly to hang about in

London while the pain went onwhat would that do but make his days impossible? His scheme was

accordingly to convince himself (340) and by some art about which he was vaguethat the sense of

waiting had passed. "What in fact," he restlessly reflected, "have I any further to do with it? Let me assume

the thing actually overas it at any moment may beand I become good again for something at least to

somebody. I'm good, as it is, for nothing to anybody, least of all to HER." He consequently tried, so far as

shutting his eyes and stalking grimly about was a trial; but his plan was carried out, it may well be guessed,

neither with marked success nor with marked consistency. The days, whether lapsing or lingering, were a stiff

reality; the suppression of anxiety was a thin idea; the taste of life itself was the taste of suspense. That he

WAS waiting was in short at the bottom of everything; and it required no great sifting presently to feel that if

he took so much more, as he called it, to Mrs. Lowder this was just for that reason.

She helped him to hold out, all the while that she was subtle enoughand he could see her divine it as what

he wantednot to insist on the actuality of their tension. His nearest approach to success was thus in being

good for something to Aunt Maud, in default of any one better; her company eased his nerves even while

they pretended together that they had seen their tragedy out. They spoke of the dying girl in the past tense;

they said no worse of her than that she had BEEN stupendous. On the other hand, howeverand this was

what wasn't for Densher pure peacethey insisted enough that stupendous was the word. It was the thing,

this recognition, that kept him most quiet; he came to it with her repeatedly; (341) talking about it against

time and, in particular, we have noted, speaking of his supreme personal impression as he hadn't spoken to

Kate. It was almost as if she herself enjoyed the perfection of the pathos; she sat there before the scene, as he

couldn't help giving it out to her, very much as a stout citizen's wife might have sat, during a play that made

people cry, in the pit or the familycircle. What most deeply stirred her was the way the poor girl must have

"Ah yes indeedshe did, she did: why in pity shouldn't she, with everything to fill her world? The mere

MONEY of her, the darling, if it isn't too disgusting at such a time to mention that!"

Aunt Maud mentioned itand Densher quite understoodbut as fairly giving poetry to the life Milly clung

to: a view of the "might have been" before which the good lady was hushed anew to tears. She had had her

own vision of these possibilities, and her own social use for them, and since Milly's spirit had been after all so

at one with her about them, what was the cruelty of the event but a cruelty, of a sort, to herself? That came

out when he named, as THE horrible thing to know, the fact of their young friend's unapproachable terror of

the end, keep it down though she would; coming out therefore often, since in so naming it he found the

strangest of reliefs. He allowed it all its vividness, as if on the principle of his not at least spiritually shirking.

Milly had held with passion to her dream of a future, and she was separated from it, not shrieking indeed, but

grimly, awfully silent, as one might (342) imagine some noble young victim of the scaffold, in the French

Revolution, separated at the prisondoor from some object clutched for resistance. Densher, in a cold

moment, so pictured the case for Mrs. Lowder, but no moment cold enough had yet come to make him so

picture it to Kate. And it was the front so presented that had been, in Milly, heroic; presented with the highest

heroism, Aunt Maud by this time knew, on the occasion of his taking leave of her. He had let her know,

absolutely for the girl's glory, how he had been received on that occasion: with a positive effectsince she

was indeed so perfectly the princess that Mrs. Stringham always called herof princely state.

Before the fire in the great room that was all arabesques and cherubs, all gaiety and gilt, and that was warm at

that hour too with a wealth of autumn sun, the state in question had been maintained and the situationwell,

Densher said for the convenience of exquisite London gossip, sublime. The gossipfor it came to as much at

Lancaster Gatewasn't the less exquisite for his use of the silver veil, nor on the other hand was the veil, so

touched, too much drawn aside. He himself for that matter took in the scene again at moments as from the

page of a book. He saw a young man far off and in a relation inconceivable, saw him hushed, passive, staying

his breath, but half understanding, yet dimly conscious of something immense and holding himself painfully

together not to lose it. The young man at these moments so seen was too distant and too strange for the right

identity; and yet, outside, afterwards, it was his own face Densher (343) had known. He had known then at

the same time what the young man had been conscious of, and he was to measure after that, day by day, how

little he had lost. At present there with Mrs. Lowder he knew he had gathered allthat passed between them

mutely as in the intervals of their associated gaze they exchanged looks of intelligence. This was as far as

association could go, but it was far enough when she knew the essence. The essence was that something had

happened to him too beautiful and too sacred to describe. He had been, to his recovered sense, forgiven,

dedicated, blessed; but this he couldn't coherently express. It would have required an explanationfatal to

Mrs. Lowder's faith in himof the nature of Milly's wrong. So, as to the wonderful scene, they just stood at

the door. They had the sense of the presence withinthey felt the charged stillness; after which, their

That itself indeed, for our restless friend, became by the end of a week the very principle of reaction: so that

he woke up one morning with such a sense of having played a part as he needed selfrespect to gainsay. He

hadn't in the least stated at Lancaster Gate that, as a haunted mana man haunted with a memoryhe was

harmless; but the degree to which Mrs. Lowder accepted, admired and explained his new aspect laid upon

him practically the weight of a declaration. What he hadn't in the least stated her own manner was perpetually

stating; it was as haunted and harmless that she was constantly putting him down. There offered itself

however to his (344) purpose such an element as plain honesty, and he had embraced, by the time he dressed,

his proper corrective. They were on the edge of Christmas, but Christmas this year was, as in the London of

so many other years, disconcertingly mild; the still air was soft, the thick light was grey, the great town

looked empty, and in the Park, where the grass was green, where the sheep browsed, where the birds

multitudinously twittered, the straight walks lent themselves to slowness and the dim vistas to privacy. He

held it fast this morning till he had got out, his sacrifice to honour, and then went with it to the nearest

postoffice and fixed it fast in a telegram; thinking of it moreover as a sacrifice only because he had, for

reasons, felt it as an effort. Its character of effort it would owe to Kate's expected resistance, not less probable

than on the occasion of past appeals; which was precisely why heperhaps innocentlymade his telegram

persuasive. It had, as a recall of tender hours, to be, for the young woman at the counter, a trifle cryptic; but

there was a good deal of it in one way and another, representing as it did a rich impulse and costing him a

couple of shillings. There was also a moment later on, that day, when, in the Park, as he measured watchfully

one of their old alleys, he might have been supposed by a cynical critic to be reckoning his chance of getting

his money back. He was waitingbut he had waited of old; Lancaster Gate as a danger was practically at

handbut she had risked that danger before. Besides it was smaller now, with the queer turn of their affair;

(345) Kate came at last by the way he had thought least likely, came as if she had started from the Marble

Arch; but her advent was responsethat was the great matter; response marked in her face and agreeable to

him, even after Aunt Maud's responses, as nothing had been since his return to London. She had not, it was

true, answered his wire, and he had begun to fear, as she was late, that with the instinct of what he might be

again intending to press upon her she had decidedthough not with easeto deprive him of his chance. He

would have of course, she knew, other chances, but she perhaps saw the present as offering her special

danger. This, in fact, Densher could himself feel, was exactly why he had so prepared it, and he had rejoiced,

even while he waited, in all that the conditions had to say to him of their simpler and better time. The shortest

day of the year though it might be, it was, in the same place, by a whim of the weather, almost as much to

their purpose as the days of sunny afternoons when they had taken their first trysts. This and that tree, within

sight, on the grass, stretched bare boughs over the couple of chairs in which they had sat of old and in

whichfor they really could sit down againthey might recover the clearness of their prime. It was to all

intents however this very reference that showed itself in Kate's face as, with her swift motion, she came

toward him. It helped him, her swift motion, when it finally brought her nearer; helped him, for that matter, at

first, if only by showing him afresh how terribly well she looked. It had been all along, he certainly

remembered, a (346) phenomenon of no rarity that he had felt her, at particular moments, handsomer than

ever before; one of these for instance being still present to him as her entrance, under her aunt's eyes, at

Lancaster Gate, the day of his dinner there after his return from America; and another her aspect on the same

spot two Sundays agothe light in which she struck the eyes he had brought back from Venice. In the course

of a minute or two now he got, as he had got it the other times, his apprehension of the special stamp of the

Whatever it had been determined by as the different hours recurred to him, it took on at present a prompt

connexion with an effect produced for him in truth more than once during the past week, only now much

intensified. This effect he had already noted and named: it was that of the attitude assumed by his friend in

the presence of the degree of response on his part to Mrs. Lowder's welcome which she couldn't possibly

have failed to notice. She HAD noticed it, and she had beautifully shown him so; wearing in its honour the

finest shade of studied serenity, a shade almost of gaiety over the workings of time. Everything of course was

relative, with the shadow they were living under; but her condonation of the way in which he now, for

confidence, distinguished Aunt Maud had almost the note of cheer. She had so by her own air consecrated the

distinction, invidious in respect to herself though it might be; and nothing, really, more than this

demonstration, could have given him had he still wanted it the measure of her superiority. It was doubtless

for that matter this (347) superiority alone that on the winter noon gave smooth decision to her step and

charming courage to her eyesa courage that deepened in them when he had presently got to what he did

want. He had delayed after she had joined him not much more than long enough for him to say to her,

drawing her hand into his arm and turning off where they had turned of old, that he wouldn't pretend he

hadn't lately had moments of not quite believing he should ever again be so happy. She answered, passing

over the reasons, whatever they had been, of his doubt, that her own belief was in high happiness for them if

they would only have patience; though nothing at the same time could be dearer than his idea for their walk.

It was only makebelieve of course, with what had taken place for them, that they couldn't meet at home; she

spoke of their opportunities as suffering at no point. He had at any rate soon let her know that he wished the

present one to suffer at none, and in a quiet spot, beneath a great wintry tree, he let his entreaty come sharp.

"We've played our dreadful game and we've lost. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our feeling FOR

ourselves and for each other, not to wait another day. Our marriage willfundamentally, somehow, don't

you see?right everything that's wrong, and I can't express to you my impatience. We've only to announce

"To 'announce' it?" Kate asked. She spoke as if not understanding, though she had listened to him without

"To accomplish it thentomorrow if you will; (348) DO it and announce it as done. That's the least part of

itafter it nothing will matter. We shall be so right," he said, "that we shall be strong; we shall only wonder

She looked at him without flinchingwith the look she had brought at his call; but he felt now the strange

"Well, that I can bear it no longer. THAT'S simply what has happened. Something has snapped, has broken in

He saw her try for a time to appear to consider it; but he saw her also not consider it. Yet he saw her, felt her,

furtherhe heard her, with her clear voicetry to be intensely kind with him. "I don't see, you know, what

has changed." She had a large strange smile. "We've been going on together so well, and you suddenly desert

It made him helplessly gaze. "You call it so 'well'? You've touches, upon my soul!"

"I call it perfectfrom my original point of view. I'm just where I was; and you must give me some better

reason than you do, my dear, for YOUR not being. It seems to me," she continued, "that we're only right as to

what has been between us so long as we do wait. I don't think we wish to have behaved like fools." He took

in while she talked her imperturbable consistency; which it was quietly, queerly hopeless to see her stand

there and breathe into their mild remembering air. He had brought her there to be (349) moved, and she was

only immoveablewhich was not moreover, either, because she didn't understand. She understood

everything, and things he refused to; and she had reasons, deep down, the sense of which nearly sickened

him. She had too again most of all her strange significant smile. "Of course if it's that you really KNOW

something?" It was quite conceivable and possible to her, he could see, that he did. But he didn't even

know what she meant, and he only looked at her in gloom. His gloom however didn't upset her. "You do, I

believe, only you've a delicacy about saying it. Your delicacy to me, my dear, is a scruple too much. I should

"Why then I'll do what you want. We needn't, I grant you, in that case wait; and I can see what you mean by

thinking it nicer of us not to. I don't even ask you," she continued, "for a proof. I'm content with your moral

By this time it had come over himit had the force of a rush. The point she made was clear, as clear as that

the blood, while he recognised it, mantled in his face. "I know nothing whatever."

"I'd consent," she said"I'd announce it tomorrow, today, I'd go home this moment and announce it to

Aunt Maud, for an idea: I mean an idea straight FROM you, I mean as your own, given me in (350) good

If it WAS then what she called it, it disposed of his appeal, and he could but stand there with his wasted

passionfor it was in high passion that he had from the morning actedin his face. She made it all out, bent

upon herthe idea he didn't have, and the idea he had, and his failure of insistence when it brought up

THAT challenge, and his sense of her personal presence, and his horror, almost, of her lucidity. They made in

him a mixture that might have been rage, but that was turning quickly to mere cold thought, thought which

led to something else and was like a new dim dawn. It affected her then, and she had one of the impulses, in

all sincerity, that had before this, between them, saved their position. When she had come nearer to him,

when, putting her hand upon him, she made him sink with her, as she leaned to him, into their old pair of

chairs, she prevented irresistibly, she forestalled, the waste of his passion. She had an advantage with his

He had said to her in the Park when challenged on it that nothing had "happened" to him as a cause for the

demand he there made of herhappened he meant since the account he had given, after his return, of his

recent experience. But in the course of a few daysthey had brought him to Christmas morninghe was

conscious enough, in preparing again to seek her out, of a difference on that score. Something HAD in this

case happened to him, and, after his taking the night to think of it he felt that what it most, if not absolutely

first, involved was his immediately again putting himself in relation with her. The fact itself had met him

therein his own small quarterson Christmas Eve, and had not then indeed at once affected him as

implying that consequence. So far as he on the spot and for the next hours took its measurea process that

made his night mercilessly wakefulthe consequences possibly implied were numerous to distraction. His

spirit dealt with them, in the darkness, as the slow hours passed; his intelligence and his imagination, his soul

and his sense, had never on the whole been so intensely engaged. It was his difficulty for the moment that he

was face to face with alternatives, and that it was scarce even a question of turning from one to the other.

They were not in a perspective in which they might be compared and considered; they were, by (352) a

strange effect, as close as a pair of monsters of whom he might have felt on either cheek the hot breath and

the huge eyes. He saw them at once and but by looking straight before him; he wouldn't for that matter, in his

cold apprehension, have turned his head by an inch. So it was that his agitation was stillwas not, for the

slow hours, a matter of restless motion. He lay long, after the event, on the sofa where, extinguishing at a

touch the white light of convenience that he hated, he had thrown himself without undressing. He stared at

the buried day and wore out the time; with the arrival of the Christmas dawn moreover, late and grey, he felt

himself somehow determined. The common wisdom had had its say to himthat safety in doubt was NOT

action; and perhaps what most helped him was this very commonness. In his case there was nothing of

THATin no case in his life had there ever been less: which association, from one thing to another, now

worked for him as a choice. He acted, after his bath and his breakfast, in the sense of that marked element of

the rare which he felt to be the sign of his crisis. And that is why, dressed with more state than usual and quite

Action, for him, on coming to the point, it appeared, carried with it a certain complexity. We should have

known, walking by his side, that his final prime decision hadn't been to call at the door of Sir Luke Strett, and

yet that this step, though subordinate, was none the less urgent. His prime decision was for another matter, to

which impatience, once he was on (353) the way, had now added itself; but he remained sufficiently aware

that he must compromise with the perhaps excessive earliness. This, and the ferment set up within him, were

together a reason for not driving; to say nothing of the absence of cabs in the dusky festal desert. Sir Luke's

great square was not near, but he walked the distance without seeing a hansom. He had his interval thus to

turn over his viewthe view to which what had happened the night before had not sharply reduced itself; but

the complexity just mentioned was to be offered within the next few minutes another item to assimilate.

Before Sir Luke's house, when he reached it, a brougham was drawn upat the sight of which his heart had a

lift that brought him for the instant to a stand. This pause wasn't long, but it was long enough to flash upon

him a revelation in the light of which he caught his breath. The carriage, so possibly at such an hour and on

such a day Sir Luke's own, had struck him as a sign that the great doctor was back. This would prove

something else, in turn, still more intensely, and it was in the act of the double apprehension that Densher felt

himself turn pale. His mind rebounded for the moment like a projectile that has suddenly been met by

another: he stared at the strange truth that what he wanted MORE than to see Kate Croy was to see the

witness who had just arrived from Venice. He wanted positively to be in his presence and to hear his

voicewhich was the spasm of his consciousness that produced the flash. Fortunately for him, on the spot,

there supervened something in which the flash went out. He became aware within this minute that the

coachman on the (354) box of the brougham had a face known to him, whereas he had never seen before, to

his knowledge, the great doctor's carriage. The carriage, as he came nearer, was simply Mrs. Lowder's; the

face on the box was just the face that, in coming and going at Lancaster Gate, he would vaguely have noticed,

outside, in attendance. With this the rest came: the lady of Lancaster Gate had, on a prompting not wholly

remote from his own, presented herself for news; and news, in the house, she was clearly getting, since her

It was under the influence of this last reflexion that Densher again delayed; and it was while he delayed that

something else occurred to him. It was all round, visiblygiven his own new contributiona case of

pressure; and in a case of pressure Kate, for quicker knowledge, might have come out with her aunt. The

possibility that in this event she might be sitting in the carriagethe thing most likelyhad had the effect,

before he could check it, of bringing him within range of the window. It wasn't there he had wished to see

her; yet if she WAS there he couldn't pretend not to. What he had however the next moment made out was

that if some one was there it wasn't Kate Croy. It was, with a sensible shock for him, the person who had last

offered him a conscious face from behind the clear plate of a cafe in Venice. The great glass at Florian's was

a medium less obscure, even with the window down, than the air of the London Christmas; yet at present

also, none the less, between the two men, an exchange of recognitions (355) could occur. Densher felt his

own look a gaping arrestwhich, he disgustedly remembered, his back as quickly turned, appeared to repeat

itself as his special privilege. He mounted the steps of the house and touched the bell with a keen

consciousness of being habitually looked at by Kate's friend from positions of almost insolent vantage. He

forgot for the time the moment when, in Venice, at the palace, the encouraged young man had in a manner

assisted at the departure of the disconcerted, since Lord Mark was not looking disconcerted now any more

than he had looked from his bench at his cafe. Densher was thinking that HE seemed to show as vagrant

while another was ensconced. He was thinking of the other asin spite of the difference of situationmore

ensconced than ever; he was thinking of him above all as the friend of the person with whom his recognition

had, the minute previous, associated him. The man was seated in the very place in which, beside Mrs.

Lowder's, he had looked to find Kate, and that was a sufficient identity. Meanwhile at any rate the door of the

house had opened and Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was something at least that SHE wasn't Kate. She

was herself, on the spot, in all her affluence; with presence of mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in

the brougham, didn't matter and to prevent Sir Luke's butler, by a firm word thrown over her shoulder, from

standing there to listen to her passage with the gentleman who had rung. "I'LL tell Mr. Densher; you needn't

(356) "He arrives, travelling straight, tomorrow early. I couldn't not come to learn."

"No more," said Densher simply, "could I. On my way," he added, "to Lancaster Gate."

"Sweet of you." She beamed on him dimly, and he saw her face was attuned. It made him, with what she had

just before said, know all, and he took the thing in while he met the air of portentous, of almost functional,

sympathy that had settled itself as her medium with him and that yet had now a fresh glow. "So you HAVE

He knew so well what she meant, and so equally with it what he "HAD had" no less than what he hadn't, that,

It rather racked him, but he tried to receive it as she intended, and she evidently took his formal assent for

selfcontrol. "Unless it's more true," she accordingly added, "that she has spread them the wider."

He again but formally assented, though, strangely enough, the words fitted a figure deep in his own

"Exactly. Greater," Densher broke in; but now with a look, he feared, that did a little warn her off.

"You were certainly," she went on with more reserve, "entitled to direct news. Ours came late last (357)

night: I'm not sure otherwise I shouldn't have gone to you. But you're coming," she asked, "to ME?"

He had had a minute by this time to think further, and the window of the brougham was still within range.

Her rich "me," reaching him moreover through the mild damp, had the effect of a thump on his chest.

"Squared," Aunt Maud? She was indeed squared, and the extent of it just now perversely enough took away

his breath. His look from where they stood embraced the aperture at which the person sitting in the carriage

might have shown, and he saw his interlocutress, on her side, understand the question in it, which he

moreover then uttered. "Shall you be alone?" It was, as an immediate instinctive parley with the image of his

condition that now flourished in her, almost hypocritical. It sounded as if he wished to come and overflow to

her, yet this was exactly what he didn't. The need to overflow had suddenlysince the night beforedried

But she had meanwhile largely responded. "Completely alone. I should otherwise never have dreamed;

feeling, dear friend, but too much!" Failing on her lips what she felt came out for him in the offered hand

with which she had the next moment condolingly pressed his own. "Dear friend, dear friend!"she was

deeply "with" him, and she wished to be still more so: which was what made her immediately continue. "Or

wouldn't you this evening, for the sad Christmas it makes us, dine with me teteatete?"

It put the thing off, the question of a talk with hermaking the difference, to his relief, of several (358)

hours; but it also rather mystified him. This however didn't diminish his need of caution. "Shall you mind if I

"Not in the leastleave it open: it shall be as you may feel, and you needn't even send me word. I only

"Without Miss Croy. Miss Croy," said Mrs. Lowder, "is spending her Christmas in the bosom of her more

He was afraid, even while he spoke, of what his face might show. "You mean she has left you?"

Aunt Maud's own face for that matter met the enquiry with a consciousness in which he saw a reflexion of

events. He was made sure by it, even at the moment and as he had never been before, that since he had known

these two women no confessed nor commented tension, no crisis of the cruder sort would really have taken

form between them: which was precisely a high proof of how Kate had steered her boat. The situation

exposed in Mrs. Lowder's present expression lighted up by contrast that superficial smoothness; which

afterwards, with his time to think of it, was to put before him again the art, the particular gift, in the girl, now

so placed and classed, so intimately familiar for him, as her talent for life. The peace, within a day or

twosince his seeing her lasthad clearly been broken; differences, deep down, kept there by a diplomacy

on Kate's part as deep, had been shaken to the surface by some exceptional jar; with which, in addition, he

felt Lord (359) Mark's odd attendance at such an hour and season vaguely associated. The talent for life

indeed, it at the same time struck him, would probably have shown equally in the breach, or whatever had

occurred; Aunt Maud having suffered, he judged, a strain rather than a stroke. Of these quick thoughts, at all

events, that lady was already abreast. "She went yesterday morningand not with my approval, I don't mind

telling youto her sister: Mrs. Condrip, if you know who I mean, who lives somewhere in Chelsea. My

other niece and her affairsthat I should have to say such things today!are a constant worry; so that

Kate, in consequencewell, of events!has simply been called in. My own idea, I'm bound to say, was that

"Oh I can imagine." He had reached the point in the scale of hypocrisy at which he could ask himself why a

little more or less should signify. Besides, with the intention he had had he MUST know. Kate's move, if he

didn't know, might simply disconcert him; and of being disconcerted his horror was by this time fairly

Mrs. Lowder's soreness, it was still not obscure, had discovered in free speech to him a momentary (360)

balm. "They've the misfortune to have, I suppose you know, a dreadful horrible father."

"He's too bad almost to name, but he has come upon Marian, and Marian has shrieked for help."

Densher wondered at this with intensity; and his curiosity compromised for an instant with his discretion.

"Oh for that of course always. But, at THIS blessed season, for refuge, for safety: for God knows what. He's

THERE, the brute. And Kate's with them. And that," Mrs. Lowder wound up, going down the steps, "is her

She had stopped again at the bottom while he thought of an answer. "Yours then is after all rather better."

"It's at least more decent." And her hand once more came out. "But why do I talk of OUR troubles? Come if

She had asked it, with her good intention, rather in the air and by way of sketching for him, in the line of

support, something a little more to the purpose than what she had been giving him. He felt it as finishing off

their intensities of expression that he found himself to all appearance receiving her hint as happy. "Why

yesI think I will": after which, as the door of the brougham, at her approach, had opened from within, he

was free to turn his back. He heard the door, behind him, sharply close again and the vehicle move off in

(361) He had in fact for the time no direction; in spite of which indeed he was at the end of ten minutes aware

of having walked straight to the south. That, he afterwards recognised, was, very sufficiently, because there

had formed itself in his mind, even while Aunt Maud finally talked, an instant recognition of his necessary

course. Nothing was open to him but to follow Kate, nor was anything more marked than the influence of the

step she had taken on the emotion itself that possessed him. Her complications, which had fairly, with

everything else, an awful soundwhat were they, a thousand times over, but his own? His present business

was to see that they didn't escape an hour longer taking their proper place in his life. He accordingly would

have held his course hadn't it suddenly come over him that he had just lied to Mrs. Lowdera term it

perversely eased him to keep usingeven more than was necessary. To what church was he going, to what

church, in such a state of his nerves, COULD he go?he pulled up short again, as he had pulled up in sight

of Mrs. Lowder's carriage, to ask it. And yet the desire queerly stirred in him not to have wasted his word. He

was just then however by a happy chance in the Brompton Road, and he bethought himself with a sudden

light that the Oratory was at hand. He had but to turn the other way and he should find himself soon before it.

At the door then, in a few minutes, his idea was reallyas it struck himconsecrated: he was, pushing in,

on the edge of a splendid servicethe flocking crowd told of itwhich glittered and resounded, from

distant depths, in the blaze of altarlights (362) and the swell of organ and choir. It didn't match his own day,

but it was much less of a discord than some other things actual and possible. The Oratory in short, to make

The difference was thus that the dusk of afternoondusk thick from an early hourhad gathered when he

knocked at Mrs. Condrip's door. He had gone from the church to his club, wishing not to present himself in

Chelsea at luncheontime and also remembering that he must attempt independently to make a meal. This, in

the event, he but imperfectly achieved: he dropped into a chair in the great dim void of the club library, with

nobody, up or down, to be seen, and there after a while, closing his eyes, recovered an hour of the sleep he

had lost during the night. Before doing this indeed he had writtenit was the first thing he dida short note,

which, in the Christmas desolation of the place, he had managed only with difficulty and doubt to commit to

a messenger. He wished it carried by hand, and he was obliged, rather blindly, to trust the hand, as the

messenger, for some reason, was unable to return with a gage of delivery. When at four o'clock he was face

to face with Kate in Mrs. Condrip's small drawingroom he found to his relief that his notification had

reached her. She was expectant and to that extent prepared; which simplified a littleif a little, at the present

pass, counted. Her conditions were vaguely vivid to him from the moment of his coming in, and vivid partly

by their difference, a difference sharp and suggestive, from those in which he had hitherto constantly (364)

seen her. He had seen her but in places comparatively great; in her aunt's pompous house, under the high

trees of Kensington and the storied ceilings of Venice. He had seen her, in Venice, on a great occasion, as the

centre itself of the splendid Piazza: he had seen her there, on a still greater one, in his own poor rooms, which

yet had consorted with her, having state and ancientry even in their poorness; but Mrs. Condrip's interior,

even by this best view of it and though not flagrantly mean, showed itself as a setting almost grotesquely

inapt. Pale, grave and charming, she affected him at once as a distinguished strangera stranger to the little

Chelsea streetwho was making the best of a queer episode and a place of exile. The extraordinary thing

was that at the end of three minutes he felt himself less appointedly a stranger in it than she.

A part of the queernessthis was to come to him in glimpsessprang from the air as of a general large

misfit imposed on the narrow room by the scale and mass of its furniture. The objects, the ornaments were,

for the sisters, clearly relics and survivals of what would, in the case of Mrs. Condrip at least, have been

called better days. The curtains that overdraped the windows, the sofas and tables that stayed circulation, the

chimneyornaments that reached to the ceiling and the florid chandelier that almost dropped to the floor,

were so many mementoes of earlier homes and so many links with their unhappy mother. Whatever might

have been in itself the quality of these elements Densher could feel the effect proceeding from them, as they

lumpishly (365) blocked out the decline of the dim day, to be ugly almost to the point of the sinister. They

failed to accommodate or to compromise; they asserted their differences without tact and without taste. It was

truly having a sense of Kate's own quality thus promptly to see them in reference to it. But that Densher had

this sense was no new thing to him, nor did he in strictness need, for the hour, to be reminded of it. He only

knew, by one of the tricks his imagination so constantly played him, that he was, so far as her present tension

went, very specially sorry for herwhich was not the view that had determined his start in the morning; yet

also that he himself would have taken it all, as he might say, less hard. HE could have lived in such a place;

but it wasn't given to those of his complexion, so to speak, to be exiled anywhere. It was by their comparative

grossness that they could somehow make shift. His natural, his inevitable, his ultimate homeleft, that is, to

itselfwasn't at all unlikely to be as queer and impossible as what was just round them, though doubtless in

less ample masses. As he took in moreover how Kate wouldn't have been in the least the creature she was if

what was just round them hadn't mismatched her, hadn't made for her a medium involving compunction in

the spectator, so, by the same stroke, that became the very fact of her relation with her companions there,

such a fact as filled him at once, oddly, both with assurance and with suspense. If he himself, on this brief

vision, felt her as alien and as ever so unwittingly ironic, how must they not feel her and how above all must

(366) Densher could ask himself that even after she had presently lighted the tall candles on the mantelshelf.

This was all their illumination but the fire, and she had proceeded to it with a quiet dryness that yet left play,

visibly, to her implication between them, in their trouble and failing anything better, of the presumably genial

Christmas hearth. So far as the genial went this had in strictness, given their conditions, to be all their

geniality. He had told her in his note nothing but that he must promptly see her and that he hoped she might

be able to make it possible; but he understood from the first look at her that his promptitude was already

having for her its principal reference. "I was prevented this morning, in the few minutes," he explained,

"asking Mrs. Lowder if she had let you know, though I rather gathered she had; and it's what I've been in fact

since then assuming. It was because I was so struck at the moment with your having, as she did tell me, so

"Yes, it was sudden enough." Very neat and fine in the contracted firelight, with her hands in her lap, Kate

considered what he had said. He had spoken immediately of what had happened at Sir Luke Strett's door.

"It's part of what I mean," Densher said; but what he went on with, after a pause during which she waited,

was apparently not the rest of that. "She had had her telegram from Mrs. Stringham; late last night. But to me

the poor lady hasn't wired. The event," he added, "will have taken place yesterday, (367) and Sir Luke,

starting immediately, one can see, and travelling straight, will get back tomorrow morning. So that Mrs.

Stringham, I judge, is left to face in some solitude the situation bequeathed to her. But of course," he wound

Her look at him might have had in it a vague betrayal of the sense that he was gaining time. "Was your

"Not from Mrs. Stringhamno." He failed again however to develop thisfor which her forbearance from

another question gave him occasion. From whom then had he heard? He might at last, confronted with her,

really have been gaining time; and as if to show that she respected this impulse she made her enquiry

About that at least he was clear. "Not at all. She's alone, but she's very capable and very courageous.

She had uttered the words as definitely to show them for not untender; and he showed equally every reason to

assent. "One remembers him indeed, and with every ground for it. He'll be of the highest value to herhe's

capable of anything. What I was going to say," he went on, "is that some of their people from America must

(368) On this, as happened, Kate was able at once to satisfy him. "Mr. Someoneorother, the person

principally in charge of Milly's affairsher first trustee, I supposehad just got there at Mrs. Stringham's

"Ah that then was after your aunt last spoke to meI mean the last time before this morning. I'm relieved to

"Oh they'll do." And it came from each still as if it wasn't what each was most thinking of. Kate presently got

however a step nearer to that. "But if you had been wired to by nobody what then this morning had taken you

"Oh something elsewhich I'll presently tell you. It's what made me instantly need to see you; it's what I've

come to speak to you of. But in a minute. I feel too many things," he went on, "at seeing you in this place."

He got up as he spoke; she herself remained perfectly still. His movement had been to the fire, and, leaning a

little, with his back to it, to look down on her from where he stood, he confined himself to his point. "Is it

He had now in any case said enough to justify her wish for more; so that, passing this matter by, she pressed

her own challenge. "Do you mean, if I may ask, that SHE, dying?" Her face, wondering, pressed it more

"Certainly you may ask," he after a moment said. "What has come to me is what, as I say, I came expressly to

tell you. I don't mind letting you know," he went on, "that my decision to do this took for (369) me last night

and this morning a great deal of thinking of. But here I am." And he indulged in a smile that couldn't, he was

She went straighter with him, she seemed to show, than he really went with her. "You didn't want to come?"

"It would have been simple, my dear"and he continued to smile"if it had been, one way or the other,

only a question of 'wanting.' It took, I admit it, the idea of what I had best do, all sorts of difficult and

This word apparently puzzled hershe studied him in the light of it. "You look upsetyou've certainly been

"My dear girl, you simplify"and he was now serious enough. "It isn't so simple even as that."

She had the air of thinking what it then might be. "I of course can't, with no clue, know what it is." She

remained none the less patient and still. "If at such a moment she could write you one's inevitably quite at

sea. One doesn't, with the best will in the world, understand." And then as Densher had a pause which might

have stood for all the involved explanation that, to his discouragement, loomed before him: "You HAVEN'T

She had said it very gently, almost sweetly, and he (370) didn't instantly say otherwise. But he said so after a

look at her. "Oh yesI have. Only with this sight of you here and what I seem to see in it for you!" And

his eyes, as at suggestions that pressed, turned from one part of the room to another.

It brought him straight back to his enquiry. "Is it for anything awful you've had to come?"

"Oh that will take as long to tell you as anything YOU may have. Don't mind," she continued, "the 'sight of

me here,' nor whateverwhich is more than I yet know myselfmay be 'in it' for me. And kindly consider

too that, after all, if you're in trouble I can a little wish to help you. Perhaps I can absolutely even do it."

"My dear child, it's just because of the sense of your wish! I suppose I'm in troubleI suppose that's it."

He said this with so odd a suddenness of simplicity that she could only stare for itwhich he as promptly

saw. So he turned off as he could his vagueness. "And yet I oughtn't to be." Which sounded indeed vaguer

She waited a moment. "Is it, as you say for my own business, anything very awful?"

"Well," he slowly replied, "you'll tell me if you find it so. I mean if you find my idea"

He was so slow that she took him up. "Awful?" A sound of impatiencethe form of a laughat last escaped

It brought him then more to the point, though it did so at first but by making him, on the hearthrug (371)

before her, with his hands in his pockets, turn awhile to and fro. There rose in him even with this movement a

recall of another timethe hour in Venice, the hour of gloom and storm, when Susan Shepherd had sat in his

quarters there very much as Kate was sitting now, and he had wondered, in pain even as now, what he might

say and mightn't. Yet the present occasion after all was somehow the easier. He tried at any rate to attach that

feeling to it while he stopped before his companion. "The communication I speak of can't possibly

belongso far as its date is concernedto these last days. The postmark, which is legible, does; but it isn't

thinkable, for anything else, that she wrote!" He dropped, looking at her as if she'd understand.

It was easy to understand. "On her deathbed?" But Kate took an instant's thought. "Aren't we agreed that there

"Yes." And looking over her head he spoke clearly enough. "There was never any one in the world like her."

Kate, from her chair, always without a movement, raised her eyes to the unconscious reach of his own. Then

when the latter again dropped to her she added a question. "And won't it further depend a little on what the

It was as if his tone for this promptedwith a slight strangenessher next demand. "Have you had many

"No. Only three notes." He spoke looking straight at her. "And very, very short ones."

"Ah," said Kate, "the number doesn't matter. Three lines would be enough if you're sure you remember."

"I'm sure I remember. Besides," Densher continued, "I've seen her hand in other ways. I seem to recall how

you once, before she went to Venice, showed me one of her notes precisely FOR that. And then she once

"Oh," said Kate almost with a smile, "I don't ask you for the detail of your reasons. One good one's enough."

To which however she added as if precisely not to speak with impatience or with anything like irony: "And

"Yesit WAS beautiful. Well," Kate, to defer to him still, further remarked, "it's not news to us now that she

"Yes, anything's possible"he appeared oddly to catch at it. "That's what I say to myself. It's what I've been

She waited for him to say more, but he only, with his hands in his pockets, turned again away, going this

(373) time to the single window of the room, where in the absence of lamplight the blind hadn't been drawn.

He looked out into the lamplit fog, lost himself in the small sordid London streetfor sordid, with his other

association, he felt itas he had lost himself, with Mrs. Stringham's eyes on him, in the vista of the Grand

Canal. It was present then to his recording consciousness that when he had last been driven to such an attitude

the very depth of his resistance to the opportunity to give Kate away was what had so driven him. His waiting

companion had on that occasion waited for him to say he WOULD; and what he had meantime glowered

forth at was the inanity of such a hope. Kate's attention, on her side, during these minutes, rested on the back

and shoulders he thus familiarly presentedrested as with a view of their expression, a reference to things

unimparted, links still missing and that she must ever miss, try to make them out as she would. The result of

her tension was that she again took him up. "You receivedwhat you spoke oflast night?"

It made him turn round. "Coming in from Fleet Streetearlier by an hour than usualI found it with some

other letters on my table. But my eyes went straight to it, in an extraordinary way, from the door. I recognised

"One can understand." She listened with respect. His tone however was so singular that she presently added:

"Oh yes, I've touched it. I feel as if, ever since, (374) I'd been touching nothing else. I quite firmly," he

So he said with a distinctness that had, among his other oddities, almost a sound of cheer, yet making no

movement that matched his words. She could accordingly but offer again her expectant face, while his own,

to her impatience, seemed perversely to fill with another thought. "But now that you've done so you feel you

She smiled at him, with this, finally, as if he were an unreasonable child. "It seems to me I tell you quite as

much as you tell me. You haven't yet even told me how it is that such explanations as you require don't come

from your document itself." Then as he answered nothing she had a flash. "You mean you haven't read it?"

Again leaving her while she never budged he paced five strides, and again he was before her. "By telling me

"The first time after my returnthe Sunday I came to you. What's he doing," Densher went on, (375) "at that

"Yes, my dearand with you. It comes more or less to the same thing; and it's what you didn't tell me the

"I asked you when it was you last saw himprevious, I mean, to his second descent at Venice. You wouldn't

say, and as we were talking of a matter comparatively more important I let it pass. But the fact remains, you

Two things in this speech appeared to have reached Kate more distinctly than the others. "I 'wouldn't

say'?and you 'let it pass'?" She looked just coldly blank. "You really speak as if I were keeping something

"Well, you see," Densher persisted, "you're not even telling me now. All I want to know," he nevertheless

explained, "is whether there was a connexion between that proceeding on his part, which was practicallyoh

beyond all doubt!the shock precipitating for her what has now happened, and anything that had occurred

Kate slowly rose; it was, since she had lighted the candles and sat down, the first movement she had made.

She spoke not so much in resentment as in pale dismaywhich he showed he immediately took in. "My dear

child, I'm not trying to 'fix' anything; but I'm extremely tormented and I seem not to understand. What has the

She shook her head as if in recovery, within the minute, of some mild allowance for his unreason. There was

in itand for his reason reallyone of those halfinconsequent sweetnesses by which she had often before

made, over some point of difference, her own terms with him. Practically she was making them now, and

essentially he was knowing it; yet inevitably, all the same, he was accepting it. She stood there close to him,

with something in her patience that suggested her having supposed, when he spoke more appealingly, that he

was going to kiss her. He hadn't been, it appeared; but his continued appeal was none the less the quieter.

"Since day before yesterday. He was there before I came away." And then she explainedconfessing it in

fact anomalous. "It's an accidentlike Aunt Maud's having herself remained in town for Christmas, but it

isn't after all so monstrous. WE stayedand, with my having come here, she's sorry nowbecause we

neither of us, waiting from day to day for the news you brought, seemed to want to be with a lot of people."

"Of course we did. For what else? And even a little," Kate wonderfully added"it's true at least of Aunt

He appreciated. "I see. Nice of you every way. But whom," he enquired, "has Lord Mark stayed for thinking

"His being in London, I believe, is a very commonplace matter. He has some rooms which he has had

suddenly some rather advantageous chance to letsuch as, with his confessed, his decidedly proclaimed

want of money, he hasn't had it in him, in spite of everything, not to jump at."

"Well, I don't know. In spite, say, of his being scarcely supposed to do that sort of thing."

"To try at any rate in little thrifty ways. Apparently however he has had for some reason to do what he can.

He turned at a couple of days' notice out of (378) his place, making it over to his tenant; and Aunt Maud,

who's deeply in his confidence about all such matters, said: 'Come then to Lancaster Gateto sleep at

leasttill, like all the world, you go to the country.' He was to have gone to the countryI think to

Kate had been somehow, for her companion, through this statement, beautifully, quite soothingly, suggestive.

"Yesso far as she had taken it into her head that his being there was part of my reason."

"A little if you like. Yet there's plenty hereas I knew there would bewithout it. So that," she said

candidly, "doesn't matter. I'm glad I am here: even if for all the good I do!" She implied however that that

didn't matter either. "He didn't, as you tell me, get off then to Matcham; though he may possibly, if it IS

possible, be going this afternoon. But what strikes me as most probableand it's really, I'm bound to say,

quite amiable of himis that he has declined to leave Aunt Maud, as I've been so ready to do, to spend her

Christmas alone. If moreover he has given up Matcham for her it's a _procede_ that won't please her less. It's

small wonder therefore that she insists, on a dull day, in driving him about. I don't pretend to know," she

"You see in everything, and you always did," Densher (379) returned, "something that, while I'm with you at

She looked at him as if consciously and even carefully extracting the sting of his reservation; then she spoke

with a quiet gravity that seemed to show how fine she found it. "Thank you." It had for him, like everything

else, its effect. They were still closely face to face, and, yielding to the impulse to which he hadn't yielded

just before, he laid his hands on her shoulders, held her hard a minute and shook her a little, far from

untenderly, as if in expression of more mingled things, all difficult, than he could speak. Then bending his

head he applied his lips to her cheek. He fell, after this, away for an instant, resuming his unrest, while she

kept the position in which, all passive and as a statue, she had taken his demonstration. It didn't prevent her,

however, from offering him, as if what she had had was enough for the moment, a further indulgence. She

made a quiet lucid connexion and as she made it sat down again. "I've been trying to place exactly, as to its

date, something that did happen to me while you were in Venice. I mean a talk with him. He spoke to

"Well, if I'm 'there,' as you so gracefully call it, by having refused to meet him as he wantedas he

pressedI plead guilty to being so. Would you have liked me," she went on, "to give him an answer that

"Never for a moment; but I'm afraid thateven if it doesn't fit your strange suppositionsI should have

given him just the same answer if I had known. If it's a matter I haven't, since your return, thrust upon you,

that's simply because it's not a matter in the memory of which I find a particular joy. I hope that if I've

satisfied you about it," she continued, "it's not too much to ask of you to let it rest."

"Certainly," said Densher kindly, "I'll let it rest." But the next moment he pursued: "He saw something. He

"If you mean," she presently returned, "that he was unfortunately the one person we hadn't deceived, I can't

"Noof course not. But WHY," Densher still risked, "was he unfortunately the one person? He's not

"Intelligent enough apparently to have seen a mystery, a riddle, in anything so unnatural asall things

considered and when it came to the pointmy attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and on his

Densher seemed for a little to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it were a blot on the face of nature. "Do

"You and I. What I appeared to him, however, (381) hadn't mattered. What mattered was how I appeared to

Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remember that he has had all along his impression of YOU. You can't help it,"

"As much myself as you please. But when I took myself to Venice and kept myself therewhat," Densher

"Your being in Venice and liking to bewhich is never on any one's part a monstrositywas explicable for

him in other ways. He was quite capable moreover of seeing it as dissimulation."

"No," said Kate, "not in spite of Mrs. Lowder now. Aunt Maud, before what you call his second descent,

hadn't convinced himall the more that my refusal of him didn't help. But he came back convinced." And

then as her companion still showed a face at a loss: "I mean after he had seen Milly, spoken to her and left

"That you were sincere. That it was HER you loved." It came to him from her in such a way that he instantly,

once more, turned, found himself yet again at his window. "Aunt Maud, on his return here," she meanwhile

He only for a minute looked out in silenceafter which he came away. "And why YOU are." It was almost,

in its extremely affirmative effect between them, the note of recrimination; or it would have been perhaps

rather if it hadn't been so much more (382) the note of truth. It was sharp because it was true, but its truth

appeared to impose it as an argument so conclusive as to permit on neither side a sequel. That made, while

they faced each other over it without speech, the gravity of everything. It was as if there were almost danger,

which the wrong word might start. Densher accordingly at last acted to better purpose: he drew, standing

there before her, a pocketbook from the breast of his waistcoat and he drew from the pocketbook a folded

letter to which her eyes attached themselves. He restored then the receptacle to its place and, with a

movement not the less odd for being visibly instinctive and unconscious, carried the hand containing his

letter behind him. What he thus finally spoke of was a different matter. "Did I understand from Mrs. Lowder

If it never had taken her long in such excursions to meet him it was not to take her so now. "In the house, yes.

But we needn't fear his interruption"she spoke as if he had thought of that. "He's in bed."

She sadly shook her head. "Father's never ill. He's a marvel. He's onlyendless."

"Yes." She perfectly, wearily, almost serenely, had it all. "By our making your visit as little of an affair as

Quickly it almost upset her. "Ah don't, today, put ugly words into my mouth. I've enough of my trouble

"I knowI know!" He spoke in instant pleading. "It's all only that I'm as troubled FOR you. When did he

"Three days agoafter he hadn't been near her for more than a year, after he had apparently, and not

regrettably, ceased to remember her existence; and in a state which made it impossible not to take him in."

"No, not of food, of necessary thingsnot even, so far as his appearance went, of money. He looked as

"I don't know. Of somebodyof something. He wants, he says, to be quiet. But his quietness is awful."

It made her slowly rise, and they were once more fully face to face. Her eyes held his own and she was paler

(384) He waited again a moment. "I love you. It's because I love you that I'm here. It's because I love you that

I've brought you this." And he drew from behind him the letter that had remained in his hand.

But her eyes onlythough he held it outmet the offer. "Why you've not broken the seal!"

"If I had broken the sealexactlyI should know what's within. It's for YOU to break the seal that I bring

She lookedstill not touching the thinginordinately grave. "To break the seal of something to you from

"I don't understand," said Kate. "What do you yourself think?" And then as he didn't answer: "It seems to me

I think you know. You have your instinct. You don't need to read. It's the proof."

Densher faced her words as if they had been an accusation, an accusation for which he was prepared and

which there was but one way to face. "I have indeed my instinct. It came to me, while I worried it out, last

night. It came to me as an effect of the hour." He held up his letter and seemed now to insist more than to

Kate had suddenly a strange smile. "The season of gifts!" After which, as he said nothing, she went on: "And

(385) Only meeting her eyes while he thought, he again didn't reply. "What do YOU mean by the proof?"

"Why of the beauty with which you've been loved. But I won't," she said, "break your seal."

"Not all of it, no doubt, for it's immense. But money to a large amount. I don't care," Kate went on, "to know

"Never!" Kate visibly flushed at the thought. "That wouldn't, on my part, have been playing fair with her.

Densher, who had believed herhe couldn't help itcontinued, holding his letter, to face her. He was much

quieter now, as if his torment had somehow passed. "You played fair with me, Kate; and that's whysince

we talk of proofsI want to give YOU one. I've wanted to let you seeand in preference even to

"I've asked myself for a tribute, for a sacrifice by which I can peculiarly recognise"

"The admirable nature of your own sacrifice. You were capable in Venice of an act of splendid generosity."

She looked at him long. "Your attitude, my dear, is that you're afraid of yourself. You've had to take yourself

She bent her eyes hard a moment to the letter, from which her hand still stayed itself. "You absolutely

"Short of course of making known its terms. It must remainpardon my making the pointbetween you

She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke it. "Trust me." Taking from him the sacred script she held it

a little while her eyes again rested on those fine characters of Milly's that they had shortly before discussed.

"Well then if we both do!" She had already turned to the fire, nearer to which she had moved, and with a

quick gesture had jerked the thing into (387) the flame. He startedbut only halfas to undo her action: his

arrest was as prompt as the latter had been decisive. He only watched, with her, the paper burn; after which

It was after he had in fact, two months later, heard from New York that she paid him a visit one morning at

his own quarterscoming not as she had come in Venice, under his extreme solicitation, but as a need

recognised in the first instance by herself, even though also as the prompt result of a missive delivered to her.

This had consisted of a note from Densher accompanying a letter, "just to hand," addressed him by an

eminent American legal firm, a firm of whose high character he had become conscious while in New York as

of a thing in the air itself, and whose head and front, the principal executor of Milly Theale's copious will,

had been duly identified at Lancaster Gate as the gentleman hurrying out, by the straight southern course,

before the girl's death, to the support of Mrs. Stringham. Densher's act on receipt of the document in

questionan act as to which and to the bearings of which his resolve had had time to matureconstituted in

strictness, singularly enough, the first reference to Milly, or to what Milly might or might not have done, that

had passed between our pair since they had stood together watching the destruction, in the little vulgar grate

at Chelsea, of the undisclosed work of her hand. They had at the time, and in due deference now, on his part,

to Kate's mention of her responsibility for his call, immediately separated, and when they met again the

subject was made present to themat all (389) events till some flare of new lightonly by the intensity

with which it mutely expressed its absence. They were not moreover in these weeks to meet often, in spite of

the fact that this had, during January and a part of February, actually become for them a comparatively easy

matter. Kate's stay at Mrs. Condrip's prolonged itself under allowances from her aunt which would have been

a mystery to Densher had he not been admitted, at Lancaster Gate, really in spite of himself, to the esoteric

view of them. "It's her idea," Mrs. Lowder had there said to him as if she really despised ideaswhich she

didn't; "and I've taken up with my own, which is to give her her head till she has had enough of it. She HAS

had enough of it, she had that soon enough; but as she's as proud as the deuce she'll come back when she has

found some reasonhaving nothing in common with her disgustof which she can make a show. She calls

it her holiday, which she's spending in her own waythe holiday to which, once a year or so, as she says, the

very maids in the scullery have a right. So we're taking it on that basis. But we shall not soon, I think, take

another of the same sort. Besides, she's quite decent; she comes oftenwhenever I make her a sign; and she

has been good, on the whole, this year or two, so that, to be decent myself, I don't complain. She has really

been, poor dear, very much what one hoped; though I needn't, you know," Aunt Maud wound up, "tell YOU,

It had been partly in truth to keep down the opportunity for this that Densher's appearances under (390) the

good lady's roof markedly, after Christmas, interspaced themselves. The phase of his situation that on his

return from Venice had made them for a short time almost frequent was at present quite obscured, and with it

the impulse that had then acted. Another phase had taken its place, which he would have been painfully at a

loss as yet to name or otherwise set on its feet, but of which the steadily rising tide left Mrs. Lowder, for his

desire, quite high and dry. There had been a moment when it seemed possible that Mrs. Stringham, returning

to America under convoy, would pause in London on her way and be housed with her old friend; in which

case he was prepared for some apparent zeal of attendance. But this danger passedhe had felt it a danger,

and the person in the world whom he would just now have most valued seeing on his own terms sailed away

westward from Genoa. He thereby only wrote to her, having broken, in this respect, after Milly's death, the

silence as to the sense of which, before that event, their agreement had been so deep. She had answered him

from Venice twice, and had had time to answer him twice again from New York. The last letter of her four

had come by the same post as the document he sent on to Kate, but he hadn't gone into the question of also

enclosing that. His correspondence with Milly's companion was somehow already presenting itself to him as

a featureas a factor, he would have said in his newspaperof the time whatever it might be, long or short,

in store for him; but one of his acutest current thoughts was apt to be devoted to his not having yet mentioned

it to Kate. (391) She had put him no question, no "Don't you ever hear?"so that he hadn't been brought to

the point. This he described to himself as a mercy, for he liked his secret. It was as a secret that, in the same

personal privacy, he described his transatlantic commerce, scarce even wincing while he recognised it as the

one connexion in which he wasn't straight. He had in fact for this connexion a vivid mental imagehe saw it

as a small emergent rock in the waste of waters, the bottomless grey expanse of straightness. The fact that he

had on several recent occasions taken with Kate an outoftheway walk that was each time to define itself

as more remarkable for what they didn't say than for what they didthis fact failed somehow to mitigate for

him a strange consciousness of exposure. There was something deep within him that he had absolutely shown

to no oneto the companion of these walks in particular not a bit more than he could help; but he was none

the less haunted, under its shadow, with a dire apprehension of publicity. It was as if he had invoked that

ugliness in some stupid good faith; and it was queer enough that on his emergent rock, clinging to it and to

Susan Shepherd, he should figure himself as hidden from view. That represented no doubt his belief in her

power, or in her delicate disposition to protect him. Only Kate at all events knewwhat Kate did know, and

she was also the last person interested to tell it; in spite of which it was as if his ACT, so deeply associated

with her and never to be recalled nor recovered, was abroad on the winds of the world. His honesty, as he

viewed it with Kate, was the very element of that menace: (392) to the degree that he saw at moments, as to

their final impulse or their final remedy, the need to bury in the dark blindness of each other's arms the

Save indeed that the sense in which it was in these days a question of arms was limited, this might have been

the intimate expedient to which they were actually resorting. It had its value, in conditions that made

everything count, that thrice over, in Battersea Parkwhere Mrs. Lowder now never drovehe had adopted

the usual means, in sequestered alleys, of holding her close to his side. She could make absences, on her

present footing, without having too inordinately to account for them at homewhich was exactly what gave

them for the first time an appreciable margin. He supposed she could always say in Chelseathough he

didn't press itthat she had been across the town, in decency, for a look at her aunt; whereas there had

always been reasons at Lancaster Gate for her not being able to plead the look at her other relatives. It was

therefore between them a freedom of a purity as yet untasted; which for that matter also they made in various

ways no little show of cherishing as such. They made the show indeed in every way but the way of a large

usean inconsequence that they almost equally gave time to helping each other to regard as natural. He put

it to his companion that the kind of favour he now enjoyed at Lancaster Gate, the wonderful warmth of his

reception there, cut in a manner the ground from under their feet. He was too horribly trustedthey had

succeeded too well. He couldn't in short (393) make appointments with her without abusing Aunt Maud, and

he couldn't on the other hand haunt that lady without tying his hands. Kate saw what he meant just as he saw

what she did when she admitted that she was herself, to a degree scarce less embarrassing, in the enjoyment

of Aunt Maud's confidence. It was special at presentshe was handsomely used; she confessed accordingly

to a scruple about misapplying her licence. Mrs. Lowder then finally had foundand all unconsciously

nowthe way to baffle them. It wasn't however that they didn't meet a little, none the less, in the southern

quarter, to point for their common benefit the moral of their defeat. They crossed the river; they wandered in

neighbourhoods sordid and safe; the winter was mild, so that, mounting to the top of trams, they could

rumble together to Clapham or to Greenwich. If at the same time their minutes had never been so counted it

struck Densher that by a singular law their tonehe scarce knew what to call ithad never been so bland.

Not to talk of what they MIGHT have talked of drove them to other ground; it was as if they used a perverse

insistence to make up what they ignored. They concealed their pursuit of the irrelevant by the charm of their

manner; they took precautions for the courtesy they had formerly left to come of itself; often, when he had

quitted her, he stopped short, walking off, with the aftersense of their change. He would have described their

changehad he so far faced it as to describe itby their being so damned civil. That had even, with the

intimate, the familiar at the point to which they had brought them, a touch almost (394) of the droll. What

danger had there ever been of their becoming rudeafter each had long since made the other so

tremendously tender? Such were the things he asked himself when he wondered what in particular he most

Yet all the while too the tension had its charmsuch being the interest of a creature who could bring one

back to her by such different roads. It was her talent for life again; which found in her a difference for the

differing time. She didn't give their tradition up; she but made of it something new. Frankly moreover she had

never been more agreeable nor in a wayto put it prosaicallybetter company: he felt almost as if he were

knowing her on that defined basiswhich he even hesitated whether to measure as reduced or as extended;

as if at all events he were admiring her as she was probably admired by people she met "out." He hadn't in

fine reckoned that she would still have something fresh for him; yet this was what she hadthat on the top of

a tram in the Borough he felt as if he were next her at dinner. What a person she would be if they HAD been

richwith what a genius for the socalled great life, what a presence for the socalled great house, what a

grace for the socalled great positions! He might regret at once, while he was about it, that they weren't

princes or billionaires. She had treated him on their Christmas to a softness that had struck him at the time as

of the quality of fine velvet, meant to fold thick, but stretched a little thin; at present, however, she gave him

the impression of a contact multitudinous as only the superficial can be. She had throughout (395) never a

word for what went on at home. She came out of that and she returned to it, but her nearest reference was the

look with which, each time, she bade him goodbye. The look was her repeated prohibition: "It's what I

HAVE to see and to knowso don't touch it. That but wakes up the old evil, which I keep still, in my way,

by sitting by it. I go nowleave me alone!to sit by it again. The way to pity meif that's what you

wantis to believe in me. If we could really DO anything it would be another matter."

He watched her, when she went her way, with the vision of what she thus a little stiffly carried. It was

confused and obscure, but how, with her head high, it made her hold herself! He really in his own person

might at these moments have been swaying a little aloft as one of the objects in her poised basket. It was

doubtless thanks to some such consciousness as this that he felt the lapse of the weeks, before the day of

Kate's mounting of his stair, almost swingingly rapid. They contained for him the contradiction that, whereas

periods of waiting are supposed in general to keep the time slow, it was the wait, actually, that made the pace

trouble him. The secret of that anomaly, to be plain, was that he was aware of how, while the days melted,

something rare went with them. This something was only a thought, but a thought precisely of such freshness

and such delicacy as made the precious, of whatever sort, most subject to the hunger of time. The thought

was all his own, and his intimate companion was the last person he might have shared it with. He kept it back

like a favourite pang; (396) left it behind him, so to say, when he went out, but came home again the sooner

for the certainty of finding it there. Then he took it out of its sacred corner and its soft wrappings; he undid

them one by one, handling them, handling IT, as a father, baffled and tender, might handle a maimed child.

But so it was before himin his dread of who else might see it. Then he took to himself at such hours, in

other words, that he should never, never know what had been in Milly's letter. The intention announced in it

he should but too probably know; only that would have been, but for the depths of his spirit, the least part of

it. The part of it missed for ever was the turn she would have given her act. This turn had possibilities that,

somehow, by wondering about them, his imagination had extraordinarily filled out and refined. It had made

of them a revelation the loss of which was like the sight of a priceless pearl cast before his eyeshis pledge

given not to save itinto the fathomless sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice of something sentient and

throbbing, something that, for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail. This was the

sound he cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and guarded the stillness, so that it

might prevail there till the inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh, should

smother and deaden itdoubtless by the same process with which they would officiously heal the ache in his

soul that was somehow one with it. It moreover deepened the sacred hush that he couldn't complain. He had

(397) The great and obvious thing, as soon as she stood there on the occasion we have already named, was

that she was now in high possession of it. This would have marked immediately the differencehad there

been nothing else to do itbetween their actual terms and their other terms, the character of their last

encounter in Venice. That had been HIS idea, whereas her present step was her own; the few marks they had

in common were, from the first moment, to his conscious vision, almost pathetically plain. She was as grave

now as before; she looked around her, to hide it, as before; she pretended, as before, in an air in which her

words at the moment itself fell flat, to an interest in the place and a curiosity about his "things"; there was a

recall in the way in which, after she had failed a little to push up her veil symmetrically and he had said she

had better take it off altogether, she had acceded to his suggestion before the glass. It was just these things

that were vain; and what was real was that his fancy figured her after the first few minutes as literally now

providing the element of reassurance which had previously been his care. It was she, supremely, who had the

presence of mind. She made indeed for that matter very prompt use of it. "You see I've not hesitated this time

She had laid on the table from the moment of her coming in the long envelope, substantially filled, which he

had sent her enclosed in another of still ampler make. He had however not looked at ithis belief being that

he wished never again to do so; besides which it had happened to rest with its (398) addressed side up. So he

"saw" nothing, and it was only into her eyes that her remark made him look, declining any approach to the

object indicated. "It's not 'my' seal, my dear; and my intentionwhich my note tried to expresswas all to

"Well, let us call it, if we like, theirsthat of the good people in New York, the authors of our

communication. If the seal is broken well and good; but we MIGHT, you know," he presently added, "have

sent it back to them intact and inviolate. Only accompanied," he smiled with his heart in his mouth, "by an

Kate took it with the mere brave blink with which a patient of courage signifies to the exploring medical hand

that the tender place is touched. He saw on the spot that she was prepared, and with this signal sign that she

was too intelligent not to be, came a flicker of possibilities. She wasmerely to put it at thatintelligent

"I refer," he went on without noticing it, "to what would have been the handsome way. Its being dispatched

again, with no cognisance taken but one's assurance of the highest consideration, and the proof of this in the

(399) She thought an instant. "The state of the envelope proving refusal, you mean, not to be based on the

Densher smiled again as for the play, however whimsical, of her humour. "Well yessomething of that

"So that if cognisance HAS been takenso far as I'm concernedit spoils the beauty?"

"It makes the difference that I'm disappointed in the hopewhich I confess I entertainedthat you'd bring

"I didn't want to. I wanted to leave it to yourself. I wantedoh yes, if that's what you wish to ask meto see

He continued steady now; a kind of easefrom the presence, as in the air, of something he couldn't yet have

She was struckit showed in her faceby his expression. "It IS a good case. I doubt whether a better," she

"I see"she took it in. "But I myself shouldn't (400) have known at all. And you wouldn't have known,

"Let me tell you at once," he returned, "that if you've been moved to correct my ignorance I very particularly

She just hesitated. "Are you afraid of the effect of the corrections? Can you only do it by doing it blindly?"

"Why the only thing in the world that I take you as thinking of. Not acceptingwhat she has done. Isn't there

"There's something you forget in it," he said after a moment. "My asking you to join with me in doing so."

Her wonder but made her softer, yet at the same time didn't make her less firm. "How can I 'join' in a matter

She seemed to face a threat in it. "You mean you won't give up if I DON'T consent?"

It had a soundthough he had been coming to itthat made for gravity. "Who then in such an event

Again a little she said nothing: she might say too much. But by the time she spoke he had covered ground.

"In the way I showand the way I've always shown. When have I shown," he asked as with a sudden cold

impatience, "anything else? You surely must feelso that you needn't wish to appear to spare me in ithow

"It's very good of you, my dear," she nervously laughed, "to put me so thoroughly up to it!"

"I put you up to nothing. I didn't even put you up to the chance that, as I said a few moments ago, I saw for

It had come to the point really that they showed each other pale faces, and that all the unspoken between them

looked out of their eyes in a dim terror of their further conflict. Something even rose between them in one of

their short silencessomething (402) that was like an appeal from each to the other not to be too true. Their

necessity was somehow before them, but which of them must meet it first? "Thank you!" Kate said for his

word about her freedom, but taking for the minute no further action on it. It was blest at least that all ironies

failed them, and during another slow moment their very sense of it cleared the air.

There was an effect of this in the way he soon went on. "You must intensely feel that it's the thing for which

She took up the remark, however, no more than if it were commonplace; she was already again occupied with

a point of her own. "Is it absolutely truefor if it is, you know, it's tremendously interestingthat you

"Ah," he couldn't help breaking in, "what do you know of my place? Pardon me," he at once added; "my

She had in an instant nevertheless a curious thought. "But won't the facts be published?"

It seemed to settle the subject, but she had the next minute another insistence. "Your desire is to escape

"And do you need no more definite sense of what it is you ask me to help you to renounce?"

"My sense is sufficient without being definite. I'm willing to believe that the amount of money's not small."

"If she was to leave me a remembrance," he quietly pursued, "it would inevitably not be meagre."

Kate waited as for how to say it. "It's worthy of her. It's what she was herselfif you remember what we

He hesitatedas if there had been many things. But he remembered one of them. "Stupendous?"

"Stupendous." A faint smile for itever so smallhad flickered in her face, but had vanished before the

omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had shown themselves in his own. His eyes filledbut that made her

continue. She continued gently. "I think that what it really is must be that you're afraid. I mean," she

explained, "that you're afraid of ALL the truth. If you're in love with her without it, what indeed can you be

She took it, but after a little she met it. "I believe that nowfor the time she lived. I believe it at least for the

time you were there. But your change cameas it might wellthe day you last saw her; she died for you

then that you might understand her. From that hour you DID." With which Kate slowly rose. "And I do now.

She did it FOR us." Densher (404) rose to face her, and she went on with her thought. "I used to call her, in

my stupidityfor want of anything bettera dove. Well she stretched out her wings, and it was to THAT

"That's what I give you," Kate gravely wound up. "That's what I've done for you."

His look at her had a slow strangeness that had dried, on the moment, his tears. "Do I understand then?"

"That I do consent?" She gravely shook her head. "Nofor I see. You'll marry me without the money; you

"You lose me?" He showed, though naming it frankly, a sort of awe of her high grasp. "Well, you lose

Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no smile this time to spare. "Preciselyso that I must choose."

Strange it was for him then that she stood in his own rooms doing it, while, with an intensity now beyond any

that had ever made his breath come slow, he waited for her act. "There's but one thing that can save you from

"Yes"and she gave a nod at the long envelope on the table"your surrender of that."

"Ah"she made a high gesture"don't speak of it as if you couldn't be. i could in your place; and you're

He heard her out in stillness, watching her face but not moving. Then he only said: "I'll marry you, mind you,

But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. "We shall never be again as we were!"