Page 3 of The Wings of the Dove, Volume II

  I

  Densher became aware, afresh, that he disliked his hotel--and all themore promptly that he had had occasion of old to make the samediscrimination. The establishment, choked at that season with thepolyglot herd, cockneys of all climes, mainly German, mainly American,mainly English, it appeared as the corresponding sensitive nerve wastouched, sounded loud and not sweet, sounded anything and everythingbut Italian, but Venetian. The Venetian was all a dialect, he knew; yetit was pure Attic beside some of the dialects at the bustling inn. Itmade, "abroad," both for his pleasure and his pain that he had to feelat almost any point how he had been through every thing before. He hadbeen three or four times, in Venice, during other visits, through thispleasant irritation of paddling away--away from the concert of falsenotes in the vulgarised hall, away from the amiable American familiesand overfed German porters. He had in each case made terms for alodging more private and not more costly, and he recalled withtenderness these shabby but friendly asylums, the windows of which heshould easily know again in passing on canal or through campo. Theshabbiest now failed of an appeal to him, but he found himself at theend of forty-eight hours forming views in respect to a smallindependent _quartiere_, far down the Grand Canal, which he had onceoccupied for a month with a sense of pomp and circumstance and yet alsowith a growth of initiation into the homelier Venetian mysteries. Thehumour of those days came back to him for an hour, and what furtherbefell in this interval, to be brief, was that, emerging on a traghettoin sight of the recognised house, he made out on the green shutters ofhis old, of his young windows the strips of white pasted paper thatfigure in Venice as an invitation to tenants. This was in the course ofhis very first walk apart, a walk replete with impressions to which heresponded with force. He had been almost without cessation, since hisarrival, at Palazzo Leporelli, where, as happened, a turn of badweather on the second day had kept the whole party continuously athome. The episode had passed for him like a series of hours in amuseum, though without the fatigue of that; and it had also resembledsomething that he was still, with a stirred imagination, to find a namefor. He might have been looking for the name while he gave himself up,subsequently, to the ramble--he saw that even after years he couldn'tlose his way--crowned with his stare across the water at the littlewhite papers.

  He was to dine at the palace in an hour or two, and he had lunchedthere, at an early luncheon, that morning. He had then been out withthe three ladies, the three being Mrs. Lowder, Mrs. Stringham and Kate,and had kept afloat with them, under a sufficient Venetian spell, untilAunt Maud had directed him to leave them and return to Miss Theale. Oftwo circumstances connected with this disposition of his person he waseven now not unmindful; the first being that the lady of Lancaster Gatehad addressed him with high publicity and as if expressing equally thesense of her companions, who had not spoken, but who might have beentaken--yes, Susan Shepherd quite equally with Kate--for inscrutableparties to her plan. What he could as little contrive to forget wasthat he had, before the two others, as it struck him--that was to sayespecially before Kate--done exactly as he was bidden; gathered himselfup without a protest and retraced his way to the palace. Present withhim still was the question of whether he looked a fool for it, ofwhether the awkwardness he felt as the gondola rocked with the businessof his leaving it--they could but make, in submission, for alanding-place that was none of the best--had furnished his friends withsuch entertainment as was to cause them, behind his back, to exchangeintelligent smiles. He had found Milly Theale twenty minutes lateralone, and he had sat with her till the others returned to tea. Thestrange part of this was that it had been very easy, extraordinarilyeasy. He knew it for strange only when he was away from her, becausewhen he was away from her he was in contact with particular things thatmade it so. At the time, in her presence, it was as simple as sittingwith his sister might have been, and not, if the point were urged, verymuch more thrilling. He continued to see her as he had first seenher--that remained ineffaceably behind. Mrs. Lowder, Susan Shepherd,his own Kate, might, each in proportion, see her as a princess, as anangel, as a star, but for himself, luckily, she hadn't as yetcomplications to any point of discomfort: the princess, the angel, thestar, were muffled over, ever so lightly and brightly, with the littleAmerican girl who had been kind to him in New York and to whomcertainly--though without making too much of it for either of them--hewas perfectly willing to be kind in return. She appreciated his comingin on purpose, but there was nothing in that--from the moment she wasalways at home--that they couldn't easily keep up. The only note theleast bit high that had even yet sounded between them was thisadmission on her part that she found it best to remain within. Shewouldn't let him call it keeping quiet, for she insisted that herpalace--with all its romance and art and history--had set up round hera whirlwind of suggestion that never dropped for an hour. It wasn'ttherefore, within such walls, confinement, it was the freedom of allthe centuries: in respect to which Densher granted good-humouredly thatthey were then blown together, she and he, as much as she liked,through space.

  Kate had found on the present occasion a moment to say to him that hesuggested a clever cousin calling on a cousin afflicted, and bored forhis pains; and though he denied on the spot the "bored" he could so farsee it as an impression he might make that he wondered if the sameimage wouldn't have occurred to Milly. As soon as Kate appeared againthe difference came up--the oddity, as he then instantly felt it, ofhis having sunk so deep. It was sinking because it was all doing whatKate had conceived for him; it wasn't in the least doing--and that hadbeen his notion of his life--anything he himself had conceived. Thedifference, accordingly, renewed, sharp, sore, was the irritant underwhich he had quitted the palace and under which he was to make the bestof the business of again dining there. He said to himself that he mustmake 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 thepast, would it do for the present? would it play in any manner into thegeneral necessity of which he was conscious? That necessity of makingthe best was the instinct--as he indeed himself knew--of a man somehowaware that if he let go at one place he should let go everywhere. If hetook 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 minuteand admit the light. It was really a matter of nerves; it was exactlybecause he was nervous that he _could_ go straight; yet if thatcondition should increase he must surely go wild. He was walking inshort on a high ridge, steep down on either side, where theproprieties--once he could face at all remaining there--reducedthemselves 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 onefoot exactly before another, a sensible sharpness of irony as to hermanagement of him. It wasn't that she had put him in danger--to be inreal danger with her would have had another quality. There glowed forhim in fact a kind of rage at what he wasn't having; an exasperation, aresentment, begotten truly by the very impatience of desire, in respectto his postponed and relegated, his so extremely manipulated state. Itwas beautifully done of her, but what was the real meaning of it unlessthat he was perpetually bent to her will? His idea from the first, fromthe very first of his knowing her, had been to be, as the French calledit, _bon prince_ with her, mindful of the good humour and generosity,the contempt, in the matter of confidence, for small outlays and smallsavings, that belonged to the man who wasn't generally afraid. Therewere things enough, goodness knew--for it was the moral of hisplight--that he couldn't afford; but what had had a charm for him ifnot 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 cheapedition. All he had originally felt in her came back to him, was indeedactually as present as ever--how he had admired and envied what hecalled to himself her pure talent for life, as distinguished from hisown, a poor weak thing of the occasion, amateurishly patched up; onlyit irritated him the mor
e that this was exactly what was now, ever socharacteristically, standing out in her.

  It was thanks to her pure talent for life, verily, that he was justwhere he was and that he was above all just _how_ he was. The proof ofa decent reaction in him against so much passivity was, with no greatrichness, that he at least knew--knew, that is, how he was, and howlittle he liked it as a thing accepted in mere helplessness. He was,for the moment, wistful--that above all described it; that was so largea part of the force that, as the autumn afternoon closed in, kept him,on his traghetto, positively throbbing with his question. His questionconnected itself, even while he stood, with his special smotheredsoreness, his sense almost of shame; and the soreness and the shamewere 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 theconditions, those conditions that Kate had so almost insolently braved,had been willing, without a pang, to see him ridiculously--ridiculouslyso far as just complacently--exposed to. How little it _could_ becomplacently he was to feel with the last thoroughness before he hadmoved from his point of vantage. His question, as we have called it,was the interesting question of whether he had really no will left. Howcould he know--that was the point--without putting the matter to thetest? It had been right to be _bon prince,_ and the joy, something ofthe pride, of having lived, in spirit, handsomely, was even nowcompatible with the impulse to look into their account; but he held hisbreath a little as it came home to him with supreme sharpness that,whereas he had done absolutely everything that Kate had wanted, she haddone nothing whatever that he had. So it was in fine that his idea ofthe test by which he must try that possibility kept referring itself,in the warm early dusk, the approach of the Southernnight--"conditions" these, such as we just spoke of--to the glimmer,more and more ghostly as the light failed, of the little white paperson his old green shutters. By the time he looked at his watch he hadbeen for a quarter of an hour at this post of observation andreflexion; but by the time he walked away again he had found his answerto the idea that had grown so importunate. Since a proof of his willwas wanted it was indeed very exactly in wait for him--it lurked thereon the other side of the Canal. A ferryman at the little pier had fromtime to time accosted him; but it was a part of the play of hisnervousness to turn his back on that facility. He would go over, but hewalked, very quickly, round and round, crossing finally by the Rialto.The rooms, in the event, were unoccupied; the ancient padrona was therewith her smile all a radiance but her recognition all a fable; theancient rickety objects too, refined in their shabbiness, amiable intheir decay, as to which, on his side, demonstrations were tenderlyveracious; so that before he took his way again he had arranged to comein on the morrow.

  He was amusing about it that evening at dinner--in spite of an oddfirst impulse, which at the palace quite melted away, to treat itmerely 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 innocentgaiety. Such was quite its effect, with the aid of his picture--anevocation of the quaint, of the humblest rococo, of a Venetian interiorin the true old note. He made the point for his hostess that her ownhigh chambers, though they were a thousand grand things, weren't reallythis; made it in fact with such success that she presently declared ithis plain duty to invite her on some near day to tea. She had expressedas yet--he could feel it as felt among them all--no such clear wish togo anywhere, not even to make an effort for a parish feast, or anautumn sunset, nor to descend her staircase for Titian or 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 wholesoft breath of consciousness meeting and promoting consciousness. Thisview was so far justified to-night as that Milly's offer to him of hercompany was to his sense taken up by Kate in spite of her doing nothingto show it. It fell in so perfectly with what she had desired andforetold that she was--and this was what most struck him--sufficientlygratified and blinded by it not to know, from the false quality of hisresponse, from his tone and his very look, which for an instantinstinctively sought her own, that he had answered inevitably, almostshamelessly, in a mere time-gaining sense. It gave him on the spot, herfailure of perception, almost a beginning of the advantage he had beenplanning for--that is at least if she too were not darkly dishonest.She might, he was not unaware, have made out, from some deep part ofher, the bearing, in respect to herself, of the little fact he hadannounced; for she was after all capable of that, capable of guessingand yet of simultaneously hiding her guess. It wound him up a turn ortwo further, none the less, to impute to her now a weakness of visionby which he could himself feel the stronger. Whatever apprehension ofhis motive in shifting his abode might have brushed her with its wings,she at all events certainly didn't guess that he was giving theirfriend a hollow promise. That was what she had herself imposed on him;there had been in the prospect from the first a definite particularpoint at which hollowness, to call 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 notrecovered them to receive Milly Theale: which made no more differencein his expression of happy readiness than if he had been--just what hewas trying not to be--fully hardened and fully base. So rapid in factwas the rhythm of his inward drama that the quick vision ofimpossibility produced in him by his hostess's direct and unexpectedappeal had the effect, slightly sinister, of positively scaring him. Itgave him a measure of the intensity, the reality of his now maturemotive. It prompted in him certainly no quarrel with these things, butit made them as vivid as if they already flushed with success. It wasbefore the flush of success that his heart beat almost to dread. Thedread was but the dread of the happiness to be compassed; only that wasin itself a symptom. That a visit from Milly should, in this projectionof necessities, strike him as of the last incongruity, quite as ahateful idea, and above all as spoiling, should one put it grossly, hisgame--the adoption of such a view might of course have an identity withone of those numerous ways of being a fool that seemed so to abound forhim. It would remain none the less the way to which he should be inadvance most reconciled. His mature motive, as to which he allowedhimself no grain of illusion, had thus in an hour taken imaginativepossession of the place: that precisely was how he saw it seated there,already unpacked and settled, for Milly's innocence, for Milly'sbeauty, no matter how short a time, to be housed with. There werethings she would never recognise, never feel, never catch in the air;but this made no difference in the fact that her brushing against themwould do nobody any good. The discrimination and the scruple were for_him_. So he felt all the parts of the case together, while Kate showedadmirably as feeling none of them. Of course, however--when hadn't itto be his last word?--Kate was always sublime.

  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 ourplighted pair snatched, in its passage, at the good fortune of half anhour together, they were doomed--though Densher felt it as all by _his_act--to spend a part of the rare occasion in wonder at their luck andin study of its queer character. This was the case after he might besupposed to have got, in a manner, used to it; it was the case afterthe girl--ready always, as we say, with the last word--had given himthe benefit of her righting of every wrong appearance, a supportfamiliar to him now in reference to other phases. It was still the caseafter he possibly might, with a little imagination, as she freelyinsisted, have made out, by the visible working of the crisis, whatidea on Mrs. Lowder's part had determined it. Such as the idea was--andthat it suited Kate's own book she openly professed--he had only to seehow things were turning out to feel it strikingly justified. Densher'sreply to all this vividness was that of course Aunt Maud's interventionhadn't been occult, even for _his_ vividness, from the moment she hadwritten him, with characteristic concentration, tha
t if he should seehis way to come to Venice for a fortnight she should engage he wouldfind it no blunder. It took Aunt Maud really to do such things in suchways; just as it took him, he was ready to confess, to do such othersas he must now strike them all--didn't he?--as committed to. Mrs.Lowder's admonition had been of course a direct reference to what shehad said to him at Lancaster Gate before his departure the night Millyhad failed them through illness; only it had at least matched thatremarkable outbreak in respect to the quantity of good nature itattributed to him. The young man's discussions of his situation--whichwere confined to Kate; he had none with Aunt Maud herself--suffered alittle, it may be divined, by the sense that he couldn't put everythingoff, as he privately expressed it, on other people. His ears, insolitude, were apt to burn with the reflexion that Mrs. Lowder hadsimply tested him, seen him as he was and made out what could be donewith him. She had had but to whistle for him and he had come. If shehad taken for granted his good nature she was as justified as Katedeclared. This awkwardness of his conscience, both in respect to hisgeneral plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits,to be a mode of life like another--certainly better than some, andparticularly in respect to such confusion as might reign about what hehad really come for--this inward ache was not wholly dispelled by thestyle, charming as that was, of Kate's poetic versions. Even the highwonder and delight of Kate couldn't set him right with himself whenthere was something quite distinct from these things that kept himwrong.

  In default of being right with himself he had meanwhile, for one thing,the interest of seeing--and quite for the first time in hislife--whether, on a given occasion, that might be quite so necessary tohappiness as was commonly assumed and as he had up to this moment neverdoubted. He was engaged distinctly in an adventure--he who had neverthought himself cut out for them, and it fairly helped him that he wasable at moments to say to himself that he mustn't fall below it. At hishotel, alone, by night, or in the course of the few late strolls he wasfinding time to take through dusky labyrinthine alleys and empty_campi_, overhung with mouldering palaces, where he paused in disgustat his want of ease and where the sound of a rare footstep on theenclosed pavement was like that of a retarded dancer in a banquet-halldeserted--during these interludes he entertained cold views, even tothe point, at moments, on the principle that the shortest follies arethe best, of thinking of immediate departure as not only possible butas indicated. He had however only to cross again the threshold ofPalazzo Leporelli to see all the elements of the business compose, aspainters called it, differently. It began to strike him then thatdeparture wouldn't curtail, but would signally coarsen his folly, andthat above all, as he hadn't really "begun" anything, had onlysubmitted, consented, but too generously indulged and condoned thebeginnings of others, he had no call to treat himself withsuperstitious rigour. The single thing that was clear in complicationswas that, whatever happened, one was to behave as a gentleman--to whichwas added indeed the perhaps slightly less shining truth thatcomplications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study ofthe question of how a gentleman would behave. This question, I hastento add, was not in the last resort Densher's greatest worry. Threewomen were looking to him at once, and, though such a predicament couldnever be, from the point of view of facility, quite the ideal, it yethad, thank goodness, its immediate workable law. The law was not to bea brute--in return for amiabilities. He hadn't come all the way outfrom England to be a brute. He hadn't thought of what it might give himto have a fortnight, however handicapped, with Kate in Venice, to be abrute. He hadn't treated Mrs. Lowder as if in responding to hersuggestion he had understood her--he hadn't done that either to be abrute. And what he had prepared least of all for such an anti-climaxwas the prompt and inevitable, the achieved surrender--_as_ agentleman, oh that indubitably!--to the unexpected impression made bypoor pale exquisite Milly as the mistress of a grand old palace and thedispenser of an hospitality more irresistible, thanks to all theconditions, than any ever known to him.

  This spectacle had for him an eloquence, an authority, a felicity--hescarce knew by what strange name to call it--for which he said tohimself that he had not consciously bargained. Her welcome, herfrankness, sweetness, sadness, brightness, her disconcerting poetry, ashe made shift at moments to call it, helped as it was by the beauty ofher whole setting and by the perception at the same time, on theobserver's part, that this element gained from her, in a manner, foreffect and harmony, as much as it gave--her whole attitude had, to hisimagination, meanings that hung about it, waiting upon her, hovering,dropping and quavering forth again, like vague faint snatches, mereghosts of sound, of old-fashioned melancholy music. It was positivelywell for him, he had his times of reflecting, that he couldn't put itoff on Kate and Mrs. Lowder, as a gentleman so conspicuously wouldn't,that--well, that he had been rather taken in by not having known inadvance! There had been now five days of it all without his riskingeven to Kate alone any hint of what he ought to have known and of whatin particular therefore had taken him in. The truth was doubtless thatreally, when it came to any free handling and naming of things, theywere living together, the five of them, in an air in which an uglyeffect of "blurting out" might easily be produced. He came back withhis friend on each occasion to the blest miracle of renewedpropinquity, which had a double virtue in that favouring air. Hebreathed on it as if he could scarcely believe it, yet the time hadpassed, in spite of this privilege, without his quite committinghimself, for her ear, to any such comment on Milly's high style andstate as would have corresponded with the amount of recognition it hadproduced in him. Behind everything for him was his renewed remembrance,which had fairly become a habit, that he had been the first to knowher. This was what they had all insisted on, in her absence, that dayat Mrs. Lowder's; and this was in especial what had made him feel itsinfluence on his immediately paying her a second visit. Its influencehad been all there, been in the high-hung, rumbling carriage with them,from the moment she took him to drive, covering them in together as ifit had been a rug of softest silk. It had worked as a clear connexionwith something lodged in the past, something already their own. He hadmore 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 wasin so doing it, through Kate and Kate's idea, but through Milly andMilly's own, and through himself and _his_ own, unmistakeably--as wellas through the little facts, whatever they had amounted to, of his timein New York.

  II

  There was at last, with everything that made for it, an occasion whenhe got from Kate, on what she now spoke of as his eternal refrain, ananswer 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 profit--a view so hard to reconcile with thechances she gave them to meet. Impatiently, at this, the girl deniedthe chances, wanting to know from him, with a fine irony that smote himrather straight, whether he felt their opportunities as anything sogrand. He looked at her deep in the eyes when she had sounded thisnote; it was the least he could let her off with for having made himvisibly flush. For some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped outof her tone, which became sweet and sincere. "'Meet,' my dear man," sheexpressively echoed; "does it strike you that we get, after all, sovery much out of our meetings?"

  "On the contrary--they're starvation diet. All I mean is--and it's allI've meant from the day I came--that we at least get more than AuntMaud."

  "Ah but you see," Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maudgets."

  "Exactly so--and it's what I don't understand that keeps me sofascinated with the question. _She_ gives me no light; she'sprodigious. She takes everything as of a natural--!"

  "She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making myreflexions about you. There's every appearance for her," Kate went on,"that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible; thatwhat she had thought more likely than not to happen is happening. Thevery essence of her, as you surely by this time hav
e made out foryourself, is that when she adopts a view she--well, to her own sense,really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view anyother, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that. I'veoften thought success comes to her"--Kate continued to study thephenomenon--"by the spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not toprove the right one. One has seen it so again and again, in the face ofeverything, become the right one."

  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 presentlyexplained, "only when understanding fails." He took a moment; then hepursued: "Does she think she terrorises _us?_" To which he added while,without immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does shebelieve anything so stiff as that you've really changed about me?" Heknew now that he was probing the girl deep--something told him so; butthat was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that youdislike me?"

  To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong. "You could yourselfeasily put it there!"

  He wondered. "By telling her so?"

  "No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask thatof you."

  "Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little--!"

  There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resistthe impulse to take up. "I'm perfectly justified in what I've asked,"she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyesagain intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You'renot a bit unhappy."

  "Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly.

  "It doesn't practically show--which is enough for Aunt Maud. You'rewonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want toknow whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectlythat I see it coming." With which, by a quick transition, as if she hadsettled the case, she asked him the hour.

  "Oh only twelve-ten"--he had looked at his watch. "We've taken butthirteen minutes; we've time yet."

  "Then we must walk. We must go toward them."

  Densher, from where they had been standing, measured the long reach ofthe Square. "They're still in their shop. They're safe for half anhour."

  "That shows then, that shows!" said Kate.

  This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco,always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamberof amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in themiddle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulseafter leaving the great mosque-like church. It rose now, domed andpinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vastempty space, enclosed by its arcades, to which at that hour movementand traffic were mostly confined. Venice was at breakfast, the Veniceof the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for theparties of importunate pigeons picking up the crumbs of perpetualfeasts, their prospect was clear and they could see their companionshadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorgedby the lace-shop, in one of the _loggie_, where, shortly before, theyhad left them for a look-in--the expression was artfully Densher's--atSaint Mark's. Their morning had happened to take such a turn as broughtthis chance to the surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, hadn'tbeen an overstatement of their general opportunity. The worst thatcould be said of their general opportunity was that it was essentiallyin presence--in presence of every one; every one consisting at thisjuncture, in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly.But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could becomespecial was furnished precisely by this view of the compatibility oftheir comfort with a certain amount of lingering. The others hadassented to their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the leastthe others could do. What had really helped them this morning was thefact 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 usehad hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day afterday--eight days had been now so conveniently marked--their friends,Milly's and his, conveniently dispersed and left him to sit with hertill luncheon. Such was the perfect operation of the scheme on which hehad been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly therewas that amount of justification for Kate's vision of success. He_had_, for Mrs. Lowder--he couldn't help it while sitting there--theair, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Katesufficiently deep to be alarming. He had failed their young hostesseach morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day thatshe hadn't been well enough to see him.

  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, allbright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent,they--the rest of them--simply looked at each other. It waslurid--lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately--that theyhad uttered no common regrets. It was strange for our young man aboveall that, if the poor girl was indisposed to _that_ degree, the hush ofgravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort, should be themost the case--that of the guests--could permit itself. The hush, forthat matter, continued after the party of four had gone down to thegondola and taken their places in it. Milly had sent them word that shehoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and this indeed hadproduced a second remarkable look, a look as of their knowing, onequite as well as the other, what such a message meant as provision forthe alternative beguilement of Densher. She wished not to have spoiledhis morning, and he had therefore, in civility, to take it aspleasantly patched up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs.Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their friend better than anyof them. She knew her so well that she knew herself as acting inexquisite compliance with conditions comparatively obscure,approximately awful to them, by not thinking it necessary to stay athome. She had corrected that element of the perfunctory which was theslight fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had invented apreference for Mrs. Lowder and herself; she had remembered the fonddreams of the visitation of lace that had hitherto always been brushedaway 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 ownfailure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher'ssense of Susan Shepherd's conscious intervention had by this time acorner of his mind all to itself; something that had begun for them atLancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action,ineffably discreet, had at all events a way of affecting him as for themost part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own interest.They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were toomany persons, at least three, and too many things, between them; butmeanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. Hescarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour whenit would be a service to do so, that she had all the while understoodhim. He even had a presentiment of a juncture at which theunderstanding of every one else would fail and this deep littleperson's alone survive.

  Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, thathung about our young friends; these had been the small accidents andquiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in somesort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as theystayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had sonotoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life thanany equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness fromearshot, with solitude and security. It was as if, being in possession,they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequenceof that, each had an apprehension of what the other wanted to say. Itwas most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated ontheir lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for theirears 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 thesilence resting on her last words. "What did you mean just now that Ican do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if you will,I don't see, f
rom the moment I can't lie to her, what else there is butlying."

  Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome andsincere to her about Milly--whom you honestly like so much. Thatwouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. Youdon't, you know, say much about her."

  And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know,speak of her at all."

  "And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?" Then as the girl,for answer, only seemed to bethink herself, "You must haveextraordinary conversations!" he exclaimed.

  Yes, she had bethought herself. "We have extraordinary conversations."

  His look, while their eyes met, marked him as disposed to hear moreabout them; but there was something in her own, apparently, thatdefeated the opportunity. He questioned her in a moment on a differentmatter, which had been in his mind a week, yet in respect to which hehad had no chance so good as this. "Do you happen to know then, as suchwonderful things pass between you, what she makes of the incident, theother day, of Lord Mark's so very superficial visit?--his having spenthere, as I gather, but the two or three hours necessary for seeing ourfriend and yet taken no time at all, since he went off by the samenight's train, for seeing any one else. What can she make of his nothaving waited to see _you_, or to see herself--with all he owes her?"

  "Oh of course," said Kate, "she understands. He came to make Milly hisoffer of marriage--he came for nothing but that. As Milly whollydeclined it his business was for the time at an end. He couldn't quiteon the spot turn round to make up to _us_."

  Kate had looked surprised that, as a matter of taste on such anadventurer's part, Densher shouldn't see it. But Densher was lost inanother thought. "Do you mean that when, turning up myself, I found himleaving her, that was what had been taking place between them?"

  "Didn't you make it out, my dear?" Kate enquired.

  "What sort of a blundering weathercock then _is_ he?" the young manwent on in his wonder.

  "Oh don't make too little of him!" Kate smiled. "Do you pretend thatMilly didn't tell you?"

  "How great an ass he had made of himself?"

  Kate continued to smile. "You _are_ in love with her, you know."

  He gave her another long look. "Why, since she has refused him, shouldmy opinion of Lord Mark show it? I'm not obliged, however, to thinkwell of him for such treatment of the other persons I've mentioned, andI feel I don't understand from you why Mrs. Lowder should."

  "She doesn't--but she doesn't care," Kate explained. "You knowperfectly the terms on which lots of London people live together evenwhen they're supposed to live very well. He's not committed to us--hewas having his try. Mayn't an unsatisfied man," she asked, "always havehis try?"

  "And come back afterwards, with confidence in a welcome, to the victimof his inconstancy?"

  Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought of as a victim. "Oh buthe has _had_ his try at _me_. So it's all right."

  "Through your also having, you mean, refused him?"

  She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wonderedif pure historic truth were to suffer a slight strain. But she droppedon the right side. "I haven't let it come to that. I've been toodiscouraging. Aunt Maud," she went on--now as lucid asever--"considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge from him in respectto me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him.As the case stands that makes no difference."

  Densher laughed out. "It isn't _his_ merit that he has failed."

  "It's still his merit, my dear, that he's Lord Mark. He's just what hewas, and what he knew he was. It's not for me either to reflect on himafter I've so treated him."

  "Oh," said Densher impatiently, "you've treated him beautifully."

  "I'm glad," she smiled, "that you can still be jealous." But before hecould take it up she had more to say. "I don't see why it need puzzleyou that Milly's so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud more than anythingelse can displease her. What does she see but that Milly herselfrecognises her situation with you as too precious to be spoiled? Such arecognition as that can't but seem to her to involve in some degreeyour own recognition. Out of which she therefore gets it that the moreyou have for Milly the less you have for me."

  There were moments again--we know that from the first they had beennumerous--when he felt with a strange mixed passion the mastery of hermere way of putting things. There was something in it that bent him atonce to conviction and to reaction. And this effect, however it benamed, now broke into his tone. "Oh if she began to know what I havefor you--!"

  It wasn't ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we mayreally consider she doesn't. So successful have we been."

  "Well," he presently said, "I take from you what you give me, and Isuppose that, to be consistent--to stand on my feet where I do stand atall--I ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems tome, more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. Itseems to me more than anything else what you expect of me. It neverseems to me somehow what I may expect of _you_. There's so much you_don't_ give me."

  She appeared to wonder. "And pray what is it I don't--?"

  "I give you proof," said Densher. "You give me none."

  "What then do you call proof?" she after a moment ventured to ask.

  "Your doing something for me."

  She considered with surprise. "Am I not doing _this_ for you? Do youcall this nothing?"

  "Nothing at all."

  "Ah I risk, my dear, everything for it."

  They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. "Ithought you exactly contend that, with your aunt so bamboozled, yourisk nothing!"

  It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that hehad seen her at a loss. He judged the next instant moreover that shedidn't like it--either the being so or the being seen, for she soonspoke with an impatience that showed her as wounded; an appearance thatproduced in himself, he no less quickly felt, a sharp pang ofindulgence. "What then do you wish me to risk?"

  The appeal from danger touched him, but all to make him, as he wouldhave said, worse. "What I wish is to be loved. How can I feel at thisrate that I _am_?" Oh she understood him, for all she might so bravelydisguise it, and that made him feel straighter than if she hadn't.Deep, always, was his sense of life with her--deep as it had been fromthe moment of those signs of life that in the dusky London of twowinters ago they had originally exchanged. He had never taken her forunguarded, ignorant, weak; and if he put to her a claim for someintenser faith between them this was because he believed it could reachher and she could meet it. "I can go on perhaps," he said, "with help.But I can't go on without."

  She looked away from him now, and it showed him how she understood. "Weought to be there--I mean when they come out."

  "They _won't_ come out--not yet. And I don't care if they do." To whichhe straightway added, as if to deal with the charge of selfishness thathis 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 brokefrom him in perfect sincerity. "Good God, if you'd only _take_ me!"

  It brought her eyes round to him again, and he could see how, afterall, somewhere deep within, she felt his rebellion more sweet thanbitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold heran instant. "We've gone too far," she none the less pulled herselftogether to reply. "Do you want to kill her?"

  He had an hesitation that wasn't all candid. "Kill, you mean, AuntMaud?"

  "You know whom I mean. We've told too many lies."

  Oh at this his head went up. "I, my dear, have told none!"

  He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he hadnaturally, none the less, to take the look it made her give him. "Thankyou very much."

  Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had alreadyrisen to his lips. "Rather than lay myself open to the least appearanceof it I'll go this very night."

  "Then go," said Kate Croy.

  He
knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that whatwas in the air for him, and disconcertingly, was not the violence, butmuch rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her. Theywalked on together, and it was for a minute as if their difference hadbecome of a sudden, in all truth, a split--as if the basis of hisdeparture had been settled. Then, incoherently and still more suddenly,recklessly moreover, since they now might easily, from under thearcades, be observed, he passed his hand into her arm with a force thatproduced for them another pause. "I'll tell any lie you want, any youridea requires, if you'll only come to me."

  "Come to you?"

  "Come to me."

  "How? Where?"

  She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his uncertainty, a wonder inher 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 it--with two grains of courage. People in ourcase always arrange it." She listened as for the good information, andthere was support for him--since it was a question of his going step bystep--in the way she took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He hadin truth not expected of her that particular vulgarity, but the absenceof it only added the thrill of a deeper reason to his sense ofpossibilities. For the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely to_see_ her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for him in all thelight of the day and of his admirable merciless meaning. Her merelistening in fact made him even understand himself as he hadn't yetdone. 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 afool. It's all I have to say, but you must know what it means. _With_you I can do it--I'll go as far as you demand or as you will yourself.Without you--I'll be hanged! And I must be sure."

  She listened so well that she was really listening after he had ceasedto speak. He had kept his grasp of her, drawing her close, and thoughthey had again, for the time, stopped walking, his talk--for others ata distance--might have been, in the matchless place, that of anyimpressed tourist to any slightly more detached companion. Onpossessing himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that they facedafresh to Saint Mark's, over the great presence of which his eyes movedwhile she twiddled her parasol. She now, however, made a motion thatconfronted them finally with the opposite end. Then only shespoke--"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 othersfrom their place of purchase. So they went to them side by side, and itwas all right. The others had seen them as well and waited for them,complacent enough, under one of the arches. They themselves too--heargued that Kate would argue--looked perfectly ready, decently patient,properly accommodating. They themselves suggested nothing worse--alwaysby Kate's system--than a pair of the children of a supercivilised agemaking the best of an awkwardness. They didn't nevertheless hurry--thatwould overdo it; so he had time to feel, as it were, what he felt. Hefelt, ever so distinctly--it was with this he faced Mrs. Lowder--thathe was already in a sense possessed of what he wanted. There was moreto come--everything; he had by no means, with his companion, had it allout. Yet what he was possessed of was real--the fact that she hadn'tthrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Ofthis he had had so sore a fear that its being dispelled was in itselfof the nature of bliss. The danger had dropped--it was behind him therein the great sunny space. So far she was good for what he wanted.

  III

  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 hadbeen on his lips in the morning--which his other preoccupation hadthen, to his consciousness, crowded out. His opportunity was againmade, as befell, by his learning from Mrs. Stringham, on arriving, asusual, with the close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail themagain at dinner, but would to all appearance be able to come downlater. He had found Susan Shepherd alone in the great saloon, whereeven more candles than their friend's large common allowance--she grewdaily more splendid; they were all struck with it and chaffed her aboutit--lighted up the pervasive mystery of Style. He had thus five minuteswith the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and Kate appeared--minutesillumined indeed to a longer reach than by the number of Milly'scandles.

  "_May_ she come down--ought she if she isn't really up to it?"

  He had asked that in the wonderment always stirred in him byglimpses--rare as were these--of the inner truth about the girl. Therewas of course a question of health--it was in the air, it was in theground he trod, in the food he tasted, in the sounds he heard, it waseverywhere. But it was everywhere with the effect of a request tohim--to his very delicacy, to the common discretion of others as wellas his own--that no allusion to it should be made. There hadpractically been none, that morning, on her explainednon-appearance--the absence of it, as we know, quite monstrous andawkward; and this passage with Mrs. Stringham offered him his firstlicence to open his eyes. He had gladly enough held them closed; allthe more that his doing so performed for his own spirit a usefulfunction. If he positively wanted not to be brought up with his noseagainst Milly's facts, what better proof could he have that his conductwas marked by straightness? It was perhaps pathetic for her, and forhimself was perhaps even ridiculous; but he hadn't even the amount ofcuriosity that he would have had about an ordinary friend. He mighthave shaken himself at moments to try, for a sort of dry decency, tohave it; but that too, it appeared, wouldn't come. In what thereforewas the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feelings--it being soestablished that he had none at all. They were all for Kate, without afeather's weight to spare. He was acting for Kate--not, by thedeviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly notinterested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had hecared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn'thave been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had torepresent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, atthe same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoilinghis little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse--it was as if she hadwished to give him that; and it was as if, for himself, on currentterms, he could oblige her by accepting it. She not only permitted, shefairly invited him to open his eyes. "I'm so glad you're here." It wasno answer to his question, but it had for the moment to serve. And therest was fully to come.

  He smiled at her and presently found himself, as a kind of consequenceof communion with her, talking her own language. "It's a very wonderfulexperience."

  "Well"--and her raised face shone up at him--"that's all I want you tofeel about it. If I weren't afraid," she added, "there are things Ishould like to say to you."

  "And what are you afraid of, please?" he encouragingly asked.

  "Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Besides, I don't, you know,seem to have the chance. You're always, you know, _with_ her."

  He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his fixed smile; whichwas the more fixed as he felt in these last words an exact descriptionof his course. It was an odd thing to have come to, but he was alwayswith her. "Ah," he none the less smiled, "I'm not with her now."

  "No--and I'm so glad, since I get this from it. She's ever so muchbetter."

  "Better? Then she _has_ been worse?"

  Mrs. Stringham waited. "She has been marvellous--that's what she hasbeen. She _is_ marvellous. But she's really better."

  "Oh then if she's really better--!" But he checked himself, wantingonly to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to thepoint 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 miss anything. There's to be alittle party."

  "Ah I do see--by this aggravated grandeur."

  "Well, it _is_ lovely, isn't it? I want the whole thing. She's lodgedfor the first time as she ought, from her type, to be; and doing it--Imean bringing out all the glory of the place--makes her really happy.It's a Veronese pictur
e, as near as can be--with me as the inevitabledwarf, the small blackamoor, put into a corner of the foreground foreffect. If I only had a hawk or a hound or something of that sort Ishould do the scene more honour. The old housekeeper, the woman incharge here, has a big red cockatoo that I might borrow and perch on mythumb for the evening." These explanations and sundry others Mrs.Stringham gave, though not all with the result of making him feel thatthe picture closed him in. What part was there for _him_, with hisattitude that lacked the highest style, in a composition in whicheverything else would have it? "They won't, however, be at dinner, thefew people she expects--they come round afterwards from theirrespective hotels; and Sir Luke Strett and his niece, the principalones, will have arrived from London but an hour or two ago. It's for_him_ she has wanted to do something--to let it begin at once. We shallsee more of him, because she likes him; and I'm so glad--she'll be gladtoo--that _you're_ to see him." The good lady, in connexion with it,was urgent, was almost unnaturally bright. "So I greatly hope--!" Buther hope fairly lost itself in the wide light of her cheer.

  He considered a little this appearance, while she let him, he thought,into still more knowledge than she uttered. "What is it you hope?"

  "Well, that you'll stay on."

  "Do you mean after dinner?" She meant, he seemed to feel, so much thathe could scarce tell where it ended or began.

  "Oh that, of course. Why we're to have music--beautiful instruments andsongs; and not Tasso declaimed as in the guide-books either. She hasarranged it--or at least I have. That is Eugenio has. Besides, you'rein the picture."

  "Oh--I!" said Densher almost with the gravity of a real protest.

  "You'll be the grand young man who surpasses the others and holds uphis head and the wine-cup. What we hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "isthat you'll be faithful to us--that you've not come for a mere foolishfew days."

  Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, withoutcomfort, he was conscious, at this touch, in the artificial repose hehad in his anxiety about them but half-managed to induce. The waysmooth ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronesepictures, talked to plain embarrassed working-men, engaged in anunprecedented sacrifice of time and of the opportunity for modestacquisition! The things they took for granted and the general misery ofexplaining! He couldn't tell them how he had tried to work, how it waspartly what he had moved into rooms for, only to find himself, almostfor the first time in his life, stricken and sterile; because thatwould give them a false view of the source of his restlessness, if notof the degree of it. It would operate, indirectly perhaps, butinfallibly, to add to that weight as of expected performance whichthese very moments with Mrs. Stringham caused more and more to settleon his heart. He had incurred it, the expectation of performance; thething was done, and there was no use talking; again, again the coldbreath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best hefloundered. "I'm afraid you won't understand when I say I've verytiresome things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. Thepinch, the pressure in London."

  But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and thepressure and showed how they had been her own very element. "Oh thedaily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No oneknows better than I how they haunt one in the flight of the preciousdeceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have given up? I'vegiven up all to follow _her_. I wish you could feel as I do. And can'tyou," she asked, "write about Venice?"

  He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did;and he smiled for her kindly. "Do _you_ write about Venice?"

  "No; but I would--oh wouldn't I?--if I hadn't so completely given up.She's, you know, my princess, and to one's princess--"

  "One makes the whole sacrifice?"

  "Precisely. There you are!"

  It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many placesat once. "I quite understand that she's yours. Only you see she's notmine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had themoral 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 heliked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gavehim a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was initself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficentand elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he couldsee. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it allwas. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Katewanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, in so different away and from a motive so different, even though scarce less deep. ThenMrs. Lowder wanted, by so odd an evolution of her exuberance, exactlywhat each of the others did; and he was between them all, he was in themidst. Such perceptions made occasions--well, occasions for fairlywondering 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 init was of the two things the more asinine. He was glad there was nomale witness; it was a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked aman to see him. He only had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir LukeStrett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in London had spoken ofMilly as in commerce with, and whose renewed intervention at such adistance, just announced to him, required some accounting for. He had avision of great London surgeons--if this one was a surgeon--as incisiveall round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape theironic attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do wasnot to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was atrain, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. LordMark had caught him twice in the fact--the fact of his absurd posture;and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to mindLord Mark.

  His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirmher discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Ofcourse she's not. You must do something first."

  Densher gave it his thought. "Wouldn't it be rather _she_ who must?"

  It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "Isee. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her cheer was for the time ineclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as in thewonder of what Milly could do. "And yet she has wanted to be kind."

  It made him on the spot feel a brute. "Of course she has. No one couldbe more charming. She has treated me as if _I_ were somebody. Call hermy hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with youaltogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do seethat it's quite court life."

  She promptly showed how this was almost all she wanted of him. "That'sall I mean, if you understand it of such a court as never was: one ofthe courts of heaven, the court of a reigning seraph, a sort of avice-queen of an angel. That will do perfectly."

  "Oh well then I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, youknow," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay."

  "Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beautyhere; it's why she's the great and only princess. With her, at hercourt," said Mrs. Stringham, "it does pay." Then as if she had quitesettled it for him: "You'll see for yourself."

  He waited a moment, but said nothing to discourage her. "I think youwere right just now. One must do something first."

  "Well, you've done something."

  "No--I don't see that. I can do more."

  Oh well, she seemed to say, if he would have it so! "You can doeverything, you know."

  "Everything" was rather too much for him to take up gravely, and hemodestly let it alone, speaking the next moment, to avert fatuity, of adifferent but a related matter. "Why has she sent for Sir Luke Strettif, as you tell me, she's so much better?"

  "She hasn't sent. He has come of himself," Mrs. Stringham explained."He has wanted to come."

  "Isn't that rather worse then--if it means he mayn't be easy?"

  "He was coming, from the first, for his holiday. She has known thatthese several weeks." After which Mrs. Stringham added: "You can _make_hi
m easy."

  "_I_ can?" he candidly wondered. It was truly the circle of petticoats."What have I to do with it for a man like that?"

  "How do you know," said his friend, "what he's like? He's not like anyone you've ever seen. He's a great beneficent being."

  "Ah then he can do without me. I've no call, as an outsider, to meddle."

  "Tell him, all the same," Mrs. Stringham urged, "what you think."

  "What I think of Miss Theale?" Densher stared. It was, as they said, alarge order. But he found the right note. "It's none of his business."

  It did seem a moment for Mrs. Stringham too the right note. She fixedhim at least with an expression still bright, but searching, thatshowed almost to excess what she saw in it; though what this might behe was not to make out till afterwards. "Say _that_ to him then.Anything will do for him as a means of getting at you."

  "And why should he get at me?"

  "Give him a chance to. Let him talk to you. Then you'll see."

  All of which, on Mrs. Stringham's part, sharpened his sense ofimmersion in an element rather more strangely than agreeably warm--asense that was moreover, during the next two or three hours, to be fedto satiety by several other impressions. Milly came down after dinner,half a dozen friends--objects of interest mainly, it appeared, to theladies of Lancaster Gate--having by that time arrived; and with thiscall on her attention, the further call of her musicians ushered byEugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and the supremeopportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came lastof 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, forsome than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that heseemed to stand in it up to his neck. He moved about in it and it madeno plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it, and they were alltogether, for that matter, like fishes in a crystal pool. The effect ofthe 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, tookcare, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people blandwithout making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringhamhad said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who duringthe day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes anddiffered, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly,let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehowinto relation with something that made them more finely genial; so thatif the Veronese picture of which he had talked with Mrs. Stringham wasnot quite constituted, the comparative prose of the previous hours, thetraces of insensibility qualified by "beating down," were at lastalmost nobly disowned. There was perhaps something for him in theaccident of his seeing her for the first time in white, but she hadn'tyet had occasion--circulating with a clearness intensified--to strikehim as so happily pervasive. She was different, younger, fairer, withthe colour of her braided hair more than ever a not altogether luckychallenge to attention; yet he was loth wholly to explain it by herhaving quitted this once, for some obscure yet doubtless charmingreason, her almost monastic, her hitherto inveterate black. Much as thechange did for the value of her presence, she had never yet, when allwas said, made it for _him_; and he was not to fail of the furtheramusement of judging her determined in the matter by Sir Luke Strett'svisit. If he could in this connexion have felt jealous of Sir LukeStrett, whose strong face and type, less assimilated by the sceneperhaps than any others, he was anon to study from the other side ofthe saloon, that would doubtless have been most amusing of all. But hecouldn't be invidious, even to profit by so high a tide; he felthimself too much "in" it, as he might have said: a moment's reflexionput him more in than any one. The way Milly neglected him for othercares while Kate and Mrs. Lowder, without so much as the attenuation ofa joke, introduced him to English ladies--that was itself a proof; fornothing really of so close a communion had up to this time passedbetween them as the single bright look and the three gay words (allostensibly of the last lightness) with which her confessedconsciousness brushed by him.

  She was acquitting herself to-night as hostess, he could see, undersome supreme idea, an inspiration which was half her nerves and half aninevitable harmony; but what he especially recognised was the characterthat had already several times broken out in her and that she so oddlyappeared able, by choice or by instinctive affinity, to keep down or todisplay. She was the American girl as he had originally foundher--found her at certain moments, it was true, in New York, more thanat 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'scompany. It affected him as a large though queer social resource inher--such as a man, for instance, to his diminution, would never in theworld be able to command; and he wouldn't have known whether to see itin an extension or a contraction of "personality," taking it as he didmost directly for a confounding extension of surface. Clearly too itwas the right thing this evening all round: that came out for him in aword from Kate as she approached him to wreak on him a secondintroduction. He had under cover of the music melted away from the ladytoward whom she had first pushed him; and there was something in her toaffect him as telling evasively a tale of their talk in the Piazza. Towhat did she want to coerce him as a form of penalty for what he haddone to her there? It was thus in contact uppermost for him that he haddone something; not only caused her perfect intelligence to act in hisinterest, but left her unable to get away, by any mere private effort,from his inattackable logic. With him thus in presence, and nearhim--and it had been as unmistakeable through dinner--there was nogetting away for her at all, there was less of it than ever: so shecould only either deal with the question straight, either frankly yieldor ineffectually struggle or insincerely argue, or else merely expressherself by following up the advantage she did possess. It was part ofthat advantage for the hour--a brief fallacious makeweight to hispressure--that there were plenty of things left in which he must feelher will. They only told him, these indications, how much she was, insuch close quarters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again thather very aspect, as great a variation in its way as Milly's own, gavehim back the sense of his action. It had never yet in life been grantedhim to know, almost materially to taste, as he could do in theseminutes, the state of what was vulgarly called conquest. He had livedlong enough to have been on occasion "liked," but it had never begun tobe allowed him to be liked to any such tune in any such quarter. It wasa liking greater than Milly's--or it would be: he felt it in him toanswer for that. So at all events he read the case while he noted thatKate was somehow--for Kate--wanting in lustre. As a striking youngpresence she was practically superseded; of the mildness that Millydiffused she had assimilated all her share; she might fairly have beendressed to-night in the little black frock, superficiallyindistinguishable, that Milly had laid aside. This represented, heperceived, the opposite pole from such an effect as that of herwonderful entrance, under her aunt's eyes--he had never forgottenit--the day of their younger friend's failure at Lancaster Gate. Shewas, in her accepted effacement--it was actually her acceptance thatmade the beauty and repaired the damage--under her aunt's eyes now; butwhose eyes were not effectually preoccupied? It struck him none theless certainly that almost the first thing she said to him showed anexquisite attempt to appear if not unconvinced at least self-possessed.

  "Don't you think her good enough _now?_" Almost heedless of the dangerof overt freedoms, she eyed Milly from where they stood, noted her inrenewed talk, over her further wishes, with the members of her littleorchestra, who had approached her with demonstrations of deferenceenlivened by native humours--things quite in the line of old Venetiancomedy. The girl's idea of music had been happy--a real solvent ofshyness, yet not drastic; thanks to the intermissions, discretions, ageneral habit of mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the goodmanners of its interpreters, representatives though these might be butof the order in which taste was natural and melody rank. It was easy atall events to answer Kate. "Ah my dear, you kno
w how good I think her!"

  "But she's _too_ nice," Kate returned with appreciation. "Everythingsuits her so--especially her pearls. They go so with her old lace. I'lltrouble you really to look at them." Densher, though aware he had seenthem before, had perhaps not "really" looked at them, and had thus notdone justice to the embodied poetry--his mind, for Milly's aspects,kept coming back to that--which owed them part of its style. Kate'sface, as she considered them, struck him: the long, priceless chain,wound twice round the neck, hung, heavy and pure, down the front of thewearer's breast--so far down that Milly's trick, evidently unconscious,of holding and vaguely fingering and entwining a part of it, conducedpresumably to convenience. "She's a dove," Kate went on, "and onesomehow doesn't think of doves as bejewelled. Yet they suit her down tothe ground."

  "Yes--down to the ground is the word." Densher saw now how they suitedher, but was perhaps still more aware of something intense in hiscompanion's feeling about them. Milly was indeed a dove; this was thefigure, though it most applied to her spirit. Yet he knew in a momentthat Kate was just now, for reasons hidden from him, exceptionallyunder the impression of that element of wealth in her which was apower, which was a great power, and which was dove-like only so far asone remembered that doves have wings and wondrous flights, have them aswell as tender tints and soft sounds. It even came to him dimly thatsuch wings could in a given case--_had_, truly, in the case with whichhe was concerned--spread themselves for protection. Hadn't they, forthat matter, lately taken an inordinate reach, and weren't Kate andMrs. Lowder, weren't Susan Shepherd and he, wasn't he in particular,nestling under them to a great increase of immediate ease? All this wasa brighter blur in the general light, out of which he heard Katepresently going on.

  "Pearls have such a magic that they suit every one."

  "They would uncommonly suit you," he frankly returned.

  "Oh yes, I see myself!"

  As she saw herself, suddenly, he saw her--she would have been splendid;and with it he felt more what she was thinking of. Milly's royalornament had--under pressure now not wholly occult--taken on thecharacter of a symbol of differences, differences of which the visionwas 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 whatMerton Densher would never be able to give her. Wasn't _that_ the greatdifference that Milly to-night symbolised? She unconsciouslyrepresented to Kate, and Kate took it in at every pore, that there wasnobody with whom she had less in common than a remarkably handsome girlmarried to a man unable to make her on any such lines as that the leastlittle present. Of these absurdities, however, it was not tillafterwards that Densher thought. He could think now, to any purpose,only of what Mrs. Stringham had said to him before dinner. He could butcome back to his friend's question of a minute ago. "She's certainlygood enough, as you call it, in the sense that I'm assured she'sbetter. Mrs. Stringham, an hour or two since, was in great feather tome about it. She evidently believes her better."

  "Well, if they choose to call it so--!"

  "And what do _you_ call it--as against them?"

  "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 impatience for all he had tobe taught.

  "That's what I'm talking about," he said. "What do you call it to me?"

  It made her wait a little. "She isn't better. She's worse. But that hasnothing to do with it."

  "Nothing to do?" He wondered.

  But she was clear. "Nothing to do with us. Except of course that we'redoing our best for her. We're making her want to live." And Kate againwatched her. "To-night she does want to live." She spoke with akindness that had the strange property of striking him asinconsequent--so much, and doubtless so unjustly, had all her clearnessbeen an implication of the hard. "It's wonderful. It's beautiful."

  "It's beautiful indeed."

  He hated somehow the helplessness of his own note; but she had given itno heed. "She's doing it for _him_"--and she nodded in the direction ofMilly's medical visitor. "She wants to be for him at her best. But shecan't deceive him."

  Densher had been looking too; which made him say in a moment: "And doyou think _you_ can? I mean, if he's to be with us here, about yoursentiments. If Aunt Maud's so thick with him--!"

  Aunt Maud now occupied in fact a place at his side and was visiblydoing her best to entertain him, though this failed to prevent such adirection of his own eyes--determined, in the way such things happen,precisely by the attention of the others--as Densher became aware ofand as Kate promptly marked. "He's looking at _you_. He wants to speakto you."

  "So Mrs. Stringham," the young man laughed, "advised me he would."

  "Then let him. Be right with him. I don't need," Kate went on in answerto the previous question, "to deceive him. Aunt Maud, if it'snecessary, will do that. I mean that, knowing nothing about me, he cansee me only as she sees me. She sees me now so well. He has nothing todo with me."

  "Except to reprobate you," Densher suggested.

  "For not caring for _you?_ Perfectly. As a brilliant young man drivenby it into your relation with Milly--as all _that_ I leave you to him."

  "Well," said Densher sincerely enough, "I think I can thank you forleaving me to some one easier perhaps with me than yourself."

  She had been looking about again meanwhile, the lady having changed herplace, for the friend of Mrs. Lowder's to whom she had spoken ofintroducing him. "All the more reason why I should commit you then toLady Wells."

  "Oh but wait." It was not only that he distinguished Lady Wells fromafar, that she inspired him with no eagerness, and that, somewhere atthe back of his head, he was fairly aware of the question, in germ, ofwhether this was the kind of person he should be involved with whenthey were married. It was furthermore that the consciousness ofsomething he had not got from Kate in the morning, and that logicallymuch concerned him, had been made more keen by these very moments--tosay nothing of the consciousness that, with their general smallness ofopportunity, he must squeeze each stray instant hard. If Aunt Maud,over there with Sir Luke, noted him as a little "attentive," that mightpass for a futile demonstration on the part of a gentleman who had toconfess to having, not very gracefully, changed his mind. Besides, justnow, he didn't care for Aunt Maud except in so far as he wasimmediately to show. "How can Mrs. Lowder think me disposed of with anyfinality, if I'm disposed of only to a girl who's dying? If you'reright 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'tdeceive other people--not those, that is, who are closely concerned. Hewon't at any rate deceive Mrs. Stringham, who's Milly's greatestfriend; and it will be very odd if Mrs. Stringham deceives Aunt Maud,who's her own."

  Kate showed him at this the cold glow of an idea that really was worthhis having kept her for. "Why will it be odd? I marvel at your seeingyour way so little."

  Mere curiosity even, about his companion, had now for him its quick,its slightly quaking intensities. He had compared her once, we know, toa "new book," an uncut volume of the highest, the rarest quality; andhis emotion (to justify that) was again and again like the thrill ofturning the page. "Well, you know how deeply I marvel at the way _you_see it!"

  "It doesn't in the least follow," Kate went on, "that anything in thenature of what you call deception on Mrs. Stringham's part will be whatyou call odd. Why shouldn't she hide the truth?"

  "From Mrs. Lowder?" Densher stared. "Why should she?"

  "To please you."

  "And how in the world can it please me?"

  Kate turned her head away as if really at last almost tired of hisdensity. But she looked at him again as she spoke. "Well then to pleaseMilly." And before he could question: "Don't you feel by this time thatthere's nothing Susan Shepherd won't do for you?"

  He had verily after an instant to take it in, so sharply itcorresponded with the good lady's recent reception of him. It wasque
erer 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 andon. It was with a reserve, however, that he confessed this. "She's everso kind. Only her view of the right thing may not be the same as yours."

  "How can it be anything different if it's the view of serving you?"

  Densher for an instant, but only for an instant, hung fire. "Oh thedifficulty is that I don't, upon my honour, even yet quite make out howyours does serve me."

  "It helps you--put it then," said Kate very simply--"to serve _me_. Itgains you time."

  "Time for what?"

  "For everything!" She spoke at first, once more, with impatience; thenas usual she qualified. "For anything that may happen."

  Densher had a smile, but he felt it himself as strained. "You'recryptic, love!"

  It made her keep her eyes on him, and he could thus see that, by one ofthose incalculable motions in her without which she wouldn't have beena quarter so interesting, they half-filled with tears from some sourcehe had too roughly touched. "I'm taking a trouble for you I neverdreamed I should take for any human creature."

  Oh it went home, making him flush for it; yet he soon enough felt hisreply on his lips. "Well, isn't my whole insistence to you now that Ican conjure trouble away?" And he let it, his insistence, come outagain; it had so constantly had, all the week, but its step or two tomake. "There _need_ be none whatever between us. There need be nothingbut our sense of each other."

  It had only the effect at first that her eyes grew dry while she tookup again one of the so numerous links in her close chain. "You can tellher anything you like, anything whatever."

  "Mrs. Stringham? I _have_ nothing to tell her."

  "You can tell her about _us_. I mean," she wonderfully pursued, "thatyou do still like me."

  It was indeed so wonderful that it amused him. "Only not that you stilllike me."

  She let his amusement pass. "I'm absolutely certain she wouldn't repeatit."

  "I see. To Aunt Maud."

  "You don't quite see. Neither to Aunt Maud nor to any one else." Katethen, he saw, was always seeing Milly much more, after all, than hewas; and she showed it again as she went on. "_There_, accordingly, isyour time."

  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 forsomething in particular that I understand you regard as possible. Timetoo that, I further understand, is time for you as well."

  "Time indeed for me as well." And encouraged visibly by his glow ofconcentration, she looked at him as through the air she had painfullymade clear. Yet she was still on her guard. "Don't think, however, I'lldo all the work for you. If you want things named you must name them."

  He had quite, within the minute, been turning names over; and there wasonly one, which at last stared at him there dreadful, that properlyfitted. "Since she's to die I'm to marry her?"

  It struck him even at the moment as fine in her that she met it with nowincing nor mincing. She might for the grace of silence, for favour totheir conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. But her lipsbravely moved. "To marry her."

  "So that when her death has taken place I shall in the natural coursehave money?"

  It was before him enough now, and he had nothing more to ask; he hadonly to turn, on the spot, considerably cold with the thought that allalong--to his stupidity, his timidity--it had been, it had been only,what she meant. Now that he was in possession moreover she couldn'tforbear, strangely enough, to pronounce the words she hadn'tpronounced: they broke through her controlled and colourless voice asif she should be ashamed, to the very end, to have flinched. "You'll inthe natural course have money. We shall in the natural course be free."

  "Oh, oh, oh!" Densher softly murmured.

  "Yes, yes, yes." But she broke off. "Come to Lady Wells."

  He never budged--there was too much else. "I'm to propose itthen--marriage--on the spot?"

  There was no ironic sound he needed to give it; the more simply hespoke 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 washyour hands of me I don't think you ought to ask me. You must act as youlike and as you can."

  He thought again. "I'm far--as I sufficiently showed you thismorning--from washing my hands of you."

  "Then," said Kate, "it's all right."

  "All right?" His eagerness flamed. "You'll come?"

  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 chance--well, quite ideal."

  "Your descriptions"--her "ideal" was such a touch!--"are prodigious.And what I don't make out is how, caring for me, you can like it."

  "I don't like it, but I'm a person, thank goodness, who can do what Idon't like."

  It wasn't till afterwards that, going back to it, he was to read intothis speech a kind of heroic ring, a note of character that belittledhis own incapacity for action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time thegreatness of knowing so well what one wanted. At the time too,moreover, he next reflected that he after all knew what _he_ did. Butsomething else on his lips was uppermost. "What I don't make out thenis how you can even bear it."

  "Well, when you know me better you'll find out how much I can bear."And she went on before he could take up, as it were, her too manyimplications. That it was left to him to know her, spiritually,"better" after his long sacrifice to knowledge--this for instance was atruth he hadn't been ready to receive so full in the face. She hadmystified him enough, heaven knew, but that was rather by his owngenerosity than by hers. And what, with it, did she seem to suggest shemight incur at his hands? In spite of these questions she was carryinghim on. "All you'll have to do will be to stay."

  "And proceed to my business under your eyes?"

  "Oh dear no--we shall go."

  "'Go?'" he wondered. "Go when, go where?"

  "In a day or two--straight home. Aunt Maud wishes it now."

  It gave him all he could take in to think of. "Then what becomes ofMiss Theale?"

  "What I tell you. She stays on, and you stay with her."

  He stared. "All alone?"

  She had a smile that was apparently for his tone. "You're oldenough--with 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 thesesuccessive cues, that he was essentially "seeing what she wouldsay"--an instinct compatible for him therefore with that absence of aneed to know her better to which she had a moment before doneinjustice. If it hadn't been appearing to him in gleams that she wouldsomewhere break down, he probably couldn't have gone on. Still, as shewasn't breaking down there was nothing for him but to continue. "Isyour going Mrs. Lowder's idea?"

  "Very much indeed. Of course again you see what it does for us. And Idon't," she added, "refer only to our going, but to Aunt Maud's view ofthe general propriety of it."

  "I see again, as you say," Densher said after a moment. "It makeseverything fit."

  "Everything."

  The word, for a little, held the air, and he might have seemed thewhile to be looking, by no means dimly now, at all it stood for. But hehad in fact been looking at something else. "You leave her here then todie?"

  "Ah she believes she won't die. Not if you stay. I mean," Kateexplained, "Aunt Maud believes."

  "And that's all that's necessary?"

  Still indeed she didn't break down. "Didn't we long ago agree that whatshe believes is the principal thing for us?"

  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 if I stay--"

  "It won't"--she was prompt--"be our fault."

  "If Mrs. Lowder still, you mean, suspects us?"

  "If she still suspects us. But she won't."

  Kate gave it an emphasis that might have appeared to leave him nothingmore; and he might in fact well have
found nothing if he hadn'tpresently found: "But what if she doesn't accept me?"

  It produced in her a look of weariness that made the patience of hertone the next moment touch him. "You can but try."

  "Naturally I can but try. Only, you see, one has to try a little hardto propose to a dying girl."

  "She isn't for you as if she's dying." It had determined in Kate theflash of _justesse_ he could perhaps most, on consideration, haveadmired, since her retort touched the truth. There before him was thefact of how Milly to-night impressed him, and his companion, with hereyes in his own and pursuing his impression to the depths of them,literally now perched on the fact in triumph. She turned her head towhere their friend was again in range, and it made him turn his, sothat they watched a minute in concert. Milly, from the other side,happened at the moment to notice them, and she sent across toward themin response all the candour of her smile, the lustre of her pearls, thevalue of her life, the essence of her wealth. It brought them togetheragain with faces made fairly grave by the reality she put into theirplan. Kate herself grew a little pale for it, and they had for a timeonly a silence. The music, however, gay and vociferous, had broken outafresh and protected more than interrupted them. When Densher at lastspoke it was under cover.

  "I might stay, you know, without trying."

  "Oh to stay _is_ to try."

  "To have for herself, you mean, the appearance of it?"

  "I don't see how you can have the appearance more."

  Densher waited. "You think it then possible she may _offer_ marriage?"

  "I can't think--if you really want to know--what she may _not_ offer!"

  "In the manner of princesses, who do such things?"

  "In any manner you like. So be prepared."

  Well, he looked as if he almost were. "It will be for me then toaccept. But that's the way it must come."

  Kate's silence, so far, let it pass; but she presently said: "You'll,on your honour, stay then?"

  His answer made her wait, but when it came it was distinct. "Withoutyou, you mean?"

  "Without us."

  "And you yourselves go at latest--?"

  "Not later than Thursday."

  It made three days. "Well," he said, "I'll stay, on my honour, ifyou'll come to me. On your honour."

  Again, as before, this made her momentarily rigid, with a rigour out ofwhich, at a loss, she vaguely cast about her. Her rigour was more tohim, nevertheless, than all her readiness; for her readiness was thewoman herself, and this other thing a mask, a stop-gap 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 istired of waiting: she's coming--see--to _us_."

  Densher saw in fact, but there was a distance for their visitor tocross, and he still had time. "If you decline to understand me I whollydecline to understand you. I'll do nothing."

  "Nothing?" It was as if she tried for the minute to plead.

  "I'll do nothing. I'll go off before you. I'll go to-morrow."

  He was to have afterwards the sense of her having then, as the phrasewas--and for vulgar triumphs too--seen he meant it. She looked again atLady Wells, who was nearer, but she quickly came back. "And if I dounderstand?"

  "I'll do everything."

  She found anew a pretext in her approaching friend: he was fairlyplaying with her pride. He had never, he then knew, tasted, in all hisrelation with her, of anything so sharp--too sharp for meresweetness--as the vividness with which he saw himself master in theconflict. "Well, I understand."

  "On your honour?"

  "On my honour."

  "You'll come?"

  "I'll come."

  BOOK NINTH