Page 5 of The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2

  BOOK FIFTH

  X

  Lord Mark looked at her to-day in particular as if to wring from her aconfession that she had originally done him injustice; and he wasentitled to whatever there might be in it of advantage or merit thathis intention really in a manner took effect: he cared about something,that is, after all, sufficiently to make her feel absurdly as if she_were_ confessing--all the while it was quite the case that neitherjustice nor injustice was what had been in question between them. Hehad presented himself at the hotel, had found her and had found SusanShepherd at home, had been "civil" to Susan--it was just that shade,and Susan's fancy had fondly caught it; and then had come again andmissed them, and then had come and found them once more: besidesletting them easily see that if it hadn't by this time been the end ofeverything--which they could feel in the exhausted air, that of theseason at its last gasp--the places they might have liked to go to weresuch as they would have had only to mention. Their feeling was--or atany rate their modest general plea--that there was no place they wouldhave 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 washighly the case as to their current consciousness--which could beindeed, in an equally eminent degree, but a matter of course;impressions this afternoon having by a happy turn of their wheel beengathered for them into a splendid cluster, an offering like an armfulof the rarest flowers. They were in presence of the offering--they hadbeen led up to it; and if it had been still their habit to look at eachother across distances for increase of unanimity his hand would havebeen silently named between them as the hand applied to the wheel. Hehad administered the touch that, under light analysis, made thedifference--the difference of their not having lost, as Susie on thespot and at the hour phrased it again and again, both for herself andfor such others as the question might concern, so beautiful andinteresting an experience; the difference also, in fact, of Mrs.Lowder's not having lost it either, though it was with Mrs. Lowder,superficially, they had come, and though it was further with that ladythat our young woman was directly engaged during the half-hour or so ofher most agreeably inward response to the scene.

  The great historic house had, for Milly, beyond terrace and garden, asthe centre of an almost extravagantly grand Watteau-composition, a toneas of old gold kept "down" by the quality of the air, summerfull-flushed, but attuned to the general perfect taste. Much, by hermeasure, for the previous hour, appeared, in connection with thisrevelation of it, to have happened to her--a quantity expressed inintroductions of charming new people, in walks through halls of armour,of pictures, of cabinets, of tapestry, of tea-tables, in an assault ofreminders that this largeness of style was the sign of _appointed_felicity. The largeness of style was the great containing vessel, whileeverything else, the pleasant personal affluence, the easy, murmurouswelcome, the honoured age of illustrious host and hostess, all at onceso distinguished and so plain, so public and so shy, became but this orthat element of the infusion. The elements melted together and seasonedthe draught, the essence of which might have struck the girl asdistilled into the small cup of iced coffee she had vaguely acceptedfrom somebody, while a fuller flood, somehow, kept bearing her up--allthe freshness of response of her young life the freshness of the firstand only prime. What had perhaps brought on just now a kind of climaxwas the fact of her appearing to make out, through Aunt Maud, what wasreally the matter. It couldn't be less than a climax for a poor shakymaiden to find it put to her of a sudden that she herself was thematter--for that was positively what, on Mrs. Lowder's part, it cameto. Everything was great, of course, in great pictures, and it wasdoubtless precisely a part of the brilliant life--since the brilliantlife, as one had faintly figured it, clearly _was_ humanly led--thatall impressions within its area partook of its brilliancy; still,letting that pass, it fairly stamped an hour as with the official sealfor one to be able to take in so comfortably one's companion's broadblandness. "You must stay among us--you must stay; anything else isimpossible and ridiculous; you don't know yet, no doubt--you can't; butyou will soon enough: you can stay in _any_ position." It had been asthe murmurous consecration to follow the murmurous welcome; and even ifit were but part of Aunt Maud's own spiritual ebriety--for the dearwoman, one could see, was spiritually "keeping" the day--it served toMilly, then and afterwards, as a high-water mark of the imagination.

  It was to be the end of the short parenthesis which had begun but theother day at Lancaster Gate with Lord Mark's informing her that she wasa "success"--the key thus again struck; and though no distinct, nonumbered revelations had crowded in, there had, as we have seen, beenplenty of incident for the space and the time. There had been thrice asmuch, and all gratuitous and genial--if, in portions, not exactlyhitherto _the_ revelation--as three unprepared weeks could have beenexpected to produce. Mrs. Lowder had improvised a "rush" for them, butout of elements, as Milly was now a little more freely aware, somewhatroughly combined. Therefore if at this very instant she had her reasonsfor thinking of the parenthesis as about to close--reasons completelypersonal--she had on behalf of her companion a divination almost asdeep. The parenthesis would close with this admirable picture, but theadmirable picture still would show Aunt Maud as not absolutely sureeither if she herself were destined to remain in it. What she wasdoing, Milly might even not have escaped seeming to see, was to talkherself into a sublimer serenity while she ostensibly talked Milly. Itwas fine, the girl fully felt, the way she did talk _her,_ little as,at bottom, our young woman needed it or found other persuasions atfault. It was in particular during the minutes of her gratefulabsorption of iced coffee--qualified by a sharp doubt of herwisdom--that she most had in view Lord Mark's relation to her beingthere, or at least to the question of her being amused at it. Itwouldn't have taken much by the end of five minutes quite to make herfeel that this relation was charming. It might, once more, simply havebeen that everything, anything, was charming when one was so justly andcompletely charmed; but, frankly, she had not supposed anything soserenely sociable could define itself between them as the friendlyunderstanding that was at present somehow in the air. They were, manyof them together, near the marquee that had been erected on a stretchof sward as a temple of refreshment and that happened to have theproperty--which was all to the good of making Milly think of a"durbar"; her iced coffee had been a consequence of this connection, inwhich, further, the bright company scattered about fell thoroughly intoplace. Certain of its members might have represented the contingent of"native princes"--familiar, but scarce the less grandly gregariousterm!--and Lord Mark would have done for one of these even though forchoice he but presented himself as a supervisory friend of the family.The Lancaster Gate family, he clearly intended, in which he includedits American recruits, and included above all Kate Croy--a young personblessedly easy to take care of. She knew people, and people knew her,and she was the handsomest thing there--this last a declaration made byMilly, in a sort of soft mid-summer madness, a straight skylark-flightof charity, to Aunt Maud.

  Kate had, for her new friend's eyes, the extraordinary and attachingproperty of appearing at a given moment to show as a beautifulstranger, to cut her connections and lose her identity, letting theimagination for the time make what it would of them--make her merely aperson striking from afar, more and more pleasing as one watched, butwho was above all a subject for curiosity. Nothing could have givenher, as a party to a relation, a greater freshness than thissense--which sprang up at its own hours--of being as curious about heras if one hadn't known her. It had sprung up, we have gathered, as soonas Milly had seen her after hearing from Mrs. Stringham of herknowledge of Merton Densher; she had _looked_ then other and, as Millyknew the real critical mind would call it, more objective; and ouryoung woman had foreseen it of her, on the spot, that she would oftenlook so again. It was exactly what she was doing this afternoon andMilly, who had amusements of thought that were like the secrecies of alittle girl playing with dolls when conventionally "too big," couldalmost settle to the game of
what one would suppose her, how one wouldplace her, if one didn't know her. She became thus, intermittently, afigure conditioned only by the great facts of aspect, a figure to bewaited for, named and fitted. This was doubtless but a way of feelingthat it was of her essence to be peculiarly what the occasion, whateverit might be, demanded when its demand was highest. There were probablyways enough, on these lines, for such a consciousness; another of themwould be, for instance, to say that she was made for great social uses.Milly was not wholly sure that she herself knew what great social usesmight be--unless, as a good example, exerting just that sort of glamourin just that sort of frame were one of them: she would have fallen backon knowing sufficiently that they existed at all events for her friend.It imputed a primness, all round, to be reduced but to saying, by wayof a translation of one's amusement, that she was always so_right_--since that, too often, was what the _insupportables_themselves were; yet it was, in overflow to Aunt Maud, what she had tocontent herself withal--save for the lame enhancement of saying she waslovely. It served, all the same, the purpose, strengthened the bondthat for the time held the two ladies together, distilled in short itsdrop of rose-colour for Mrs. Lowder's own view. That was really theview Milly had, for most of the rest of the occasion, to give herselfto immediately taking in; but it didn't prevent the continued play ofthose swift cross-lights, odd beguilements of the mind, at which wehave already glanced.

  Mrs. Lowder herself found it enough simply to reply, in respect toKate, that she was indeed a luxury to take about the world: sheexpressed no more surprise than that at her "rightness" to-day. Wasn'tit by this time sufficiently manifest that it was precisely as the veryluxury she was proving that she had, from far back, been appraised andwaited for? Crude elation, however, might be kept at bay, and thecircumstance none the less demonstrated that they were all swimmingtogether in the blue. It came back to Lord Mark again, as he seemedslowly to pass and repass and conveniently to linger before them; hewas personally the note of the blue--like a suspended skein of silkwithin reach of the broiderer's hand. Aunt Maud's free-moving shuttletook a length of him at rhythmic intervals; and one of the intermixedtruths that flickered across to Milly was that he ever so consentinglyknew he was being worked in. This was almost like an understanding withher at Mrs. Lowder's expense, which she would have none of; shewouldn't for the world have had him make any such point as that hewouldn't have launched them at Matcham--or whatever it was he _had_done--only for Aunt Maud's _beaux yeux._ What he had done, it wouldhave been guessable, was something he had for some time been desired invain to do; and what they were all now profiting by was a changecomparatively sudden, the cessation of hope delayed. What had causedthe cessation easily showed itself as none of Milly's business; and shewas luckily, for that matter, in no real danger of hearing from himdirectly that her individual weight had been felt in the scale. Whythen indeed was it an effect of his diffused but subdued participationthat he might absolutely have been saying to her "Yes, let the dearwoman take her own tone? Since she's here she may stay," he might havebeen adding--"for whatever she can make of it. But you and I aredifferent." Milly knew _she_ was different in truth--his own differencewas his own affair; but also she knew that, after all, even at theirdistinctest, Lord Mark's "tips" in this line would be tacit. Hepractically placed her--it came round again to that--under noobligation whatever. It was a matter of equal ease, moreover, herletting Mrs. Lowder take a tone. She might have taken twenty--theywould have spoiled nothing.

  "You must stay on with us; you _can,_ you know, in any position youlike; any, any, _any,_ my dear child"--and her emphasis went deep. "Youmust make your home with us; and it's really open to you to make themost beautiful one in the world. You mustn't be under a mistake--underany of any sort; and you must let us all think for you a little, takecare 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 hashappened 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 isthat it should have come about through our dear delightful Susie,restored to me, after so many years, by such a miracle. No--that's morecharming to me than even your hitting it off with Kate. God has beengood to one--positively; for I couldn't, at my age, have made a newfriend--undertaken, I mean, out of whole cloth, the real thing. It'slike changing one's bankers--after fifty: one doesn't do that. That'swhy Susie has been kept for me, as you seem to keep people in yourwonderful country, in lavender and pink paper--coming back at last asstraight as out of a fairy-tale and with you as an attendant fairy."Milly hereupon replied appreciatively that such a description ofherself made her feel as if pink paper were her dress and lavender itstrimming; but Aunt Maud was not to be deterred by a weak joke fromkeeping it up. Her interlocutress could feel besides that she kept itup in perfect sincerity. She was somehow at this hour a very happywoman, and a part of her happiness might precisely have been that heraffections and her views were moving as never before in concert.Unquestionably she loved Susie; but she also loved Kate and loved LordMark, loved their funny old host and hostess, loved every one withinrange, down to the very servant who came to receive Milly's emptyiceplate--down, for that matter, to Milly herself, who was, while shetalked, really conscious of the enveloping flap of a protective mantle,a shelter with the weight of an eastern carpet. An eastern carpet, forwishing-purposes 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, shecould feel, by Mrs. Lowder's fault. One of the last things she wasafterwards to recall of this was Aunt Maud's going on to say that sheand 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 forits full operation, just as Milly's prosperity at the same timeinvolved Kate's. It was nebulous yet, it was slightly confused, but itwas unmistakably free and genial, and it made our young womanunderstand things Kate had said of her aunt's possibilities as well ascharacterisations that had fallen from Susan Shepherd. One of the mostfrequent on the lips of the latter had been that dear Maud was anatural force.

  XI

  A prime reason, we must add, why sundry impressions were not to befully present to the girl till later on was that they yielded at thisstage, with an effect of sharp supersession, to a detached quarter ofan hour--her only one--with Lord Mark. "Have you seen the picture inthe house, the beautiful one that's so like you?"--he was asking thatas he stood before her; having come up at last with his smoothintimation that any wire he had pulled and yet wanted not to remind herof 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 inshort for Milly some evidence, which he only wanted to supply. She wasthe image of the wonderful Bronzino, which she must have a look at onevery ground. He had thus called her off and led her away; the moreeasily that the house within was above all what had already drawn roundher its mystic circle. Their progress, meanwhile, was not of thestraightest; it was an advance, without haste, through innumerablenatural pauses and soft concussions, determined for the most part bythe appearance before them of ladies and gentlemen, singly, in couples,in groups, who brought them to a stand with an inveterate "I say,Mark." What they said she never quite made out; it was their all sodomestically knowing him, and his knowing them, that mainly struck her,while her impression, for the rest, was but of fellow-strollers morevaguely afloat than themselves, supernumeraries mostly a littlebattered, whether as jaunty males or as ostensibly elegant women. Theymight have been moving a good deal by a momentum that had begun farback, but they were still brave and personable, still warranted forcontinuance as long again, and they gave her, in especial collectively,a sense of pleasant voices, pleasanter than those of actors, offriendly, empty words and kind, lingering eyes. The lingering eyeslooked her over, the lingering eyes were what went, in alm
ost confessedsimplicity, with the pointless "I say, Mark "; and what was really mostsensible of all was that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she didn'tmind, he seemed to suggest their letting people, poor dear things, havethe benefit of her.

  The odd part was that he made her herself believe, for amusement, inthe benefit, measured by him in mere manner--for wonderful, of a truth,was, as a means of expression, his slightness of emphasis--that herpresent good-nature conferred. It was, as she could easily see, a mildcommon carnival of good-nature--a mass of London people together, ofsorts 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 wasthere; questions about her would be passing; the easiest thing was torun the gauntlet with _him_--just as the easiest thing was in fact totrust him generally. Couldn't she know for herself, passively, howlittle harm they meant her?--to that extent that it made no differencewhether or not he introduced them. The strangest thing of all for Millywas perhaps the uplifted assurance and indifference with which shecould simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in suchcases to mark civilisation at its highest. It was so little her fault,this oddity of what had "gone round" about her, that to accept itwithout question might be as good a way as another of feeling life. Itwas inevitable to supply the probable description--that of the awfullyrich young American who was so queer to behold, but nice, by allaccounts, to know; and she had really but one instant of speculation asto fables or fantasies perchance originally launched. She asked herselfonce only if Susie could, inconceivably, have been blatant about her;for the question, on the spot, was really blown away for ever. She knewin fact on the spot and with sharpness just why she had "elected" SusanShepherd: she had had from the first hour the conviction of her beingprecisely the person in the world least possibly a trumpeter. So itwasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault, and anything might happenthat would, and everything now again melted together, and kind eyeswere always kind eyes--if it were never to be worse than that! She gotwith her companion into the house; they brushed, beneficently, past alltheir accidents. The Bronzino was, it appeared, deep within, and thelong afternoon light lingered for them on patches of old colour andwaylaid them, as they went, in nooks and opening vistas.

  It was all the while for Milly as if Lord Mark had really had somethingother than this spoken pretext in view; as if there were something hewanted to say to her and were only--consciously yet not awkwardly, justdelicately--hanging fire. At the same time it was as if the thing hadpractically 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 afool take care of you a little." The thing somehow, with the aid of theBronzino, was done; it hadn't seemed to matter to her before if he werea 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 ofthe same sound as Mrs. Lowder's so recent reminder. She too wished totake care of her--and wasn't it, _a peu pres_ what all the people withthe kind eyes were wishing? Once more things melted together--thebeauty and the history and the facility and the splendid midsummerglow: it was a sort of magnificent maximum, the pink dawn of anapotheosis, coming so curiously soon. What in fact befell was that, asshe afterwards made out, it was Lord Mark who said nothing inparticular--it was she herself who said all. She couldn't help that--itcame; and the reason it came was that she found herself, for the firstmoment, looking at the mysterious portrait through tears. Perhaps itwas her tears that made it just then so strange and fair--as wonderfulas he had said: the face of a young woman, all magnificently drawn,down to the hands, and magnificently dressed; a face almost livid inhue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolledback and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a familyresemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with herslightly Michaelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her fulllips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds,was a very great personage--only unaccompanied by a joy. And she wasdead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that hadnothing to do with her. "I shall never be better than this."

  He smiled for her at the portrait. "Than she? You'd scarce need to bebetter, for surely that's well enough. But you _are,_ one feels, as ithappens, better; because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she wasgood."

  He hadn't understood. She was before the picture, but she had turned tohim, and she didn't care if, for the minute, he noticed her tears. Itwas probably as good a moment as she should ever have with him. It wasperhaps as good a moment as she should have with any one, or have inany connection whatever. "I mean that everything this afternoon hasbeen too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never beso right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it."

  Though he still didn't understand her he was as nice as if he had; hedidn't ask for insistence, and that was just a part of his lookingafter her. He simply protected her now from herself, and there was aworld of practice in it. "Oh, we must talk about these things!"

  Ah, they had already done that, she knew, as much as she ever would;and she was shaking her head at her pale sister the next moment with aworld, on her side, of slowness. "I wish I could see the resemblance.Of course her complexion's green," she laughed; "but mine's severalshades greener."

  "It's down to the very hands," said Lord Mark.

  "Her hands are large," Milly went on, "but mine are larger. Mine arehuge."

  "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 wereimportant to his character as a serious man not to appear to haveinvented his plea.

  "I don't know one never knows one's self. It's a funny fancy, and Idon't imagine it would have occurred----"

  "I see it _has_ occurred"--he has already taken her up. She had herback, as she faced the picture, to one of the doors of the room, whichwas open, and on her turning, as he spoke, she saw that they were inthe presence of three other persons, also, as appeared, interestedinquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had just become awareof her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the bestof it, that she was far from being first in the field. She had broughta lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what Lord Mark wasshowing Milly, and he took her straightway as a reinforcement. Kateherself had spoken, however, before he had had time to tell her so.

  _"You_ had noticed too?"--she smiled at him without looking at Milly."Then I'm not original--which one always hopes one has been. But thelikeness is so great." And now she looked at Milly--for whom again itwas, 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 atthe picture, though it was enough to make her question to her friendsnot too straight. "Isn't she superb?"

  "I brought Miss Theale," Lord Mark explained to the latter, "quite offmy own bat."

  "I wanted Lady Aldershaw," Kate continued to Milly, "to see forherself."

  _"Les grands esprits se rencontrent!"_ laughed her attendant gentleman,a high, but slightly stooping, shambling and wavering person, whorepresented urbanity by the liberal aid of certain prominent frontteeth and whom Milly vaguely took for some sort of great man.

  Lady Aldershaw meanwhile looked at Milly quite as if Milly had been theBronzino and the Bronzino only Milly. "Superb, superb. Of course I hadnoticed you. It is wonderful," she went on with her back to thepicture, but with some other eagerness which Milly felt gathering,directing her motions now. It was enough--they were introduced, and shewas saying "I wonder if you could give us the pleasure of coming----"She was not fresh, for she was not young, even though she denied atevery pore that she was old; but she was vivid and much bejewelled forthe midsummer daylight; and she was all in the palest pinks and blues.She didn't think, at this pass, that she could "come" anywhere--Millydidn't; and she already knew that somehow Lord Mark was saving her fromthe question. He had interposed, taking the words out of th
e lady'smouth and not caring at all if the lady minded. That was clearly theright way to treat her--at least for him; as she had only dropped,smiling, and then turned away with him. She had been dealt with--itwould have done an enemy good. The gentleman still stood, a littlehelpless, addressing himself to the intention of urbanity as if it werea large loud whistle; he had been signing sympathy, in his way, whilethe lady made her overture; and Milly had, in this light, soon arrivedat their identity. They were Lord and Lady Aldershaw, and the wife wasthe clever one. A minute or two later the situation had changed, andshe 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 Susiecould be found; but she was sitting down on the nearest seat to say it.The prospect, through opened doors, stretched before her into otherrooms, down the vista of which Lord Mark was strolling with LadyAldershaw, who, close to him and much intent, seemed to show frombehind as peculiarly expert. Lord Aldershaw, for his part, had beenleft in the middle of the room, while Kate, with her back to him, wasstanding before her with much sweetness of manner. The sweetness wasall for _her;_ she had the sense of the poor gentleman's having somehowbeen handled as Lord Mark had handled his wife. He dangled there, heshambled a little; then he bethought himself of the Bronzino, beforewhich, with his eyeglass, he hovered. It drew from him an odd, vaguesound, not wholly distinct from a grunt, and a "Humph--mostremarkable!" which lighted Kate's face with amusement. The next momenthe had creaked away, over polished floors, after the others, and Millywas feeling as if _she_ had been rude. But Lord Aldershaw was in everyway a detail, and Kate was saying to her that she hoped she wasn't ill.

  Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded historic chamber andthe presence of the pale personage on the wall, whose eyes all thewhile seemed engaged with her own, she found herself suddenly sunk insomething quite intimate and humble and to which these grandeurs werestrange enough witnesses. It had come up, in the form in which she hadhad 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 escapefrom something else. Something else, from her first vision of herfriend's appearance three minutes before, had been present to her eventhrough the call made by the others on her attention something thatwas perversely _there,_ she was more and more uncomfortably finding, atleast for the first moments and by some spring of its own, with everyrenewal of their meeting. "Is it the way she looks to _him?"_ she askedherself--the perversity being that she kept in remembrance that Katewas known to him. It wasn't a fault in Kate--nor in him assuredly; andshe had a horror, being generous and tender, of treating either of themas if it had been. To Densher himself she couldn't make it up--he wastoo far away; but her secondary impulse was to make it up to Kate. Shedid so now with a strange soft energy--the impulse immediately acting."Will you render me to-morrow a great service?"

  "Any service, dear child, in the world."

  "But it's a secret one--nobody must know. I must be wicked and falseabout it."

  "Then I'm your woman," Kate smiled, "for that's the kind of thing Ilove. _Do_ let us do something bad. You're impossibly without sin, youknow."

  Milly's eyes, on this, remained a little with their companion's. "Ah, Ishan't perhaps come up to your idea. It's only to deceive SusanShepherd."

  "Oh!" said Kate as if this were indeed mild.

  "But thoroughly--as thoroughly as I can."

  "And for cheating," Kate asked, "my powers will contribute? Well, I'lldo my best for you." In accordance with which it was presently settledbetween them that Milly should have the aid and comfort of her presencefor a visit to Sir Luke Strett. Kate had needed a minute forenlightenment, and it was quite grand for her comrade that this nameshould have said nothing to her. To Milly herself it had for some daysbeen secretly saying much. The personage in question was, as sheexplained, the greatest of medical lights if she had got hold, as shebelieved (and she had used to this end the wisdom of the serpent) ofthe right, the special man. She had written to him three days before,and he had named her an hour, eleven-twenty; 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 had listened, aboveall, with high indulgence. "And I'm betwixt and between, happy thought!Too good for what?"

  Milly thought. "Why, to be worried if it's nothing. And to be stillmore worried--I mean before she need be--if it isn't."

  Kate fixed her with deep eyes. "What in the world is the matter withyou?" It had inevitably a sound of impatience, as if it had been achallenge really to produce something; so that Milly felt her for themoment only as a much older person, standing above her a little,doubting the imagined ailments, suspecting the easy complaints, ofignorant youth. It somewhat checked her, further, that the matter withher was what exactly as yet she wanted knowledge about; and sheimmediately declared, for conciliation, that if she were merelyfanciful Kate would see her put to shame. Kate vividly uttered, inreturn, the hope that, since she could come out and be so charming,could so universally dazzle and interest, she wasn't all the while indistress or in anxiety--didn't believe herself, in short, to be in anydegree seriously menaced. "Well, I want to make out--to make out!" wasall that this consistently produced. To which Kate made clear answer:"Ah then, let us by all means!"

  "I thought," Milly said, "you would like to help me. But I must askyou, please, for the promise of absolute silence."

  "And how, if you _are_ ill, can your friends remain in ignorance?"

  "Well, if I am, it must of course finally come out. But I can go for along time." Milly spoke with her eyes again on her paintedsister's--almost as if under their suggestion. She still sat therebefore Kate, yet not without a light in her face. "That will be one ofmy 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 time to talk of such things!"

  "Well, we won't talk, precisely"--Milly got herself together again. "Ionly wanted to make sure of you."

  "Here in the midst of----!" But Kate could only sigh for wonder--almostvisibly too for pity.

  It made a moment during which her companion waited on her word; partlyas if from a yearning, shy but deep, to have her case put to her justas Kate was struck by it; partly as if the hint of pity were alreadygiving a sense to her whimsical "shot," with Lord Mark, at Mrs.Lowder's first dinner. Exactly this--the handsome girl's compassionatemanner, her friendly descent from her own strength--was what she hadthen foretold. She took Kate up as if positively for the deeper tasteof it. "Here in the midst of what?"

  "Of everything. There's nothing you can't have. There's nothing youcan't do."

  "So Mrs. Lowder tells me."

  It just kept Kate's eyes fixed as possibly for more of that; then,however, without waiting, she went on. "We all adore you."

  "You're wonderful--you dear things!" Milly laughed.

  "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 morereason," she added, "that I shouldn't needlessly torment you."

  "But me? what becomes of _me?"_ said Kate.

  "Well, you--" Milly thought--"if there's anything to bear, you'll bearit."

  "But I _won't_ bear it!" said Kate Croy.

  "Oh yes, you will: all the same! You'll pity me awfully, but you'llhelp me very much. And I absolutely trust you. So there we are." Therethey 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 shehad wished to arrive. She had wanted to prove to herself that shedidn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve; and what better proofcould there be than this quite special confidence? If she desired toshow Kate that she really believed the latter liked her, how could sheshow it more than by asking her for help?

  XII

  What it really came to, on the morrow, this first time--the tim
e Katewent with her--was that the great man had, a little, to excuse himself;had, by a rare accident--for he kept his consulting-hours in generalrigorously free--but ten minutes to give her; ten mere minutes which heyet placed at her service in a manner that she admired even more thanshe could meet it: so crystal-clean the great empty cup of attentionthat he set between them on the table. He was presently to jump intohis carriage, but he promptly made the point that he must see heragain, see her within a day or two; and he named for her at onceanother hour--easing her off beautifully too even then in respect toher possibly failing of justice to her errand. The minutes affected herin fact as ebbing more swiftly than her little army of items couldmuster, and they would probably have gone without her doing much morethan secure another hearing, had it not been for her sense, at thelast, that she had gained above all an impression. The impression--allthe sharp growth of the final few moments--was neither more nor lessthan that she might make, of a sudden, in quite another world, anotherstraight friend, and a friend who would moreover be, wonderfully, themost appointed, the most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection,inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character scientifically,ponderably, proveably--not just loosely and sociably. Literally,furthermore, it wouldn't really depend on herself, Sir Luke Strett'sfriendship, in the least; perhaps what made her most stammer and pantwas its thus queerly coming over her that she might find she hadinterested him even beyond her intention, find she was in fact launchedin some current that would lose itself in the sea of science. At thesame time that she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there wasa moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, ofexplaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supremepointless quaver that had turned, the next instant, to an intensity ofinterrogative stillness, upon his general goodwill. His large, settledface, though firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; helooked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, half like a general andhalf like a bishop, and she was soon sure that, within some suchhandsome range, what it would show her would be what was good, what wasbest for her. She had established, in other words, in this time-savingway, 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 newresource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tuckedaway under the arm of memory. She hadn't had it when she went in, andshe had it when she came out; she had it there under her cloak, butdissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again facedKate 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 inattendance; and she rose for her with such a face of sympathy as mighthave graced the vestibule of a dentist. "Is it out?" she seemed to askas if it had been a question of a tooth; and Milly indeed kept her inno suspense at all.

  "He's a dear. I'm to come again."

  "But what does he say?"

  Milly was almost gay. "That I'm not to worry about anything in theworld, and that if I'll be a good girl and do exactly what he tells me,he'll take care of me for ever and ever."

  Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. "But does he allow then thatyou're ill?"

  "I don't know what he allows, and I don't care. I shall know, andwhatever it is it will be enough. He knows all about me, and I like it.I don't hate it a bit."

  Still, however, Kate stared. "But could he, in so few minutes, ask youenough----?"

  "He asked me scarcely anything--he doesn't need to do anything sostupid," Milly said. "He can tell. He knows," she repeated; "and when Igo back--for he'll have thought me over a little--it will be all right."

  Kate, after a moment, made the best of this. "Then when are we to come?"

  It just pulled her friend up, for even while they talked--at least itwas one of the reasons--she stood there suddenly, irrelevantly, in thelight of her _other_ identity, the identity she would have for Mr.Densher. This was always, from one instant to another, an incalculablelight, which, though it might go off faster than it came on,necessarily disturbed. It sprang, with a perversity all its own, fromthe fact that, with the lapse of hours and days, the chances themselvesthat made for his being named continued so oddly to fail. There weretwenty, there were fifty, but none of them turned up. This, inparticular, was of course not a juncture at which the least of themwould naturally be present; but it would make, none the less, Millysaw, another day practically all stamped with avoidance. She saw in aquick glimmer, and with it all Kate's unconsciousness; and then sheshook off the obsession. But it had lasted long enough to qualify herresponse. No, she had shown Kate how she trusted her; and that, forloyalty, would somehow do. "Oh, dear thing, now that the ice is brokenI shan't trouble _you_ again."

  "You'll come alone?"

  "Without a scruple. Only I shall ask you, please, for your absolutediscretion still."

  Outside, before the door, on the wide pavement of the great square,they had to wait again while their carriage, which Milly had kept,completed a further turn of exercise, engaged in by the coachman forreasons of his own. The footman was there, and had indicated that hewas making the circuit; so Kate went on while they stood. "But don'tyou ask a good deal, darling, in proportion to what you give?"

  This pulled Milly up still shorter--so short in fact that she yieldedas soon as she had taken it in. But she continued to smile. "I see.Then you _can_ tell."

  "I don't want to 'tell,'" said Kate. "I'll be as silent as the tomb ifI can only have the truth from you. All I want is that you shouldn'tkeep 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 turnout 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 was all her own mementoand she was none the less fine. Still, still, what had passed was afair bargain, and it would do. "Of course I like it. I feel--I can'totherwise describe it--as if I had been, on my knees, to the priest.I've confessed and I've been absolved. It has been lifted off."

  Kate's eyes never quitted her. "He must have liked _you."_

  "Oh--doctors!" Milly said. "But I hope," she added, "he didn't like metoo much." Then as if to escape a little from her friend's deepersounding, 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 Londonwith its dance all danced and its story all told, the air seemed athing of blurred pictures and mixed echoes, and an impression met thesense--an impression that broke, the next moment, through the girl'stightened lips. "Oh, it's a beautiful big world, and everyone, yes,everyone----!" It presently brought her back to Kate, and she hoped shedidn't actually look as much as if she were crying as she must havelooked to Lord Mark among the portraits at Matcham.

  Kate at all events understood. "Everyone wants to be so nice?"

  "So nice," said the grateful Milly.

  "Oh," Kate laughed, "we'll pull you through! And won't you now bringMrs. Stringham?"

  But Milly after an instant was again clear about that. "Not till I'veseen him once more."

  She was to have found this preference, two days later, abundantlyjustified; and yet when, in prompt accordance with what had passedbetween them, she reappeared before her distinguished friend--thatcharacter having, for him, in the interval, built itself up stillhigher--the first thing he asked her was whether she had beenaccompanied. She told him, on this, straightway, everything; completelyfree at present from her first embarrassment, disposed even--as shefelt she might become--to undue volubility, and conscious moreover ofno alarm from his thus perhaps wishing that she had not come alone. Itwas exactly as if, in the forty-eight hours that had passed, heracquaintance with him had somehow increased, and his own knowledge inparticular received mysterious additions. They had been together,before, scarce ten minutes; but the relation,
the one the ten minuteshad so beautifully created, was there to take straight up: and thisnot, on his own part, from mere professional heartiness, mere bedsidemanner, which she would have disliked--much rather from a quiet,pleasant air in him of having positively asked about her, asked hereand there and found out. Of course he couldn't in the least have asked,or have wanted to; there was no source of information to his hand, andhe had really needed none: he had found out simply by his genius--andfound out, she meant, literally everything. Now she knew not only thatshe didn't dislike this--the state of being found out about; but that,on the contrary, it was truly what she had come for, and that, for thetime at least, it would give her something firm to stand on. She struckherself as aware, aware as she had never been, of really not having hadfrom the beginning anything firm. It would be strange for the firmnessto come, after all, from her learning in these agreeable conditionsthat she was in some way doomed; but above all it would prove howlittle she had hitherto had to hold her up. If she was now to be heldup by the mere process--since that was perhaps on the cards--of beinglet 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 wasridiculously true that her thus sitting there to see her life put intothe scales represented her first approach to the taste of orderlyliving. Such was Milly's romantic version--that her life, especially bythe fact of this second interview, _was_ put into the scales; and justthe best part of the relation established might have been, for thatmatter, that the great grave charming man knew, had known at once, thatit was romantic, and in that measure allowed for it. Her only doubt,her only fear, was whether he perhaps wouldn't even take advantage ofher being a little romantic to treat her as romantic altogether. Thisdoubtless was her danger with him; but she should see, and dangers ingeneral meanwhile dropped and dropped.

  The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the commodious, "handsome"room, far back in the fine old house, soundless from position, somewhatsallow with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at midsummer--thevery place put on for her a look of custom and use, squared itselfsolidly round her as with promises and certainties. She had come forthto see the world, and this then was to be the world's light, the richdusk of a London "back," these the world's walls, those the world'scurtains and carpet. She should be intimate with the great bronze clockand mantel-ornaments, conspicuously presented in gratitude and longago; she should be as one of the circle of eminent contemporaries,photographed, engraved, signatured, and in particular framed andglazed, who made up the rest of the decoration, and made up as well somuch of the human comfort; and while she thought of all the cleantruths, unfringed, unfingered, that the listening stillness, strainedinto pauses and waits, would again and again, for years, have keptdistinct, she also wondered what she would eventually decide upon topresent in gratitude. She would give something better at least than thebrawny Victorian bronzes. This was precisely an instance of what shefelt he knew of her before he had done with her: that she was secretlyromancing at that rate, in the midst of so much else that was moreurgent, all over the place. So much for her secrets with him, none ofwhich really required to be phrased. It would have been, for example, asecret for her from any one else that without a dear lady she hadpicked up just before coming over she wouldn't have a decently nearconnection, of any sort, for such an appeal as she was making, to putforward: no one in the least, as it were, to produce forrespectability. But _his_ seeing it she didn't mind a scrap, and not ascrap 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 apretext of shops, of a whim, of she didn't know what--the amusement ofbeing for once in the streets by herself. The streets by herself werenew to her--she had always had in them a companion, or a maid; and hewas never to believe, moreover, that she couldn't take full in the faceanything he might have to say. He was softly amused at her account ofher courage; though he yet showed it somehow without soothing her toogrossly. Still, he did want to know whom she had. Hadn't there been alady with her on Wednesday?

  "Yes--a different one. Not the one who's travelling with me. I've told_her."_

  Distinctly he was amused, and it added to his air--the greatest charmof all--of giving her lots of time. "You've told her what?"

  "Well," said Milly, "that I visit you in secret."

  "And how many persons will she tell?"

  "Oh, she's devoted. Not one."

  "Well, if she's devoted doesn't that make another friend for you?"

  It didn't take much computation, but she nevertheless had to think amoment, conscious as she was that he distinctly _would_ want to fillout his notion of her--even a little, as it were, to warm the air forher. That, however--and better early than late--he must accept as of nouse; and she herself felt for an instant quite a competent certainty onthe subject of any such warming. The air, for Milly Theale, was, fromthe very nature of the case, destined never to rid itself of aconsiderable chill. This she could tell him with authority, if shecould tell him nothing else; and she seemed to see now, in short, thatit would importantly simplify. "Yes, it makes another; but they alltogether wouldn't make--well, I don't know what to call it but thedifference. I mean when one is--really alone. I've never seen anythinglike the kindness." She pulled up a minute while he waited--waitedagain 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, asit 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, andjustice was not wronged by her being able presently to stick to herpoint. "Only one's situation is what it is. It's me it concerns. Therest is delightful and useless. Nobody can really help. That's why I'mby myself to-day. I _want_ to be--in spite of Miss Croy, who came withme last. If you can help, so much the better and also of course if onecan, a little, one's self. Except for that--you and me doing ourbest--I like you to see me just as I am. Yes, I like it--and I don'texaggerate. Shouldn't one, at the start, show the worst--so thatanything after that may be better? It wouldn't make any realdifference--it _won't_ make any, anything that may happen won't--to anyone. Therefore I feel myself, this way, with you, just as I am; and--ifyou do in the least care to know--it quite positively bears me up." Sheput it as to his caring to know, because his manner seemed to give herall her chance, and the impression was there for her to take. It wasstrange and deep for her, this impression, and she did, accordingly,take it straight home. It showed him--showed him in spite ofhimself--as allowing, somewhere far within, things comparativelyremote, 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 ofscientific mind--his _being_ the even highest, magnificently becauseotherwise, obviously, it wouldn't be there; but she could at the sametime take it as a direct source of light upon herself, even though thatmight present her a little as pretending to equal him. Wanting to knowmore about a patient than how a patient was constructed or derangedcouldn't be, even on the part of the greatest of doctors, anything butsome form or other of the desire to let the patient down easily. Whenthat was the case the reason, in turn, could only be, too manifestly,pity; and when pity held up its tell-tale face like a head on a pike,in a French revolution, bobbing before a window, what was the inferencebut that the patient was bad? He might say what he would now--she wouldalways have seen the head at the window; and in fact from this momentshe only wanted him to say what he would. He might say it too with thegreater ease to himself as there wasn't one of her divinations that--asher own--he would in any way put himself out for. Finally, if he wasmaking her talk she _was_ talking; and what it could, at any rate, cometo for him was that she wasn't afraid. If he wanted to do the dearestthing in the world for her he would show her he believed she wasn't;which undertaking of hers--not to have misled him--was what she countedat the moment as her presu
mptuous little hint to him that she was asgood 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. Thismade, in their brown old temple of truth, its momentary flicker; thenwhat followed it was that he had her, all the same, in his pocket; andthe whole thing wound up, for that consummation, with its kind dimsmile. Such kindness was wonderful with such dimness; butbrightness--that even of sharp steel--was of course for the other sideof the business, and it would all come in for her in one way oranother. "Do you mean," he asked, "that you've no relations atall?--not a parent, not a sister, not even a cousin nor an aunt?"

  She shook her head as with the easy habit of an interviewed heroine ora freak of nature at a show. "Nobody whatever." But the last thing shehad come for was to be dreary about it. "I'm a survivor--a survivor ofa general wreck. You see," she added, "how that's to be taken intoaccount--that everyone else _has_ gone. When I was ten years old therewere, with my father and my mother, six of us. I'm all that's left. Butthey 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 Imean that makes me worse. However, you'll probably know what it makesme."

  "Yes," he discreetly indulged her; "I know perfectly what it makes you.It makes you, to begin with, a capital case."

  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 only--but as much as youlike. 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 thanin their company. It puts you with plenty of others--and that isn'tpure 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 aninstant 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 theright to be happy. You must make up your mind to it. You must acceptany form in which happiness may come."

  "Oh, I'll accept any whatever!" she almost gaily returned. "And itseems to me, for that matter, that I'm accepting a new one every day.Now _this!"_ she smiled.

  "This is very well so far as it goes. You can depend on me," the greatman said, "for unlimited interest. But I'm only, after all, one elementin fifty. We must gather in plenty of others. Don't mind who knows.Knows, I mean, that you and I are friends."

  "Ah, you do want to see some one!" she broke out. "You want to get atsome one who cares for me." With which, however, as he simply met thisspontaneity in a manner to show that he had often had it from youngpersons of her race, and that he was familiar even with thepossibilities of their familiarity, she felt her freedom rendered vainby his silence, and she immediately tried to think of the mostreasonable thing she could say. This would be, precisely, on thesubject 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'tknow it. I can do exactly what I like--anything in all the wide world.I haven't a creature to ask--there's not a finger to stop me. I canshake about till I'm black and blue. That perhaps isn't _all_ joy; butlots of people, I know, would like to try it." He had appeared about toput a question, but then had let her go on, which she promptly did, forshe understood him the next moment as having thus taken it from herthat her means were as great as might be. She had simply given it tohim so, and this was all that would ever pass between them on theodious head. Yet she couldn't help also knowing that an importanteffect, for his judgment, or at least for his amusement--which was hisfeeling, since, marvellously, he did have feeling--was produced by it.All her little pieces had now then fallen together for him like themorsels of coloured glass that used to make combinations, under thehand, in the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of childhood. "Sothat if it's a question of my doing anything under the sun that willhelp----!"

  "You'll _do_ anything under the sun? Good." He took that beautifully,ever so pleasantly, for what it was worth; but time was needed--tenminutes or so were needed on the spot--to deal even provisionally, withthe substantive question. It was convenient, in its degree, that therewas nothing she wouldn't do; but it seemed also highly and agreeablyvague that she should have to do anything. They thus appeared to betaking her, together, for the moment, and almost for sociability, asprepared to proceed to gratuitous extremities; the upshot of which wasin turn, that after much interrogation, auscultation, exploration, muchnoting of his own sequences and neglecting of hers, had duly kept upthe vagueness, they might have struck themselves, or may at leaststrike us, as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to thenorth pole. Milly was ready, under orders, for the north pole; whichfact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend'sactual abstention from orders. "No," she heard him again distinctlyrepeat 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 bemade clear to you, and let me within a few days come to see you athome."

  It was at first heavenly. "Then you'll see Mrs. Stringham." But shedidn't mind a bit now.

  "Well, I shan't be afraid of Mrs. Stringham." And he said it once moreas she asked once more: "Absolutely not; I 'send' you nowhere.England's all right--anywhere that's pleasant, convenient, decent, willbe all right. You say you can do exactly as you like. Oblige metherefore by being so good as to do it. There's only one thing: youought of course, now, as soon as I've seen you again, to get out ofLondon."

  Milly thought. "May I then go back to the continent?"

  "By all means back to the continent. Do go back to the continent."

  "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 shallfollow you up; though if you mean that I don't want you to keep seeing_me_----"

  "Well?" she asked.

  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 hersomething and would advise her promptly of the date of his coming toher, by which she was virtually dismissed. Yet, for herself, one or twothings kept her. "May I come back to England too?"

  "Rather! Whenever you like. But always, when you do come, immediatelylet me know."

  "Ah," said Milly, "it won't be a great going to and fro."

  "Then if you'll stay with us, so much the better."

  It touched her, the way he controlled his impatience of her; and thefact itself affected her as so precious that she yielded to the wish toget more from it. "So you don't think I'm out of my mind?"

  "Perhaps that _is,"_ he smiled, "all that's the matter."

  She looked at him longer. "No, that's too good. Shall I, at any rate,suffer?"

  "Not a bit."

  "And yet then live?"

  "My dear young lady," said her distinguished friend, "isn't to 'live'exactly what I'm trying to persuade you to take the trouble to do?"

  XIII

  She had gone out with these last words so in her ears that when onceshe was well away--back this time in the great square alone--it was asif some instant application of them had opened out there before her. Itwas positively, this effect, an excitement that carried her on shewent forward into space under the sense of an impulse received--animpulse simple and direct, easy above all to act upon. She was borne upfor 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; notie would have been close enough to enable a companion to walk besideher without some disparity. She literally felt, in this first flush,that her only company must be the human race at large, present allround her, but inspiringly impersonal, and that her only field must be,then and there, the grey immensity of London. Gre
y immensity hadsomehow of a sudden become her element; grey immensity was what herdistinguished friend had, for the moment, furnished her world with andwhat the question of "living," as he put it to her, living by option,by volition, inevitably took on for its immediate face. She wentstraight before her, without weakness, altogether with strength; andstill as she went she was more glad to be alone, for nobody--not KateCroy, not Susan Shepherd either--would have wished to rush with her asshe rushed. She had asked him at the last whether, being on foot, shemight go home so, or elsewhere, and he had replied as if almost amusedagain at her extravagance: "You're active, luckily, by nature--it'sbeautiful: therefore rejoice in it. _Be_ active, without folly--foryou're not foolish: be as active as you can and as you like." That hadbeen in fact the final push, as well as the touch that most made amixture of her consciousness--a strange mixture that tasted at one andthe same time of what she had lost and what had been given her. It waswonderful to her, while she took her random course, that thesequantities felt so equal: she had been treated--hadn't she?--as if itwere in her power to live; and yet one wasn't treated so--wasone?--unless it came up, quite as much, that one might die. The beautyof the bloom had gone from the small old sense of safety--that wasdistinct: she had left it behind her there forever. But the beauty ofthe idea of a great adventure, a big dim experiment or struggle inwhich she might, more responsibly than ever before, take a hand, hadbeen offered her instead. It was as if she had had to pluck off herbreast, to throw away, some friendly ornament, a familiar flower, alittle old jewel, that was part of her daily dress; and to take up andshoulder as a substitute some queer defensive weapon, a musket, aspear, a battle-axe conducive possibly in a higher degree to a strikingappearance, but demanding all the effort of the military posture. Shefelt this instrument, for that matter, already on her back, so that sheproceeded now in very truth as a soldier on a march--proceeded as if,for her initiation, the first charge had been sounded. She passed alongunknown streets, over dusty littery ways, between long rows of frontsnot enhanced by the August light; she felt good for miles and onlywanted to get lost; there were moments at corners, where she stoppedand chose her direction, in which she quite lived up to his injunctionto rejoice that she was active. It was like a new pleasure to have sonew a reason she would affirm, without delay, her option, hervolition taking this personal possession of what surrounded her was afair affirmation to start with; and she really didn't care if she madeit 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 thiswould be nothing either, probably, to wonderments still in store.Wonderments in truth, Milly felt, even now attended her steps: it wasquite as if she saw in people's eyes the reflection of her appearanceand pace. She found herself moving at times in regions visibly nothaunted by odd-looking girls from New York, duskily draped,sable-plumed, all but incongruously shod and gazing about them withextravagance; she might, from the curiosity she clearly excited inbyways, in side-streets peopled with grimy children and costermongerscarts, which she hoped were slums, literally have had her musket on hershoulder, have announced herself as freshly on the warpath. But for thefear of overdoing this character she would here and there have begunconversation, have asked her way; in spite of the fact that, as thatwould help the requirements of adventure, her way was exactly what shewanted not to know. The difficulty was that she at last accidentallyfound it; she had come out, she presently saw, at the Regent's Park,round which, on two or three occasions with Kate Croy, her publicchariot had solemnly rolled. But she went into it further now; this wasthe real thing; the real thing was to be quite away from the pompousroads, well within the centre and on the stretches of shabby grass.Here were benches and smutty sheep; here were idle lads at games ofball, with their cries mild in the thick air; here were wanderers,anxious and tired like herself; here doubtless were hundreds of othersjust in the same box. Their box, their great common anxiety, what wasit, in this grim breathing-space, but the practical question of life?They could live if they would; that is, like herself, they had beentold so; she saw them all about her, on seats, digesting theinformation, feeling it altered, assimilated, recognising it again assomething, in a slightly different shape, familiar enough, the blessedold truth that they would live if they could. All she thus shared withthem made her wish to sit in their company; which she so far did thatshe looked for a bench that was empty, eschewing a still emptier chairthat she saw hard by and for which she would have paid, withsuperiority, a fee.

  The last scrap of superiority had soon enough left her, if only becauseshe before long knew herself for more tired than she had proposed. Thisand the charm, after a fashion, of the situation in itself made herlinger and rest; there was a sort of spell in the sense that nobody inthe world knew where she was. It was the first time in her life thatthis had happened; somebody, everybody appeared to have known before,at every instant of it, where she was; so that she was now suddenlyable to put it to herself that that hadn't been a life. This presentkind of thing therefore might be--which was where precisely herdistinguished friend seemed to be wishing her to come out. He wishedher also, it was true, not to make, as she was perhaps doing now, toomuch of her isolation at the same time however as he clearly desiredto deny her no decent source of interest. He was interested--shearrived at that--in her appealing to as many sources as possible; andit fairly filtered into her, as she sat and sat, that he wasessentially propping her up. Had she been doing it herself she wouldhave called it bolstering--the bolstering that was simply for the weak;and she thought and thought as she put together the proofs that it wasas one of the weak he was treating her. It was of course as one of theweak that she had gone to him--but, oh, with how sneaking a hope thathe might pronounce her, as to all indispensables, a veritable younglioness! What indeed she was really confronted with was theconsciousness that he had not, after all, pronounced her anything: shenursed 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 tothe end?--though, as she weighed the question, she yet felt it a littleunjust. Milly weighed, in this extraordinary hour, questions numerousand strange; but she had, happily, before she moved, worked round to asimplification. Stranger than anything, for instance, was the effect ofits rolling over her that, when one considered it, he might perhapshave "got out" by one door but to come in with a beautiful, beneficentdishonesty by another. It kept her more intensely motionless there thatwhat he might fundamentally be "up to" was some disguised intention ofstanding by her as a friend. Wasn't that what women always said theywanted to do when they deprecated the addresses of gentlemen theycouldn't more intimately go on with? It was what they, no doubt,sincerely fancied they could make of men of whom they couldn't makehusbands. And she didn't even reason that it was, by a similar law, theexpedient of doctors in general for the invalids of whom they couldn'tmake patients: she was somehow so sufficiently aware that _her_ doctorwas--however fatuous it might sound--exceptionally moved. This was thedamning little fact--if she could talk of damnation: that she couldbelieve herself to have caught him in the act of irrelevantly likingher. She hadn't gone to him to be liked, she had gone to him to bejudged; and he was quite a great enough man to be in the habit, as arule, of observing the difference. She could like _him,_ as shedistinctly did--that was another matter; all the more that her doing sowas now, so obviously for herself, compatible with judgment. Yet itwould have been all portentously mixed had not, as we say, a final,merciful wave, chilling rather, but washing clear, come to herassistance.

  It came, of a sudden, when all other thought was spent. She had beenasking herself why, if her case was grave--and she knew what she meantby that--he should have talked to her at all about what she might withfutility "do"; or why on the other hand, if it were light, he shouldattach an importance to the office of friendship. She had him, with herlittle lonely acuteness--as acuteness went during the dog-days in theRegent's Park--in a cleft stick: she either mattered, and then she wasill; or she didn't m
atter, and then she was well enough. Now he was"acting," as they said at home, as if she did matter--until he shouldprove the contrary. It was too evident that a person at his highpressure must keep his inconsistencies, which were probably his highestamusements, only for the very greatest occasions. Her prevision, infine, of just where she should catch him furnished the light of thatjudgment in which we describe her as daring to indulge. And thejudgment it was that made her sensation simple. He _had_ distinguishedher--that was the chill. He hadn't known--how could he?--that she wasdevilishly subtle, subtle exactly in the manner of the suspected, thesuspicious, the condemned. He in fact confessed to it, in his way, asto an interest in her combinations, her funny race, her funny losses,her funny gains, her funny freedom, and, no doubt, above all, her funnymanners--funny, like those of Americans at their best, without beingvulgar, legitimating amiability and helping to pass it off. In hisappreciation of these redundancies he dressed out for her thecompassion he so signally permitted himself to waste; but its operationfor herself was as directly divesting, denuding, exposing. It reducedher to her ultimate state, which was that of a poor girl with her rentto pay for example--staring before her in a great city. Milly had herrent to pay, her rent for her future; everything else but how to meetit fell away from her in pieces, in tatters. This was the sensation thegreat man had doubtless not purposed. Well, she must go home, like thepoor girl, and see. There might after all be ways; the poor girl toowould be thinking. It came back for that matter perhaps to viewsalready presented. She looked about her again, on her feet, at herscattered, melancholy comrades--some of them so melancholy as to bedown on their stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrowing;she saw once more, with them, those two faces of the question betweenwhich there was so little to choose for inspiration. It was perhapssuperficially more striking that one could live if one would; but itwas more appealing, insinuating, irresistible, in short, that one wouldlive if one could.

  She found after this, for the day or two, more amusement than she hadventured to count on in the fact, if it were not a mere fancy, ofdeceiving Susie; and she presently felt that what made the differencewas the mere fancy--as this _was_ one--of a countermove to her greatman. His taking on himself--should he do so--to get at her companionmade her suddenly, she held, irresponsible, made any notion of her ownall right for her; though indeed at the very moment she invited herselfto enjoy this impunity she became aware of new matter for surprise, orat least for speculation. Her idea would rather have been that Mrs.Stringham would have looked at her hard--her sketch of the grounds ofher long, independent excursion showing, she could feel, as almostcynically superficial. Yet the dear woman so failed, in the event, toavail herself of any right of criticism that it was sensibly tempting,for an hour, to wonder 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 wouldhave called the straight tip? It must immediately be mentioned,however, that, quite apart from a remembrance of the distinctness ofKate's promise, Milly, the next thing, found her explanation in a truththat had the merit of being general. If Susie, at this crisis,suspiciously spared her, it was really that Susie was alwayssuspiciously sparing her--yet occasionally, too, with portentous andexceptional mercies. The girl was conscious of how she dropped at timesinto inscrutable, impenetrable deferences--attitudes that, thoughwithout at all intending it, made a difference for familiarity, for theease of intimacy. It was as if she recalled herself to manners, to thelaw of court-etiquette--which last note above all helped our youngwoman to a just appreciation. It was definite for her, even if notquite solid, that to treat her as a princess was a positive need of hercompanion's mind; wherefore she couldn't help it if this lady had hertranscendent view of the way the class in question were treated. Susanhad read history, had read Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon she hadhigh-lights as to the special allowances made for the class, and, sinceshe saw them, when young, as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironicand infinitely refined, one must take it for amusing if she inclined toan indulgence verily Byzantine. If one _could_ only beByzantine!--wasn't _that_ what she insidiously led one on to sigh?Milly tried to oblige her--for it really placed Susan herself sohandsomely to be Byzantine now. The great ladies of that race--it wouldbe somewhere in Gibbon--weren't, apparently, questioned about theirmysteries. But oh, poor Milly and hers! Susan at all events provedscarce more inquisitive than if she had been a mosaic at Ravenna. Susanwas a porcelain monument to the odd moral that consideration might,like cynicism, have abysses. Besides, the Puritan finallydisencumbered----! What starved generations wasn't Mrs. Stringham, infancy, going to make up for?

  Kate Croy came straight to the hotel--came that evening shortly beforedinner; specifically and publicly moreover, in a hansom that, drivenapparently very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost with theclatter of an accident, a "smash." Milly, alone, as happened, in thegreat garnished void of their sitting-room, where, a little, really,like a caged Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer,long-drawn, almost sinister delay of night, an effect she yetliked--Milly, at the sound, one of the French windows standing open,passed out to the balcony that overhung, with pretensions, the generalentrance, and so was in time for the look that Kate, alighting, payingher cabman, happened to send up to the front. The visitor moreover hada shilling back to wait for, during which Milly, from the balcony,looked down at her, and a mute exchange, but with smiles and nods, tookplace between them on what had occurred in the morning. It was whatKate had called for, and the tone was thus, almost by accident,determined for Milly before her friend came up. What was also, however,determined for her was, again, yet irrepressibly again, that the imagepresented to her, the splendid young woman who looked so particularlyhandsome in impatience, with the fine freedom of her signal, was thepeculiar property of somebody else's vision, that this fine freedom inshort was the fine freedom she showed Mr. Densher. Just so was how shelooked to him, and just so was how Milly was held by her--held as bythe strange sense of seeing through that distant person's eyes. Itlasted, as usual, the strange sense, but fifty seconds; yet in solasting it produced an effect. It produced in fact more than one, andwe take them in their order. The first was that it struck our youngwoman as absurd to say that a girl's looking so to a man could possiblybe without connections; and the second was that by the time Kate hadgot into the room Milly was in mental possession of the main connectionit must have for herself.

  She produced this commodity on the spot--produced it, that is, instraight response to Kate's frank "Well, what?" The inquiry bore ofcourse, with Kate's eagerness, on the issue of the morning's scene, thegreat man's latest wisdom, and it doubtless affected Milly a little asthe cheerful demand for news is apt to affect troubled spirits whennews is not, in one of the neater forms, prepared for delivery. Shecouldn't have said what it was exactly that, on the instant, determinedher; the nearest description of it would perhaps have been as the morevivid impression of all her friend took for granted. The contrastbetween this free quantity and the maze of possibilities through which,for hours, she had herself been picking her way, put on, in short, forthe moment, a grossness that even friendly forms scarce lightened: ithelped forward in fact the revelation to herself that she absolutelyhad nothing to tell. Besides which, certainly, there was somethingelse--an influence, at the particular juncture, still more obscure.Kate had lost, on the way upstairs, the look--_the_ look--that made heryoung hostess so subtly think and one of the signs of which was thatshe never kept it for many moments at once; yet she stood there, nonethe less, so in her bloom and in her strength, so completely again the"handsome girl" beyond all others, the "handsome girl" for whom Millyhad at first gratefully taken her, that to meet her now with the noteof the plaintive would amount somehow to a surrender, to a confession._She_ would never in her life be ill; the greatest doctor would keepher, at the worst, the fewest minutes; and it was as if she had askedjust _with_ all this practical impeccability for all th
at was mostmortal in her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly danced theirdance; but the vibration produced and the dust kicked up had lastedless than our account of them. Almost before she knew it she wasanswering, and answering, beautifully, with no consciousness of fraud,only as with a sudden flare of the famous "will-power" she had heardabout, read about, and which was what her medical adviser had mainlythrown her back on. "Oh, it's all right. He's lovely."

  Kate was splendid, and it would have been clear for Milly now, had thefurther presumption been 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, forour young woman, was that she felt it, as soon as spoken, to have donesomething for her safety.

  And Kate really hung on her lips. "There's nothing at all the matter?"

  "Nothing to worry about. I shall take a little watching, but I shan'thave to do anything dreadful, or even, in the least, inconvenient. Ican do in fact as I like." It was wonderful for Milly how just to putit so made all its pieces fall at present quite properly into places.

  Yet even before the full effect came Kate had seized, kissed, blessedher. "My love, you're too sweet! It's too dear! But it's as I wassure." Then she grasped the full beauty. "You can do as you like?"

  "Quite. Isn't it charming?"

  "Ah, but catch you," Kate triumphed with gaiety, _"not_ doing----! Andwhat _shall_ you do?"

  "For the moment simply enjoy it. Enjoy"--Milly was completelyluminous--"having got out of my scrape."

  "Learning, you mean, so easily, that you _are_ well."

  It was as if Kate had but too conveniently put the words into hermouth. "Learning, I mean, so easily, that I _am_ well."

  "Only, no one's of course well enough to stay in London now. He can't,"Kate went on, "want this of you."

  "Mercy, no--I'm to knock about. I'm to go to places."

  "But not beastly 'climates'--Engadines, Rivieras, boredoms?"

  "No; just, as I say, where I prefer. I'm to go in for pleasure."

  "Oh, the duck!"--Kate, with her own shades of familiarity, abounded."But what kind of pleasure?"

  "The highest," Milly smiled.

  Her friend met it as nobly. "Which is the highest?"

  "Well, it's just our chance to find out. You must help me."

  "What have I wanted to do but help you," Kate asked, "from the moment Ifirst laid eyes on you?" Yet with this too Kate had her wonder. "I likeyour talking, though, about that. What help, with your luck all round,do you want?"

  XIV

  Milly indeed at last couldn't say; so that she had really for the timebrought it along to the point so oddly marked for her by her visitor'sarrival, the truth that she was enviably strong. She carried this out,from that evening, for each hour still left her, and the more easilyperhaps that the hours were now narrowly numbered. All she actuallywaited for was Sir Luke Strett's promised visit; as to her proceedingon which, however, her mind was quite made up. Since he wanted to getat Susie he should have the freest access, and then perhaps he wouldsee how he liked it. What was between _them_ they might settle asbetween them, and any pressure it should lift from her own spirit theywere at liberty to convert to their use. If the dear man wished to fireSusan Shepherd with a still higher ideal, he would only after all, atthe worst, have Susan on his hands. If devotion, in a word, was what itwould come up for the interested pair to organise, she was herselfready to consume it as the dressed and served dish. He had talked toher of her "appetite" her account of which, she felt, must have beenvague. But for devotion, she could now see, this appetite would be ofthe best. Gross, greedy, ravenous--these were doubtless the propernames for her: she was at all events resigned in advance to themachinations of sympathy. The day that followed her lonely excursionwas to be the last but two or three of their stay in London and theevening of that day practically ranked for them as, in the matter ofoutside relations, the last of all. People were by this time quitescattered, 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, theselatter, more especially, of Mrs. Lowder's immediate circle or asmembers of Lord Mark's--our friends being by this time able to make thedistinction. The general pitch had thus, decidedly, dropped, and theoccasions still to be dealt with were special and few. One of these,for Milly, announced itself as the doctor's call already mentioned, asto which she had now had a note from him: the single other, ofimportance, was their appointed leave-taking--for the shortestseparation--in respect to Mrs. Lowder and Kate. The aunt and the niecewere to dine with them alone, intimately and easily--as easily asshould be consistent with the question of their afterwards going ontogether to some absurdly belated party, at which they had had it fromAunt Maud that they would do well to show. Sir Luke was to make hisappearance on the morrow of this, and in respect to that complicationMilly had already her plan.

  The night was, at all events, hot and stale, and it was late enough bythe time the four ladies had been gathered in, for their small session,at the hotel, where the windows were still open to the high balconiesand the flames of the candles, behind the pink shades--disposed as forthe vigil of watchers--were motionless in the air in which the seasonlay dead. What was presently settled among them was that Milly, whobetrayed on this occasion a preference more marked than usual, shouldnot 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 herand await their return. It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to send SusanShepherd forth; she saw her go with complacency, liked, as it were, toput people off with her, and noted with satisfaction, when she so movedto the carriage, the further denudation--a markedly ebbing tide--of herlittle 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 newAmerican girl herself, nothing could better indicate the range of thatlady's merit than the spirit in which--as at the present hour forinstance--she made the best of the minor advantage. And she did thiswith a broad, cheerful absence of illusion she did it--confessing evenas much to poor Susie--because, frankly, she _was_ good-natured. WhenMrs. Stringham observed that her own light was too abjectly borrowedand that it was as a link alone, fortunately not missing, that she wasvalued, Aunt Maud concurred to the extent of the remark: "Well, mydear, you're better than nothing." To-night, furthermore, it came upfor Milly that Aunt Maud had something particular in mind. Mrs.Stringham, before adjourning with her, had gone off for some shawl orother accessory, and Kate, as if a little impatient for theirwithdrawal, had wandered out to the balcony, where she hovered, for thetime, unseen, though with scarce more to look at than the dim Londonstars and the cruder glow, up the street, on a corner, of a smallpublic-house, in front of which a fagged cab-horse was thrown intorelief. Mrs. Lowder made use of the moment: Milly felt as soon as shehad spoken that what she was doing was somehow for use.

  "Dear Susan tells me that you saw, in America, Mr. Densher--whom I'venever till now, as you may have noticed, asked you about. But do youmind at last, in connection with him, doing something for me?" She hadlowered her fine voice to a depth, though speaking with all her richglibness; and Milly, after a small sharpness of surprise, was alreadyguessing the sense of her appeal. "Will you name him, in any way youlike, to _her"_--and Aunt Maud gave a nod at the window; "so that youmay perhaps find out whether he's back?"

  Ever so many things, for Milly, fell into line at this; it was awonder, she afterwards thought, that she could be conscious of so manyat once. She smiled hard, however, for them all. "But I don't know thatit's important to me to 'find out.'" The array of things was furtherswollen, however, even as she said this, by its striking her as toomuch to say. She therefore tried as quickly to say less. "Except youmean, of course, that it's important to _you."_ She fancied Aunt Maudwas looking at her almost as hard as she was he
rself smiling, and thatgave her another impulse. "You know I never _have_ yet named him toher; so that if I should break out now----"

  "Well?"--Mrs. Lowder waited.

  "Why, she may wonder what I've been making a mystery of. She hasn'tmentioned him, you know," Milly went on, "herself."

  "No"--her friend a little heavily weighed it--"she wouldn't. So it'sshe, you see then, who has made the mystery."

  Yes, Milly but wanted to see; only there was so much. "There has beenof course no particular reason." Yet that indeed was neither here northere. "Do you think," she asked, "he is back?"

  "It will be about his time, I gather, and rather a comfort to medefinitely to know."

  "Then can't you ask her yourself?"

  "Ah, we never speak of him!"

  It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience of a puzzled pause."Do you mean he's an acquaintance of whom you disapprove for her?"

  Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. "I disapprove of _her_ for the pooryoung man. She doesn't care for him."

  "And _he_ cares so much----?"

  "Too much, too much. And my fear is," said Mrs. Lowder, "that heprivately besets her. She keeps it to herself, but I don't want herworried. Neither, in truth," she both generously and confidentiallyconcluded, "do I want _him."_

  Milly showed all her own effort to meet the case. "But what can _I_ do?"

  "You can find out where they are. If I myself try," Mrs. Lowderexplained, "I shall appear to treat them as if I supposed themdeceiving me."

  "And you don't. You don't," Milly mused for her, "suppose themdeceiving you."

  "Well," said Aunt Maud, whose fine onyx eyes failed to blink, eventhough Milly's questions might have been taken as drawing her ratherfurther than she had originally meant to go--"well, Kate is thoroughlyaware of my views for her, and that I take her being with me, atpresent, in the way she is with me, if you know what I mean, as a loyalassent 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,therefore in short she had been prompted to this step, though shecompleted her sense, but sketchily, with the rattle of her large fan.

  It assisted them perhaps, however, for the moment, that Milly was ableto pick out of her sense what might serve as the clearest part of it."You do like him then?"

  "Oh dear, yes. Don't you?"

  Milly hesitated, for the question was somehow as the sudden point ofsomething sharp on a nerve that winced. She just caught her breath, butshe had ground for joy afterwards, she felt, in not really havingfailed to choose with quickness sufficient, out of fifteen possibleanswers, the one that would best serve her. She was then almost proud,as well, that she had cheerfully smiled. "I did--three times--in NewYork." So came and went for her, in these simple words, the speech thatwas to figure for her, later on, that night, as the one she had everuttered that cost her most. She was to lie awake, at all events, halfthe night, for the gladness of not having taken any line so reallyinferior as the denial of a happy impression.

  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 ofthe racy. "You dear American thing! But people may be very good, andyet not good for what one wants."

  "Yes," the girl assented, "even I suppose when what one wants issomething very good."

  "Oh, my child, it would take too long just now to tell you all _I_want! I want everything at once and together--and ever so much for youtoo, you know. But you've seen us," Aunt Maud continued; "you'll havemade out."

  "Ah," said Milly, "I _don't_ make out"; for again--it came that way inrushes--she felt an obscurity in things. "Why, if our friend heredoesn't like him----"

  "Should I conceive her interested in keeping things from me?" Mrs.Lowder did justice to the question. "My dear, how can you ask? Putyourself in her place. She meets me, but on _her_ terms. Proud youngwomen are proud young women. And proud old ones are--well, what _I_ am.Fond of you as we both are, you can help us."

  Milly tried to be inspired. "Does it come back then to my asking herstraight?"

  At this, however, finally, Aunt Maud threw her up. "Oh, if you've somany reasons not----!"

  "I've not so many," Milly smiled "but I've one. If I break out sosuddenly as knowing him, what will she make of my not having spokenbefore?"

  Mrs. Lowder looked blank at it. "Why should you care what she makes?You may have only been decently discreet."

  "Ah, I _have_ been," the girl made haste to say.

  "Besides," her friend went on, "I suggested to you, through Susan, yourline."

  "Yes, that reason's a reason for _me."_

  "And for _me,"_ Mrs. Lowder insisted. "She's not therefore so stupid asnot to do justice to grounds so marked. You can tell her perfectly thatI had asked you to say nothing."

  "And may I tell her that you've asked me now to speak?"

  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 dowhat I can if you'll kindly tell me one thing more." She faltered alittle--it was so prying; but she brought it out. "Will he have beenwriting to her?"

  "It's exactly, my dear, what I should like to know." Mrs. Lowder was atlast impatient. "Push in for yourself, and I dare say she'll tell you."

  Even now, all the same, Milly had not quite fallen back. "It will bepushing in," she continued to smile, "for _you"_ She allowed hercompanion, however, no time to take this up. "The point will be that ifhe _has_ been writing she may have answered."

  "But what point, you subtle thing, is that?"

  "It isn't subtle, it seems to me, but quite simple," Milly said, "thatif she has answered she has very possibly spoken of me."

  "Very certainly indeed. But what difference will it make?"

  The girl had a moment, at this, of thinking it natural that herinterlocutress herself should so fail of subtlety. "It will make thedifference that he will have written to her in answer that he knows me.And that, in turn," our young woman explained, "will give an oddity tomy own silence."

  "How so, if she's perfectly aware of having given you no opening? Theonly oddity," Aunt Maud lucidly professed, "is for yourself. It's in_her_ not having spoken."

  "Ah, there we are!" said Milly.

  And she had uttered it, evidently, in a tone that struck her friend."Then it _has_ troubled you?"

  But ah, the inquiry had only to be made to bring the rare colour withfine inconsequence, to her face. "Not, really, the least little bit!"And, quickly feeling the need to abound in this sense, she was on thepoint, to cut short, of declaring that she cared, after all, no scraphow much she obliged. Only she felt at this instant too theintervention of still other things. Mrs. Lowder was, in the firstplace, already beforehand, already affected as by the sudden vision ofher having herself pushed too far. Milly could never judge from herface of her uppermost motive--it was so little, in its hard, smoothsheen, that kind of human countenance. She looked hard when she spokefair; the only thing was that when she spoke hard she likewise didn'tlook soft. Something, none the less, had arisen in her now--a fullappreciable tide, entering by the rupture of some bar. She announcedthat if what she had asked was to prove in the least a bore her youngfriend was not to dream of it; making her young friend at the sametime, by the change in her tone, dream on the spot more profusely. Shespoke with a belated light, Milly could apprehend--she could alwaysapprehend--from pity; and the result of that perception, for the girl,was singular: it proved to her as quickly that Kate, keeping hersecret, had been straight with her. From Kate distinctly then, as towhy she was to be pitied, Aunt Maud knew nothing, and was therebysimply putting in evidence the fine side of her own character. Thisfine side was that she could almost at any hour, by a kindledpreference or a diverted energy, glow for another interest than herown. She exclaimed as well, at this moment, that Milly must have beenthinking, round the case, much more than she had supposed; and t
hisremark could, at once, affect the girl as sharply as any other form ofthe charge of weakness. It was what everyone, if she didn't look out,would soon be saying--"There's something the matter with you!" What onewas therefore one's self concerned immediately to establish was thatthere was nothing at all. "I shall like to help you; I shall like, sofar as that goes, to help Kate herself," she made such haste as shecould to declare; her eyes wandering meanwhile across the width of theroom to that dusk of the balcony in which their companion perhaps alittle unaccountably lingered. She suggested hereby her impatience tobegin; she almost overtly wondered at the length of the opportunitythis friend was giving them--referring it, however, so far as wordswent, to the other friend, breaking off with an amused: "Howtremendously Susie must be beautifying!"

  It only marked Aunt Maud, none the less, as too preoccupied for herallusion. The onyx eyes were fixed upon her with a polished pressurethat must signify some enriched benevolence. "Let it go, my dear. Weshall, after all, soon enough see."

  "If he _has_ come back we shall certainly see," Milly after a momentreplied; "for he'll probably feel that he can't quite civilly not cometo see me. Then _there,"_ she remarked, "we shall be. It wouldn't then,you see, come through Kate at all--it would come through him. Except,"she wound up with a smile, "that he won't find me."

  She had the most extraordinary sense of interesting her interlocutress,in spite of herself, more than she wanted; it was as if her doom sofloated her on that she couldn't stop--by very much the same trick ithad played her with her doctor. "Shall you run away from him?"

  She neglected the question, wanting only now to get off. "Then," shewent on, "you'll deal with Kate directly."

  "Shall you run away from _her?"_ Mrs. Lowder profoundly inquired, whilethey became aware of Susie's return through the room, opening outbehind them, in which they had dined.

  This affected Milly as giving her but an instant; and suddenly, withit, everything she felt in the connection rose to her lips in aquestion that, even as she put it, she knew she was failing to keepcolourless. "Is it your own belief that he _is_ with her?"

  Aunt Maud took it in--took in, that is, everything of the tone that shejust wanted her not to; and the result for some seconds, was but tomake their eyes meet in silence. Mrs. Stringham had rejoined them andwas asking if Kate had gone--an inquiry at once answered by this younglady's reappearance. They saw her again in the open window, where,looking at them, she had paused--producing thus, on Aunt Maud's part,almost too impressive a "Hush!" Mrs. Lowder indeed, without loss oftime, smothered any danger in a sweeping retreat with Susie; butMilly's words to her, just uttered, about dealing with her niecedirectly, struck our young woman as already recoiling on herself.Directness, however evaded, would be, fully, for _her;_ nothing in factwould ever have been for her so direct as the evasion. Kate hadremained in the window, very handsome and upright, the outer darkframing in a highly favourable way her summery simplicities andlightnesses of dress. Milly had, given the relation of space, no realfear she had heard their talk; only she hovered there as with consciouseyes and some added advantage. Then indeed, with small delay, herfriend sufficiently saw. The conscious eyes, the added advantage werebut those she had now always at command--those proper to the personMilly knew as known to Merton Densher. It was for several seconds againas if the _total_ of her identity had been that of the person known tohim--a determination having for result another sharpness of its own.Kate had positively but to be there just as she was to tell her he hadcome back. It seemed to pass between them, in fine, without a word,that he was in London, that he was perhaps only round the corner; andsurely therefore no dealing of Milly's with her would yet have been sodirect.

  XV

  It was doubtless because this queer form of directness had in itself,for the hour, seemed so sufficient that Milly was afterwards aware ofhaving really, all the while--during the strange, indescribable sessionbefore the return of their companions--done nothing to intensify it. Ifshe was most aware only afterwards, under the long, discurtained ordealof the morrow's dawn, that was because she had really, till theirevening's end came, ceased, after a little, to miss anything from theirostensible 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 had not passed before Milly quite knew she should havedone nothing Aunt Maud had just asked her. She knew it moreover by muchthe same light that had acted for her with that lady and with Sir LukeStrett. It pressed upon her then and there that she was still in acurrent determined, through her indifference, timidity, bravery,generosity--she scarce could say which--by others; that not she but thecurrent acted, and that somebody else, always, was the keeper of thelock or the dam. Kate for example had but to open the flood-gate: thecurrent moved in its mass--the current, as it had been, of her doing asKate wanted. What, somehow, in the most extraordinary way in the world,_had_ Kate wanted but to be, of a sudden, more interesting than she hadever been? Milly, for their evening then, quite held her breath withthe appreciation of it. If she hadn't been sure her companion wouldhave had nothing, from her moments with Mrs. Lowder, to go by, shewould almost have seen the admirable creature "cutting in" toanticipate a danger. This fantasy indeed, while they sat together,dropped after a little; even if only because other fantasies multipliedand clustered, making fairly, for our young woman, the buoyant mediumin which her friend talked and moved. They sat together, I say, butKate moved as much as she talked; she figured there, restless andcharming, just perhaps a shade perfunctory, repeatedly quitting herplace, taking slowly, to and fro, in the trailing folds of her lightdress, the length of the room, and almost avowedly performing for thepleasure of her hostess.

  Mrs. Lowder had said to Milly at Matcham that she and her niece, asallies, could practically conquer the world; but though it was a speechabout which there had even then been a vague, grand glamour, the girlread into it at present more of an approach to a meaning. Kate, forthat matter, by herself, could conquer anything, and _she,_ MillyTheale, was probably concerned with the "world" only as the small scrapof it that most impinged on her and that was therefore first to bedealt with. On this basis of being dealt with she would doubtlessherself do her share of the conquering: she would have something tosupply, Kate something to take--each of them thus, to that tune,something for squaring with Aunt Maud's ideal. This in short was whatit came to now--that the occasion, in the quiet late lamplight, had thequality of a rough rehearsal of the possible big drama. Milly knewherself dealt with--handsomely, completely: she surrendered to theknowledge, for so it was, she felt, that she supplied her helpfulforce. And what Kate had to take Kate took as freely and, to allappearance, as gratefully; accepting afresh, with each of her long,slow walks, the relation between them so established and consecratingher companion's surrender simply by the interest she gave it. Theinterest to Milly herself we naturally mean; the interest to Kate Millyfelt as probably inferior. It easily and largely came for their presenttalk, for the quick flight of the hour before the breach of thespell--it all came, when considered, from the circumstance, not in theleast abnormal, that the handsome girl was in extraordinary "form."Milly remembered her having said that she was at her best late atnight; remembered it by its having, with its fine assurance, made herwonder when _she_ was at her best and how happy people must be who hadsuch a fixed time. She had no time at all; she was never at herbest--unless indeed it were exactly, as now, in listening, watching,admiring, collapsing. If Kate moreover, quite mercilessly, had neverbeen so good, the beauty and the marvel of it was that she had neverreally been so frank; being a person of such a calibre, as Milly wouldhave said, that, even while "dealing" with you and thereby, as it were,picking her steps, she could let herself go, could, in irony, inconfidence, in extravagance, tell you things she had never told before.That was the impression--that she was telling things, and quiteconceivably for her own relief as well; almost as if the errors ofvision, the mistakes of proportion, the residuary innocence of spiritstill to be remedied on th
e part of her auditor had their moments ofproving too much for her nerves. She went at them just now, thesesources of irritation, with an amused energy that it would have beenopen to Milly to regard as cynical and that was nevertheless calledfor--as to this the other was distinct--by the way that in certainconnections the American mind broke down. It seemed at least--theAmerican mind as sitting there thrilled and dazzled in Milly--not tounderstand English society without a separate confrontation with _all_the cases. It couldn't proceed by--there was some technical term shelacked until Milly suggested both analogy and induction, and then,differently, instinct, none of which were right: it had to be led upand introduced to each aspect of the monster, enabled to walk all roundit, whether for the consequent exaggerated ecstasy or for the stillmore as appeared to this critic disproportionate shock. It might, themonster, Kate conceded, loom large for those born amid forms lessdeveloped and therefore no doubt less amusing; it might on some sidesbe a strange and dreadful monster, calculated to devour the unwary, toabase the proud, to scandalize the good; but if one had to live with itone must, not to be for ever sitting up, learn how: which was virtuallyin short to-night what the handsome girl showed herself as teaching.

  She gave away publicly, in this process, Lancaster Gate and everythingit contained; she gave away, hand over hand, Milly's thrill continuedto note, Aunt Maud and Aunt Maud's glories and Aunt Maud'scomplacencies; she gave herself away most of all, and it was naturallywhat most contributed to her candour. She didn't speak to her friendonce more, in Aunt Maud's strain, of how they could scale the skies;she spoke, by her bright, perverse preference on this occasion, of theneed, in the first place, of being neither stupid nor vulgar. It mighthave been a lesson, for our young American, in the art of seeing thingsas they were--a lesson so various and so sustained that the pupil had,as we have shown, but receptively to gape. The odd thing furthermorewas that it could serve its purpose while explicitly disavowing everypersonal bias. It wasn't that she disliked Aunt Maud, who waseverything she had on other occasions declared; but the dear woman,ineffaceably stamped by inscrutable nature and a dreadful art,wasn't--how _could_ she be?--what she wasn't. She wasn't any one. Shewasn't anything. She wasn't anywhere. Milly mustn't think it--onecouldn't, as a good friend, let her. Those hours at Matcham were_inesperees,_ were pure manna from heaven; or if not wholly thatperhaps, with humbugging old Lord Mark as a backer, were vain as aground for hopes and calculations. Lord Mark was very well, but hewasn't _the_ cleverest creature in England, and even if he had been hestill wouldn't have been the most obliging. He weighed it out inounces, and indeed each of the pair was really waiting for what theother would put down.

  "She has put down _you."_ said Milly, attached to the subject still;"and I think what you mean is that, on the counter, she still keepshold of you."

  "Lest"--Kate took it up--"he should suddenly grab me and run? Oh, as heisn't ready to run, he's much less ready, naturally, to grab. I_am_--you're so far right as that--on the counter, when I'm not in theshop-window; in and out of which I'm thus conveniently, commerciallywhisked: the essence, all of it, of my position, and the price, asproperly, of my aunt's protection." Lord Mark was substantially whatshe had begun with as soon as they were alone; the impression was evenyet with Milly of her having sounded his name, having imposed it, as atopic, in direct opposition to the other name that Mrs. Lowder had leftin the air and that all her own look, as we have seen, kept there atfirst for her companion. The immediate strange effect had been that ofher consciously needing, as it were, an alibi--which, successfully, sheso found. She had worked it to the end, ridden it to and fro across thecourse marked for Milly by Aunt Maud, and now she had quite, so tospeak, broken it in. "The bore is that if she wants him so much--wantshim, heaven forgive her! for _me_--he has put us all out, since yourarrival, by wanting somebody else. I don't mean somebody else than you."

  Milly threw off the charm sufficiently to shake her head. "Then Ihaven't made out who it is. If I'm any part of his alternative he hadbetter stop where he is."

  "Truly, truly?--always, always?"

  Milly tried to insist with an equal gaiety. "Would you like me toswear?"

  Kate appeared for a moment--though that was doubtless but gaietytoo--to think. "Haven't we been swearing enough?"

  "You have perhaps, but I haven't, and I ought to give you theequivalent. At any rate there it is. Truly, truly as you say--'always,always.' So I'm not in the way."

  "Thanks," said Kate--"but that doesn't help me."

  "Oh, it's as simplifying for _him_ that I speak of it."

  "The difficulty really is that he's a person with so many ideas thatit's particularly hard to simplify for him. That's exactly of coursewhat Aunt Maud has been trying. He won't," Kate firmly continued, "makeup his mind about me."

  "Well," Milly smiled, "give him time."

  Her friend met it in perfection. "One is _doing_ that--one _is._ Butone remains, all the same, but one of his ideas."

  "There's no harm in that," Milly returned, "if you come out in the endas the best of them. What's a man," she pursued, "especially anambitious one, without a variety of ideas?"

  "No doubt. The more the merrier." And Kate looked at her grandly. "Onecan but hope to come out, and do nothing to prevent it."

  All of which made for the impression, fantastic or not, of the _alibi._The splendour, the grandeur were, for Milly, the bold ironic spiritbehind it, so interesting too in itself. What, moreover, was not lessinteresting was the fact, as our young woman noted it, that Kateconfined her point to the difficulties, so far as _she_ was concerned,raised only by Lord Mark. She referred now to none that her own tastemight present; which circumstance again played its little part. She wasdoing what she liked in respect to another person, but she was in noway committed to the other person, and her furthermore talking of LordMark as not young and not true were only the signs of her clearself-consciousness, were all in the line of her slightly hard, butscarce the less graceful extravagance. She didn't wish to show too muchher consent to be arranged for, but that was a different thing from notwishing sufficiently to give it. There was something moreover, on itall, that Milly still found occasion to say, "If your aunt has been, asyou tell me, put out by me, I feel that she has remained remarkablykind."

  "Oh, but she has--whatever might have happened in that respect--plentyof use for you! You put her in, my dear, more than you put her out. Youdon't half see it, but she has clutched your petticoat. You can doanything--you can do, I mean, lots that _we_ can't. You're an outsider,independent and standing by yourself; you're not hideously relative totiers and tiers of others." And Kate, facing in that direction, wentfurther and further; wound up, while Milly gaped, with extraordinarywords. "We're of no use to you--it's decent to tell you. You'd be ofuse to us, but that's a different matter. My honest advice to you wouldbe--" she went indeed all lengths--"to drop us while you can. It wouldbe funny if you didn't soon see how awfully better you can do. We'venot really done for you the least thing worth speaking of--nothing youmightn't easily have had in some other way. Therefore you're under noobligation. 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 dreadfullyfor poor Mrs. Stringham's having let you in. She has the bestconscience in the world; she's enchanted with what she has done; butyou shouldn't take your people from _her._ It has been quite awful tosee you do it."

  Milly tried to be amused, so as not--it was too absurd--to be fairlyfrightened. Strange enough indeed--if not natural enough--that, late atnight thus, in a mere mercenary house, with Susie away, a want ofconfidence should possess her. She recalled, with all the rest of it,the next day, piecing things together in the dawn, that she had feltherself alone with a creature who paced like a panther. That was aviolent image, but it made her a little less ashamed of having beenscared. For all her scare, none the less, she had now the sense to findwords. "And yet without Susie I shouldn't have had you."

  It had been at this point, however, that Kate flicke
red highest. "Oh,you may very well loathe me yet!"

  Really at last, thus, it had been too much; as, with her own leastfeeble flare, after a wondering watch, Milly had shown. She hadn'tcared; she had too much wanted to know; and, though a small solemnityof reproach, a sombre strain, had broken into her tone, it was tofigure as her nearest approach to serving Mrs. Lowder. "Why do you saysuch things to me?"

  This unexpectedly had acted, by a sudden turn of Kate's attitude, as ahappy speech. She had risen as she spoke, and Kate had stopped beforeher, shining at her instantly with a softer brightness. Poor Millyhereby enjoyed one of her views of how people, wincing oddly, wereoften touched by her. "Because you're a dove." With which she feltherself ever so delicately, so considerately, embraced; not withfamiliarity or as a liberty taken, but almost ceremonially and in themanner of an accolade; partly as if, though a dove who could perch on afinger, 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, thatthis form, this cool pressure, fairly sealed the sense of what Kate hadjust said. It was moreover, for the girl, like an inspiration: shefound herself accepting as the right one, while she caught her breathwith relief, the name so given her. She met it on the instant as shewould have met the revealed truth; it lighted up the strange dusk inwhich 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 becameaware of the sound, outside, of the return of their friends. There was,the next thing, little enough doubt about it after Aunt Maud had beentwo minutes in the room. She had come up, Mrs. Lowder, withSusan--which she needn't have done, at that hour, instead of lettingKate come down to her; so that Milly could be quite sure it was tocatch hold, in some way, of the loose end they had left. Well, the wayshe did catch was simply to make the point that it didn't now in theleast matter. She had mounted the stairs for this, and she had hermoment again with her younger hostess while Kate, on the spot, as thelatter at the time noted, gave Susan Shepherd unwonted opportunities.Kate was in other words, as Aunt Maud engaged her friend, listeningwith the handsomest response to Mrs. Stringham's impression of thescene they had just quitted. It was in the tone of the fondestindulgence--almost, really, that of dove cooing to dove--that Mrs.Lowder expressed to Milly the hope that it had all gone beautifully.Her "all" had an ample benevolence; it soothed and simplified; shespoke as if it were the two young women, not she and her comrade, whohad been facing the town together. But Milly's answer had prepareditself while Aunt Maud was on the stair; she had felt in a rush all thereasons that would make it the most dovelike; and she gave it, whileshe was about it, as earnest, as candid. "I don't _think,_ dear lady,he's here."

  It gave her straightway the measure of the success she could have as adove: that was recorded in the long look of deep criticism, a lookwithout a word, that Mrs. Lowder poured forth. And the word, presently,bettered it still. "Oh, you exquisite thing!" The luscious innuendo ofit, almost startling, lingered in the room, after the visitors hadgone, like an oversweet fragrance. But left alone with Mrs. StringhamMilly continued to breathe it: she studied again the dovelike and soset her companion to mere rich reporting that she averted all inquiryinto her own case.

  That, with the new day, was once more her law--though she saw beforeher, of course, as something of a complication, her need, each time, todecide. She should have to be clear as to how a dove _would_ act. Shesettled it, she thought, well enough this morning by quite readoptingher plan in respect to Sir Luke Strett. That, she was pleased toreflect, had originally been pitched in the key of a merely iridescentdrab; and although Mrs. Stringham, after breakfast, began by staring atit as if it had been a priceless Persian carpet suddenly unrolled ather feet, she had no scruple, at the end of five minutes, in leavingher to make the best of it. "Sir Luke Strett comes, by appointment, tosee 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 will like that, this time,better. So do be nice to him." It had taken, naturally, moreexplanation, and the mention, above all, of the fact that the visitorwas the greatest of doctors; yet when once the key had been offeredSusie slipped it on her bunch, and her young friend could again feelher 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 heavyonce more with the extravagance of assent. It might, afresh, almosthave 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 bespared her? It was as if they were helping her to take it out on thespot. Susie--she couldn't deny, and didn't pretend to--might, of atruth, 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 thereas well; and the proposal now made her what was it in short butByzantine? The vision of Milly's perception of the propriety of thematter had, at any rate, quickly engulfed, so far as her attitude wasconcerned, any surprise and any shock; so that she only desired, thenext thing, perfectly to possess the facts. Milly could easily speak,on this, as if there were only one: she made nothing of such another asthat she had felt herself menaced. The great fact, in fine, was thatshe _knew_ him to desire just now, more than anything else, to meet,quite apart, some one interested in her. Who therefore so interested asher faithful Susan? The only other circumstance that, by the time shehad quitted her friend, she had treated as worth mentioning was thecircumstance of her having at first intended to keep quiet. She hadoriginally best seen herself as sweetly secretive. As to that she hadchanged, and her present request was the result. She didn't say why shehad changed, but she trusted her faithful Susan. Their visitor wouldtrust her not less, and she herself would adore their visitor. Moreoverhe wouldn't--the girl felt sure--tell her anything dreadful. The worstwould be that he was in love and that he needed a confidant to work it.And now she was going to the National Gallery.

  XVI

  The idea of the National Gallery had been with her from the moment ofher hearing from Sir Luke Strett about his hour of coming. It had beenin her mind as a place so meagrely visited, as one of the places thathad seemed at home one of the attractions of Europe and one of itshighest aids to culture, but that--the old story--the typical frivolousalways ended by sacrificing to vulgar pleasures. She had had perfectly,at those whimsical moments on the Bruenig, the half-shamed sense ofturning her back on such opportunities for real improvement as hadfigured to her, from of old, in connection with the continental tour,under the general head of "pictures and things"; and now she knew forwhat she had done so. The plea had been explicit--she had done so forlife, as opposed to learning; the upshot of which had been that lifewas now beautifully provided for. In spite of those few dips and dashesinto the many-coloured stream of history for which of late Kate Croyhad helped her to find time, there were possible great chances she hadneglected, possible great moments she should, save for to-day, have allbut missed. She might still, she had felt, overtake one or two of themamong the Titians and the Turners; she had been honestly nursing thehour, and, once she was in the benignant halls, her faith knew itselfjustified. It was the air she wanted and the world she would nowexclusively choose; the quiet chambers, nobly overwhelming, rich butslightly veiled, opened out round her and made her presently say "If Icould lose myself _here!"_ There were people, people in plenty, but,admirably, no personal question. It was immense, outside, the personalquestion but she had blissfully left it outside, and the nearest itcame, for a quarter of an hour, to glimmering again into sight was whenshe watched for a little one of the more earnest of the lady-copyists.Two or three in particular, spectacled, aproned, absorbed, engaged hersympathy to an absurd extent, seemed to show her for the time the rightway to live. She should have been a lady copyist--it met so the case.The case was the case of escape, of living under water, of being atonce impersonal and firm. There it was before one--one had onl
y tostick and stick.

  Milly yielded to this charm till she was almost ashamed; she watchedthe lady-copyists till she found herself wondering what would bethought by others of a young woman, of adequate aspect, who shouldappear to regard them as the pride of the place. She would have likedto talk to them, to get, as it figured to her, into their lives, andwas deterred but by the fact that she didn't quite see herself aspurchasing imitations and yet feared she might excite the expectationof purchase. She really knew before long that what held her was themere refuge, that something within her was after all too weak for theTurners and Titians. They joined hands about her in a circle too vast,though a circle that a year before she would only have desired totrace. They were truly for the larger, not for the smaller life, thelife of which the actual pitch, for example, was an interest, theinterest of compassion, in misguided efforts. She marked absurdly herlittle stations, blinking, in her shrinkage of curiosity, at theglorious walls, yet keeping an eye on vistas and approaches, so thatshe shouldn't be flagrantly caught. The vistas and approaches drew herin this way from room to room, and she had been through many parts ofthe show, as she supposed, when she sat down to rest. There were chairsin scant clusters, places from which one could gaze. Milly indeed atpresent fixed her eyes more than elsewhere on the appearance, first,that she couldn't quite, after all, have accounted to an examiner forthe order of her "schools," and then on that of her being more tiredthan she had meant, in spite of her having been so much lessintelligent. They found, her eyes, it should be added, other occupationas well, which she let them freely follow: they rested largely, in hervagueness, on the vagueness of other visitors; they attached themselvesin especial, with mixed results, to the surprising stream of hercompatriots. She was struck with the circumstance that the greatmuseum, early in August, was haunted with these pilgrims, as also withthat of her knowing them from afar, marking them easily, each and all,and recognising not less promptly that they had ever new lights forher--new lights on their own darkness. She gave herself up at last, andit was a consummation like another: what she should have come to theNational Gallery for to-day would be to watch the copyists and reckonthe Baedekers. That perhaps was the moral of a menaced state ofhealth--that one would sit in public places and count the Americans. Itpassed the time in a manner; but it seemed already the second line ofdefence, and this notwithstanding the pattern, so unmistakable, of hercountry-folk. They were cut out as by scissors, coloured, labelled,mounted; but their relation to her failed to act--they somehow didnothing for her. Partly, no doubt, they didn't so much as notice orknow 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 thus--for her humour could still play--that shedidn't seem then the same success with them as with the inhabitants ofLondon, who had taken her up on scarce more of an acquaintance. Shecould wonder if they would be different should she go back with thatglamour attached; and she could also wonder, if it came to that,whether she should ever go back. Her friends straggled past, at anyrate, in all the vividness of their absent criticism, and she had evenat last the sense of taking a mean advantage. There was a finerinstant, however, at which three ladies, clearly a mother anddaughters, had paused before her under compulsion of a commentapparently just uttered by one of them and referring to some object onthe other side of the room. Milly had her back to the object, but herface very much to her young compatriot, the one who had spoken and inwhose 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 knowthe answer in class; she felt, like the schoolboy, guiltyenough--questioned, as honour went, as to her right so to possess, todispossess, people who hadn't consciously provoked her. She would havebeen able to say where they lived, and how, had the place and the waybeen but amenable to the positive; she bent tenderly, in imagination,over marital, paternal Mr. Whatever-he-was, at home, eternally named,with all the honours and placidities, but eternally unseen and existingonly as some one who could be financially heard from. The mother, thepuffed and composed whiteness of whose hair had no relation to herapparent age, showed a countenance almost chemically clean and dry; hercompanions wore an air of vague resentment humanised by fatigue; andthe three were equally adorned with short cloaks of coloured clothsurmounted by little tartan hoods. The tartans were doubtlessconceivable as different, but the cloaks, curiously, only thinkable asone. "Handsome? Well, if you choose to say so." It was the mother whohad spoken, who herself added, after a pause during which Milly tookthe reference as to a picture: "In the English style." The three pairof eyes had converged, and their possessors had for an instant rested,with the effect of a drop of the subject, on this lastcharacterisation--with that, too, of a gloom not less mute in one ofthe daughters than murmured in the other. Milly's heart went out tothem while they turned their backs; she said to herself that they oughtto have known her, that there was something between them they mighthave beautifully put together. But she had lost _them_ also--they werecold; they left her in her weak wonder as to what they had been lookingat. The "handsome" disposed her to turn--all the more that the "Englishstyle" would be the English school, which she liked; only she saw,before moving, by the array on the side facing her, that she was infact among small Dutch pictures. The action of this was againappreciable--the dim surmise that it wouldn't then be by a picture thatthe spring in the three ladies had been pressed. It was at all eventstime she should go, and she turned as she got on her feet. She had hadbehind her one of the entrances and various visitors who had come inwhile she sat, visitors single and in pairs--by one of the former ofwhom she felt her eyes suddenly held.

  This was a gentleman in the middle of the place, a gentleman who hadremoved his hat and was for a moment, while he glanced, absently, asshe could see, at the top tier of the collection, tapping his foreheadwith his pocket-handkerchief. The occupation held him long enough togive Milly time to take for granted--and a few seconds sufficed--thathis face was the object just observed by her friends. This could onlyhave been because she concurred in their tribute, even qualified, andindeed "the English style" of the gentleman--perhaps by instantcontrast to the American--was what had had the arresting power. Thisarresting power, at the same time--and that was the marvel--had alreadysharpened almost to pain, for in the very act of judging the bared headwith detachment she felt herself shaken by a knowledge of it. It wasMerton Densher's own, and he was standing there, standing long enoughunconscious for her to fix him and then hesitate. These successionswere swift, so that she could still ask herself in freedom if she hadbest let him see her. She could still reply to that that she shouldn'tlike him to catch her in the effort to prevent this; and she mightfurther have decided that he was too preoccupied to see anything hadnot a perception intervened that surpassed the first in violence. Shewas unable to think afterwards how long she had looked at him beforeknowing herself as otherwise looked at; all she was coherently to puttogether was that she had had a second recognition without his havingnoticed her. The source of this latter shock was nobody less than KateCroy--Kate Croy who was suddenly also in the line of vision and whoseeyes met her eyes at their next movement. Kate was but two yardsoff--Mr. Densher wasn't alone. Kate's face specifically said so, forafter a stare as blank at first as Milly's it broke into a far smile.That was what, wonderfully--in addition to the marvel of theirmeeting--passed from her for Milly; the instant reduction to easy termsof the fact of their being there, the two young women, together. It wasperhaps only afterwards that the girl fully felt the connection betweenthis touch and her already established conviction that Kate was aprodigious person yet on the spot she none the less, in a degree, knewherself handled and again, as she had been the night before, dealtwith--absolutely even dealt with for her greater pleasure. A minute infine hadn't elapsed before Kate had somehow made her provisionally takeeverything as natural. The provisional was just the charm--acquiringthat char
acter from one moment to the other; it represented happily somuch that Kate would explain on the very first chance. This leftmoreover--and that was the greatest wonder--all due margin foramusement at the way things happened, the monstrous oddity of theirturning up in such a place on the very heels of their having separatedwithout allusion to it. The handsome girl was thus literally in controlof the scene by the time Merton Densher was ready to exclaim with ahigh flush, or a vivid blush--one didn't distinguish the embarrassmentfrom the joy--"Why, Miss Theale: fancy!" and "Why, Miss Theale: whatluck!"

  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 hehad looked at her with a question. He had looked and he was lookingonly at Milly herself, ever so pleasantly and considerately--she scarceknew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, allthe same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. Thepredicament of course wasn't definite or phraseable--and the way theylet all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as acharacteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it forgranted, insistently, with a small private flare of passion, becausethe one thing she could think of to do for him was to show him how sheeased him off. She would really, tired and nervous, have been muchdisconcerted, were it not that the opportunity in question had savedher. It was what had saved her most, what had made her, after the firstfew seconds, almost as brave for Kate as Kate was for her, had made heronly ask herself what their friend would like of her. That he was atthe end of three minutes, without the least complicated reference, sosmoothly "their" friend was just the effect of their all beingsublimely civilised. The flash in which he saw this was, for Milly,fairly inspiring--to that degree in fact that she was even now, on sucha plane, yearning to be supreme. It took, no doubt, a big dose ofinspiration to treat as not funny--or at least as not unpleasant--theanomaly, for Kate, that _she_ knew their gentleman, and for herself,that Kate was spending the morning with him; but everything continuedto make for this after Milly had tasted of her draught. She was towonder in subsequent reflection what in the world they had actuallysaid, since they had made such a success of what they didn't say; thesweetness of the draught for the time, at any rate, was to feel successassured. What depended on this for Mr. Densher was all obscurity toher, and she perhaps but invented the image of his need as a short cutto service. Whatever were the facts, their perfect manners, all round,saw them through. The finest part of Milly's own inspiration, it mayfurther be mentioned, was the quick perception that what would be ofmost service was, so to speak, her own native wood-note. She had longbeen conscious with shame for her thin blood, or at least for her pooreconomy, of her unused margin as an American girl--closely indeed as,in English air, the text might appear to cover the page. She still hadreserves of spontaneity, if not of comicality; so that all this cash inhand could now find employment. She became as spontaneous as possibleand as American as it might conveniently appeal to Mr. Densher, afterhis travels, to find her. She said things in the air, and yet flatteredherself that she struck him as saying them not in the tone of agitationbut in the tone of New York. In the tone of New York agitation wasbeautifully discounted, and she had now a sufficient view of how muchit might accordingly help her.

  The help was fairly rendered before they left the place; when herfriends presently accepted her invitation to adjourn with her toluncheon at her hotel, it was in the Fifth Avenue that the meal mighthave waited. Kate had never been there so straight, but Milly was atpresent taking her; and if Mr. Densher had been he had at least neverhad to come so fast. She proposed it as the natural thing--proposed itas the American girl; and she saw herself quickly justified by the paceat which she was followed. The beauty of the case was that to do it allshe had only to appear to take Kate's hint. This had said, in its finefirst smile, "Oh yes, our look is queer--but give me time;" and theAmerican girl could give time as nobody else could. What Milly thusgave she therefore made them take--even if, as they might surmise, itwas rather more than they wanted. In the porch of the museum sheexpressed her preference for a four-wheeler; they would take theircourse in that guise precisely to multiply the minutes. She was morethan ever justified by the positive charm that her spirit imparted evento their use of this conveyance; and she touched her highestpoint--that is, certainly, for herself--as she ushered her companionsinto the presence of Susie. Susie was there with luncheon, with herreturn, in prospect; and nothing could now have filled her ownconsciousness more to the brim than to see this good friend take in howlittle she was abjectly anxious. The cup itself actually offered tothis good friend might in truth well be startling, for it was composedbeyond question of ingredients oddly mixed. She caught Susie fairlylooking at her as if to know whether she had brought in guests to hearSir Luke Strett's report. Well, it was better her companion should havetoo much than too little to wonder about; she had come out "anyway," asthey said at home, for the interest of the thing; and interest trulysat in her eyes. Milly was none the less, at the sharpest crisis, alittle sorry for her; she could of necessity extract from the odd sceneso comparatively little of a soothing secret. She saw Mr. Denshersuddenly popping up, but she saw nothing else that had happened. Shesaw in the same way her young friend indifferent to her young friend'sdoom, and she lacked what would explain it. The only thing to keep herin 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 Millyherself in patience. It had in fact for our young woman a positivebeauty--was so marked as a deviation from the handsome girl's previouscourses. Susie had been a bore to the handsome girl, and the change wasnow suggestive. The two sat together, after they had risen from table,in the apartment in which they had lunched, making it thus easy for theother guest and his entertainer to sit in the room adjacent. This, forthe 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 thatsaid practically everything. It didn't perhaps altogether say why shehad 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, theprobabilities fell back into their order. Merton Densher was in love,and Kate couldn't help it--could only be sorry and kind: wouldn't that,without wild flurries, cover everything? Milly at all events tried itas a cover, tried it hard, for the time; pulled it over her, in thefront, the larger room, drew it up to her chin with energy. If itdidn't, so treated, do everything for her, it did so much that shecould herself supply the rest. She made that up by the interest of hergreat question, the question of whether, seeing him once more, with allthat, as she called it to herself, had come and gone, her impression ofhim would be different from the impression received in New York. Thathad held her from the moment of their leaving the museum; it kept hercompany through their drive and during luncheon and now that she was aquarter of an hour alone with him it became acute. She was to feel atthis crisis that no clear, no common answer, no direct satisfaction onthis point, was to reach her; she was to see her question itself simplygo to pieces. She couldn't tell if he were different or not, and shedidn't know nor care if _she_ were: these things had ceased to matterin the light of the only thing she did know. This was that she likedhim, as she put it to herself, as much as ever; and if that were toamount to liking a new person the amusement would be but the greater.She had thought him at first very quiet, in spite of recovery from hisoriginal confusion though even the shade of bewilderment, she yetperceived, had not been due to such vagueness on the subject of herreintensified identity as the probable sight, over there, of manythousands of her kind would sufficiently have justified. No, he wasquiet, inevitably, for the first half of the time, because Milly's ownlively line--the line of spontaneity--made everything else relative;and because too, so far as Kate was spontaneous, i
t was ever so finelyin 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'sseparate felicity, he had begun to talk more, clearly bethoughthimself, 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 sudden he almost insisted; he returned, after breaks,to the charge; and the effect was perhaps the more odd as he gave noclue whatever to what he had admired, as he went, or to what he hadn't.He simply drenched her with his sociable story--especially during thetime they were away from the others. She had stopped then beingAmerican--all to let him be English; a permission of which he took, shecould feel, both immense and unconscious advantage. She had reallynever cared less for the "States" than at this moment; but that hadnothing to do with the matter. It would have been the occasion of herlife to learn about them, for nothing could put him off, and heventured on no reference to what had happened for herself. It mighthave been almost as if he had known that the greatest of all theseadventures was her doing just what she did then.

  It was at this point that she saw the smash of her great question ascomplete, saw that all she had to do with was the sense of being therewith him. And there was no chill for this in what she also presentlysaw--that, however he had begun, he was now acting from a particulardesire, determined either by new facts or new fancies, to be likeeveryone else, simplifyingly "kind" to her. He had caught on already asto manner--fallen into line with everyone else; and if his spiritsverily _had_ gone up it might well be that he had thus felt himselflighting on the remedy for all awkwardness. Whatever he did or hedidn't, Milly knew she should still like him--there was no alternativeto that; but her heart could none the less sink a little on feeling howmuch his view of her was destined to have in common with--as she nowsighed over it--_the_ view. She could have dreamed of his not having_the_ view, of his having something or other, if need be quiteviewless, of his own; but he might have what he could with leasttrouble, and _the_ view wouldn't be, after all, a positive bar to herseeing him. The defect of it in general--if she might so ungraciouslycriticise--was that, by its sweet universality, it made relationsrather prosaically a matter of course. It anticipated and supersededthe--likewise sweet--operation of real affinities. It was this that wasdoubtless marked in her power to keep him now--this and her glassylustre of attention to his pleasantness about the scenery in theRockies. She was in truth a little measuring her success in detaininghim by Kate's success in "standing" Susan. It would not be, if shecould help it, Mr. Densher who should first break down. Such at leastwas one of the forms of the girl's inward tension but beneath eventhis deep reason was a motive still finer. What she had left at home ongoing out to give it a chance was meanwhile still, was more sharply andactively, there. What had been at the top of her mind about it and thenbeen violently pushed down--this quantity was again working up. As soonas their friends should go Susie would break out, and what she wouldbreak out upon wouldn't be--interested in that gentleman as she hadmore than once shown herself--the personal fact of Mr. Densher. Millyhad found in her face at luncheon a feverish glitter, and it told whatshe was full of. She didn't care now for Mr. Densher's personal fact.Mr. Densher had risen before her only to find his proper place in herimagination already, of a sudden, occupied. His personal fact failed,so far as she was concerned, to be personal, and her companion notedthe failure. This could only mean that she was full to the brim, of SirLuke Strett, and of what she had had from him. What _had_ she had fromhim? It was indeed now working upward again that Milly would do well toknow, though knowledge looked stiff in the light of Susie's glitter. Itwas therefore, on the whole, because Densher's young hostess wasdivided from it by so thin a partition that she continued to cling tothe Rockies.

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