< 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
3S? tbe Same 
 
 THE SACRED FOUNT. 
 I vol. izmo. i-O 
 
THE WINGS OF 
 THE DOVE^ 
 
 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1902 
 
SERAL 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, BV 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 Published, August, 1902 
 
 TMOW DIKICTOMV 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
Vi 
 
 BOOK SIXTH 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 BOOK SIXTH 
 
 XVII 
 
 IS AY, you know, Kate you did stay ! " had 
 been Merton Densher s punctual remark on 
 their adventure after they had, as it were, got out of 
 it; an observation which she not less promptly, on 
 her side, let him see that she forgave in him only 
 because he was a man. She had to recognise, with 
 whatever disappointment, that it was doubtless the 
 most helpful he could make in this character. The 
 fact of the adventure was flagrant between them; 
 they had looked at each other, on gaining the street, 
 as people look who have just rounded together a 
 dangerous corner, and there was therefore already 
 enough unanimity sketched out to have lighted, for 
 her companion, anything equivocal in her action. 
 But the amount of light men did need ! Kate could 
 have been eloquent at this moment about that. 
 What, however, on his seeing more, struck him as 
 most distinct in her was her sense that, reunited after 
 his absence and having been now half the morning 
 
 3 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 together, it behooved them to face without delay the 
 question of handling their immediate future. That 
 it would require some handling, that they should still 
 have to deal, deal in a subtle spirit, with difficulties 
 and delays, was the great matter he had come back 
 to, greater than any but the refreshed consciousness 
 of their personal need of each other. This need had 
 had twenty minutes, the afternoon before, to find out 
 where it stood, and the time was fully accounted for 
 by the charm of the demonstration. He had arrived 
 at Euston at five, having wired her from Liverpool 
 the moment he landed, and she had quickly decided 
 to meet him at the station, whatever publicity might 
 attend such an act. When he had praised her for 
 it on alighting from his train she had answered 
 frankly enough that such things should be taken at 
 a jump. She didn t care to-day who saw her, and 
 she profited by it for her joy. To-morrow, inevita 
 bly, she should have time to think and then, as inev 
 itably, would become a creature of precautions. It 
 was none the less for to-morrow at an early hour 
 that she had appointed their next meeting, keeping 
 in mind for the present a particular obligation to 
 show at Lancaster Gate by six o clock. She had 
 given, with imprecations, her reason people to tea, 
 eternally, and a promise to Aunt Maud ; but she had 
 been liberal enough on the spot and had suggested 
 the National Gallery for the morning quite as with 
 an idea that had ripened in expectancy. They might 
 be seen there too, but nobody would know them; 
 
 4 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 just as, for that matter, now, in the refreshment- 
 room to which they had adjourned, they would incur 
 the notice but, at the worst, of the unacquainted. 
 They would " have something " there for the facility 
 it would give. Thus had it already come up for 
 them again that they had no place of convenience. 
 
 He found himself on English soil with all sorts of 
 feelings, but he had not quite faced having to reckon 
 with a certain ruefulness on that subject as one of 
 the strongest. He was aware later on that there 
 were questions his impatience had shirked ; whereby 
 it actually rather smote him, for want of preparation 
 and assurance, that he had nowhere to " take " his 
 love. He had taken it thus, at Euston and on 
 Kate s own suggestion into the place where people 
 had beer and buns, and had ordered tea at a small 
 table in the corner; which, no doubt, as they were 
 lost in the crowd, did well enough for a stopgap. It 
 perhaps did as well as her simply driving with him 
 to the door of his lodging, which had had to figure 
 as the sole device of his own wit. That wit, the 
 truth was, had broken down a little at the sharp pre 
 vision that once at his door they would have to hang 
 back. She would have to stop there, wouldn t come 
 in with him, couldn t possibly; and he shouldn t be 
 able to ask her, would feel he couldn t without be 
 traying a deficiency of what would be called, even 
 at their advanced stage, respect for her : that again 
 was all that was clear except the further fact that it 
 was maddening. Compressed and concentrated, 
 
 5 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 confined to a single sharp pang or two, but none the 
 less in wait for him there on the Euston platform 
 and lifting its head as that of a snake in the garden, 
 was the disconcerting sense that " respect," in their 
 game, seemed somehow he scarce knew what to 
 call it a fifth wheel to the coach. It was properly 
 an inside thing, not an outside, a thing to make love 
 greater, not to make happiness less. They had met 
 again for happiness, and he distinctly felt, during 
 his most lucid moment or two, how he must keep 
 w r atch on anything that really menaced that boon. 
 If Kate had consented to drive away with him and 
 alight at his house, there would probably enough 
 have occurred for them, at the foot of his steps, one 
 of those strange instants between man and woman 
 that blow upon the red spark, the spark of conflict, 
 ever latent in the depths of passion. She would 
 have shaken her head oh sadly, divinely on the 
 question of coming in ; and he, though doing all jus 
 tice to her refusal, would have yet felt his eyes reach 
 further into her own than a possible word, at such a 
 time, could reach. This would have meant the sus 
 picion, the dread of the shadow, of an adverse will. 
 Lucky therefore, in the actual case, that the scant 
 minutes took another turn and that by the half -hour 
 she did in spite of everything contrive to spend with 
 him Kate showed so well how she could deal with 
 the maddening. She seemed to ask him, to beseech 
 him, and all for his better comfort, to leave her, now 
 and henceforth, to meet it in her own way. 
 
 6 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She had still met it in naming so promptly, for 
 their early convenience one of the great museums; 
 and indeed with such happy art that his fully seeing 
 where she had placed him had not been till after he 
 left her. His absence from her for so many weeks 
 had had such an effect upon him that his demands, 
 his desires had grown; and only the night before, 
 as his ship steamed, beneath summer stars, in sight 
 of the Irish coast, he had felt all the force of his par 
 ticular necessity. He had not in other words at any 
 point, doubted he was on his way to say to her that 
 really their mistake must end. Their mistake was to 
 have believed that they could hold out hold out, that 
 is, not against Aunt Maud, but against an impatience 
 that, prolonged, made a man ill. He had known 
 more than ever, on their separating in the court of 
 the station, how ill a man, and even a woman, could 
 be with it; but he struck himself as also knowing 
 that he had already suffered Kate to begin finely to 
 manipulate it. It had a vulgar sound as through 
 out, in love, the names of things, the verbal terms of 
 intercourse, were, compared with love itself, vulgar ; 
 but it was as if, after all, he might have come back 
 to find himself " put off," though it would take him 
 of course a day or two to see. His letters from the 
 States had pleased whom it concerned, though not 
 so much as he had meant they should ; and he should 
 be paid according to agreement and would now take 
 up his money. It was not in truth very much to 
 take up, so that he hadn t in the least come back 
 
 7 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 flourishing a cheque-book; that new motive for 
 bringing his mistress to terms he couldn t therefore 
 pretend to show. The ideal certainty would have 
 been to be able to present a change of prospect as a 
 warrant for the change of philosophy, and without 
 it he should have to make shift but with the pretext 
 of the lapse of time. The lapse of time not so 
 many weeks, after all, she might always of course 
 say couldn t at any rate have failed to do some 
 thing for him; and that consideration it was that 
 had just now tided him over, all the more that he had 
 his vision of what it had done personally for Kate. 
 This had come out for him with a splendour that 
 almost scared him even in their small corner of the 
 room at Euston almost scared him because it just 
 seemed to blaze at him that waiting was the game 
 of dupes. Not yet had she been so the creature he 
 had originally seen ; not yet had he felt so soundly, 
 safely sure. It was all there for him, playing on his 
 pride of possession as a hidden master, in a great 
 dim church, might play on the grandest organ. His 
 final sense was that a woman couldn t be like that 
 and then ask of one the impossible. 
 
 She had been like that afresh on the morrow ; and 
 so for the hour they had been able to float in the mere 
 joy of contact such contact as their situation, in 
 pictured public halls, permitted. This poor make 
 shift fr closeness confessed itself in truth, by twenty 
 small signs of unrest even on Kate s part inadequate ; 
 so little could a decent interest in the interesting 
 
 8 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 place presume to remind them of its claims. They 
 had met there in order not to meet in the streets and 
 not again, with a want of fancy, at a railway-station ; 
 not again, either, in Kensington Gardens, which, 
 they could easily and tacitly agree, would have had 
 too much of the taste of their old frustrations. The 
 present taste, the taste that morning in the pictured 
 halls, had been a variation; yet Densher had at the 
 end of a quarter of an hour fully known what to con 
 clude from it. This fairly consoled him for their 
 awkwardness, as if he had been watching it affect 
 her. She might be as nobly charming as she liked, 
 and he had seen nothing to touch her in the States ; 
 she couldn t pretend that in such conditions as those 
 she herself believed it enough for him. She couldn t 
 pretend she believed he would believe it enough for 
 herself. It was not enough for herself she showed 
 him it was not. That was what he could be glad, 
 by demonstration, to have brought her to. He 
 would have said to her had he put it crudely and on 
 the spot : " Now am I to understand you that you 
 consider this sort of thing can go on ? " It would 
 have been open to her, no doubt, to reply that to have 
 him with her again, to have him all so dear and so 
 perfectly proved and attested as she had held him in 
 their yearning interval, was a sort of thing that he 
 must allow her to have no quarrel about; but that 
 would be a mere gesture of her grace, a mere sport 
 of her subtlety. She knew as well as he what they 
 wanted; in spite of which ideed he scarce could have 
 
 9 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 said how beautifully he mightn t once more have 
 named it and urged it if she hadn t, at a given mo 
 ment, blurred, as it were, the accord. They had soon 
 seated themselves for better talk, and so they had 
 remained awhile, intimate and superficial. The im 
 mediate things to say had been many, for they had 
 not exhausted them at Euston. They drew upon 
 them freely now, and Kate appeared quite to forget 
 which was amazingly becoming to her to look 
 about for surprises. He was to try afterwards, and 
 try in vain, to remember what speech or what silence 
 of his own, what natural sign of the eyes or acciden 
 tal touch of the hand, had precipitated for her, in the 
 midst of this, a sudden different impulse. She had 
 got up, with inconsequence, as if to break the charm, 
 though he was not aware of what he had done at the 
 moment to make the charm a danger. She had 
 patched it up agreeably enough the next minute by 
 some odd remark about some picture, to which he 
 had not so much as replied ; it being quite independ 
 ently of this that he had himself exclaimed on the 
 dreadful closeness of the rooms. He had observed 
 that they must go out again to breathe ; and it was 
 as if their common consciousness, while they passed 
 into another part, was that of persons who, infinitely 
 engaged together, had been startled and were trying 
 to look natural. It was probably while they were 
 so occupied as the young man subsequently recon- 
 ceived that they had stumbled upon his little New 
 York friend. He thought of her for some reason 
 
 no 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as little, though she was of about Kate s height, to 
 which, any more than to any other felicity in his 
 mistress, he had never applied the diminutive. 
 
 What was to be in the retrospect more distinct to 
 him was the process by which he had become aware 
 that Kate s acquaintance with her was greater than 
 he had gathered. She had written of it in due 
 course as a new and amusing one, and he had writ 
 ten back that he had met over there, and that he 
 much liked, the young person, whereupon she had 
 rejoined that he must find out about her at home. 
 Kate, in the event, however, had not returned to 
 that, and he had of course, with so many things to 
 find out about, been otherwise taken up. Little Miss 
 Theale s history was not stuff for his paper ; besides 
 which, moreover, he was seeing but too many little 
 Miss Theales. They even went so far as to impose 
 themselves as one of the groups of social phenomena 
 that fell into the scheme of his public letters. For 
 this group in especial perhaps the irrepressible, the 
 supereminent young persons his best pen was 
 ready. Thus it was that there could come back to 
 him in London, an hour or two after their luncheon 
 with the American pair, the sense of a situation for 
 which Kate had not wholly prepared him. Possibly 
 indeed as marked as this was his recovered percep 
 tion that preparations, of more than one kind, had 
 been exactly what, both yesterday and to-day, he felt 
 her as having in hand. This in fact now became for 
 him so sharp an apprehension as to require some 
 
 II 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 brushing away. He to some extent shook it off, on 
 their separating first from their hostesses and then 
 from each other, by a long and rather aimless walk. 
 He was to go to the office later, but he had the next 
 two or three hours, and he gave himself as a pretext 
 that he had eaten much too much. After Kate had 
 asked him to put her into a cab which, as an an 
 nounced, a resumed policy on her part, he found him 
 self deprecating he stood awhile by a corner and 
 looked vaguely forth at his London. There was 
 always doubtless a moment for the absentee recap 
 tured the moment, that of the reflux of the first 
 emotion at which it was beyond disproof that one 
 was back. His full parenthesis was closed, and he 
 was once more but a sentence, of a sort, in the gen 
 eral text, the text that, from his momentary street- 
 corner, showed as a great grey page of print that 
 somehow managed to be crowded without being 
 " fine." The grey, however, was more or less the 
 blur of a point of view not yet quite seized again; 
 and there would be colour enough to come out. He 
 was back, flatly enough, but back to possibilities and 
 prospects, and the ground he now somewhat sight 
 lessly covered was the act of renewed possession. 
 
 He walked northward without a plan, without 
 suspicion, quite in the direction his little New York 
 friend, in her restless ramble, had taken a day or two 
 before. He reached, like Milly, the Regent s Park ; 
 and though he moved further and faster he finally 
 sat down, like Milly, from the force of thought. For 
 
 13 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 him too in this position, be it added and he might 
 positively have occupied the same bench various 
 troubled fancies folded their wings. He had no 
 more yet said what he really wanted than Kate her 
 self had found time. She should hear enough of 
 that in a couple of days. He had practically not 
 pressed her as to what most concerned them ; it had 
 seemed so to concern them during these first hours 
 but to hold each other, spiritually speaking, close. 
 This at any rate was palpable, that there were at 
 present more things rather than fewer between them. 
 The explanations about the two ladies would be part 
 of the lot ; these could wait with all the rest. They 
 were not meanwhile, certainly, what most made him 
 roam the missing explanations were not. That 
 was what she had so often said before, and always 
 with the effect of suddenly breaking off : " Now, 
 please, call me a good cab." Their previous en 
 counters, the times when they had reached in their 
 stroll the south side of the park, had had a way of 
 winding up with his special irrelevance. It was, 
 effectively, what most divided them, for he would 
 generally, but for her reasons, have been able to 
 jump in with her. What did she think he wished to 
 do to her? it was a question he had had occasion 
 to put. A small matter, however, doubtless since 
 when it came to that they didn t depend on cabs, 
 good or bad, for the sense of union : its importance 
 was less from the particular loss than as a kind of 
 irritating mark of her expertness. This expertness, 
 
 13 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 under providence, had been great from the first, so 
 far as joining him was concerned ; and he was criti 
 cal only because it had been still greater, even from 
 the first too, in respect to leaving him. He had re 
 minded her of this, that afternoon, on the repetition 
 of her appeal had asked her once more what she 
 supposed he wished to do. He recalled, on his 
 bench in the Regent s Park, the freedom of fancy, 
 funny and pretty, with which she had answered; 
 the moment itself, while the usual hansom charged 
 them, during which he felt himself, disappointed as 
 he was, grimacing back at the superiority of her very 
 " humour/ in its added grace of gaiety, to the cele 
 brated solemn American. Their fresh appointment 
 had been at all events by that time made, and he 
 should see what her choice in respect to it a sur 
 prise as well as a relief would do toward really 
 simplifying. It meant either new help or new hin 
 drance, though it took them at least out of the 
 streets. And her naming this privilege had natur 
 ally made him ask if Mrs. Lowder knew of his re 
 turn. 
 
 " Not from me/ Kate had replied. " But I shall 
 speak to her now." And she had argued, as with 
 rather a quick, fresh view, that it would now be quite 
 easy. " We ve behaved for months so properly that 
 I ve margin surely for my mention of you. You ll 
 come to see her, and she ll leave you with me ; she ll 
 show her good-nature, and her want of betrayed 
 fear, in that. With her, you know, you ve never 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 broken, quite the contrary, and she likes you as much 
 as ever. We re leaving town; it will be the end, 
 just now ; therefore it s nothing to ask. I ll ask to 
 night," Kate had wound up, " and if you ll leave it 
 to me my cleverness, I assure you, has grown in 
 fernal I ll make it all right." 
 
 He had of course thus left it to her and he was 
 wondering more about it now than he had wondered 
 there in Brook Street. He repeated to himself that 
 if it wasn t in the line of triumph it was in the line 
 of muddle. This indeed, no doubt, was as a part 
 of his wonder for still other questions. Kate had 
 really got off without meeting his little challenge 
 about the terms of their intercourse with her dear 
 Milly. Her dear Milly, it was sensible, was some 
 how in the picture. Her dear Milly, popping up in 
 his absence, occupied he couldn t have said quite 
 why he felt it more of the foreground than one 
 would have expected her in advance to find clear. 
 She took up room, and it was almost as if room had 
 been made for her. Kate had appeared to take for 
 granted he would know why it had been made ; but 
 that was just the point. It was a foreground in 
 which he himself, in which his connection with Kate, 
 scarce enjoyed a space to turn round. But Miss 
 Theale was perhaps at the present juncture a possi 
 bility of the same sort as the softened, if not the 
 squared, Aunt Maud. It might be true of her also 
 that if she weren t a bore she d be a convenience. It 
 rolled over him of a sudden, after he had resumed 
 
 5 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 his walk, that this might easily be what Kate had 
 meant. The charming girl adored her Densher 
 had for himself made out that and would protect, 
 would lend a hand, to their interviews. These might 
 take place in other words, on her premises, which 
 would remove them still better from the streets. 
 That was an explanation which did hang together. 
 It was impaired a little, of a truth, by this fact that 
 their next encounter was rather markedly not to de 
 pend upon her. Yet this fact in turn would be ac 
 counted for by the need of more preliminaries. One 
 of the things he conceivably should gain on Thurs 
 day at Lancaster Gate would be a further view of 
 that propriety. 
 
 16 
 
XVIII 
 
 IT was extraordinary enough that he should actu 
 ally be rinding himself, when Thursday arrived, none 
 so wide of the mark. Kate had not come all the 
 way to this for him, but she had come to a good deal 
 by the end of a quarter of an hour. What she had 
 begun with was her surprise at her appearing to have 
 left him on Tuesday anything more to understand. 
 The parts, as he now saw, under her hand, did fall 
 more or less together, and it was not even as if she 
 had spent the interval in twisting and fitting them. 
 She was bright and handsome, not fagged and worn, 
 with the general clearness; for it certainly stuck out 
 enough that if the American ladies themselves were 
 not to be squared, which was absurd, they fairly 
 imposed the necessity of trying Aunt Maud again. 
 One couldn t say to them, kind as she had been to 
 them : " We ll meet, please, whenever you ll let us, 
 at your house; but we count on you to help us to 
 keep it secret." They must in other terms inevitably 
 speak to Aunt Maud it would be of the last awk 
 wardness to ask them not to : Kate had embraced all 
 this in her choice of speaking first. What Kate em 
 braced altogether was indeed wonderful to-day to 
 
 Densher, though he perhaps struck himself rather as 
 VOL. II. 2 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 getting it out of her piece by piece than as receiving 
 it in a steady light. He had always felt, however, 
 that the more he asked of her the more he found 
 her prepared, as he imaged it, to hand out. He had 
 said to her more than once even before his absence : 
 " You keep the key of the cupboard, and I foresee 
 that when we re married you ll dole me out my sugar 
 by lumps." She had replied that she rejoiced in his 
 assumption that sugar .would be his diet, and the 
 domestic arrangement so prefigured might have 
 seemed already to prevail. The supply from the 
 cupboard at this hour w r as doubtless, of a truth, not 
 altogether cloyingly sweet ; but it met, in a manner, 
 his immediate requirements. If her explanations, 
 at any rate, prompted questions, the questions no 
 more exhausted them than they exhausted her pa 
 tience. And they were naturally, of the series, the 
 simpler; as for instance in his taking it from her that 
 Miss Theale then could do nothing for them. He 
 frankly brought out what he had ventured to fancy. 
 " If we can t meet here and we ve really exhausted 
 the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such 
 little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity 
 like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these 
 two days as better than nothing. But if our friends 
 are so accountable to this house of course there s no 
 more to be said. And it s one more nail, thank God, 
 in the coffin of our odious delay." He was but too 
 glad without more ado to point the moral. " Now 
 I hope you see we can t work it anyhow/ 
 
 18 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 If she laughed for this and her spirits seemed 
 really high it was because of the opportunity that, 
 at the hotel, he had most shown himself as enjoying. 
 " Your idea s beautiful when one remembers that 
 you hadn t a word except for Milly." But she was 
 as beautifully good-humoured. " You might of 
 course get used to her you will. You re quite right 
 so long as they re with us or near us." And she 
 put it, lucidly, that the dear things couldn t help, 
 simply as charming friends, giving them a lift. 
 " They ll speak to Aunt Maud, but they won t shut 
 their doors to us : that would be another matter. A 
 friend always helps and she s a friend." She had 
 left Mrs. Stringham by this time out of the question; 
 she had reduced it to Milly. " Besides, she particu 
 larly likes us. She particularly likes you. I say, 
 old boy, make something of that." He felt her 
 dodging the ultimatum he had just made sharp, his 
 definite reminder of how little, at the best, they could 
 work it; but there were certain of his remarks 
 those mostly of the sharper penetration that it had 
 been quite her practice from the first not formally, 
 not reverently to notice. She showed the effect of 
 them in ways less trite. This was what happened 
 now : he didn t think in truth that she wasn t really 
 minding. She took him up, none the less, on a 
 minor question. " You say we can t meet here, but 
 you see it s just what we do. What could be more 
 lovely than this ? " 
 
 It wasn t to torment him that again he didn t 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 believe; but he had to come to the house in some 
 discomfort, so that he frowned a little at her calling 
 it thus a luxury. Wasn t there an element in it of 
 coming back into bondage ? The bondage might be 
 veiled and varnished, but he knew in his bones how 
 little the very highest privileges of Lancaster Gate 
 could ever be a sign of their freedom. They were 
 upstairs, in one of the smaller apartments of state, 
 a room arranged as a boudoir, but visibly unused- 
 it defied familiarity and furnished in the ugliest of 
 blues. He had immediately looked with interest at 
 the closed doors, and Kate had met his interest with 
 the assurance that it was all right, that Aunt Maud 
 did them justice so far, that was, as this particular 
 time was concerned; that they should be alone and 
 have nothing to fear. But the fresh allusion to this 
 that he had drawn from her acted on him now more 
 directly, brought him closer still to the question. 
 They were alone it w as all right : he took in anew 
 the shut doors and the permitted privacy, the solid 
 stillness of the great house. They connected them 
 selves on the spot with something made doubly vivid 
 in him by the whole present play of her charming 
 strong will. What it amounted to was that he 
 couldn t have her hanged if he could! evasive. 
 He couldn t and he wouldn t wouldn t have her 
 elusive. He didn t want her deeper than himself, 
 fine as it might be as wit or as character; he wanted 
 to keep her where their communications would be 
 straight and easy and their intercourse independent. 
 
 20 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 The effect of this was to make him say in a moment : 
 " Will you take me just as I am? " 
 
 She turned a little pale for the tone of truth in it 
 which qualified to his sense delightfully the 
 strength of her will; and the pleasure he found in 
 this was not the less for her breaking out after an 
 instant into a strain that stirred him more than any 
 she has ever used with him. " Ah, do let me try 
 myself ! I assure you I see my way so don t spoil 
 it : wait for me and give me time. Dear man," 
 Kate said, " only believe in me, and it will be beau 
 tiful." 
 
 He hadn t come back to hear her talk of his be 
 lieving in her as if he didn t; but he had come back 
 and it all was upon him now to seize her with a 
 sudden intensity that her manner of pleading with 
 him had made, as happily appeared, irresistible. He 
 laid strong hands upon her to say, almost in anger, 
 " Do you love me, love me, love me ? " and she closed 
 her eyes as with the sense that he might strike her 
 but that she could gratefully take it. Her surrender 
 was her response, her response her surrender ; and, 
 though scarce hearing what she said, he so profited 
 by these things that it could for the time be solid to 
 him that he was keeping her. The long embrace in 
 which they held each other was the rout of evasion, 
 and he took from it the certitude that what she had 
 from him was real. It was stronger than an uttered 
 vow, and the name he was to give it in afterthought 
 was that she had been sublimely sincere. That was 
 
 21 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 
 
 all he asked sincerity making a basis that would 
 bear almost anything. This settled so much, and 
 settled it so thoroughly, that there was nothing left 
 to ask her to swear to. Oaths and vows apart, now 
 they could talk. It seemed in fact only now that 
 their questions were put on the table. He had taken 
 up more expressly at the end of five minutes her plea 
 for her own plan, and it was marked that the differ 
 ence made by the passage just enacted was a dif 
 ference in favour of her choice of means. They had 
 somehow suddenly become a detail her province 
 and her care ; it had grown more consistently vivid 
 that her intelligence was one with her passion. " I 
 certainly don t want," he said and he could say it 
 with a smile of indulgence " to be all the while 
 bringing it up that I don t trust you." 
 
 " I should hope not ! What do you think I want 
 to do?" 
 
 He had really at this to make out a little what he 
 thought, and the first thing that put itself in evidence 
 was of course the oddity, after all, of their game, to 
 which he could but frankly allude. " We re doing, 
 at the best, in trying to temporise in so special a way, 
 a thing most people would call us fools for." But 
 his visit passed, all the same, without his again at 
 tempting to make "just as he was " serve. He had no 
 more money just as he was than he had had just as 
 he had been, or than he would have, probably, when 
 it came to that, just as he always would be ; whereas 
 she, on her side, in comparison with her state of some 
 
 22 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 months before, had measurably more to relinquish. 
 He easily saw how their meeting at Lancaster Gate 
 gave more of an accent to that quantity than their 
 meeting at stations or in parks ; and yet, on the other 
 hand, he couldn t urge this against it. If Mrs. Low- 
 der was indifferent her indifference added in a man 
 ner to what Kate s taking him as he was would call 
 on her to sacrifice. Such, in fine, was her art with \ 
 him that she seemed to put the question of their still 
 waiting into quite other terms than the terms of ugly 
 blue, of florid Sevres, of complicated brass, in which 
 their boudoir expressed it. She said almost all in 
 fact in saying, in respect to Aunt Maud, as to whom 
 he had once more pressed her, that when he should 
 see her, as must inevitably soon happen, he would 
 understand. " Do you mean," he asked on this, 
 " that there s any definite sign of her coming round? 
 I m not talking," he explained, " of mere hypocrisies 
 in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after 
 all, that supremely clever as we are, and as strong 
 a team, I admit, as there is going remember that 
 she can play with us quite as much as we play with 
 her." 
 
 " She doesn t want to play with me, my dear," 
 Kate lucidly replied ; " she doesn t want to make me 
 suffer a bit more than she need. She cares for me 
 too much, and everything she does, or doesn t do, 
 has a value. This has a value her being as she has 
 been about to-day. I believe she s in her own room, 
 where she s keeping strictly to herself while you re 
 
 23 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 here with me. But that isn t playing not a 
 bit. " 
 
 " What is it then," the young man inquired 
 " from the moment it isn t her blessing and a 
 cheque? " 
 
 Kate was complete. " It s simply her absence of 
 smallness. There is something in her above trifles. 
 She generally trusts us ; she doesn t propose to hunt 
 us into corners; and if we frankly ask a thing 
 why," said Kate, " she shrugs, but she lets it go. 
 She has really but one fault she s indifferent, on 
 such ground as she has taken about us, to details. 
 However," the girl cheerfully went on, " it isn t in 
 detail we fight her." 
 
 " It seems to me," Densher said after a moment s 
 thought of this, " that it s in detail we deceive her " 
 a speech that, as soon as he had uttered it, applied 
 itself for him, as also visibly for his companion, to 
 the circumstances of their recent embrace. 
 
 Any confusion attaching to it, however, dropped 
 from Kate, whom, as he could see with sacred joy, 
 it must take more than that to make compunctious. 
 " I don t say we can do it again. I mean," she ex 
 plained, " meet here." 
 
 Densher indeed had been wondering where they 
 could do it again. If Lancaster Gate was so limited 
 that issue reappeared. " I mayn t come back at 
 all?" 
 
 " Certainly to see her. It s she, really," his 
 companion smiled, " who s in love with you." 
 
 24 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 But it made him a trifle more grave look at her 
 a moment. " Don t make out, you know, that every 
 one s in love with me." 
 
 She hesitated. " I don t say everyone." 
 
 "You said just now Miss Theale." 
 
 " I said she liked you yes." 
 
 " Well, it comes to the same thing." With which, 
 however, he pursued. "Of course, I ought to thank 
 Mrs. Lowder in person. I mean for this as from 
 myself." 
 
 " Ah but, you know, not too much ! " She had 
 an ironic gaiety for the implications of his " this," 
 besides wishing to insist on a general prudence. 
 " She ll wonder what you re thanking her for ! " 
 
 Densher did justice to both considerations. 
 " Yes, I can t very well tell her all." 
 
 It was perhaps because he said it so gravely that 
 Kate was again in a manner amused. Yet she gave 
 out light. " You can t very well tell her any 
 thing, and that doesn t matter. Only be nice to her. 
 Please her ; make her see how clever you are only 
 without letting her see that you re trying. If you re 
 charming to her you ve nothing else to do." 
 
 But she oversimplified too. " I can be * charm 
 ing to her, so far as I see, only by letting her sup 
 pose I give you up which I ll be hanged if I do! 
 It is" he said with feeling, " a game." 
 
 " Of course it s a game. But she ll never suppose 
 you give me up or I give you if you keep remind 
 ing her how you enjoy our interviews." 
 
 2 5 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Then if she has to see us as obstinate and con 
 stant," Densher asked, " what good does it do? " 
 
 Kate was for a moment checked. " What good 
 does what ? " 
 
 " Does my pleasing her does anything. I cant," 
 he impatiently declared, " please her." 
 
 Kate looked at him hard again, disappointed at 
 his want of consistency; but it appeared to deter 
 mine in her something better than a mere complaint. 
 "Then / can! Leave it to me." With which she 
 came to him under the compulsion, again, that had 
 united them shortly before, and took hold of him in 
 her urgency to the same tender purpose. It was 
 her form of entreaty renewed and repeated, which 
 made after all, as he met it, their great fact clear. 
 And it somehow clarified all things so to possess each 
 other. The effect of it was that, once more, on these 
 terms, he could only be generous. He had so on 
 the spot then left everything to her that she came 
 back in the course of a few moments to one of her 
 previous and as positively seemed her most prec 
 ious ideas. " You accused me just now of saying 
 that Milly s in love v/ith you. Well, if you come 
 to that, I do say it. So there you are. That s the 
 good she ll do us. It makes a basis for her seeing 
 you so that she ll help us to go on." 
 
 Densher stared she was wondrous all round. 
 " And what sort of a basis does it make for my see 
 ing her? " 
 
 " Oh, I don t mind! " Kate smiled. 
 26 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Don t mind my leading her on ? " 
 
 She put it differently. " Don t mind her leading 
 you." 
 
 " Well, she won t so it s nothing not to mind. 
 But how can that help, " he pursued, " with what 
 she knows? " 
 
 " What she knows? That needn t prevent." 
 
 He w r ondered. " Prevent her loving us? " 
 
 " Prevent her helping you. She s like that," Kate 
 Croy explained. 
 
 It took indeed some understanding. " Making 
 nothing of the fact that I love another? " 
 
 " Making everything," said Kate. " To console 
 you." 
 
 "But for what?" 
 
 " For not getting your other." 
 
 He continued to stare. " But how does she 
 know ?" 
 
 " That you won t get her ? She doesn t ; but on 
 the other hand she doesn t know you will. Mean 
 while she sees you baffled, for she knows of Aunt 
 Maud s stand. That " Kate was lucid " gives 
 her the chance to be nice to you." 
 
 " And what does it give me," the young man none 
 the less rationally asked, "the chance to be? A 
 brute of a humbug to her? " 
 
 Kate so possessed her facts, as it were, that she 
 smiled at his violence. " You ll extraordinarily like 
 her. She s exquisite. And there are reasons. I 
 mean others." 
 
 27 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 "What others?" 
 
 " Well, I ll tell you another time. Those I give 
 you," the girl added, " are enough to go on 
 with." 
 
 "To go on to what?" 
 
 " Why, to seeing her again say as soon as you 
 can: which, moreover, on all grounds, is no more 
 than decent of you." 
 
 He of course took in her reference, and he had 
 fully in mind what had passed between them in New 
 York. It had been no great quantity, but it had 
 made distinctly at the time for his pleasure ; so that 
 anything in the nature of an appeal in the name of it 
 could have a slight kindling consequence. " Oh, I 
 shall naturally call again without delay. Yes," 
 said Densher, " her being in love with me is non 
 sense ; but I must, quite independently of that, make 
 every acknowledgment of favours received." 
 
 It appeared practically all Kate asked. " Then 
 you see. I shall meet you there." 
 
 " I don t quite see," he presently returned, " why 
 she should wish to receive yon for it." 
 
 " She receives me for myself that is for her self. 
 She thinks no end of me. That I should have to 
 drum it into you ! " 
 
 Yet still he didn t take it. " Then I confess she s 
 beyond me." 
 
 Well, Kate could but leave it as she saw it. " She 
 regards me as already in these few weeks her 
 dearest friend. It s quite separate. We re in, she 
 
 23 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and I, ever so deep." And it was to confirm this 
 that, as if it had flashed upon her that he was some 
 where at sea, she threw out at last her own real light. 
 " She doesn t, of course, know I care for you. She 
 thinks I care so little that it s not worth speaking of." 
 That he had been somewhere at sea these remarks 
 made quickly clear, and Kate hailed the effect with 
 surprise. " Have you been supposing that she does 
 know ?" 
 
 " About our situation? Certainly, if you re such 
 friends as you show me and if you haven t other 
 wise represented it to her." She uttered at this such 
 a sound of impatience that he stood artlessly vague. 
 " You have denied it to her? " 
 
 She threw up her arms at his being so backward. 
 " Denied it ? My dear man, we ve never spoken 
 of you." 
 
 " Never, never? " 
 
 " Strange as it may appear to your glory 
 never." 
 
 He couldn t piece it together. " But won t Mrs. 
 Lowder have spoken ? " 
 
 " Very probably. But of you. Not of me." 
 
 This struck him as obscure. " How does she 
 know me but as part and parcel of you ? " 
 
 ." Plow ? " Kate triumphantly asked. " Why, ex 
 actly to make nothing of it, to have nothing to do 
 with it, to stick consistently to her line about it. 
 Aunt Maud s line is to keep all reality out of our 
 relation that is out of my being in danger from 
 
 29 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 you by not having so much as suspected or heard 
 of it. She ll get rid of it, as she believes, by ignor 
 ing it and sinking it if she only does so hard 
 enough. Therefore she in her manner denies it, 
 if you will. That s how she knows you otherwise 
 than as part and parcel of me. She won t for a mo 
 ment have allowed either to Mrs. Stringham or to 
 Milly that I ve in any way, as they say, distinguished 
 you." 
 
 " And you don t suppose," said Densher, " that 
 they must have made it out for themselves ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, I don t ; not even," Kate declared, 
 " after Milly s so funnily bumping against us on 
 Tuesday." 
 
 " She doesn t see from that ?" 
 
 " That you re, so to speak, mad about me. Yes, 
 she sees, no doubt, that you regard me with a com 
 placent eye for you show it, I think, always too 
 much. But nothing beyond that. / don t show it 
 too much ; I don t perhaps to please you completely 
 where others are concerned show it enough." 
 
 " Can you show it or not as you like ? " Densher 
 demanded. 
 
 It pulled her up a little, but she came out resplen 
 dent. " Not where you are concerned. Beyond see 
 ing that you re rather gone," she went on, " Milly 
 only sees that I m decently good to you." 
 
 " Very good indeed she must think it ! " 
 
 " Very good indeed then. She easily sees me," 
 Kate smiled, " as very good indeed." 
 
 30 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 The young man brooded. " But in a sense to take 
 some explaining." 
 
 " Then I explain." She was really fine; it came 
 back to her essential plea for her freedom of action 
 and his beauty of trust. " I mean," she added, " I 
 will explain." 
 
 "And what will /do?" 
 
 " Recognise the difference it will make if she 
 thinks." But here in truth Kate faltered. It was 
 his silence alone that, for the moment, took up her 
 apparent meaning; and before he again spoke she 
 had returned to remembrance and prudence. They 
 were now not to forget that, Aunt Maud s liberality 
 having put them on their honour, they mustn t spoil 
 their case by abusing it. He must leave her in time ; 
 they should probably find it would help them. But 
 she came back to Milly too. " Mind you go to see 
 her." 
 
 Densher still, however, took up nothing of this. 
 Then I may come again? " 
 
 " For Aunt Maud as much as you like. But we 
 can t again," said Kate, " play her this trick. I can t 
 see you here alone." 
 
 "Then where?" 
 
 " Go to see Milly," she, for all satisfaction, re 
 peated. 
 
 " And what good will that do me? " 
 
 " Try it, and you ll see." 
 
 " You mean you ll manage to be there ? " Densher 
 asked. " Say you are, how will that give us pri 
 vacy ? " 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 :< Try it you ll see," the girl once more returned. 
 " We must manage as we can." 
 
 " That s precisely what / feel. It strikes me we 
 might manage better." His idea of this was a thing 
 that made him for an instant hesitate; yet he 
 brought it out with conviction. " Why won t you 
 come to me? " 
 
 It was a question her troubled eyes seemed to tell 
 him that he was scarce generous in expecting her 
 definitely to answer, and in looking to him to wait 
 at least she appealed to something that she presently 
 made him feel as his pity. It was on that special 
 shade of tenderness that he thus found himself 
 thrown back; and while he asked of his spirit and of 
 his flesh just what concession they could arrange she 
 pressed him yet again on the subject of her singular 
 remedy for their embarrassment. It might have 
 been irritating had she ever struck him as having in 
 her mind a stupid corner. " You ll see," she said, 
 " the difference it will make." 
 
 Well, since she was not stupid she was intelligent ; 
 it was he that was stupid the proof of which was 
 that he would do what she liked. But he made a last 
 effort to understand, her allusion to the " difference " 
 bringing him round to it. He indeed caught at 
 something subtle but strong even as he spoke. " Is 
 what you meant a moment ago that the difference 
 will be in her being made to believe you hate me? " 
 
 Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of 
 putting it, one of her more marked shows of impa- 
 
 3 2 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 tience; with which in fact she sharply closed their 
 discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, 
 and she accompanied him to the top of the stairs 
 with an air of having so put their possibilities before 
 him that questions were idle and doubts perverse. 
 " I verily believe I shall hate you if you spoil for me 
 the beauty of what I see ! " 
 
 VOL. tt-3 
 
XIX 
 
 HE was really, notwithstanding, to hear more from 
 her of what she saw ; and the very next occasion had 
 for him still other surprises than that. He received 
 from Mrs. Lowder on the morning after his visit to 
 Kate the telegraphic expression of a hope that he 
 might be free to dine with them that evening; and 
 his freedom affected him as fortunate even though 
 in some degree qualified by her missive. " Expect 
 ing American friends, whom I m so glad to find you 
 know ! " His knowledge of American friends was 
 clearly an accident of which he was to taste the fruit 
 to the last bitterness. This apprehension, however, 
 we hasten to add, enjoyed for him, in the immediate 
 event, a certain merciful shrinkage; the immediate 
 event being that, at Lancaster Gate, five minutes 
 after his due arrival, prescribed him for eight-thirty, 
 Mrs. Stringham came in alone. The long daylight, 
 the postponed lamps, the habit of the hour, made din 
 ners late and guests still later; so that, punctual as 
 he was, he had found Mrs. Lowder alone, with Kate 
 herself not yet in the field. He had thus had with 
 her several bewildering moments bewildering by 
 reason, fairly, of their tacit invitation to him to be 
 supernaturally simple. This was exactly, goodness 
 knew, what he wanted to be ; but he had never had 
 
 34 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 it so largely and freely so supernaturally simply, 
 for that matter imputed to him as of easy achieve 
 ment. It was a particular in which Aunt Maud ap 
 peared to offer herself as an example, appeared to 
 say quite agreeably : " What 1 want of you, don t 
 you see? is to be just exactly as / am." The quan 
 tity of the article required was what might especially 
 have caused him to stagger he liked so, in general, 
 the quantities in which Mrs. Lowder dealt. He 
 would have liked as well to ask her how feasible she 
 supposed it for a poor young man to resemble her at 
 any point; but he had after all soon enough per 
 ceived that he was doing as she wished by letting 
 his wonder show just a little as silly. He was con 
 scious moreover of a small strange dread of the re 
 sults of discussion with her strange, truly, because 
 it was her good-nature, not her asperity, that he 
 feared. Asperity might have made him angry in 
 which there was always a comfort ; good-nature, in 
 his conditions, had a tendency to make him ashamed 
 which Aunt Maud indeed, wonderfully, liking him 
 for himself, quite struck him as having guessed. To 
 spare him therefore she also avoided discussion ; she 
 kept him down by refusing to quarrel with him. 
 This was what she now proposed to him to enjoy, 
 and his secret discomfort was his sense that on the 
 whole it was what would best suit him. Being kept 
 down was a bore, but his great dread, verily, was of 
 being ashamed, which was a thing distinct ; and it 
 mattered but little that he was ashamed of that too. 
 
 35 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 It was of the essence of his position that in such 
 a house as this the tables could always be turned on 
 him. " What do you offer, what do you offer ? " 
 the place, however muffled in convenience and de 
 corum, constantly hummed for him with that thick 
 irony. The irony was a renewed reference to obvi 
 ous bribes, and he had already seen how little aid 
 came to him from denouncing the bribes as ugly in 
 form. That was what the precious metals they 
 alone could afford to be; it was vain enough for 
 him accordingly to try to impart a gloss to his own 
 comparative brummagem. The humiliation of this 
 impotence was precisely what Aunt Maud sought to 
 mitigate for him by keeping him down ; and as her 
 effort to that end had doubtless never yet been so 
 visible he had probably never felt so definitely placed 
 in the world as while he waited with her for her half- 
 dozen other guests. She welcomed him genially 
 back from the States, as to his view of which her 
 few questions, though not coherent, were compre 
 hensive, and he had the amusement of seeing in her, 
 as through a clear glass, the outbreak of a plan and 
 the sudden consciousness of a curiosity. She be 
 came aware of America, under his eyes, as a possible 
 scene for social operations; the idea of a visit to 
 the wonderful country had clearly but just occurred 
 to her, yet she was talking of it, at the end of a min 
 ute, as her favourite dream. He didn t believe in 
 it, but he pretended to; this helped her as well as 
 anything else to treat him as a harmless young man. 
 
 36 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She was so engaged, with the further aid of a com 
 plete absence of allusions, when the highest effect 
 was given her method by the beautiful entrance of 
 Kate. The method therefore received support all 
 round, for no young man could have been more 
 harmless than the person to the relief of whose shy 
 ness her niece ostensibly came. The ostensible, in 
 Kate, struck him altogether, on this occasion, as pro 
 digious; while scarcely less prodigious, for that 
 matter, was his own reading, on the spot, of the rela 
 tion between his companions a relation lighted for 
 him by the straight look, not exactly loving nor lin 
 gering, yet searching and soft, that, on the part of 
 her aunt, the girl had to reckon with as she advanced. 
 It took her in from head to foot, and in doing so it 
 told a story that made poor Densher again the least 
 bit sick : it marked so something with which Kate 
 habitually and consummately reckoned. 
 
 That was the story that she was always, for her 
 beneficent dragon, under arms; living up, every 
 hour, but especially at festal hours, to the " value " 
 Mrs. Lowder had attached to her. High and fixed, 
 this estimate ruled, on each occasion, at Lancaster 
 Gate, the social scene; so that our young man now 
 recognised in it something like the artistic idea, the 
 plastic substance, imposed by tradition, by genius, 
 by criticism, in respect to a given character, on a 
 distinguished actress. As such a person was to dress 
 the part, to walk, to look, to speak, in every way to 
 express, the part, so all this was what Kate was to 
 
 37 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 do for the character she had undertaken, under her 
 aunt s roof, to represent. It was made up, the char 
 acter, of definite elements and touches things all 
 perfectly ponderable to criticism; and the way for 
 her to meet criticism was evidently at the start to be 
 sure her make-up was exact and that she looked at 
 least no worse than usual. Aunt Maud s apprecia 
 tion of that to-night was indeed managerial, and 
 Kate s own contribution fairly that of the faultless 
 soldier on parade. Densher saw himself for the 
 moment as in his purchased stall at the play; the 
 watchful manager was in the depths of a box and 
 the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But 
 she passed, the poor actress he could see how she 
 always passed; her wig, her paint, her jewels, every 
 mark of her expression impeccable, and her entrance 
 accordingly greeted with the proper round of ap 
 plause. Such impressions as we thus note for Den 
 sher come and go, it must be granted, in very much 
 less time than notation demands; but we may none 
 the less make the point that there was, still further, 
 time among them for him to feel almost too scared 
 to take part in the ovation. He struck himself as 
 having lost, for the minute, his presence of mind 
 so that, at any rate, he only stared in silence at the 
 older woman s technical challenge and at the younger 
 one s disciplined face. It was as if the drama it 
 thus came to him, for the fact of a drama there was 
 no blinking was between them, them quite prepon 
 derantly; with Merton Densher relegated to mere 
 
 38 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 spectator ship, a paying place in front, and one of the 
 most expensive. This was why his appreciation had 
 turned for the instant to fear had just turned, as 
 we have said, to sickness; and in spite of the fact 
 that the disciplined face did offer him over the foot 
 lights, as he believed, the small gleam, fine, faint, but 
 exquisite, of a special intelligence. So might a prac 
 tised performer, even when raked by double-bar 
 relled glasses, seem to be all in her part and yet con 
 vey a sign to the person in the house she loved best. 
 
 The drama, at all events, as Densher saw it, mean 
 while went on amplified soon enough by the advent 
 of two other guests, stray gentlemen both, stragglers 
 in the rout of the season, who visibly presented them 
 selves to Kate, during the next moments, as subjects 
 for a like impersonal treatment and sharers in a like 
 usual mercy. At opposite ends of the social course, 
 they displayed, in respect to the " figure " that each, 
 in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the 
 contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A 
 scratch company of two innocuous youths and a paci 
 fied veteran was therefore what now offered itself to 
 Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless 
 and full of the compunction of having had to come 
 alone. Her companion, at the last moment, had 
 been indisposed positively not well enough, and so 
 had packed her off, insistently, with excuses, with 
 wild regrets. This circumstance of their charming 
 friend s illness was the first thing Kate took up with 
 Densher on their being able after dinner, without 
 
 39 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 bravado, to have ten minutes " naturally," as she 
 called it which wasn t what he did together ; but 
 it was already as if the young man had, by an odd 
 impression, throughout the meal, not been wholly 
 deprived of Miss Theale s participation. Mrs. Low- 
 der had made dear Milly the topic, and it proved, on 
 the spot, a topic as familiar to the enthusiastic 
 younger as to the sagacious older man. Any 
 knowledge they might lack Mrs. Lowder s niece was 
 moreover alert to supply, while Densher himself was 
 freely appealed to as the most privileged, after all, 
 of the group. Wasn t it he who had in a manner 
 invented the wonderful creature through having 
 seen her first, caught her in her native jungle? 
 Hadn t he more or less paved the way for her by his 
 prompt recognition of her rarity, by preceding her, 
 in a friendly spirit as he had the " ear " of society 
 with a sharp flashlight or two? 
 
 He met, poor Densher, these inquiries as he could, 
 listening with interest, yet with discomfort; winc 
 ing in particular, dry journalist as he was, to find it 
 seemingly supposed of him that he had put his pen 
 oh, his " pen ! " at the service of private distinc 
 tion. The ear of society? they were talking, or 
 almost, as if he had publicly paragraphed a modest 
 young lady. They dreamt dreams, in truth, he ap 
 peared to perceive, that fairly waked him up, and he 
 settled himself in his place both to resist his embar 
 rassment and to catch the full revelation. His em 
 barrassment came, naturally, from the fact that if he 
 
 40 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 could claim no credit for Miss Theale s success, so 
 neither could he gracefully insist on his not having 
 been concerned with her. What touched him most 
 nearly was that the occasion took on somehow the 
 air of a commemorative banquet, a feast to celebrate 
 a brilliant if brief career. There was of course more 
 said about the heroine than if she had not been ab 
 sent, and he found himself rather stupefied at the 
 range of Milly s triumph. Mrs. Lowder had won 
 ders to tell of it; the two wearers of the waistcoat, 
 either with sincerity or with hypocrisy, professed in 
 the matter an equal expertness ; and Densher at last 
 seemed to know himself in presence of a social 
 " case." It was Mrs. Stringham, obviously, whose 
 testimony would have been most invoked had she not 
 been, as her friend s representative, rather confined 
 to the function of inhaling the incense ; so that Kate, 
 who treated her beautifully, smiling at her, cheering 
 and consoling her across the table, appeared benevo 
 lently both to speak and to interpret for her. Kate 
 spoke as if she wouldn t perhaps understand their 
 way of appreciating Milly, but would let them none 
 the less, in justice to their goodwill, express it in 
 their coarser fashion. Densher himself was not un 
 conscious in respect to this of a certain broad broth 
 erhood with Mrs. Stringham; wondering indeed, 
 while he followed the talk, how it might move 
 American nerves. He had only heard of them before, 
 but in his recent tour he had caught them in the fact, 
 and there was now a moment or two when it came to 
 
 4 1 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 him that he had perhaps and not in the way of an 
 escape taken a lesson from them. 
 
 They quivered, clearly, they hummed and 
 drummed, they leaped and bounded in Mrs. String- 
 ham s typical organism this lady striking him as 
 before all things excited, as, in the native phrase, 
 keyed-tip, to a perception of more elements in the 
 occasion than he was himself able to count. She 
 was accessible to sides of it, he imagined, that were 
 as yet obscure to him ; for, though she unmistakably 
 rejoiced and soared, he none the less saw her at mo 
 ments as even more agitated than pleasure required. 
 It was a state of emotion in her that could scarce 
 represent simply an impatience to report at home. 
 Her little dry New England brightness he had 
 " sampled " all the shades of the American complex 
 ity, if complexity it were had its actual reasons for 
 finding relief most in silence ; so that before the sub 
 ject was changed he perceived with surprise at the 
 others that they had given her enough of it. He 
 had quite had enough of it himself by the time he was 
 asked if it were true that their friend had really not 
 made in her own country the mark she had chalked 
 so large in London. It was Mrs. Lowder herself 
 who addressed him that inquiry; while he scarce 
 knew if he were the more impressed with her launch 
 ing it under Mrs. Stringham s nose or with her hope 
 that he would allow to London the honour of dis 
 covery. The innocuous young man propounded the 
 theory that they saw in London for all that was 
 
 42 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 said much further than in the States : it wouldn t 
 be the first time, he urged, that they had taught the 
 Americans to appreciate especially when it was 
 funny seme native product. He didn t mean that 
 Miss Theale was funny though she was weird, and 
 this was precisely her magic ; but it might very well 
 be that New York, in having her to show, hadn t 
 been aware of its luck. There were plenty of people 
 who were nothing over there and yet were awfully 
 taken up in England; just as to make the balance 
 right, thank goodness they sometimes sent out 
 beauties and celebrities who left the Briton cold. 
 The Briton s temperature in truth was not to be cal 
 culated a formulation of the matter that was not 
 reached, however, without producing in Mrs. String- 
 ham a final feverish sally. She announced that if 
 the point of view for a proper admiration of her 
 young friend had seemed to fail a little in New York, 
 there was no manner of doubt of her having carried 
 Boston by storm. It pointed the moral that Boston, 
 for the finer taste, left New York nowhere ; and the 
 good lady, as the exponent of this doctrine which 
 she set forth at a certain length made, obviously, 
 to Densher s mind, her nearest approach to supply 
 ing the weirdness in which Milly s absence had left 
 them deficient. She made it indeed effective for him 
 by suddenly addressing him. 
 
 * You know nothing, sir but not the least little 
 bit about my friend." 
 
 He hadn t pretended he did, but there was a purity 
 43 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of reproach in Mrs. Stringham s face and tone, a 
 purity charged apparently with solemn meanings; 
 so that for a little, small as had been his claim, he 
 couldn t but feel that she exaggerated. He won 
 dered what she did mean, but while doing so he de 
 fended himself. " I certainly don t know enormous 
 ly much beyond her having been most kind to me, 
 in New York, as a poor bewildered and newly landed 
 alien, and my having tremendously appreciated it." 
 To which he added, he scarce knew why, what had 
 an immediate success. " Remember, Mrs. String- 
 ham, that you weren t then present." 
 
 " Ah, there you are ! " said Kate with a pleasant 
 spirit, though whether for his own or for Mrs. 
 Stringham s benefit he failed at the time to make 
 out. 
 
 " You weren t present then, dearest," Mrs. Low- 
 der richly concurred. " You don t know," she con 
 tinued with mellow gaiety, " how far things may 
 have gone." 
 
 It made the little woman, he could see, really lose 
 her head. She had more things in mind than any 
 of them, unless perhaps it were Kate, whom he felt 
 as indirectly watching him during this foolish pas 
 sage, though it pleased him and because of the fool 
 ishness not to meet her eyes. He met Mrs. String- 
 ham s, which affected him: with her he could on 
 occasion clear it up a sense produced by the mute 
 communion between them and really the beginning, 
 as the event was to show, of something extraordi- 
 
 44 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 nary. It was even already a little the effect of this 
 communion that Mrs. Stringham perceptibly faltered 
 in her retort to Mrs. Lowder s joke. " Oh, it s pre 
 cisely my point that Mr. Densher can t have had vast 
 opportunities." And then she smiled at him. " I 
 wasn t away, you know, long." 
 
 It made everything, in the oddest way in the 
 world, immediately right for him. " And I wasn t 
 there long, either." He positively saw, with it, that 
 nothing, for him, so far as she was concerned, would 
 again be wrong. " She s beautiful, but I don t say 
 she s easy to know." 
 
 " Ah, she s a thousand and one things ! " replied 
 the good lady, as if now to keep well with him. 
 
 He asked nothing better. " She was off with 
 you, to these parts, before I knew it. I myself was 
 off too away off to wonderful parts, where I had 
 endlessly more to see." 
 
 " But you didn t forget her ! " Aunt Maud inter 
 posed, with almost menacing archness. 
 
 " No, of course I didn t forget her. One doesn t 
 forget such charming impressions. But I never," 
 he lucidly maintained, " chattered to others about 
 her." 
 
 " She ll thank you for that, sir," said Mrs. String- 
 ham with a flushed firmness. 
 
 Yet doesn t silence in such a case," Aunt Maud 
 blandly inquired, " very often quite prove the depth 
 of the impression ? " 
 
 He would have been amused, had he not been 
 45 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 slightly displeased, at all they seemed to want to 
 fasten on him. " Well, the impression was as deep 
 as you like. But I really want Miss Theale to 
 know," he pursued for Mrs. Stringham, " that I 
 don t figure by any consent of my own as an author 
 ity about her." 
 
 Kate came to his assistance if assistance it was 
 before their friend had had time to meet this charge. 
 " You re right about her not being easy to know. 
 One sees her, with intensity sees her more than one 
 sees almost any one; but then one discovers that 
 that isn t knowing her and that one may know better 
 a person whom one doesn t see, as I say, half so 
 well." 
 
 The discrimination was interesting, but it brought 
 them back to the fact of her success; and it was at 
 that comparatively gross circumstance, now so fully 
 placed before them, that Milly s anxious compan 
 ion sat and looked looked very much as some spec 
 tator in an old-time circus might have watched the 
 oddity of a Christian maiden, in the arena, mildly, 
 caressingly, martyred. It was the nosing and fumb 
 ling not of lions and tigers but of domestic animals 
 let loose as for the joke. Even the joke made Mrs. 
 Stringham uneasy, and her mute communion with 
 Densher, to which we have alluded, was more and 
 more determined by it. He wondered afterwards if 
 Kate had made this out; though it was not indeed 
 till much later on that he found himself, in thought, 
 dividing the things she might have been conscious 
 
 46 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of from the things she must have missed. If she 
 actually missed, at any rate, Mrs. Stringham s dis 
 comfort, that but showed how her own idea held her. 
 Her own idea was, by insisting on the fact of the 
 girl s prominence as a feature of the season s end, to 
 keep Densher in relation, for the rest of them, both 
 to present and to past. " It s everything that has 
 happened since that makes you naturally a little shy 
 about her. You don t know what has happened 
 since, but we do; we ve seen it and followed it; 
 we ve a little been of it." The great thing for him, 
 at this, as Kate gave it, was in fact quite irresistibly 
 that the case was a real one the kind of thing that, 
 when one s patience was shorter than one s curiosity, 
 one had vaguely taken for possible in London, but 
 in which one had never been, even to this small ex 
 tent, concerned. The little American s sudden so 
 cial adventure, her happy and, no doubt, harmless 
 flourish, had probably been favoured by several ac 
 cidents, but it had been favoured above all by the 
 simple spring-board of the scene, by one of those 
 common caprices of the numberless foolish flock, 
 gregarious movements as inscrutable as ocean-cur 
 rents. The huddled herd had drifted to her blindly 
 it might as blindly have drifted away. There had 
 been of course a signal, but the great reason was 
 probably the absence at the moment of a larger lion. 
 The bigger beast would come and the smaller would 
 then vanish. It was at all events characteristic, and 
 what was of the essence of it was grist to his scrib- 
 
 47 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 bling mill, matter for his journalising hand. That 
 hand already, in intention, played over it the " mo 
 tive," as a sign of the season, a feature of the time, 
 of the purely expeditious and rough-and-tumble 
 nature of the social boom. The boom as in itself 
 required that would be the note; the subject of 
 the process a comparatively minor question. Any 
 thing was boomable enough when nothing else was 
 more so : the author of the " rotten " book, the 
 beauty who was no beauty, the heiress who was only 
 that, the stranger who was for the most part saved 
 from being inconveniently strange but by being in 
 conveniently familiar, the American whose Ameri 
 canism had been long desperately discounted, the 
 creature in fine as to whom spangles or spots of any 
 sufficiently marked and applied sort could be loudly 
 enough predictated. 
 
 So he judged, at least, within his limits, and the 
 idea that what he had thus caught in the fact was the 
 trick of fashion and the tone of society went so far 
 as to make him take up again his sense of indepen 
 dence. He had supposed himself civilised; but if 
 
 this was civilisation ! One could smoke one s 
 
 pipe outside when twaddle was within. He had 
 rather avoided, as we have remarked, Kate s eyes, 
 but there came a moment when he would fairly have 
 liked to put it, across the table, to her : " I say, light 
 of my life, is this the great world? " There came 
 another, it must be added and doubtless as a result 
 of something that, over the cloth, did hang between 
 
 48 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 them when she struck him as having quite an 
 swered : " Dear no for what do you take me? Not 
 the least little bit: only a poor silly, though quite 
 harmless, imitation." What she might have passed 
 for saying, however, was practically merged in what 
 she did say, for she came overtly to his aid, very 
 much as if guessing some of his thoughts. She 
 enunciated, to relieve his bewilderment, the obvious 
 truth that you couldn t leave London for three 
 months at that time of the year and come back to 
 find your friends just where they were. As they 
 had of course been jigging away they might well be 
 so red in the face that you wouldn t know them. 
 She reconciled in fine his disclaimer about Milly with 
 that honour of having discovered her which it was 
 vain for him modestly to shirk. He had unearthed 
 her, but it was they, all of them together, who had 
 developed her. She was always a charmer, one of 
 the greatest ever seen, but she wasn t the person he 
 had " backed." 
 
 Densher was to feel sure afterwards that Kate had 
 had in these pleasantries no conscious, above all no 
 insolent purpose of making light of poor Susan 
 Shepherd s property in their young friend which 
 property, by such remarks, was very much pushed to 
 the wall; but he was also to know that Mrs. String- 
 ham had secretly resented them, Mrs. Stringham 
 holding the opinion, of which he was ultimately to 
 have a glimpse, that all the Kate Croys in Christen 
 dom were but dust for the feet of her Milly. That, 
 
 VOL. II. 4 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 it was true, would be what she must reveal only 
 when driven to her last entrenchments and well cor 
 nered in her passion the rare passion of friendship, 
 the sole passion of her little life save the one other, 
 more imperturbably cerebral, that she entertained 
 for the art of Guy de Maupassant. She slipped in 
 the observation that her Milly was incapable of 
 change, was just exactly, on the contrary, the same 
 Milly; but this made little difference in the drift of 
 Kate s contention. She was perfectly kind to Susie : 
 it was as if she positively knew her as handicapped 
 for any disagreement by feeling that she, Kate, had 
 " type," and by being committed to admiration of 
 type. Kate had occasion subsequently she found 
 it somehow to mention to our young man Milly s 
 having spoken to her of this view on the good lady s 
 part. She would like Milly had had it from her 
 to put Kate Croy in a book and see what she could 
 so do with her. " Chop me up fine or serve me 
 whole " it was a way of being got at that Kate pro 
 fessed she dreaded. It would be Mrs. Stringham s, 
 however, she understood, because Mrs. Stringhara, 
 oddly, felt that with such stuff as the strange English 
 girl was made of, stuff that (in spite of Maud Man- 
 ningham, who was full of sentiment) she had never 
 known, there was none other to be employed. 
 These things were of later evidence, yet Densher 
 might even then have felt them in the air. They 
 were practically in it already when Kate, waiving the 
 question of her friend s chemical change, wound up 
 
 5 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 with the comparatively unobjectionable proposition 
 that he must now, having missed so much, take them 
 all up, on trust, further on. He met it peacefully, a 
 little perhaps as an example to Mrs. Stringham 
 " Oh, as far on as you like ! " This even had its ef 
 fect : Mrs. Stringham appropriated as much of it as 
 might be meant for herself. The nice thing about 
 her was that she could measure how much; so that 
 by the time dinner was over they had really covered 
 ground. 
 
XX 
 
 THE younger of the other men, it afterwards ap 
 peared, was most in his element at the piano; so that 
 they had coffee and comic songs upstairs the gen 
 tlemen, temporarily relinquished, submitting easily 
 in this interest to Mrs. Lowder s parting injunction 
 not to sit too tight. Our especial young man sat 
 tighter when restored to the drawing-room; he 
 made it out perfectly with Kate that they might, 
 off and on, foregather without offence. He had 
 perhaps stronger needs in this general respect than 
 she; but she had better names for the scant risks to 
 which she consented. It was the blessing of a big 
 house that intervals were large and, of an August 
 night, that windows were open; whereby, at a given 
 moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs suffi 
 ciently sung, Aunt Maud could hold her little court 
 more freshly. Densher and Kate, during these mo 
 ments, occupied, side by side, a small sofa a luxury 
 formulated by the latter as the proof, under criticism, 
 of their remarkably good conscience. " To seem 
 not to know each other once you re here would 
 be," the girl said, " to overdo it "; and she arranged 
 it charmingly that they must have some passage to 
 put Aunt Maud off the scent. She would be won 
 dering otherwise what in the world they found their 
 
 5 2 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 account in. For Densher, none the less, the profit 
 of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial 
 and poor; there were in particular at present more 
 things in his mind than he could bring out while 
 watching the windows. It was true, on the other 
 hand, that she suddenly met most of them and 
 more than he could see on the spot by coming out 
 for him with a reference to Milly that was not in the 
 key of those made at dinner. " She s not a bit 
 right, you know. I mean in health. Just see her 
 to-night. I mean it looks grave. For you she 
 would have come, you know, if it had been at all pos 
 sible." 
 
 He took this in such patience as he could muster. 
 " What s the matter with her? " 
 
 But Kate continued without saying. " Unless 
 indeed your being here has been just a reason for 
 her funking it." 
 
 " What s the matter with her? " Densher asked 
 again. 
 
 " Why, just what I ve told you that she likes you 
 so much." 
 
 " Then why should she deny herself the joy of 
 meeting me? " 
 
 Kate had an hesitation it would take so long to 
 explain. " And perhaps it s true that she is bad. 
 She easily may be." 
 
 " Quite easily, I should say, judging by Mrs. 
 Stringham, who s visibly preoccupied and wor 
 ried." 
 
 53 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Visibly enough. Yet it mayn t," said Kate, 
 " be only for that." 
 
 "For what then?" 
 
 But this question too, on thinking, she neglected. 
 " Why, if it s anything real, doesn t she go home? 
 She would be anxious, and she has done all she need 
 to be civil." 
 
 " I think," Densher remarked, " she has been 
 quite beautifully civil." 
 
 It made Kate, he fancied, look at him the least bit 
 harder; but she was already, in a manner, explain 
 ing. " Her preoccupation is probably on two differ 
 ent heads. One of them would make her hurry 
 back, but the other makes her stay. She s commis 
 sioned to tell Milly all about you." 
 
 " Well, then," said the young man between a 
 laugh and a sigh, " I m glad I felt, downstairs, a kind 
 of drawing to her. Wasn t I rather decent to 
 her? " 
 
 " Awfully nice. You ve instincts, you fiend. It s 
 all," Kate declared, " as it should be." 
 
 " Except perhaps," he after a moment cynically 
 suggested, " that she isn t getting much good of me 
 now. Will she report to Milly on this? And 
 then as Kate seemed to wonder what " this " might 
 be, " On our present disregard for appearances." 
 
 " Ah, leave appearances to me ! " She spoke in 
 her high way. " I ll make them all right. Aunt 
 Maud, moreover," she added, " has her so engaged 
 that she won t notice." Densher felt, with this, that 
 
 54 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 his companion had indeed perceptive flights that he 
 couldn t hope to match had for instance another 
 when she still subjoined : " And Mrs. Stringham s 
 appearing to respond just in order to make that im 
 pression." 
 
 " Well," Densher dropped with some humour, 
 " life s very interesting ! I hope it s really as much 
 so for you as you make it for others; I mean judging 
 by what you make it for me. You seem to me to 
 represent it as thrilling for ces dames, and in a differ 
 ent way for each: Aunt Maud, Susan Shepherd, 
 Milly. But what is," he wound up, " the matter? 
 Do you mean she s as ill as she looks? " 
 
 Kate s face struck him as replying at first that his 
 derisive speech deserved no satisfaction; then she 
 appeared to yield to a need of her own the need 
 to make the point that " as ill as she looked " was 
 what Milly scarce could be. If she were as ill as she 
 looked she could scarce be a question with them, 
 for her end would in that case be near. She believed 
 herself nevertheless and Kate couldn t help believ 
 ing her too seriously menaced. There was always 
 the fact that they had been on the point of leaving 
 town, the two ladies, and had suddenly been pulled 
 up. " We bade them good-bye or all but Aunt 
 Maud and I, the night before Milly, popping so very 
 oddly into the National Gallery for a farewell look, 
 found you and me together. They were then to get 
 off a day or two later. But they ve not got off 
 they re not getting off. When I see them and I 
 
 55 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 t,aw them this morning they have showy reasons. 
 They do mean to go, but they ve postponed it." 
 With which the girl brought out : " They ve post 
 poned it for you." He protested so far as a man 
 might without fatuity, since a protest was itself cred 
 ulous; but Kate, as ever, understood herself. 
 " You ve made Milly change her mind. She wants 
 not to miss you though she wants also not to show 
 she wants you; which is why, as I hinted a moment 
 ago, she may consciously have hung back to-night. 
 She doesn t know when she may see you again 
 she doesn t know she ever may. She doesn t see the 
 future. It has opened out before her in these last 
 weeks as a dark, confused thing." 
 
 Densher wondered. " After the tremendous 
 time you ve all been telling me she has had? " 
 
 " That s it. There s a shadow across it." 
 
 " That of what you allude to as some physical 
 break-up? " 
 
 " Some physical break-down. Nothing less. 
 She s scared. She has so much to lose. And she 
 wants more." 
 
 " Ah, well," said Densher, with a sudden strange 
 sense of discomfort, " couldn t one say to her that 
 she can t have everything? " 
 
 " No for one wouldn t want to. She really," 
 Kate went on, " has been somebody here. Ask 
 Aunt Maud you may think me prejudiced," the 
 girl oddly smiled. " Aunt Maud will tell you the 
 world s before her. It has all come since you saw 
 
 56 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her, and it s a pity you ve missed it, for it certainly 
 would have amused you. She has really been a per 
 fect success I mean of course so far as possible in 
 the scrap of time and she has taken it like a perfect 
 angel. If you can imagine an angel with a thump 
 ing bank-account you ll have the simplest expression 
 of the kind of thing. Her fortune s absolutely 
 huge; Aunt Maud has had all the facts, or enough 
 of them, in the last confidence, from Susie/ and 
 Susie speaks by book. Take them then, in the last 
 confidence, from me. There she is." Kate ex 
 pressed above all what it most came to. " It s open 
 to her to make, you see, the very greatest marriage. 
 I assure you we re not vulgar about her. Her pos 
 sibilities are quite plain." 
 
 Densher showed he neither disbelieved nor 
 grudged them. " But what good then, on earth, 
 can I do her? " 
 
 ^ Well, she had it ready. You can console her." 
 
 "And for what?" 
 
 " For all that, if she s stricken, she must see swept 
 away. I shouldn t care for her if she hadn t so 
 much," Kate very simply said. And then as it made 
 him laugh not quite happily : " I shouldn t trouble 
 about her if there were one thing she did have." 
 The girl spoke indeed with a noble compassion. 
 " She has nothing." 
 
 " Not all the young dukes? " 
 
 " Well we must see see if anything can come of 
 them. She at any rate does love life. To have met 
 
 57 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 a person like you," Kate further explained, " is to 
 have felt you become, with all the other fine things, 
 a part of life. Oh, she has you arranged ! " 
 
 " You have, it strikes me, my dear " and he 
 looked both detached and rueful. " Pray, what am 
 I to do with the dukes? " 
 
 " Oh, the dukes will be disappointed ! " 
 
 "Then why shan t I be?" 
 
 " You ll have expected less," Kate wonderfully 
 smiled. " Besides, you will be. You ll have ex 
 pected enough for that." 
 
 " Yet it s what you want to let me in for? " 
 
 " I want," said the girl, " to make things pleasant 
 for her. I use, for the purpose, what I have. 
 You re what I have of most precious, and you re 
 therefore what I use most." 
 
 He looked at her long. " I wish I could use you 
 a little more." After which, as she continued to 
 smile at him, " Is it a bad case of lungs? " he asked. 
 
 Kate showed for a little as if she wished it might 
 be. " Not lungs, I think. Isn t consumption, 
 taken in time, now curable? " 
 
 " People are, no doubt, patched up." But he 
 wondered. " Do you mean she has something 
 that s past patching? " And before she could an 
 swer, " It s really as if her appearance put her out 
 side of such things being, in spite of her youth, that 
 of a person who has been through all it s conceiv 
 able she should be exposed to. She affects one, I 
 should say, as a creature saved from a shipwreck. 
 
 53 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Such a creature may surely, in these days, on the 
 doctrine of chances, go to sea again with confidence. 
 She has had her wreck she has met her adventure." 
 
 " Oh, I grant you her wreck ! " Kate was all re 
 sponse so far. " But do let her have still her ad 
 venture. There are wrecks that are not advent 
 ures." 
 
 " Well if there be also adventures that are not 
 wrecks ! " Densher in short was willing, but he 
 came back to his point. " What I mean is that she 
 has none of the effect on one s nerves or whatever 
 of an invalid." 
 
 Kate on her side did this justice. " No that s 
 the beauty of her." 
 
 " The beauty ? " 
 
 " Yes, she s so wonderful. She won t show for 
 that, any more than your watch, when it s about to 
 stop for want of being wound up, gives you conveni 
 ent notice or shows as different from usual. She 
 won t die, she won t live, by inches. She won t 
 smell, as it were, of drugs. She won t taste, as it 
 were, of medicine. No one will know." 
 
 " Then what," he demanded, frankly mystified 
 now, "are we talking about? In what extraordi 
 nary state is she? " 
 
 Kate went on as if, at this, making it out, in a 
 fashion, for herself. " I believe that if she s ill at all 
 she s very ill. I believe that if she s bad she s not a 
 little bad. I can t tell you why, but that s how I see 
 her. She ll really live or she ll really not. She ll 
 
 59 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 have it all or she ll miss it all. Now I don t think 
 she ll have it all." 
 
 Densher had followed this, with his eye upon her 
 her own having thoughtfully wandered as if it 
 were more impressive than lucid. You * think, 
 and you don t think, and yet you remain all the 
 while without an inkling of her complaint? " 
 
 " No, not without an inkling; but it s a matter in 
 which I don t want knowledge. She moreover her 
 self doesn t want one to want it : she has, as to what 
 may be preying upon her, a kind of ferocity of mod 
 esty, a kind of I don t know what to call it in 
 tensity of pride. And then, and then " But 
 
 with this she faltered. 
 
 "And then what?" 
 
 " I m a brute about illness. I hate it. It s well 
 for you, my dear," Kate continued, " that you re as 
 sound as a bell." 
 
 " Thank you ! " Densher laughed. " It s rather 
 good then for yourself too that you re as strong as 
 the sea." 
 
 She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish 
 gladness of their young immunities. It was all they 
 had together, but they had it at least without a flaw 
 each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the per 
 sonal virtue, love and desire of the other. Yet it 
 was as if this very consciousness threw them back 
 the next moment into pity for the poor girl who had 
 everything else in the world, the great genial good 
 they, alas, didn t have, but failed, on the other hand, 
 
 60 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of this. " How we re talking about her ! " Kate 
 compunctiously sighed. But there were the facts. 
 " From illness I keep away." 
 
 " But you don t since here you are, in spite of 
 all you say, in the midst of it." 
 
 " Ah, I m only watching ! " 
 
 " And putting me forward in your place? Thank 
 you!" 
 
 " Oh," said Kate, " I m breaking you in. Let it 
 give you the measure of what I shall expect of you. 
 One can t begin too soon." 
 
 She drew away, as if under the impression of a stir 
 on the balcony, the hand of which he had a minute 
 before possessed himself; and the warning brought 
 him back to attention. " You haven t even an idea 
 if it s a case for surgery? " 
 
 " I dare say it may be ; that is that if it comes to 
 anything it may come to that. Of course she s in 
 the highest hands." 
 
 " The doctors are after her then ? " 
 
 " She s after them it s the same thing. I think 
 I m free to say it now she sees Sir Luke Strett." 
 
 It made him quickly wince. " Ah, fifty thousand 
 knives ! " Then after an instant : " One seems to 
 guess." Yes, but she waved it away. " Don t 
 guess. Only do as I tell you." 
 
 For a moment now, in silence, he took it all in, 
 might have had it before him. " What you want of 
 me then is to make up to a sick girl." 
 
 " Ah, but you admit yourself that she doesn t af- 
 61 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 feet you as sick. You understand moreover just 
 how much and just how little." 
 
 " It s amazing," he presently answered, " what 
 you think I understand." 
 
 " Well, if you ve brought me to it, my dear," she 
 returned, " that has been your way of breaking me 
 in. Besides which, so far as making up to her goes, 
 plenty of others will." 
 
 Densher for a little, under this suggestion, might 
 have been seeing their young friend, on a pile of 
 cushions and in a perpetual teagown, amid flowers 
 and with drawn blinds, surrounded by the higher 
 nobility. " Others can follow their tastes. Be 
 sides, others are free." 
 
 " But so are you, my dear ! " 
 
 She had spoken with impatience, and her sud 
 denly quitting him had sharpened it; in spite of 
 which he kept his place, only looking up at her. 
 * You re prodigious ! " 
 
 "Of course I m prodigious!" and, as immedi 
 ately happened, she gave a further sign of it that he 
 fairly sat watching. The door from the lobby had, 
 as she spoke, been thrown open for a gentleman who, 
 immediately finding her within his view, advanced 
 to greet her before the announcement of his name 
 could reach her companion. Densher none the less 
 felt himself brought quickly into relation; Kate s 
 welcome to the visitor became almost precipitately an 
 appeal to her friend, who slowly rose to meet it. " I 
 don t know whether you know Lord Mark." And 
 
 62 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 then for the other party : "Mr. Merton Densher 
 who has just come back from America." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the other party, while Densher said 
 nothing occupied as he mainly was on the spot with 
 weighing the sound in question. He recognised it 
 in a moment as less imponderable than it might have 
 appeared, as having indeed positive claims. It 
 wasn t, that is, he knew the " Oh ! " of the idiot,,, 
 however great the superficial resemblance : it was 
 that of the clever, the accomplished man ; it was the 
 very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive 
 training and experience had gone to producing it. 
 Densher felt somehow that, as a thing of value acci 
 dentally picked up, it would retain an interest of 
 curiosity. The three stood for a little together in 
 an awkwardness to which he was conscious of con 
 tributing his share ; Kate failing to ask Lord Mark 
 to be seated, but letting him know that he would 
 find Mrs. Lowder, with some others, on the balcony. 
 
 " Oh, and Miss Theale I suppose? as I seemed to 
 hear outside, from below, Mrs. Stringham s unmis 
 takable voice." 
 
 :t Yes, but Mrs. Stringham s alone. Milly s un 
 well," the girl explained, " and was compelled to dis 
 appoint us." 
 
 " Ah, disappoint rather ! " And, lingering a 
 little, he had his eyes on Densher while he inquired 
 further. " She isn t really bad, I trust? " 
 
 Densher, after all he had heard, easily supposed 
 him interested in Milly; but he could imagine him 
 
 63 
 
 \ 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 also interested in the young man with whom he had 
 found Kate engaged and whom he yet considered 
 without visible intelligence. Densher was sure, 
 however, in a moment, that he was doing what he 
 wanted, satisfying himself as to each. To this he 
 was aided by Kate, who produced a prompt : " Oh 
 dear no ; I think not. I ve just been reassuring Mr. 
 Densher," she added " who s as concerned as the 
 rest of us. I ve been calming his fears." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lord Mark again and again it was 
 just as good. That was for Densher, the latter 
 could see, or think he saw. And then for the others : 
 " My fears would want calming. We must take 
 great care of her. This way ? " 
 
 She went with him a few steps, and while Den 
 sher, hanging about, gave them frank attention, pres 
 ently paused again for some further colloquy. What 
 passed between them our young man lost, but she 
 was presently with him again, Lord Mark joining 
 the rest. Densher was by this time quite ready for 
 her. " It s he who s your aunt s man ? " 
 
 " Oh, immensely." 
 
 " I mean for you." 
 
 " That s what I mean too," Kate smiled. " There 
 he is. Now you can judge." 
 
 "Judge of what?" 
 
 " Judge of him." 
 
 " Why should I judge of him? " Densher asked. 
 " I ve nothing to do with him." 
 
 " Then why do you ask about him ? " 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " To judge of you which is different." 
 
 Kate, for a little, seemed to look at the difference, 
 To take the measure, do you mean, of my dan- 
 ger?" 
 
 He hesitated ; then he said : " I m thinking, I dare 
 say, of Miss Theale s. How does your aunt recon 
 cile his interest in her ? " 
 
 " With his interest in me? " 
 
 " With her own interest in you," Densher said 
 while she reflected. " If that interest Mrs. Low- 
 der s takes the form of Lord Mark, hasn t he rather 
 to look out for the forms he takes ? " 
 
 Kate seemed interested in the question, but " Oh, 
 he takes them easily," she answered. " The beauty 
 is that she doesn t trust him." 
 
 " That Milly doesn t?" 
 
 " Yes Milly either. But I mean Aunt Maud. 
 Not really." 
 
 Densher gave it his wonder. " Takes him to her 
 heart and yet thinks he cheats ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Kate " that s the way people are. 
 What they think of their enemies, goodness knows, 
 is bad enough; but I m still more struck with what 
 they think of their friends. Milly s own state of 
 mind, however," she went on, " is lucky. That s 
 Aunt Maud s security, though she doesn t yet fully 
 recognise it besides being Milly s own." 
 
 " You conceive it a real escape then not to care 
 for him?" 
 
 She shook her head in beautiful grave deprecation. 
 
 VOL. II. 5 65 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " You oughtn t to make me say too much. But I m 
 glad I don t." 
 
 " Don t say too much ? " 
 
 " Don t care for Lord Mark." 
 
 " Oh ! " Densher answered with a sound like his 
 lordship s own. To which he added : " You abso 
 lutely hold that that poor girl doesn t? " 
 
 " Ah, you know what I hold about that poor 
 girl ! " It had made her again impatient. 
 
 Yet he stuck a minute to the subject. You 
 scarcely call him, I suppose, one of the dukes." 
 
 " Mercy, no far from it. He s not, compared 
 with other possibilities, in it. Milly, it s true," 
 she said, to be exact, " has no natural sense of social 
 values, doesn t in the least understand our differ 
 ences or know who s who or what s what." 
 
 " I see. That," Densher laughed, " is her reason 
 for liking me." 
 
 " Precisely. She doesn t resemble me," said 
 Kate, " who at least know what I lose." 
 
 Well, it had all risen for Densher to a considerable 
 interest. " And Aunt Maud why shouldn t she 
 know? I mean that your friend there isn t really 
 anything. Does she suppose him of ducal value ? " 
 
 " Scarcely ; save in the sense of being uncle to a 
 duke. That s undeniably something. He s the 
 best moreover we can get." 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " said Densher ; and his doubt was not 
 all derisive. 
 
 " It isn t Lord Mark s grandeur," she went on 
 66 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 without heeding this ; " because perhaps in the line 
 of that alone as he has no money more could be 
 done. But she s not a bit sordid; she only counts 
 with the sordidness of others. Besides, he s grand 
 enough, with a duke in his family and at the other 
 end of the string. The thing s his genius." 
 
 " And do you believe in that? " 
 
 "In Lord Mark s genius?" Kate, as if for a 
 more final opinion than had yet been asked of her, 
 took a moment to think. She looked indeed so that 
 one would scarce have known what to expect; but 
 she came out in time with a very sufficient " Yes ! " 
 
 "Political?" 
 
 " Universal. I don t know at least," she said, 
 " what else to call it when a man is able to make 
 himself without effort, without violence, without 
 machinery of any sort, so intensely felt. He has 
 somehow an effect without his being in any traceable 
 way a cause." 
 
 " Ah, but if the effect," said Densher with con 
 scious superficiality, " isn t agreeable ? " 
 
 "Oh, but it is!" 
 
 " Not, surely, for everyone." 
 
 " If you mean not for you," Kate returned, " you 
 may have reasons and men don t count. Women 
 don t know if it s agreeable or not." 
 * Then there you are! " 
 
 " Yes, precisely that takes, on his part, genius." 
 
 Densher stood before her as if he wondered what 
 everything she thus promptly, easily and, above all, 
 
 6 7 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 amusingly met him with, would have been found, 
 should it have come to an analysis, to " take." Some 
 thing suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, 
 welled up in him and overflowed the sense of his 
 good fortune and her variety, of the future she prom 
 ised, the interest she supplied. " All women but you 
 are stupid. How can I look at another? You re 
 different and different and then you re different 
 again. No marvel Aunt Maud builds on you ex 
 cept that you re so much too good for what she 
 builds for. Even * society won t know how good 
 for it you are ; it s too stupid, and you re beyond it. 
 You d have to pull it uphill it s you yourself who 
 are at the top. The women one meets what are 
 they but books one has already read? You re a 
 whole library of the unknown, the uncut." He al 
 most moaned, he ached, from the depth of his con 
 tent. " Upon my word, I ve a subscription ! " 
 
 She took it from him with her face again, in an 
 swer, giving out all it had, and they remained once 
 more confronted and united in their essential wealth 
 of life. " It s you who draw me out. I exist in 
 you. Not in others." 
 
 It had been, however, as if the thrill of their as 
 sociation itself pressed in him, as great felicities do, 
 the sharp spring of fear. " See here, you know : 
 don t, don t ! " 
 
 "Don t what?" 
 
 " Don t fail me. It would kill me." 
 
 She looked at him a minute with no response but 
 68 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her eyes. " So you think you ll kill me, in time, to 
 prevent it ? " She smiled, but he saw her the next 
 instant as smiling through tears ; and the instant af 
 ter this, she had got, in respect to the particular point, 
 quite off. She had come back to another, which was 
 one of her own; her own were so closely connected 
 that Densher s were at best but parenthetic. Still, 
 she had a distance to go. " You do then see your 
 way?" She put it to him before they joined as 
 was high time the others. And she made him un 
 derstand that she meant his way with Milly. 
 
 He had dropped a little in presence of the explana 
 tion ; then she had brought him up to a sort of recog 
 nition. He could make out by this light something 
 of what he saw, but a dimness also there was, un- 
 dispelled since his return. " There s something you 
 must definitely tell me. If our friend knows that, 
 all the while ?" 
 
 She came straight to his aid, formulating for him 
 his anxiety, though quite to smooth it down. " All 
 the while she and I, here, were growing intimate, 
 you and I were in unmentioned relation? If she 
 knows that, yes, she knows our relation consisted in 
 your writing to me." 
 
 u Then how could she suppose you weren t an 
 swering? " 
 
 " She doesn t suppose it." 
 
 " How then can she imagine you never named 
 her?" 
 
 " She doesn t. She knows now I did name her. 
 69 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 I ve told her everything. She s in possession of 
 reasons which will perfectly do." 
 
 Still he just brooded. " She takes things from 
 you exactly as I do? " 
 
 " Exactly as you do." 
 
 " She s just such another victim ? " 
 
 " Just such another. You re a pair." 
 
 " Then if anything happens/ said Densher, " we 
 can console each other? " 
 
 " Ah, something may indeed happen," she ex 
 claimed, " if you ll only go straight! " 
 
 He watched the others an instant through the 
 window. " What do you mean by going straight ? " 
 
 " Not worrying. Doing as you like. Try, as 
 I ve told you before, and you ll see. You ll have me 
 perfectly, always, to refer to." 
 
 " Oh, rather, I hope ! But if she s going away? " 
 
 It pulled Kate up but a moment. " I ll bring her 
 back. There you are. You won t be able to say 
 that I ve not made it smooth for you." 
 
 He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But 
 it was not the queerness that, after another minute, 
 was uppermost. He was in a wondrous silken web, 
 and it was amusing. " You spoil me! " 
 
 He was not sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this 
 juncture reappeared, had caught his word as it 
 dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her 
 attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom 
 she came through and who was now, none too soon, 
 taking leave of her. They were followed by Lord 
 
 70 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Mark and by the other men, but two or three things 
 happened before any dispersal of the company be 
 gan. One of these was that Kate found time to say 
 to him with furtive emphasis : " You must go now ! " 
 Another was that she next addressed herself in all 
 frankness to Lord Mark, drew near to him with an 
 almost reproachful " Come and talk to me! " a 
 challenge resulting after a minute for Densher in a 
 consciousness of their installation together in an out- 
 of-the-way corner, though not the same he himself 
 had just occupied with her. Still another was that 
 Mrs. Stringham, in the random intensity of her fare 
 wells, affected him as looking at him with a small 
 grave intimation, something into which he after 
 wards read the meaning that if he had happened to 
 desire a few words with her after dinner he would 
 have found her ready. This impression was nat 
 urally light, but it just left him with the sense of 
 something by his own act overlooked, unappreciated. 
 It gathered perhaps a slightly sharper shade from the 
 mild formality of her "Good-night, sir!" as she 
 passed him; a matter as to which there was now 
 nothing more to be done, thanks to the alertness of 
 the young man whom he by this time had made out 
 as even more harmless than himself. This person 
 age had forestalled him in opening the door for her 
 and was evidently with a view, Densher might 
 have judged, to ulterior designs on Milly propos 
 ing to attend her to her carriage. What further 
 occurred was that Aunt Maud, having released her, 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 immediately had a word for himself. It was an im 
 perative " Wait a minute," by which she both de 
 tained and dismissed him; she was particular about 
 her minute, but he had not yet given her, as hap 
 pened, a sign of withdrawal. 
 
 " Return to our little friend. You ll find her 
 really interesting." 
 
 " If you mean Miss Theale," he said, " I shall 
 certainly not forget her. But you must remember 
 that, so far as her interest is concerned, I myself 
 discovered, I as was said at dinner invented 
 her." 
 
 " Well, one seemed rather to see that you hadn t 
 taken out the patent. Don t, I only mean, in the 
 press of other things, too much neglect her." 
 
 Affected, surprised, by the coincidence of her ap 
 peal with Kate s, he asked himself quickly if it 
 mightn t help him with her. He at any rate could 
 but try. :< You re all looking after my manners. 
 That s exactly, you know, what Miss Croy has been 
 saying to me. She keeps me up she has had so 
 much to say about it." 
 
 He found pleasure in being able to give his hostess 
 an account of his passage with Kate that, while quite 
 veracious, might be reassuring to herself. But Aunt 
 Maud, wonderfully and facing him straight, took it 
 as if her confidence were supplied with other props. 
 If she saw his intention in it she yet blinked neither 
 with doubt nor with acceptance; she only said im- 
 perturbably : " Yes, she ll herself do anything for her 
 
 72 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 friend; so that she but preaches what she prac 
 tises." 
 
 Densher really quite wondered if Aunt Maud 
 knew how far Kate s devotion went. He was more 
 over a little puzzled by this special harmony; in face 
 of which he quickly asked himself if Mrs. Lowder 
 had bethought herself of the American girl as a dis 
 traction for him, and if Kate s intensity were there 
 fore but an appearance addressed to her aunt. What 
 might really become, in all this, of the American girl 
 was therefore a question that, on the latter contin 
 gency, would lose none of its sharpness. However, 
 questions could wait, and it was easy, so far as he 
 understood, to meet Mrs. Lowder. " It isn t a bit, 
 all the same, you know, that I resist. I find Miss 
 Theale charming." 
 
 Well, it was all she wanted. " Then don t miss a 
 chance." 
 
 " The only thing is," he went on, " that she s 
 naturally now leaving town and, as I take it, going 
 abroad." 
 
 Aunt Maud looked indeed an instant as if she her 
 self had been dealing with this difficulty. " She 
 won t go," she smiled in spite of it, " till she has seen 
 
 you. Moreover, when she does go " She 
 
 paused, leaving him uncertain. But the next minute 
 he was still more at sea. " We shall go too." 
 
 He gave a smile that he himself felt as slightly 
 strange. " And what good will that do me? " 
 
 " We shall be near them somewhere, and you ll 
 come out to us." 
 
 73 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh ! " he said a little awkwardly. 
 
 " I ll see that you do. I mean I ll write to you." 
 
 " Ah, thank you, thank you ! " Merton Densher 
 laughed. She was indeed putting him on his hon 
 our, and his honour winced a little at the use he 
 rather helplessly saw himself suffering her to believe 
 she could make of it. " There are all sorts of 
 things," he vaguely remarked, " to consider." 
 
 " No doubt. But there s above all the great 
 thing." 
 
 " And, pray, what s that? " 
 
 " Why, the importance of your not losing the oc 
 casion of your life. I m treating you handsomely, 
 I m looking after it for you. I can I can smooth, 
 your path. She s charming, she s clever and she s 
 good; And her fortune s a real fortune." 
 
 Ah, there she was, Aunt Maud ! The pieces fell 
 together for him as he felt her thus buying him off, 
 and buying him it would have been funny if it 
 hadn t been so grave with Miss Theale s money. 
 He ventured, derisive, fairly to treat it as extrava 
 gant. I m much obliged to you for the handsome 
 offer " 
 
 " Of what doesn t belong to me? " She wasn t 
 abashed. " I don t say it does but there s no rea 
 son it shouldn t to you. Mind you, moreover " 
 she kept it up " I m not one who talks in the air. 
 And you owe me something if you want to know 
 why." 
 
 Distinctly, he felt her pressure; he felt, given her 
 74 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 basis, her consistency; he even felt, to a degree that 
 was immediately to receive an odd confirmation, her 
 truth. Her truth, for that matter, was that she be 
 lieved him bribeable : a belief that for his own mind 
 as well as they stood there, lighted up the impossi 
 ble. What then in this light did Kate believe him? 
 But that was not what he asked aloud. " Of course 
 I know I owe you thanks for a deal of kind 
 treatment. Your inviting me, for instance, to 
 night !" 
 
 " Yes, my inviting you to-night is a part of it. 
 But you don t know," she added, " how far I ve gone 
 for you." 
 
 He felt himself red, and as if his honour were 
 colouring up; but he laughed again as he could. 
 " I see how far you re going." 
 
 " I m the most honest woman in the world; but 
 I ve nevertheless done for you what was necessary." 
 And then, as her now quite sombre gravity only 
 made him stare : " To start you, it was necessary. 
 From me it has the weight." He but continued to 
 stare, and she met his blankness with surprise. 
 " Don t you understand me? I ve told the proper 
 lie for you." Still he only showed her his flushed, 
 strained smile; in spite of which, speaking with force 
 and as if he must with a minute s reflection see what 
 she meant, she turned away from him. " I depend 
 upon you now to make me right ! " 
 
 The minute s reflection he was of course more 
 free to take after he had left the house. He walked 
 
 75 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 up the Bayswater Road, but he stopped short, under 
 the murky stars, before the modern church, in the 
 middle of the square that, going eastward, opened 
 out on his left. He had had his brief stupidity, but 
 now he understood. She had guaranteed to Milly 
 Theale through Mrs. Stringham that Kate didn t 
 care for him. She had affirmed through the same 
 source that the attachment was only his. He made 
 it out, he made it out, and he could see what she 
 meant by its starting him. She had described Kate 
 as merely compassionate, so that Milly might be 
 compassionate too. " Proper " indeed it was, her 
 lie the very properest possible and the most deep 
 ly, richly diplomatic. So Milly was successfully 
 deceived. 
 
XXI 
 
 To see her alone, the poor girl, he none the less 
 promptly felt, was to see her after all very much on 
 the old basis, the basis of his three visits in New 
 York; the new element, when once he was again 
 face to face with her, not really amounting to much 
 more than a recognition, with a little surprise, of the 
 positive extent of the old basis. Everything but 
 that, everything embarrassing fell away after he had 
 been present five minutes : it was in fact wonderful 
 that their excellent, their pleasant, their permitted 
 and proper and harmless American relation the 
 legitimacy of which he could thus scarce express in 
 names enough should seem so unperturbed by 
 other matters. They had both since then had great 
 adventures such an adventure for him was his men 
 tal annexation of her country; and it was now, for 
 the moment, as if the greatest of them all were this 
 acquired consciousness of reasons other than those 
 that had already served. Densher had asked for her, 
 at her hotel, the day after Aunt Maud s dinner, with 
 a rich, that is with a highly troubled, preconception 
 of the part likely to be played for him at present, in 
 any contact with her, by Kate s and Mrs. Lowder s 
 so oddly conjoined and so really superfluous at 
 tempts to make her interesting. She had been in- 
 
 77 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 teresting enough without them that appeared to 
 day to come back to him; and, admirable and beauti 
 ful as was the charitable zeal of the two ladies, it 
 might easily have nipped in the bud the germs of a 
 friendship inevitably limited but still perfectly work 
 able. What had happily averted the need of his 
 breaking off, what would as happily continue to 
 avert it, was his own good sense and good humour, 
 a certain spring of mind in him which ministered, 
 imagination aiding, to understandings and allow 
 ances and which he had positively never felt such an 
 occasion as just now to rejoice in the possession of. 
 Many men he practically made the reflection 
 wouldn t have taken the matter that way, would have 
 lost patience, finding the appeal in question irra 
 tional, exorbitant ; and, thereby making short work 
 with it, would have let it render any further acquaint 
 ance with Miss Theale impossible. He had talked 
 with Kate of this young woman s being " sacri 
 ficed," and that would have been one way, so far as 
 he was concerned, to sacrifice her. Such, however, 
 had not been the tune to which his at first bewildered 
 view had, since the night before, cleared itself up. 
 It wasn t so much that he failed of being the kind 
 of man who " chucked," for he knew himself as the 
 kind of man intelligent enough to recognise the 
 cases in which chucking might be the minor evil and 
 the least cruelty. It was that he liked too much 
 everyone concerned willingly to show himself mere 
 ly impracticable. He liked Kate, goodness knew, 
 
 78 
 

 
 THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and he also, clearly enough, liked Mrs. Lowder. 
 He liked in particular Milly herself; and hadn t it 
 come up for him the evening before that he quite 
 liked even Susan Shepherd? He had never known 
 himself so generally merciful. It was a footing, at 
 all events, whatever accounted for it, on which he 
 would surely be rather a muff not to manage on one 
 line or another to escape disobliging. Should he 
 find he couldn t work it there would still be time 
 enough. The idea of working it crystallised before 
 him in such guise as not only to promise much in 
 terest fairly, in case of success, much excitement; 
 but positively to impart to failure an appearance of 
 barbarity. 
 
 Arriving thus in Brook Street both with the best 
 intentions and with a margin consciously left for 
 some primary awkwardness, he found his burden, to 
 his great relief, unexpectedly light. The awkward 
 ness involved in the responsibility so newly and so 
 ingeniously traced for him turned round on the spot 
 to present him another face. This was simply the 
 face of his old impression, which he now fully recov 
 ered the impression that American girls, when, 
 rare case, they were as charming as Milly, were 
 clearly the easiest people in the world. Had what 
 had happened been that this specimen of the class 
 was from the first so committed to ease that nothing 
 subsequent could ever make her difficult? This 
 affected him now as still more probable than on the 
 occasion of the hour or two lately passed with her 
 
 79 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in Kate s society. Milly Theale had recognised no 
 complication, to Densher s view, while bringing him, 
 with his companion, from the National Gallery and 
 entertaining them at luncheon; it need therefore 
 scarce be supposed that complications had become 
 so soon too much for her. His pretext for present 
 ing himself was fortunately of the best and simplest; 
 the least he could decently do, given their happy ac 
 quaintance, was to call with an inquiry after learning 
 that she had been prevented by illness from meeting 
 him at dinner. And then there was the beautiful ac 
 cident of her other demonstration; he must at any 
 ( rate have given a sign as a sequel to the hospitality 
 he had shared with Kate. Well, he was giving one 
 now such as it was; he was finding her, to begin 
 with, accessible, and very naturally and prettily glad 
 to see him. He had come, after luncheon, early, 
 though not so early but that she might already be 
 out if she were well enough; and she was well 
 enough and yet was still at home. He had an inner 
 glimpse, with this, of the comment Kate would have 
 made on it : it was not absent from his thought that 
 Milly would have been at home by her account be 
 cause expecting, after a talk with Mrs. Stringham, 
 that a certain person might turn up. He even so 
 pleasantly did things go enjoyed freedom of mind 
 to welcome, on that supposition, a fresh sign of the 
 beautiful hypocrisy of women. He went so far as 
 to enjoy believing the girl might have stayed in for 
 him; it helped him to enjoy her behaving as if 
 
 80 
 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 she hadn t. She expressed, that is, exactly the right 
 degree of surprise; she didn t a bit overdo it: the 
 lesson of which was, perceptibly, that, so far as his 
 late lights had opened the door to any want of 
 the natural in their meetings, he might trust 
 her to take care of it for him as well as for 
 herself. 
 
 She had begun this, admirably, on his entrance, 
 with her turning away from the table at which she 
 had apparently been engaged in letter-writing; it 
 was the very possibility of his betraying a concern 
 for her as one of the afflicted that she had within the 
 first minute conjured away. She was never, never 
 did he understand? to be one of the afflicted for 
 him; and the manner in which he understood it, 
 something of the answering pleasure that he couldn t 
 help knowing he showed, constituted, he was very 
 soon after to acknowledge, something like a start 
 for intimacy. When things like that could pass, 
 people had in truth to be equally conscious of a rela 
 tion. It soon made one, at all events, when it didn t 
 find one made. She had let him ask there had 
 been time for that, his allusion to her friend s explan 
 atory arrival at Lancaster Gate without her being 
 inevitable; but she had blown away, and quite as 
 much with the look in her eyes as with the smile on 
 her lips, every ground for anxiety and every chance 
 for insistence. How was she? why, she was as he 
 thus saw her and as she had reasons of her own, the 
 business of nobody else, for desiring to appear. 
 
 VOL. II. 6 8 1 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Kate s account of her as too proud for pity, as fierce 
 ly shy about so personal a secret, came back to him; 
 so that he rejoiced he could take a hint, especially 
 when he wanted to. The question the girl had 
 quickly disposed of " Oh, it was nothing : I m all 
 right, thank you ! " was one he was glad enough 
 to be able to banish. It was not at all, in spite of 
 the appeal Kate had made to him on it, his affair; 
 for his interest had been invoked in the name of com 
 passion, and the name of compassion was exactly 
 what he felt himself at the end of two minutes for 
 bidden so much as to whisper. He had been sent 
 to see her in order to be sorry for her, and how sorry 
 he might be, quite privately, he was yet to make out. 
 Didn t that signify, however, almost not at all? 
 inasmuch as, whatever his upshot, he was never to let 
 her know it. Thus the ground was unexpectedly 
 cleared; though it was not till a slightly longer time 
 had passed that he made sure, at first with amuse 
 ment and then with a sort of respect, of what had 
 most operated. Extraordinarily, quite amazingly, 
 he began to see that if his pity hadn t had to yield to 
 still other things it would have had to yield quite 
 definitely to her own. That was the way the case 
 had turned round : he had made his visit to be sorry 
 for her, but he would repeat it if he did repeat it 
 in order that she might be sorry for him. His situa 
 tion made him, she judged when once one liked 
 him a subject for that tenderness : he felt this judg 
 ment in her, and felt it as something he should really, 
 
 82 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in decency, in dignity, in common honesty, have very 
 soon to reckon with. 
 
 Odd enough was it certainly that the question 
 originally before him, the question placed there by 
 Kate, should so of a sudden find itself quite dis 
 lodged by another. This other, it was easy to see, 
 came straight up with the fact of her beautiful delu 
 sion and her wasted charity; the whole thing pre 
 paring for him as pretty a case of conscience as he 
 could have desired, and one at the prospect of which 
 he was already wincing. If he was interesting it was 
 because he was unhappy; and if he was unhappy, it 
 was because his passion for Kate had spent itself in 
 vain ; and if Kate was indifferent, inexorable, it was 
 because she had left Milly in no doubt of it. That, 
 above all, was what came up for him how clear an 
 impression of this attitude, how definite an account 
 of his own failure, Kate must have given her friend. 
 His immediate quarter of an hour there with the girl 
 lighted up for him almost luridly such an inference; 
 it was almost as if the other party to their remarka 
 ble understanding had been with them as they talked, 
 had been hovering about, had dropped in, to look 
 after her work. The value of the work affected him 
 as different from the moment he saw it so expressed 
 in poor Milly. Since it was false that he wasn t 
 loved, so his right was quite quenched to figure on 
 that ground as important; and if he didn t look out 
 he would find himself liking in a way quite at odds 
 with straightness the good faith of Milly s benevo- 
 
 83 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 lence. There was the place for scruples; there the 
 need, absolutely, to mind what he was about. If it 
 wasn t proper for him to enjoy consideration on a 
 perfectly false footing, where was the guarantee 
 that, if he kept on, he wouldn t himself pretend to 
 the grievance in order not to miss the sweet? Con 
 sideration from a charming girl was soothing on 
 whatever theory; and it didn t take him far to re 
 member that he had himself as yet done nothing 
 deceptive. It was Kate s description of him, his 
 defeated state, it was none of his own; his responsi 
 bility would begin, as he might say, only with acting 
 it out. The sharp point was, however, in the differ 
 ence between acting and not acting; this difference 
 in fact it was that made the case of conscience. He 
 saw it with a certain alarm rise before him that every 
 thing was acting that was not speaking the particu 
 lar word. " If you like me because you think she 
 doesn t, it isn t a bit true : she does like me, awful 
 ly!" that would have been the particular word; 
 which, at the same time, but too palpably, there 
 were difficulties about one s uttering. Wouldn t 
 it be as indelicate, in a way, to challenge her as to 
 leave her deluded? and this quite apart from the 
 exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would 
 constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate s design was 
 something so extraordinarily special to Kate that 
 he felt himself shrink from the complications in 
 volved in judging it. Not to give away the woman 
 one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes once 
 
 84 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 they had gone a certain length that was perhaps 
 chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of 
 love. Loyalty was, of course, sovereignty pre 
 scribed in presence of any design on her part, how 
 ever roundabout, to do one nothing but good. 
 
 Densher had quite to steady himself not to be 
 awestruck at the immensity of the good his own 
 friend must on all this evidence have wanted to do 
 him. Of one thing indeed meanwhile he was sure : 
 Milly Theale wouldn t herself precipitate his neces 
 sity of intervention. She would absolutely never 
 say to him : " Is it so impossible she shall ever care 
 for you seriously? " without which nothing could 
 well be less delicate than for him aggressively to set 
 her right. Kate would be free to do that if Kate, 
 in some prudence, some contrition, for some better 
 reason in fine, should revise her plan; but he asked 
 himself what, failing this, he could do that wouldn t 
 be, after all, more gross than doing nothing. This 
 brought him round again to the acceptance of the 
 fact that the poor girl liked him. She put it, for 
 reasons of her own, on a simple, a beautiful ground, 
 a ground that already supplied her with the pretext 
 she required. The ground was there, that is, in the 
 impression she had received, retained, cherished; 
 the pretext, over and above it, was the pretext for 
 acting on it. That she now believed as she did made 
 her sure at last that she might act; so that what 
 Densher therefore would have struck at would be 
 the root, in her soul, of a pure pleasure. It posi- 
 
 85 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 lively lifted its head and flowered, this pure pleas 
 ure, while the young man now sat with her, and 
 there were things she seemed to say that took the 
 words out of his mouth. These were not all the 
 things she did say; they were rather what such 
 things meant in the light of what he knew. Her 
 warning him for instance off the question of how 
 she was, the quick, brave little art with which she 
 did that, represented to his fancy a truth she didn t 
 utter. " I m well for you that s all you have to 
 do with or need trouble about : I shall never be any 
 thing so horrid as ill for you. So there you are; 
 worry about me, spare me, please, as little as you 
 can. Don t be afraid, in short, to ignore my in 
 teresting side. It isn t, you see, even now while 
 you sit here, that there are not lots of others. Only 
 do them justice and we shall get on beautifully." 
 This was what w<as folded finely up in her talk 
 all quite ostensibly about her impressions and her 
 intentions. She tried to put Densher again on his 
 American doings, but he wouldn t have that to-day. 
 As he thought of the way in which, the other after 
 noon, before Kate, he had sat complacently " jaw 
 ing," he accused himself of excess, of having over 
 done it, made at least apparently more of a 
 " set " at his interlocutress than he was at all events 
 then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her 
 out about London, about her vision of life there, 
 and only too glad to treat her as a person with whom 
 he could easily have other topics than her aches and 
 
 86 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 pains. He spoke to her, above all, of the evidence 
 offered him at Lancaster Gate that she had come 
 but to conquer; and when she had met this with full 
 and gay assent " How could I help being the feat 
 ure of the season, the what-do-you-call-it, the theme 
 of every tongue? " they fraternised freely over all 
 that had come and gone for each since their inter 
 rupted encounter in New York. 
 
 At the same time, while many things, in quick 
 succession, came up for them, came up in particular 
 for Derisher, nothing perhaps was just so sharp as 
 the odd influence of their present conditions on their 
 view of their past ones. It was as if they hadn t 
 known how " thick " they had originally become, 
 as if, in a manner, they had really fallen to remem 
 bering more passages of intimacy than there had in 
 fact at the time quite been room for. They were 
 in a relation now, whether from what they said or 
 from what they didn t say, so complicated that it 
 might have been seeking to justify its speedy growth 
 by reaching back to one of those fabulous periods 
 in which prosperous states place their beginnings. 
 He recalled what had been said at Mrs. Lowder s 
 about the steps and stages, in people s careers, that 
 absence caused one to miss, and about the resulting 
 frequent sense of meeting them further on; which, 
 with some other matters also recalled, he took oc 
 casion to communicate to Milly. The matters he 
 couldn t mention mingled themselves with those he 
 did; so that it would doubtless have been hard to 
 
 37 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Say which of the two groups now played most of a 
 part. He was kept face to face with this young lady 
 by a force absolutely resident in their situation and 
 operating, for his nerves, with the swiftness of the 
 forces commonly regarded by sensitive persons as 
 beyond their control. The current thus determined 
 had positively become for him, by the time he had 
 been ten minutes in the room, something that, but 
 for the absurdity of comparing the very small with 
 the very great, he would freely have likened to the 
 rapids of Niagara. An uncriticised acquaintance 
 between a clever young man and a responsive young 
 woman could do nothing more, at the most, than 
 go, and his actual experiment went and went and 
 went. Nothing probably so conduced to make it 
 go as the marked circumstance that they had spoken 
 all the while not a word about Kate; and this in 
 spite of the fact that, if it were a question for them 
 of what had occurred in the past weeks, nothing had 
 occurred comparable to Kate s predominance. 
 Densher had but the night before appealed to her 
 for instruction as to what he must do about her; 
 but he fairly winced to find how little this came to. 
 She had told him of course how little; but it was a 
 truth that looked different when shown him by 
 Milly. It proved to him that the latter had in fact 
 been dealt with, but it produced in him the thought 
 that Kate might perhaps again conveniently be 
 questioned. He would have liked to speak to her 
 before going further to make sure she really 
 
 88 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 meant him to succeed quite so much. With all the 
 difference that, as we say, came up for him, it came 
 up afresh, naturally, that he might make his visit 
 brief and never renew it; yet the strangest thing of 
 all was that the argument against that issue would 
 have sprung precisely from the beautiful little elo 
 quence involved in Milly s avoidances. 
 
 Precipitate these well might be, since they em 
 phasised the fact that she was proceeding in the 
 sense of the assurances she had taken. Over the 
 latter she had visibly not hesitated, for hadn t they 
 had the merit of giving her a chance? Densher 
 quite saw her, felt her take it; the chance, neither 
 more nor less, of helping him according to her free 
 dom. It was what Kate had left her with : " Lis 
 ten to him, I? Never ! So do as you like." What 
 Milly " liked " was to do, it thus appeared, as she 
 was doing: our young man s glimpse of which was 
 just what would have been for him not less a glimpse 
 of the peculiar brutality of shaking her off. The 
 choice exhaled its shy fragrance of heroism, for it 
 was not aided by any question of parting with Kate. 
 She would be charming to Kate as well as to Kate s 
 adorer; she would incur whatever pain could dwell 
 for her in the sight should she continue to be ex 
 posed to the sight of the adorer thrown with the 
 adored. It wouldn t really have taken much more 
 to make him wonder if he hadn t before him one of 
 those rare cases of exaltation food for fiction, food 
 for poetry in which a man s fortune with the 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 woman who doesn t care for him is positively pro 
 moted by the woman who does. It was as if Milly 
 had said to herself : " Well, he can at least meet her 
 in my society, if that s anything to him; so that my 
 line can only be to make my society attractive." 
 She certainly couldn t have made a different impres 
 sion if she had so reasoned. All of which, none the 
 less, didn t prevent his soon enough saying to 
 her, quite as if she were to be whirled into 
 space: "And now, then, what becomes of you? 
 Do you begin to rush about on visits to country- 
 houses? " 
 
 She disowned the idea with a headshake that, put 
 on what face she would, couldn t help betraying to 
 him something of her suppressed view of the pos 
 sibility ever, ever perhaps of any such proceed 
 ings. They weren t, at any rate, for her now. 
 " Dear no we go abroad for a few weeks, some 
 where, of high air. That has been before us for 
 many days; we ve only been kept on by last necessi 
 ties here. However, everything s done, and the 
 wind s in our sails." 
 
 " May you scud then happily before it ! But 
 when," he asked, " do you come back? " 
 
 She looked ever so vague; then as if to correct 
 it : " Oh, when the wind turns. And what do you 
 do with your summer? " 
 
 " Ah, I spend it in sordid toil. I drench it with 
 mercenary ink. My work in your country counts 
 for play as well. You see what s thought of the 
 
 90 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 pleasure your country can give. My holiday s 
 over." 
 
 " I m sorry you had to take it," said Milly, " at 
 such a different time from ours. If you could but 
 have worked while we ve been working " 
 
 " I might be playing while you play? Oh, the 
 distinction isn t so great with me. There s a little 
 of each for me, of work and of play, in either. But 
 you and Mrs. Stringham, with Miss Croy and Mrs. 
 Lowder you all," he went on, kk have been given 
 up, like navvies or niggers, to real physical toil. 
 Your rest is something you ve earned and you need. 
 My labour s comparatively light." 
 
 " Very true," she smiled; " but, all the same, I 
 like mine." 
 
 " It doesn t leave you spent? " 
 
 " Not a bit. I don t get tired when I m inter 
 ested. Oh, I could go far." 
 
 He bethought himself. "Then why don t you? 
 since you ve got here, as I learn, the whole place 
 in your pocket." 
 
 " Well, it s a kind of economy I m saving things 
 up. I ve enjoyed so what you speak of though 
 your account of it s fantastic that I m watching 
 over its future, that I can t help being anxious and 
 careful. I want in the interest itself of what I ve 
 had, and may still have not to make any mistakes. 
 The way not to make them is to get off again to a 
 distance and see the situation from there. I shall 
 keep it fresh," she wound up as if herself rather 
 
 91 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 pleased with the ingenuity of her statement " I 
 shall keep it fresh, by that prudence, for my return. " 
 
 "Ah, then, you will return? Can you promise 
 one that? " 
 
 Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise; 
 but she made as if bargaining a little. " Isn t Lon 
 don rather awful in winter? " 
 
 He had been going to ask her if she meant for 
 the invalid; but he checked the infelicity of this and 
 took the inquiry as referring to social life. " No 
 I like it, with one thing and another; it s less of a 
 mob than later on; and it would have for us the 
 merit should you come here then that we should 
 probably see more of you. So do reappear for us 
 if it isn t a question of climate." 
 
 She looked at that a little graver. " If what isn t 
 a question ? " 
 
 " Why, the determination of your movements. 
 You spoke just now of going somewhere for that." 
 
 " For better air? " she remembered. " Oh yes, 
 one certainly wants to get out of London in Au- 
 gust." 
 
 " Rather, of course ! " he fully understood. 
 " Though I m glad you ve hung on long enough for 
 me to catch you. Try us, at any rate," he con 
 tinued, " once more." 
 
 " Whom do you mean by us ? " she presently 
 asked. 
 
 It pulled him up an instant representing, as he 
 saw it might have seemed, an allusion to himself as 
 
 92 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 conjoined with Kate, whom he was proposing not 
 to mention any more than his hostess did. But the 
 issue was easy. " I mean all of us together, every 
 one you ll find ready to surround you with sym 
 pathy." 
 
 It made her, none the less, in her odd, charming 
 way, challenge him afresh. " Why do you say 
 sympathy? " 
 
 " Well, it is doubtless, a pale word. What we 
 shall feel for you will be much nearer worship." 
 
 " As near then as you like ! " With which at last 
 Kate s name was sounded. " The people I d most 
 come back for are the people you know. I d do it 
 for Mrs. Lowder, who has been beautifully kind to 
 me." 
 
 " So she has to me," said Densher. " I feel," he 
 added as she at first answered nothing, " that, quite 
 contrary to anything I originally expected, I ve 
 made a good friend of her." 
 
 " 7 didn t expect it either its turning out as it 
 has. But I did," said Milly, " with Kate. I shall 
 come back for her too. I d do anything " she 
 kept it up " for Kate." 
 
 Looking at him as with conscious clearness while 
 she spoke, she might for the moment have effective 
 ly laid a trap for whatever remains of the ideal 
 straightness in him were still able to pull themselves 
 together and operate. He was afterwards to say to 
 himself that something had at that moment hung 
 for him by a hair. " Oh, I know what one would 
 
 93 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 do for Kate ! " it had hung for him by a hair to 
 break out with that, which he felt he had really been 
 kept from by an element in his consciousness 
 stronger still. The proof of the truth in question 
 was precisely in his silence; resisting the impulse to 
 break out was what he was doing for Kate. This 
 at the time moreover came and went quickly 
 enough; he was trying the next minute but to make 
 Milly s allusion easy for herself. " Of course I 
 know what friends you are and of course I under 
 stand," he permitted himself to add, " any amount 
 of devotion to a person so charming. That s the 
 good turn then she ll do us all I mean her working 
 for your return." 
 
 " Oh, you don t know," said Milly, " how much 
 I m really on her hands." 
 
 He could but accept the appearance of wondering 
 how much he might show he knew. " Ah, she s 
 very masterful." 
 
 " She s great. Yet I don t say she bullies me." 
 
 " No that s not the way. At any rate it isn t 
 hers," he smiled. He remembered, however, then 
 that an undue acquaintance with Kate s ways \vas 
 just what he mustn t show; and he pursued the sub 
 ject no further than to remark with a good intention 
 that had the further merit of representing a truth: 
 " I don t feel as if I knew her really to call know." 
 
 " Well, if you come to that, I don t either! " she 
 laughed. The words gave him, as soon as they 
 were uttered, a sense of responsibility for his own; 
 
 94 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 though during a silence that ensued for a minute he 
 had time to recognise that his own contained, after 
 all, no element of falsity. Strange enough there 
 fore was it that he could go too far if it: was too 
 far without being false. His observation was one 
 he would perfectly have made to Kate herself. And 
 before he again spoke, and before Milly did, he took 
 time for more still for feeling that just here it was 
 that he must break short off if his mind was really 
 made up not to go further. It was as if he had been 
 at a corner and fairly put there by his last speech; 
 so that it depended on him whether or no to turn it. 
 The silence if prolonged but an instant might even 
 have given him a sense of her waiting to see what 
 he would do. It was filled for them, the next thing, 
 by the sound, rather voluminous for the August 
 afternoon, of the approach, in the street below them, 
 of heavy carriage-wheels and of horses trained to 
 " step." A rumble, a great shake, a considerable 
 effective clatter, had been apparently succeeded by 
 a pause at the door of the hotel, which was in turn 
 accompanied by a due proportion of diminished 
 prancing and stamping. " You ve a visitor," Den- 
 sher laughed, " and it must be at least an ambas 
 sador." 
 
 " It s only my own carriage; it does that isn t it 
 wonderful? every day. But we find it, Mrs. 
 Stringham and I, in the innocence of our hearts, 
 very amusing." She had got up, as she spoke, to 
 assure herself of what she said; and at the end of a 
 
 95 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 few steps they were together on the balcony and 
 looking down at her waiting chariot, which made 
 indeed a brave show. " Is it very awful? " 
 
 It was to Densher s eyes save for its absurd 
 heaviness only pleasantly pompous. " It seems to 
 me delightfully rococo. But how do I know? 
 You re mistress of these things, in contact with the 
 highest wisdom. You occupy a position, moreover, 
 thanks to which your carriage well, by this time, 
 in the eye of London, also occupies one." But she 
 was going out, and he mustn t stand in her way. 
 What had happened the next minute was, first, that 
 she had denied she was going out, so that he might 
 prolong his stay; and second, that she had said she 
 would go out with pleasure if he would like to drive 
 that in fact there were always things to do, that 
 there had been a question for her to-day of several 
 in particular, and that this, in short, was why the 
 carriage had been ordered so early. They per 
 ceived, as she said these things, that an inquirer had 
 presented himself, and, coming back, they found 
 Milly s servant announcing the carriage and pre 
 pared to accompany her. This appeared to have for 
 her the effect of settling the matter on the basis, 
 that is, of Densher s happy response. Densher s 
 happy response, however, had as yet hung fire, the 
 process we have described in him operating by this 
 time with extreme intensity. The system of not 
 pulling up, not breaking off, had already brought 
 him headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actu- 
 
 96 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ally stood; and just now it was, with a vengeance, 
 that he must do either one thing or the other. He 
 had been waiting for some moments, which prob 
 ably seemed to him longer than they were ; this was 
 because he was anxiously watching himself wait. 
 He couldn t keep that up for ever; and since one 
 thing or the other was what he must do, it was for 
 the other that he presently became conscious of hav 
 ing decided. If he had been drifting it settled itself 
 in the manner of a bump, of considerable violence, 
 against a firm object in the stream. " Oh yes; I ll 
 go with you with pleasure. It s a charming idea." 
 
 She gave no look to thank him she rather looked 
 away; she only said at once to her servant, " In ten 
 minutes " ; and then to her visitor, as the man went 
 out, " We ll go somewhere I shall like that. But 
 I must ask of you time as little as possible to get 
 ready." She looked over the room to provide for 
 him, keep him there. " There are books and things 
 plenty ; and I dress very quickly." He caught her 
 eyes only as she went, on which he thought them 
 pretty and touching. 
 
 Why especially touching at that instant he could 
 certainly scarce have said; it was involved, it was 
 lost in the sense of her wishing to oblige him. Clear 
 ly what had occurred was her having wished it so 
 that she had made him simply wish, in civil acknowl 
 edgment, to oblige her; which he had now fully done, 
 by turning his corner. He was quite round it, his 
 corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and 
 
 VOL. II.-7 97 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 he stood there alone. Alone he remained for three 
 minutes more remained with several very living 
 little matters to think about. One of these was the 
 phenomenon typical, highly American, he would 
 have said of Milly s extreme spontaneity. It was 
 perhaps rather as if he had sought refuge refuge 
 from another question in the almost exclusive 
 contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him 
 nowhere; not even to a sound generalisation about 
 American girls. It was spontaneous for his young 
 friend to have asked him to drive with her alone 
 since she hadn t mentioned her companion; but she 
 struck him, after all, as no more advanced in doing 
 it than Kate, for instance, who was not an American 
 girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Be 
 sides, Kate would have done it, though Kate wasn t 
 at all, in the same sense as Milly, spontaneous. And 
 then, in addition, Kate had done it or things very 
 much like it. Furthermore, he was engaged to Kate 
 even if his ostensibly not being put her public free 
 dom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any rate, 
 the relation between Kate and freedom, between 
 freedom and Kate, was a different one from any he 
 could associate, as to anything, with the girl who 
 had just left him to prepare to give herself up to him. 
 It had never struck him before, and he moved about 
 the room while he thought of it, touching none of 
 the books placed at his disposal. Milly was for 
 ward, as might be said, but not advanced; where 
 as Kate was backward backward still, compara- 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 tively, as an English girl and yet advanced in a 
 high degree. However though this didn t 
 straighten it out Kate was, of course, two or three 
 years older; which at their time of life considerably 
 counted. 
 
 Thus ingeniously discriminating, Densher con 
 tinued slowly to wander ; yet without keeping at bay 
 for long the sense again that his corner was turned. 
 It was so turned that he felt himself to have lost even 
 the option of taking advantage of Milly s absence 
 to retrace his steps. If he might have turned tail, 
 vulgarly speaking, five minutes before, he couldn t 
 turn tail now; he must simply wait there with his 
 consciousness charged to the brim. Quickly enough, 
 moreover, that issue was closed from without ; in the 
 course of three minutes more Miss Theale s servant 
 had returned. He preceded a visitor, whom he had 
 met, obviously, at the foot of the stairs, and whom, 
 throwing open the door, he loudly announced as 
 Miss Croy. Kate, on following him in, stopped 
 short at sight of Densher only after an instant, as 
 the young man saw, with free amusement, not from 
 surprise, and still less from discomfiture. Densher 
 immediately gave his explanation Miss Theale had 
 gone to prepare to drive on receipt of which the 
 servant effaced himself. 
 
 " And you re going with her ? " Kate asked. 
 
 :< Yes with your approval ; which I ve taken, as 
 you see, for granted." 
 
 " Oh," she laughed, " my approval is complete ! " 
 99 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She was thoroughly consistent and handsome 
 about it. 
 
 " What I mean is of course," he went on for he 
 was sensibly affected by her gaiety " at your so 
 lively instigation." 
 
 She had looked about the room she might have 
 been vaguely looking for signs of the duration, of the 
 character, of his visit, a momentary aid in taking a 
 decision. " Well, instigation then, as much as you 
 like." She treated it as pleasant, the success of her 
 plea with him ; she made a fresh joke of this direct 
 impression of it. " So much so as that ? Do you 
 know I think I won t wait ? " 
 
 " Not to see her after coming ? " 
 
 " Well, with you in the field ! I came for news 
 of her, but she must be all right. If she is " 
 
 But he took her straight up. " Ah, how do I 
 know ? " He was moved to say more. " It s not / 
 who am responsible for her, my dear. It seems to 
 me it s you." She struck him as making light of a 
 matter that had been costing him sundry qualms ; so 
 that they couldn t both be quite just. Either she 
 was too easy or he had been too anxious. He didn t 
 want, at all events, to feel a fool for that. " I m do 
 ing nothing and shall not, I assure you, do any 
 thing but what I m told." 
 
 Their eyes met, with some intensity, over the em 
 phasis he had given his words; and he had taken 
 it from her the next moment that he really needn t 
 get into a state. What in the world was the matter ? 
 
 100 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She asked it, with interest, for all answer. " Isn t 
 she better if she s able to see you ? " 
 
 " She assures me she s in perfect health." 
 
 Kate s interest grew. " I knew she would." On 
 which she added : " It won t have been really for ill 
 ness that she stayed away last night." 
 
 "For what then?" 
 
 " Well for nervousness." 
 
 " Nervousness about what ? " 
 
 " Oh, you know ! " She spoke with a hint of im 
 patience, smiling, however, the next moment. " I ve 
 told you that." 
 
 He looked at her to recover in her face what she 
 had told him; then it was as if what he saw there 
 prompted him to say : " What have you told her? " 
 
 She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all 
 as if they remembered where they were, liable to 
 surprise, talking with softened voices, even stretch 
 ing their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite 
 right feeling. Milly s room would be close at hand, 
 and yet they were saying things ! For a mo 
 ment, none the less, they kept it up. " Ask her, if 
 you like; you re free she ll tell you. Act as you 
 think best ; don t trouble about what you think I may, 
 or mayn t, have told. I m all right with her," said 
 Kate. " So there you are." 
 
 " If you mean here I am," he answered, " it s un 
 mistakable. If you also mean that her believing 
 in you is all I have to do with, you re so far right 
 as that she certainly does believe in you." 
 
 IOI 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Well, then, take example by her." 
 
 " She s really doing it for you," Densher con 
 tinued. " She s driving me out for you." 
 
 " Well, then," said Kate, with her soft tranquil 
 lity, " you can do it a little for her. I m not afraid," 
 she smiled. 
 
 He stood before her a moment, taking in again the 
 face she put on it and affected again, as he had al 
 ready so often been, by more things in this face, and 
 in her whole person and presence, than he was, to 
 his relief, obliged to find words for. It wasn t, un 
 der such impressions, a question of words. " I do 
 nothing for any one in the world but you. But for 
 you I ll do anything." 
 
 " Good, good," said Kate. " That s how I like 
 you." 
 
 He waited again an instant. " Then you swear 
 to it?" 
 
 "To 4 it ? To what?" 
 
 " Why, that you do like me. For it s only for 
 that, you know, that I m letting you do well, God 
 knows what with me." 
 
 She gave at this, with a stare, a disheartened ges 
 ture the sense of which she immediately further ex 
 pressed. "If you don t believe in me then, after all, 
 hadn t you better break off, before you ve gone 
 further?" 
 
 "Break off with you?" 
 
 " Break off with Milly. You might go now," she 
 said, " and I ll stay and explain to her why it is." 
 
 102 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He wondered as if it struck him. " What would 
 you say? " 
 
 " Why, that you find you can t stand her, and that 
 there s nothing for me but to bear with you as I best 
 may." 
 
 He considered of this. " How much do you 
 abuse me to her ? " 
 
 " Exactly enough. As much as you see by her 
 attitude." 
 
 Again he thought. " It doesn t seem to me I 
 ought to mind her attitude." 
 
 " Well, then, just as you like. I ll stay and do my 
 best for you." 
 
 He saw she was sincere, was really giving him a 
 chance; and that of itself made things clearer. The 
 feeling of how far he had gone came back to him not 
 in repentance, but in this very vision of an escape; 
 and it was not of what he had done, but of what 
 Kate offered, that he now weighed the consequence. 
 " Won t it make her her not finding me here be 
 rather more sure there s something between us? " 
 
 Kate thought. " Oh, I don t know. It will of 
 course greatly upset her. But you needn t trouble 
 about that. She won t die of it." 
 
 " Do you mean she will? " Densher presently 
 asked. 
 
 " Don t put me questions when you don t believe 
 what I say. You make too many conditions." 
 
 She spoke now with a sort of rational weariness 
 that made the want of pliancy, the failure to oblige 
 
 103 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her, look poor and ugly; so that what it suddenly 
 came back to for him was his deficiency in the things 
 a man of any taste, so engaged, so enlisted, would 
 have liked to make sure of being able to show 
 imagination, tact, positively even humour. The cir 
 cumstance is doubtless odd, but the truth is none the 
 less that the speculation uppermost with him at this 
 juncture was : " What if I should begin to bore this 
 creature?" And that, within a few seconds, had 
 translated itself. "If you ll swear again you love 
 me !" 
 
 She looked about, at door and window, as if he 
 were asking for more than he said. " Here ? 
 There s nothing between us here," Kate smiled. 
 
 "Oh, isn t there?" Her smile itself, with this, 
 had so settled something for him that he had come 
 to her pleadingly and holding out his hands, which 
 she immediately seized with her own, as if both to 
 check him and to keep him. It was by keeping him 
 thus for a minute that she did check him; she held 
 him long enough ; while, with their eyes deeply meet 
 ing, they waited in silence for him to recover himself 
 and renew his discretion. He coloured, as with a 
 return of the sense of where they were, and that gave 
 her precisely one of her usual victories, which im 
 mediately took further form. By the time he had 
 dropped her hands he had again taken hold, as it 
 were, of Milly s. It was not, at any rate, with Milly 
 he had broken. " I ll do all you wish," he declared 
 as if to acknowledge the acceptance of his condition 
 
 104 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 that he had, practically, after all, drawn from her 
 a declaration on which she then, recurring to her 
 first idea, promptly acted. 
 
 " If you are as good as that, I go. You ll tell her 
 that, finding you with her, I wouldn t wait. Say 
 that, you know, from yourself. She ll understand." 
 
 She had reached the door with it she was full of 
 decision; but he had, before she left him, one more 
 doubt. " I don t see how she can understand enough, 
 you know, without understanding too much." 
 
 " You don t need to see." 
 
 He required then a last injunction. " I must sim 
 ply go it blind ? " 
 
 " You must simply be kind to her." 
 
 " And leave the rest to you? " 
 
 " Leave the rest to her" said Kate disappearing. 
 
 It came back then afresh to that, as it had come 
 before. Milly, three minutes after Kate had gone, 
 returned in her array her big black hat, so little 
 superstitiously in the fashion, her fine black garments 
 throughout, the swathing of her throat, which Den- 
 sher vaguely took for an infinite number of yards of 
 priceless lace, and which, its folded fabric kept in 
 place by heavy rows of pearls, hung down to her feet 
 like the stole of a priestess. He spoke to her at once 
 of their friend s visit and flight. " She hadn t 
 known she would find me," he said and said at pres 
 ent without difficulty. His corner was so turned 
 that it wasn t a question of a word more or less. 
 
 She took this account of the matter as quite suf- 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ficient; she glossed over whatever might be awk 
 ward. " I m sorry but I, of course, often see her. 9 
 He felt the discrimination in his favour, and how it 
 justified Kate. This was Milly s tone when the mat 
 ter was left to her. Well, it should now be wholly 
 left. 
 
 106 
 
BOOK SEVENTH 
 
BOOK SEVENTH 
 
 XXII 
 
 WHEN Kate and Densher abandoned her to 
 Mrs. Stringham on the day of her meeting 
 them together and bringing them into luncheon, 
 Milly, face to face with that companion, had had one 
 of those moments in which the warned, the anxious 
 fighter of the battle of life, as if once again feeling 
 for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight 
 to the quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly 
 on her heart, and the two women stood there show 
 ing each other a strange face. Susan Shepherd had 
 received their great doctor s visit, which had been 
 clearly no small affair for her; but Milly had since 
 then, with insistence, kept standing, as against com 
 munication and betrayal, as she now practically con 
 fessed, the barrier of their invited guests. " You ve 
 been too dear. With what I see you re full of, you 
 treated them beautifully. Isn t Kate charming when 
 she wants to be? " 
 
 Poor Susie s expression, contending at first, as in 
 a high, fine spasm, with different dangers, had now 
 quite let itself go. She had to make an effort to 
 reach a point in space already so remote. " Miss 
 
 109 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Croy? Oh, she was pleasant and clever. She 
 knew," Mrs. Stringham added. " She knew." 
 
 Milly braced herself but conscious, above all, for 
 the moment, of a high compassion for her mate. She 
 made her out as struggling struggling in all her 
 nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, 
 given her nature, could only be a torment. Milly 
 gathered from the struggle how much there was of 
 the pity, and how therefore it was both in her ten 
 derness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham 
 suffered. Wonderful and beautiful it was that this 
 impression instantly steadied the girl. Ruefully ask 
 ing herself on what basis of ease, with the drop of 
 their barrier, they were to find themselves together, 
 she felt the question met with a relief that was al 
 most joy. The basis, the inevitable basis, was that 
 she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, to all ap 
 pearance, had been condemned, in so much more un 
 comfortable a manner, to be sorry for her. Mrs. 
 Stringham s sorrow would hurt Mrs. Stringham ; but 
 how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor 
 girl, at all events, on the spot, five minutes of ex 
 altation in which she turned the tables on her friend 
 with a pass of the hand, a gesture of an energy that 
 made a wind in the air. " Kate knew," she asked, 
 " that you were full of Sir Luke Strett ? " 
 
 " She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and 
 
 nice; she seemed to want to help me through." 
 
 Which the good lady had no sooner said, however, 
 
 than she almost tragically gasped at herself. She 
 
 * no 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 glared at Milly with a pretended pluck. " What I 
 mean is that she saw one had been taken up with 
 something. When I say she knows I should say 
 she s a person who guesses." And her grimace was 
 also, on its side, heroic. " But she doesn t matter, 
 Milly." 
 
 The girl felt she by this time could face anything. 
 " Nobody matters, Susie nobody." Which her 
 next words, however, rather contradicted. " Did 
 he take it ill that I wasn t here to see him ? Wasn t 
 it really just what he wanted to have it out, so 
 much more simply, with you? " 
 
 " We didn t have anything * out/ Milly," Mrs. 
 Stringham delicately quavered. 
 
 " Didn t he awfully like you," Milly went on, 
 " and didn t he think you the most charming person 
 I could possibly have referred him to for an account 
 of me ? Didn t you hit it off tremendously together 
 and in fact fall quite in love, so that it will really be 
 a great advantage for you to have me as a common 
 ground ? You re going to make, I can see, no end 
 of a good thing of me." 
 
 " My own child, my own child ! " Mrs. Stringham 
 pleadingly murmured; yet showing as she did so 
 that she feared the effect even of deprecation. 
 
 " Isn t he beautiful and good too himself? alto 
 gether, whatever he may say, a lovely acquaintance 
 to have made? You re just the right people for me 
 I see it now ; and do you know what, between you, 
 you must do ? " Then as Susie still but stared, won- 
 
 iii 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 derstruck and holding herself : " You must simply 
 see me through. Any way you choose. Make it 
 out together. I, on my side, will be beautiful too, 
 and we ll be the three of us, with whatever others, 
 oh, as many as the case requires, any one you like! 
 a sight for the gods. I ll be as easy for you as 
 carrying a feather." Susie took it for a moment in 
 such silence that her young friend almost saw her 
 and scarcely withheld the observation as taking 
 it for " a part of the disease." This accordingly 
 helped Milly to be, as she judged, definite and wise. 
 "He is, at any rate, awfully interesting, isn t he? 
 which is so much to the good. We haven t at 
 least as we might have, with the way we tumbled 
 into it got hold of one of the dreary." 
 
 " Interesting, dearest ? " Mrs. Stringham felt 
 her feet firmer. " I don t know if he s interesting 
 or not; but I do know, my own," she continued to 
 quaver, " that he s just as much interested as you 
 could possibly desire." 
 
 " Certainly that s it. Like all the world." 
 
 " No, my precious, not like all the world. Very 
 much more deeply and intelligently." 
 
 " Ah, there you are! " Milly laughed. " That s 
 the way, Susie, I want you. So buck up, my 
 dear. We ll have beautiful times with him. Don t 
 worry." 
 
 " I m not worrying, Milly." And poor Susie s 
 face registered the sublimity of her lie. 
 
 It was at this that, too sharply penetrated, her 
 
 112 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 companion went to her, met by her with an embrace 
 in which things were said that exceeded speech. 
 Each held and clasped the other as if to console her 
 for this unnamed woe, the woe for Mrs. Stringham 
 of learning the torment of helplessness, the woe for 
 Milly of having her, at such a time, to think of. 
 Milly s assumption was immense, and the difficulty 
 for her friend was that of not being able to gainsay 
 it without bringing it more to the proof than ten 
 derness and vagueness could permit. Nothing in 
 fact came to the proof between them but that they 
 could thus cling together except indeed that, as we 
 have indicated, the pledge of protection and support 
 was all the younger woman s own. " I don t ask 
 you, 7 she presently said, " what he told you for your 
 self, nor what he told you to tell me, nor how he 
 took it, really, that I had left him to you, nor what 
 passed between you about me in any way. It wasn t 
 to get that out of you that I took my means to make 
 sure of your meeting freely for there are things 
 I don t want to know. I shall see him again and 
 again, and I shall know more than enough. All I 
 do want is that you shall see me through on his basis, 
 whatever it is ; which it s enough for the purpose 
 that you yourself should know : that is with him to 
 show you how. I ll make it charming for you 
 that s what I mean ; I ll keep you up to it in such a 
 way that half the time you won t know you re doing 
 it. And for that you re to rest upon me. There. 
 It s understood. We keep each other going, and you 
 
 VOL. II. 8 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 may absolutely feel of me that I shan t break down. 
 So, with the way you haven t so much as a dig of 
 the elbow to fear, how could you be safer ? " 
 
 " He told me I can help you of course, he told 
 me that," Susie, on her side, eagerly contended. 
 " Why shouldn t he, and for what else have I come 
 out with you? But he told me nothing dreadful 
 nothing, nothing, nothing," the poor lady passion 
 ately protested. " Only that you must do as you 
 like and as he tells you which is just simply to do 
 as you like." 
 
 " I must keep in sight of him. I must from time 
 to time go to him. But that s of course doing as I 
 like. It s lucky," Milly smiled, " that I like going 
 to him." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham was here in agreement ; she gave 
 a clutch at the account of their situation that most 
 showed it as workable. " That s what will be 
 charming for me, and what I m sure he really wants 
 of me to help you to do as you like." 
 
 " And also a little, won t it be," Milly laughed, 
 "to save me from the consequences? Of course," 
 she added, " there must first be things I like." 
 
 " Oh, I think you ll find some," Mrs. Stringham 
 more bravely said. " I think there are some as for 
 instance just this one. I mean," she explained, 
 " really having us so." 
 
 Milly thought. " Just as I wanted you comfort 
 able about him, and him the same about you? Yes 
 I shall get the good of it." 
 
 114 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Susan Shepherd appeared to wander from this 
 into a slight confusion. " Which of them are you 
 talking of?" 
 
 Milly wondered an instant then had a light. 
 " I m not talking of Mr. Densher." With which 
 moreover she showed amusement. * Though if you 
 can be comfortable about Mr. Densher too, so much 
 the better." 
 
 " Oh, you meant Sir Luke Strett ? Certainly, he s 
 a fine type. Do you know," Susie continued, 
 " whom he reminds me of ? Of our great man Dr. 
 Buttrick of Boston." 
 
 Milly recognised Dr. Buttrick of Boston, but she 
 dropped him after a tributary pause. " What do 
 you think, now that you ve seen him, of Mr. Den 
 sher?" 
 
 It was not till after consideration, with her eyes 
 fixed on her friend s, that Susie produced her an 
 swer. " I think he s very handsome." 
 
 Milly remained smiling at her, though putting on 
 a little the manner of a teacher with a pupil. " Well, 
 that will do for the first time. I have done," she 
 .went on, " what I wanted." 
 
 :< Then that s all we want. You see there are 
 plenty of things." 
 
 Milly shook her head for the " plenty." " The 
 best is not to know that includes them all. I don t 
 I don t know. Nothing about anything except 
 that you re with me. Remember that, please. 
 There won t be anything that, on my side, for you, 
 I shall forget. So it s all right." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 The effect of it by this time was fairly, as intended, 
 to sustain Susie who dropped in spite of herself into 
 the reassuring. " Most certainly it s all right. I 
 think you ought to understand that he sees no rea 
 son " 
 
 " Why I shouldn t have a grand long life? " Milly 
 had taken it straight up as if to understand it and 
 for a moment consider it. But she disposed of it 
 otherwise. " Oh, of course, I know that" She 
 spoke as if her friend s point were small. 
 
 Mrs. Stringham tried to enlarge it. " Well, what 
 I mean is that he didn t say to me anything that he 
 hasn t said to yourself." 
 
 "Really? I would in his place." She might 
 have been disappointed, but she had her good hu 
 mour. " He tells me to live " and she oddly lim 
 ited the word. 
 
 It left Susie a little at sea. " Then what do you 
 want more? " 
 
 " My dear," the girl presently said, " I don t 
 1 want, as I assure you, anything. Still," she added, 
 " I am living. Oh yes, I m living." 
 
 It put them again face to face, but it had wound 
 Mrs. Stringham up. " So am I then, you ll see ! " 
 she spoke with the note of her recovery. Yet it 
 was her wisdom now meaning by it as much as she 
 did not to say more than that. She had risen by 
 Milly s aid to a certain command of what was before 
 them ; the ten minutes of their talk had, in fact, made 
 her more distinctly aware of the presence in her mind 
 
 116 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of a new idea. It was really perhaps an old idea 
 with a new value ; it had at all events begun during 
 the last hour, though at first but feebly, to shine with 
 a special light. That was because, in the morning, 
 darkness had so suddenly descended a sufficient 
 shade of night to bring out the power of a star. The 
 dusk might be thick yet, but the sky had compar 
 atively cleared; and Susan Shepherd s star, from 
 this time on, continued to twinkle for her. It was 
 for the moment, after her passage with Milly, the 
 one spark left in the heavens. She recognised, as 
 she continued to watch it, that it had really been set 
 there by Sir Luke Strett s visit and that the impres 
 sions immediately following had done no more than 
 fix it. Milly s reappearance with Mr. Densher at 
 her heels or, so oddly perhaps, at Miss Croy s heels, 
 Miss Croy being at Milly s had contributed to this 
 effect, though it was only with the lapse of the great 
 er obscurity that Susie made that out. The obscurity 
 had reigned during the hour of their friends visit, 
 faintly clearing indeed while, in one of the rooms, 
 Kate Croy s remarkable advance to her intensified 
 the fact that Milly and the young man were con 
 joined in the other. If it hadn t acquired on the 
 spot all the intensity of which it was capable, this 
 was because the poor lady still sat in her primary 
 gloom, the gloom the great benignant doctor had 
 practically left behind him. 
 
 The intensity the circumstance in question might 
 wear to the informed imagination would have been 
 
 117 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 sufficiently revealed for us, no doubt and with other 
 things to our purpose in two or three of those con 
 fidential passages with Mrs. Lowder that she now 
 permitted herself. She had not yet been so glad that 
 she believed in her old friend ; for if she had not had, 
 at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she 
 would certainly have stumbled by the way. Dis 
 cretion had ceased to consist of silence; silence was 
 gross and thick ; whereas wisdom should taper, how 
 ever tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to 
 Lancaster Gate the morning after the colloquy just 
 noted; and there, in Maud Manningham s own 
 sanctum, she gradually found relief in giving an ac 
 count of herself. An account of herself was one of 
 the things that she had long been in the habit of 
 expecting herself regularly to give the regularity 
 depending of course much on such tests of merit as 
 might, by laws beyond her control, rise in her path. 
 She never spared herself in short a proper sharpness 
 of conception of how she had behaved, and it was 
 a statement that she for the most part found herself 
 able to make. What had happened at present was 
 that nothing, as she felt, was left of her to report 
 to; she was all too sunk in the inevitable, and the 
 abysmal. To give an account of herself she must 
 give it to somebody else, and her first instalment of 
 it to her hostess was that she must please let her cry. 
 She couldn t cry, with Milly in observation, at the 
 hotel, which she had accordingly left for that pur 
 pose; and the power happily came to her with the 
 
 118 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 good opportunity. She cried and cried at first she 
 confined herself to that ; it was for the time the best 
 statement of her business. Mrs. Lowder moreover 
 intelligently took it as such, though knocking off a 
 note or two more, as she said, while Susie sat near 
 her table. She could resist the contagion of tears, 
 but her patience did justice to her visitor s most vivid 
 plea for it. " I shall never be able, you know, to cry 
 again at least not ever with her; so I must take it 
 out when I can. Even if she does herself, it won t 
 be for me to give away ; for what would that be but 
 a confession of despair? I m not with her for that 
 I m with her to be regularly sublime. Besides, 
 Milly won t cry herself." 
 
 " I m sure I hope," said Mrs. Lowder, " that she 
 won t have occasion to." 
 
 " She won t even if she does have occasion. She 
 won t shed a tear. There s something that will pre 
 vent her." 
 
 "Oh!" said Mrs. Lowder. 
 
 " Yes, her pride," Mrs. Stringham explained in 
 spite of her friend s doubt, and it was with this that 
 her communication took consistent form. ,It had 
 never been pride, Maud Manningham had hinted, 
 that kept her from crying when other things made 
 for it; it had only been that these same things, at 
 such times, made still more for business, arrange 
 ments, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the mar 
 shalling of servants, the taking of decisions. " I 
 might be crying now," she said, " if I weren t writ- 
 
 119 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ing letters " and this quite without harshness for 
 her anxious companion, to whom she allowed just 
 the administrative margin for difference. She had 
 interrupted her no more than she would have inter 
 rupted the piano-tuner. It gave poor Susie time; 
 and when Mrs. Lowder, to save appearances and 
 catch the post, had, with her addressed and stamped 
 notes, met at the door of the room the footman sum 
 moned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the 
 case were sufficiently ready for her. It took but two 
 or three, however, given their importance, to lay the 
 ground for the great one Mrs. Stringham s inter 
 view of the day before with Sir Luke, who had 
 wished to see her about Milly. 
 
 " He had wished it himself? " 
 
 " I think he was glad of it. Clearly indeed he was. 
 He stayed a quarter of an hour. I could see that for 
 him it was long. He s interested," said Mrs. String- 
 ham. 
 
 " Do you mean in her case ? " 
 
 " He says it isn t a case." 
 
 "What then is it?" 
 
 " It isn t, at least," Mrs. Stringham explained, 
 " the case she believed it to be thought it at any 
 rate might be when, without my knowledge, she 
 went to see him. She went because there was some 
 thing she was afraid of, and he examined her thor 
 oughly he has made sure. She s wrong she 
 hasn t what she thought." 
 
 "And what did she think?" Mrs. Lowder de 
 manded. 
 
 1 20 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " He didn t tell me." 
 
 "And you didn t ask?" 
 
 " I asked nothing," said poor Susie " I only took 
 what he gave me. He gave me no more than he had 
 to he was beautiful," she went on. " He is, thank 
 God, interested." 
 
 " He must have been interested in you, dear," 
 Maud Manningham observed with kindness. 
 
 Her visitor met it with candour. " Yes, love, I 
 think he is. I mean that he sees what he can do 
 with me." 
 
 Mrs. Lowder took it rightly. " For her" 
 
 " For her. Anything in the world he will or he 
 must. He can use me to the last bone, and he likes 
 at least that. He says the great thing for her is to 
 be happy." 
 
 " It s surely the great thing for everyone. Why, 
 therefore," Mrs. Lowder handsomely asked, " should 
 we cry so hard about it? " 
 
 " Only," poor Susie wailed, " that it s so strange, 
 so beyond us. I mean if she can t be." 
 
 " She must be." Mrs. Lowder knew no impos 
 sibles. " She shall be." 
 
 " Well if you ll help. He thinks, you know, we 
 can help." 
 
 Mrs. Lowder faced a moment, in her massive way, 
 what Sir Luke Strett thought. She sat back there, 
 her knees apart, not unlike a picturesque ear-ringed 
 matron at a market-stall ; while her friend, before her, 
 dropped their items, tossed the separate truths of the 
 
 121 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 matter one by one, into her capacious lap. " But is 
 that all he came to you for to tell you she must be 
 happy?" 
 
 " That she must be made so that s the point. It 
 seemed enough, as he told me," Mrs. Stringham went 
 on ; " he makes it, somehow, such a grand, possible 
 affair." 
 
 " Ah, well, if he makes it possible! " 
 
 " I mean especially he makes it grand. He gave 
 it to me, that is, as my part. The rest s his own." 
 
 " And what is the rest? " Mrs. Lowder asked. 
 
 " I don t know. His business. He means to 
 keep hold of her." 
 
 " Then why do you say it isn t a case ? It must 
 be very much of one." 
 
 Everything in Mrs. Stringham confessed to the 
 extent of it. " It s only that it isn t the case she 
 herself supposed." 
 
 "It s another?" 
 
 " It s another." 
 
 " Examining her for what she supposed, he finds 
 something else? " 
 
 " Something else." 
 
 "And what does he find?" 
 
 " Ah," Mrs. Stringham cried, " God keep me from 
 knowing ! " 
 
 "He didn t tell you that?" 
 
 But poor Susie had recovered herself. " What 
 I mean is that if it s there I shall know in time. He s 
 considering, but I can trust him for it because he 
 
 122 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 does, I feel, trust me. He s considering," she re 
 peated. 
 
 " He s, in other words, not sure? " 
 
 " Well, he s watching. I think that s what he 
 means. She s to get away now, but to come back to 
 him in three months." 
 
 "Then I think," said Maud Lowder, "that he 
 oughtn t meanwhile to scare us." 
 
 It roused Susie a little, Susie being already en 
 rolled in the great doctor s cause. This came out 
 at least in her glimmer of reproach. " Does it scare 
 us to enlist us for her happiness ? " 
 
 Mrs. Lowder was rather stiff for it. " Yes ; it 
 scares me. I m always scared I may call it so 
 till I understand. What happiness is he talking 
 about?" 
 
 Mrs. Stringham at this came straight. " Oh, you 
 know!" 
 
 She had really said it so that her friend had to 
 take it; which the latter in fact after a moment, 
 showed herself as having done. A strange light 
 humour in the matter even perhaps suddenly aiding, 
 she met it with a certain accommodation. " Well, 
 
 say one seems to see. The point is " But, 
 
 fairly too full now of her question, she dropped. 
 
 " The point is will it cure? " 
 
 " Precisely. Is it absolutely a remedy the spe 
 cific?" 
 
 " Well, I should think we might know ! " Mrs. 
 Stringham delicately declared. 
 
 123 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 "Ah, but we haven t the complaint." 
 
 " Have you never, dearest, been in love? " Susan 
 Shepherd inquired. 
 
 " Yes, my child; but not by the doctor s direc 
 tion." 
 
 Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a 
 break into momentary mirth, which operated and 
 happily too as a challenge to her visitor s spirit. 
 " Oh, of course we don t ask his leave to fall. But 
 it s something to know he thinks it good for us." 
 
 " My dear woman," Mrs. Lowder cried, "it strikes 
 me we know it without him. So that when that s 
 all he has to tell us !" 
 
 " Ah," Mrs. Stringham interposed, " it isn t all. 
 I feel Sir Luke will have more; he won t have put 
 me off with anything inadequate. I m to see him 
 again ; he as good as told me that he ll wish it. So 
 it won t be for nothing." 
 
 " Then what will it be for ? Do you mean he has 
 somebody of his own to propose ? Do you mean you 
 told him nothing?" 
 
 Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. " I 
 showed him I understood him. That was all I could 
 do. I didn t feel at liberty to be explicit ; but I felt, 
 even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of 
 what I had from you night before last." 
 
 " What I spoke to you of in the carriage when we 
 had left her with Kate?" 
 
 " You had seen, apparently, in three minutes. And 
 now that he s here, now that I ve met him and had 
 
 124 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 my impression of him, I feel," said Mrs. Stringham, 
 " that you ve been magnificent." 
 
 " Of course I ve been magnificent. When," 
 asked Maud Manningham, " was I anything else ? 
 But Milly won t be, you know, if she marries Merton 
 Densher." 
 
 " Oh, it s always magnificent to marry the man 
 one loves. But we re going fast ! " Mrs. Stringham 
 wofully smiled. 
 
 " The thing is to go fast if I see the case right. 
 What had I, after all, but my instinct of that on com 
 ing back with you, night before last, to pick up 
 Kate? I felt what I felt I knew in my bones the 
 man had returned." 
 
 " That s just where, as I say, you re magnificent. 
 But wait," said Mrs. Stringham, " till you ve seen 
 him." 
 
 " I shall see him immediately " Mrs. Lowder 
 took it up with decision. " What is then," she 
 asked, " your impression? " 
 
 Mrs. Stringham s impression seemed lost in her 
 doubts. " How can he ever care for her ? " 
 
 Her companion, in her companion s heavy manner, 
 sat on it. " By being put in the way of it." 
 
 " For God s sake then," Mrs. Stringham wailed, 
 " put him in the way. You have him, one feels, in 
 your hand." 
 
 Maud Lowder s eyes at this rested on her friend s. 
 " Is that your impression of him? " 
 
 " It s my impression, dearest, of you. You han 
 dle everyone." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Mrs. Lowder s eyes still rested, and Susan Shep 
 herd now felt, for a wonder, not less sincere by see 
 ing that she pleased her. But there was a great lim 
 itation. " I don t handle Kate." 
 
 It suggested something that her visitor had not 
 yet had from her something the sense of which 
 made Mrs. Stringham gasp. " Do you mean Kate 
 cares for him? " 
 
 That fact the lady of Lancaster Gate had up to 
 this moment, as we know, enshrouded, and her 
 friend s quick question had produced a change in her 
 face. She blinked then looked at the question 
 hard; after which, whether she had inadvertently 
 betrayed herself or had only taken a decision and 
 then been affected by the quality of Mrs. Stringham s 
 surprise, she accepted all results. What took place 
 in her for Susan Shepherd was not simply that she 
 made the best of them, but that she suddenly saw 
 more in them to her purpose than she could have 
 imagined. A certain impatience in fact marked in 
 her this transition : she had been keeping back, very 
 hard, an important truth, and wouldn t have liked to 
 hear that she had not concealed it cleverly. Susie 
 nevertheless felt herself passing as something of a 
 fool with her for not having thought of it. What 
 Susie indeed, however, most thought of at present, 
 in the quick, new light of it, was the wonder of 
 Kate s dissimulation. She had time for that view 
 while she waited for an answer to her cry. " Kate 
 thinks she cares. But she s mistaken. And no one 
 
 126 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 knows it." These things, distinct and responsible, 
 were Mrs. Lowder s retort. Yet they were not all 
 of it. " You don t know it that must be your line. 
 Or rather your line must be that you deny it utterly." 
 
 " Deny that she cares for him ? " 
 
 " Deny that she so much as thinks that she does. 
 Positively and absolutely. Deny that you ve so 
 much as heard of it." 
 
 Susie faced this new duty. " To Milly, you mean 
 if she asks?" 
 
 " To Milly, naturally. No one else will ask." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Stringham after a moment, 
 " Milly won t." 
 
 Mrs. Lowder wondered. " Are you sure? " 
 
 " Yes, the more I think of it. And luckily for me. 
 I lie badly." 
 
 " / lie well, thank God," Mrs. Lowder almost 
 snorted, " when, ,as sometimes will happen, there s 
 nothing else so good. One must always do the best. 
 But without lies then," she went on, " perhaps we 
 can work it out." Her interest had risen ; her friend 
 saw her as, within some minutes, more enrolled and 
 inflamed presently felt in her what had made the 
 difference. Mrs. Stringham, it was true, descried 
 this at the time but dimly ; she only made out at first 
 that Maud had found a reason for helping her. The 
 reason was that, strangely, she might help Maud too, 
 for which she now desired to profess herself ready 
 even to lying. What really perhaps most came out for 
 her was that her hostess was a little disappointed at 
 
 127 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her doubt of the social solidity of this appliance ; and 
 that in turn was to become a steadier light. The 
 truth about Kate s delusion, as her aunt presented 
 it, the delusion about the state of her affections, 
 which might be removed this was apparently the 
 ground on which they now might more intimately 
 meet. Mrs. Stringham saw herself recruited for the 
 removal of Kate s delusion by arts, however, in 
 truth, that she as yet quite failed to compass. Or 
 was it perhaps to be only for the removal of Mr. 
 Densher s? success in which indeed might entail 
 other successes. Before that job, unfortunately, her 
 heart had already failed. She felt that she believed 
 in her bones what Milly believed, and what would 
 now make working for Milly such a dreadful upward 
 tug. All this, within her, was confusedly present 
 a cloud of questions out of which Maud Manning- 
 ham s large seated self loomed, however, as a mass 
 more and more definite, taking in fact for the con 
 sultative relation something of the form of an oracle. 
 From the oracle the sound did come or at any rate 
 the sense did, a sense all accordant with the in 
 sufflation she had just seen working. " Yes," the 
 sense was, " I ll help you for Milly because if that 
 comes off I shall be helped, by its doing so, for Kate " 
 a view into which Mrs. Stringham could now suf 
 ficiently enter. She found herself of a sudden, 
 strange to say, quite willing to operate to Kate s 
 harm, or at least to Kate s good as Mrs. Lowder 
 with a noble anxiety measured it. She found herself 
 
 128 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in short not caring what became of Kate only con 
 vinced at bottom of the predominance of Kate s star. 
 Kate wasn t in danger, Kate wasn t pathetic; Kate 
 Croy, whatever happened, would take care of Kate 
 Croy. She saw moreover by this time that her 
 friend was travelling even beyond her own speed. 
 Mrs. Lowder had already, in mind, drafted a rough 
 plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off, as 
 she said : " You must stay on a few days, and you 
 must immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner." 
 In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of hav 
 ing by an instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done 
 much, two nights before, to prepare that ground. 
 c< The poor child, when I was with her there while 
 you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself away 
 to me." 
 
 " Oh, I remember how you afterwards put it to 
 me. Though it was nothing more," Susie did her 
 self the justice to observe, " than what I too had 
 quite felt." 
 
 But Mrs. Lowder fronted her so on this that she 
 wondered what she had said. " I suppose I ought 
 to be edified at what you can so beautifully give 
 up." 
 
 " Give up? " Mrs. Stringham echoed. " Why, I 
 give up nothing I cling." 
 
 Her hostess showed impatience, turning again 
 with some stiffness to her great brass-bound cylinder- 
 desk and giving a push to an object or two disposed 
 
 there. " 7 give up then. You know how little such 
 VOL. II. 9 I2 p 
 
 OF THF 
 
 1 ; .- 
 
 ,, 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 a person as Mr. Densher was to be my idea for her. 
 You know what I ve been thinking perfectly pos 
 sible." 
 
 " Oh, you ve been great " Susie was perfectly 
 fair. " A duke, a duchess, a princess, a palace : 
 you ve made me believe in them too. But where we 
 break down is that she doesn t believe in them. Luck 
 ily for her as it seems to be turning out she 
 doesn t want them. So what s one to do ? I assure 
 you I ve had many dreams. But I ve only one dream 
 now." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham s tone in these last words gave so 
 fully her meaning that Mrs. Lowder could but show 
 herself as taking it in. They sat a moment longer 
 confronted on it. " Her having what she does 
 want?" 
 
 " If it will do anything for her." 
 
 Mrs. Lowder seemed to think what it might do; 
 but she spoke for the instant of something else. " It 
 does provoke me a bit, you know for of course I m 
 a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. 
 Yet it doesn t prevent the fact that we must be de 
 cent." 
 
 " We must take her " Mrs. Stringham carried 
 that out" as she is." 
 
 " And we must take Mr. Densher as he is." With 
 which Mrs. Lowder gave a sombre laugh. " It s a 
 pity he isn t better ! " 
 
 " Well, if he were better," her friend rejoined, 
 " you would have liked him for your niece ; and in 
 
 130 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 that case Milly would interfere. 1 mean," Susie 
 added, " interfere with you." 
 
 " She interferes with me as it is not that it mat 
 ters now. But I saw Kate and her really as soon 
 as you came to me set up side by side. I saw your 
 girl I don t mind telling you helping my girl; 
 and when I say that," Mrs. Lowder continued, 
 " you ll probably put in for yourself that it was part 
 of the reason of my welcome to you. So you see 
 what I give up. I do give it up. But when I take 
 that line," she further set forth, " I take it hand 
 somely. So good-bye to it all. Good-day to Mrs. 
 Densher ! Heavens ! " she growled. 
 
 Susie held herself a minute. " Even as Mrs. Den 
 sher my girl will be somebody." 
 
 " Yes, she won t be nobody. Besides," said Mrs. 
 Lowder, " we re talking in the air." 
 
 Her companion sadly assented. " We re leaving 
 everything out." 
 
 " It s nevertheless interesting." And Mrs. Low 
 der had another thought. " He s not quite nobody 
 either." It brought her back to the question she 
 had already put and which her friend had not at the 
 time met. " What, in fact, do you make of 
 him?" 
 
 Susan Shepherd, at this, for reasons not clear even 
 to herself was moved a little to caution. So she re 
 mained general. " He s charming." 
 
 She had met Mrs. Lowder s eyes with that ex 
 treme pointedness in her own to which people resort 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 when they are not quite candid a circumstance that 
 had its effect. " Yes; he s charming." 
 
 The effect of the words, however, was equally 
 marked ; they almost determined in Mrs. Stringham 
 a return of amusement. " I thought you didn t like 
 him!" - 
 
 " I don t like him for Kate." 
 
 " But you don t like him for Milly either." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham rose as she spoke, and her friend 
 also got up. " I like him, my dear, for myself." 
 
 " Then that s the best way of all." 
 
 " Well, it s one way. He s not good enough for 
 my niece, and he s not good enough for you. One s 
 an aunt, one s a wretch and one s a fool." 
 
 " Oh, Pm not not either," Susie declared. 
 
 But her companion kept on. " One lives for oth 
 ers. You do that. If I were living for myself I 
 shouldn t at all mind him." 
 
 But Mrs. Stringham was sturdier. " Ah, if I find 
 him charming it s however I m living." 
 
 Well, it broke Mrs. Lowder down. She hung fire 
 but an instant, giving herself away with a laugh. 
 " Of course he s all right in himself." 
 
 " That s all I contend," Susie said with more re 
 serve; and the note in question what Merton 
 Densher was " in himself " closed practically, with 
 some inconsequence, this first of their councils. 
 
 132 
 
XXIII 
 
 IT had at least made the difference for them, they 
 could feel, of an informed state in respect to the 
 great doctor, whom they were now to take as watch 
 ing-, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing 
 to himself some such process before he should make 
 up his mind. Mrs. Stringham understood him as 
 considering the matter meanwhile in a spirit that, 
 on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had 
 come back to a rough notation of before retiring. 
 She followed the course of his reckoning. If what 
 they had talked of could happen if Milly, that is, 
 could have her thoughts taken off herself it 
 wouldn t do any harm and might conceivably do 
 much good. If it couldn t happen if, anxiously, 
 though tactfully working, they themselves, con 
 joined, could do nothing to contribute to it they 
 would be in no worse a box than before. Only in 
 this latter case the girl would have had her free 
 range for the summer, for the autumn; she would 
 have done her best in the sense enjoined on her, 
 and, coming back at the end to her eminent man, 
 would besides having more to show him find 
 him more ready to go on with her. It was visible 
 further to Susan Shepherd as well as being ground 
 for a second report to her old friend that Milly did 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her part for a working view of the general case, in 
 asmuch as she mentioned frankly and promptly that 
 she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir Luke 
 Strett and thank him. She even specified what she 
 was to thank him for, his having been so easy about 
 her behaviour. 
 
 " You see I didn t know that for the liberty I 
 took I shouldn t afterwards get a stiff note from 
 him." 
 
 So much Milly had said to her, and it had made 
 her a trifle rash. " Oh, you ll never get a stiff note 
 from him in your life." 
 
 She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her 
 young friend s question. " Why not, as well as any 
 one else who has played him a trick? " 
 
 " Well, because he doesn t regard it as a trick. 
 He could understand your action. It s all right, 
 you see." 
 
 Yes I do see. It is all right. He s easier 
 with me than with any one else, because that s the 
 way to let me down. He s only making believe, 
 and I m not worth hauling up." 
 
 Rueful at having provoked again this ominous 
 flare, poor Susie grasped at her only advantage. 
 " Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett 
 of trifling with you? " 
 
 She couldn t blind herself to the look her com 
 panion gave her a strange, half-amused percep 
 tion of what she made of it. " Well, so far as it s 
 trifling with me to pity me so much." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " He doesn t pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. 
 " He just the same as any one else likes you." 
 
 " He has no business then to like me. He s not 
 the same as any one else." 
 
 " Why not, if he wants to work for you? " 
 
 Milly gave her another look, but this time a won 
 derful smile. " Ah, there you are ! " Mrs. String- 
 ham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But 
 Milly let her off. " Work for me, all the same 
 work for me ! It is of course what I want." Then, 
 as usual, she embraced her friend. " I m not going 
 to be as nasty as this to him. 1 
 
 " I m sure I hope not ! " and Mrs. Stringham 
 laughed for the kiss. " I ve no doubt, however, 
 he d take it from you ! It s you, my dear, who are 
 not the same as any one else." 
 
 Milly s assent to which, after an instant, gave her 
 the last word. " No, so that people can take any 
 thing from me." And what Mrs. Stringham did in 
 deed resignedly take after this was the absence, on 
 her part, of any account of the visit then paid. It 
 was the beginning in fact, between them, of an odd 
 independence an independence positively of ac 
 tion and custom on the subject of Milly s future. 
 They went their separate ways, with the girl s in 
 tense assent; this being really nothing but what she 
 had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. 
 Stringham s first encounter with Sir Luke. She 
 fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or was to 
 have other encounters private, pointed, personal; 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 she favoured every idea, but most of all the idea that 
 she herself was to go on as if nothing were the mat 
 ter. Since she was to be worked for, that would be 
 her way; and though her companion learned from 
 herself nothing of it, that was in the event her way 
 with her medical adviser. She put her visit to him 
 on the simplest ground; she had just come to tell 
 him how touched she had been by his goodnature. 
 This required little explaining, for, as Mrs. String- 
 ham had said, he quite understood, he could but re 
 ply that it was all right. 
 
 " I had a charming quarter of an hour with that 
 clever lady. You ve got good friends." 
 
 " So each one of them thinks of all the others. 
 But so I also think/ Milly went on, " of all of them 
 together. You re excellent for each other. And 
 it s in that way, I dare say, that you re best for me." 
 
 There came to her on this occasion one of the 
 strangest of her impressions, which was at the same 
 time one of the finest of her alarms the glimmer 
 of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, 
 she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility 
 if not of value. Going too far was failing to try at 
 least to remain simple. He would be quite ready 
 to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every 
 point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no 
 doubt, in a way, constituted for him a high method. 
 Susie wouldn t hate her because Susie positively 
 wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea that 
 she might somehow so do her good. Such, how- 
 
 136 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ever, was not the way in which the greatest of Lon 
 don doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. 
 He wouldn t have time even if he should wish; 
 whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately 
 warned. Face to face there with her smooth, strong 
 director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such 
 another lift of feeling as she had known in her cru 
 cial talk with Susie. It came round to the same 
 thing; him too she would help to help her if that 
 could possibly be; but if it couldn t possibly be she 
 would assist also to make this right. It wouldn t 
 have taken many minutes more, on the basis in 
 question, almost to reverse for her their characters 
 of patient and physician. What was he, in fact, but 
 patient, what was she but physician, from the mo 
 ment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopt 
 ed once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about 
 her subtlety? She would leave the subtlety to 
 him; he would enjoy his use of it; and she herself, 
 no doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She 
 went so far as to imagine that the inward success 
 of these reflections flushed her for the minute, to his 
 eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appear 
 ance of health; and what verily next occurred was 
 that he gave colour to the presumption. " Every 
 little helps, no doubt ! " he noticed good-hu- 
 mouredly her harmless sally. " But, help or no 
 help, you re looking, you know, remarkably well." 
 
 " Oh, I thought I was," she answered; and it was 
 as if already she saw his line. Only she wondered 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 what he would have guessed. If he had guessed 
 anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. 
 As for what there was to guess, he couldn t if this 
 was present to him have arrived at it save by his 
 own acuteness. This acuteness was therefore im 
 mense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought 
 of leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. 
 Neither, for that matter, would hers be which she 
 was even actually enjoying. She wondered if really 
 then there mightn t be something for her. She 
 hadn t been sure in coming to him that she was 
 " better," and he hadn t used, he would be awfully 
 careful not to use, that compromising term about 
 her; in spite of all of which she would have been 
 ready to say, for the amiable sympathy of it, " Yes, 
 I must be," for he had this unaided sense of some 
 thing that had happened to her. It was a sense un 
 aided, because who could have told him of anything? 
 Susie, she was certain, had not yet seen him again, 
 and there were things it was impossible she could 
 have told him the first time. Since such was his 
 penetration, therefore, why shouldn t she gracefully, 
 in recognition of it, accept the new circumstance, 
 the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate her 
 on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause ten 
 derly enough it might produce an effect; and this, 
 to begin with, would be a way of nursing. You 
 gave me the other day," she went on, " plenty to 
 think over, and I ve been doing that thinking it 
 over quite as you ll have probably wished me. I 
 
 138 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 think I must be pretty easy to treat," she smiled, 
 " since you ve already done me so much good." 
 
 The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was 
 that he looked in advance so closely related to all 
 one s possibilities that one missed the pleasure of 
 really improving it. " Oh no, you re extremely 
 difficult to treat. I ve need with you, I assure you, 
 of all my wit." 
 
 "Well, I mean, I do come up." She hadn t 
 meanwhile a bit believed in his answer, convinced as 
 she was that if she had been difficult it would be the 
 last thing he would have told her. " I m doing," 
 she said, " as I like." 
 
 " Then it s as / like. But you must really, 
 though we re having such a decent month, get 
 straight away." In pursuance of which, when she 
 had replied with promptitude that her departure 
 for the Tyrol and then for Venice was quite fixed 
 for the fourteenth, he took her up with alacrity. 
 " For Venice? That s perfect, for we shall meet 
 there. I ve a dream of it for October, when I m 
 hoping for three weeks off; three weeks during 
 which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young 
 person who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take 
 me where she prefers. I heard from her only yes 
 terday that she expects to prefer Venice." 
 
 " That s lovely then. I shall expect you there. 
 And anything that, in advance or in any way, I can 
 do for you ! " 
 
 " Oh, thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 does for me. But it will be capital to find you 
 there." 
 
 " I think it ought to make you feel," she said after 
 a moment, " that I am easy to treat." 
 
 But he shook his head again; he wouldn t have 
 it. You ve not come to that yet." 
 
 " One has to be so bad for it? " 
 
 " Well, I don t think I ve ever come to it to 
 ease of treatment. I doubt if it s possible. I ve 
 not, if it is, found any one bad enough. The ease, 
 you see, is for you" 
 
 " I see I see." 
 
 They had an odd, friendly but perhaps the least 
 bit awkward pause on it; after which Sir Luke 
 asked : " And that clever lady she goes with 
 you? " 
 
 " Mrs. Stringham? Oh dear, yes. She ll stay 
 with me, I hope, to the end." 
 
 He had a cheerful blankness. " To the end of 
 what?" 
 
 " Well of everything." 
 
 " Ah then," he laughed, " you re in luck. The 
 end of everything is far off. This, you know, I m 
 hoping," said Sir Luke, " is only the beginning." 
 And the next question he risked might have 
 been a part of his hope. " Just you and she to 
 gether? " 
 
 " No, two other friends; two ladies of whom we ve 
 seen more here than of any one and who are just 
 the right people for us." 
 
 140 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He thought a moment. " You ll be four women 
 together then?" 
 
 " Ah," said Milly, " we re widows and orphans. 
 But I think," she added as if to say what she saw 
 would reassure him, " that we shall not be unat 
 tractive, as we move, to gentlemen. When you 
 talk of life I suppose you mean, mainly, gentle 
 men." 
 
 " When I talk of life/ " he made answer after a 
 moment during which he might have been appre 
 ciating her raciness " when I talk of life I think I 
 mean more than anything else the beautiful show 
 of it, in its freshness, made by young persons of 
 your age. So go on as you are. I see more and 
 more how you are. You can t," he went so far as 
 to say for pleasantness, " better it." 
 
 She took it from him with a great show of peace. 
 " One of our companions will be Miss Croy, who 
 came with me here first. It s in her that life is 
 splendid; and a part of that is even that she s de 
 voted to me. But she s, above all, magnificent in 
 herself. So that if you d like," she freely threw out, 
 " to see her " 
 
 " Oh, I shall like to see any one who s devoted to 
 you, for, clearly, it will be jolly to be in it. So 
 that if she s to be at Venice I shall see her? " 
 
 " We must arrange it I shan t fail. She more 
 over has a friend who may also be there " Milly 
 found herself going on to this. " He s likely to 
 come, I believe, for he always follows her." 
 
 141 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Sir Luke wondered. "You mean they re 
 lovers? " 
 
 "He is," Milly smiled; "but not she. She 
 doesn t care for him." 
 
 Sir Luke took an interest. " What s the matter 
 with him?" 
 
 " Nothing but that she doesn t like him." 
 
 Sir Luke kept it up. " Is he all right? " 
 
 " Oh, he s very nice. Indeed he s remarkably 
 so." 
 
 " And he s to be in Venice? " 
 
 " So she tells me she fears. For if he is there he ll 
 be constantly about with her." 
 
 " And she ll be constantly about with you? " 
 
 " As we re great friends yes." 
 
 " Well, then," said Sir Luke, " you won t be four 
 women alone." 
 
 " Oh, no; I recognise the chance of gentlemen. 
 But he won t," Milly pursued in the same wondrous 
 way, " have come, you see, for me." 
 
 " No I see. But can t you help him? " 
 
 " Can t you? " Milly after a moment quaintly 
 asked. Then for the joke of it she explained. 
 " I m putting you, you see, in relation with my 
 entourage." 
 
 It might have been for the joke of it too, by this 
 time, that her eminent friend fell in. " But if this 
 gentleman isn t of your entourage? I mean if he s 
 of what do you call her? Miss Croy s. Unless 
 indeed you also take an interest in him." 
 
 142 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh, certainly I take an interest in him ! " 
 
 " You think there may be then some chance for 
 him? " 
 
 " I like him," said Milly, " enough to hope so." 
 
 "Then that s all right. But what, pray," Sir 
 Luke next asked, " have I to do with him? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Milly, " except that if you re to 
 be there, so may he be. And also that we shan t in 
 that case be simply four dreary women." 
 
 He considered her as if at this point she a little 
 tried his patience. " You re the least dreary 
 woman I ve ever, ever seen. Ever, do you know? 
 There s no reason why you shouldn t have a really 
 splendid life." 
 
 " So everyone tells me," she promptly returned. 
 
 " The conviction strong already when I had 
 seen you once is strengthened in me by having 
 seen your friend. There s no doubt about it. The 
 world s before you." 
 
 " What did my friend tell you? " Milly asked. 
 
 " Nothing that wouldn t have given you pleasure. 
 We talked about you and freely. I don t deny 
 that. But it shows me I don t require of you the 
 impossible." 
 
 She was now on her feet. " I think I know what 
 you require of me." 
 
 " Nothing, for you," he went on, " is impossible. 
 So go on." He repeated it again wanting her so 
 to feel that to-day he saw it. " You re all right." 
 
 " Well," she smiled" keep me so." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh, you ll get away from me." 
 
 " Keep me, keep me," she simply continued with 
 her gentle eyes on him. 
 
 She had given him her hand for good-bye, and 
 he thus for a moment did keep her. Something 
 then, while he seemed to think if there were any 
 thing more, came back to him; though something 
 of which there was not too much to be made. " Of 
 course if there s anything I can do for your friend : 
 
 I mean the gentleman you speak of " He gave 
 
 out in short that he was ready. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Densher? " It was as if she had for 
 gotten. 
 
 " Mr. Densher is that his name? " 
 
 " Yes but his case isn t so dreadful." She had 
 within a minute got away from that. 
 
 " No doubt if you take an interest." Stie had 
 got away, but it was as if he made out in her eyes 
 though they also had rather got away a reason for 
 calling her back. " Still, if there s anything one can 
 
 Hr ? " 
 
 She looked at him while she thought, while she 
 smiled. " I m afraid there s really nothing one can 
 do." 
 
 144 
 
XXIV 
 
 NOT yet so much as this morning had she felt her 
 self sink into possession; gratefully glad that the 
 warmth of the southern summer was still in the high, 
 florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard, cool 
 pavements took reflections in their lifelong polish, 
 and where the sun on the stirred sea-water, flicker 
 ing up through open windows, played over the 
 painted " subjects " in the splendid ceilings medal 
 lions of purple and brown, of brave old melancholy 
 colour, medals as of old reddened gold, embossed 
 and beribboned, all toned with time and all flour 
 ished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their 
 great moulded and figured concavity (a nest of 
 white cherubs, friendly creatures of the air), and 
 appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller 
 lights, straight openings to the front, which did 
 everything, even with the Baedekers and photo 
 graphs of Milly s party dreadfully meeting the eye, 
 to make of the place an apartment of state. This 
 at last only, though she had enjoyed the palace 
 for three weeks, seemed to count as effective oc 
 cupation; perhaps because it was the first time 
 she had been alone really to call alone since 
 she had left London, her first full and unembarrassed 
 sense of what the great Eugenic had done for her. 
 
 VOL. II. 10 i 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 The great Eugenic, recommended by grand-dukes 
 and Americans, had entered her service during the 
 last hours of all had crossed from Paris, after mul 
 tiplied pourparlers with Mrs. Stringham, to whom 
 she had allowed more than ever a free hand, on pur 
 pose to escort her to the continent and encompass 
 her there, and had dedicated to her, from the mo 
 ment of their meeting, all the treasures of his ex 
 perience. She had judged him in advance, polyglot 
 and universal, very dear and very deep, as probably 
 but a swindler finished to the finger-tips; for he was 
 forever carrying one well-kept Italian hand to his 
 heart and plunging the other straight into her 
 pocket, which, as she had instantly observed him to 
 recognise, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable 
 thing was that these elements of their common con 
 sciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructi 
 ble link, formed the ground of a happy relation; be 
 ing by this time, strangely, grotesquely, delightfully, 
 what most kept up confidence between them and 
 what most expressed it. 
 
 She had seen quickly enough what was happen 
 ing the usual thing again, yet once again. Eu- 
 genio had, in an interview of five minutes, under 
 stood her, had got hold, like all the world, of the idea 
 not so much of the care with which she must be 
 taken up as of the ease with which she must be let 
 down. All the world understood her, all the world 
 had got hold; but for nobody yet, she felt, would 
 the idea have been so close a tie or won from her- 
 
 146 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 self so patient a surrender. Gracefully, respectfully, 
 consummately enough always with hands in posi 
 tion and the look, in his thick, neat, white hair, 
 smooth, fat face and black, professional, almost the 
 atrical eyes, as of some famous tenor grown too old 
 to make love, but with an art still to make money 
 did he, on occasion, convey to her that she was, of 
 all the clients of his glorious career, the one in whom 
 his interest was most personal and paternal. The 
 others had come in the way of business, but for her 
 his sentiment was special. Confidence rested thus 
 on her completely believing that : there was nothing 
 of which she felt more sure. It passed between 
 them every time they conversed; he was abysmal, 
 but this intimacy lived on the surface. He had 
 taken his place already for her among those who 
 were to see her through, and meditation ranked him, 
 in the constant perspective, for the final function, 
 side by side with poor Susie whom she was now 
 pitying more than ever for having to be herself so 
 sorry and to say so little about it. Eugenic had the 
 general tact of a residuary legatee which was a 
 character that could be definitely worn; whereas 
 she could see Susie, in the event of her death, in no 
 character at all, Susie being insistently, exclusively 
 concerned in her mere make-shift duration. This 
 principle, for that matter, Milly at present, with a 
 renewed flare of fancy, felt that she should herself 
 have liked to believe in. Eugenic had really done 
 for her more than he probably knew he didn t after 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 all know everything in having, for the wind-up of 
 the autumn, on a weak word from her, so admirably, 
 so perfectly established her. Her weak word, as a 
 general hint, had been : " At Venice, please, if pos 
 sible, no dreadful, no vulgar hotel; but, if it can be 
 at all managed you know what I mean some fine 
 old rooms, wholly independent, for a series of 
 months. Plenty of them, too, and the more inter 
 esting the better : part of a palace, historic and pic 
 turesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall be 
 to ourselves, with a cook, don t you know? with 
 servants, frescoes, tapestries, antiquities, the thor 
 ough make-believe of a settlement." 
 
 The proof of how he better and better understood 
 her was in all the place; as to his masterly acquisi 
 tion of which she had from the first asked no ques 
 tions. She had shown him enough what she 
 thought of it, and her forbearance pleased him; 
 with the part of the transaction that mainly con 
 cerned her she would soon enough become ac 
 quainted, and his connection with such values as 
 she would then find noted could scarce help grow 
 ing, as it were, still more residuary. Charming 
 people, conscious Venice-lovers, evidently, had 
 given up their house to her, and had fled to a dis 
 tance, to other countries, to hide their blushes alike 
 over what they had, however briefly, alienated, and 
 over what they had, however durably, gained. 
 They had preserved and consecrated, and she now 
 her part of it was shameless appropriated and 
 
 148 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 enjoyed. Palazzo Leporelli held its history still in its 
 great lap, even like a painted idol, a solemn puppet 
 hung about with decorations. Hung about with 
 pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the in 
 effaceable character, was here the presence revered 
 and served : which brings us back to our truth of 
 a moment ago the fact that, more than ever, this 
 October morning, awkward novice though she 
 might be, Milly moved slowly to and fro as the 
 priestess of the worship. Certainly it came from 
 the sweet taste of solitude, caught again and cher 
 ished for the hour; always a need of her nature, 
 moreover, when things spoke to her with penetra 
 tion. It was mostly in stillness that they spoke to 
 her best; amid voices she lost the sense. Voices had 
 surrounded her for weeks, and she had tried to listen, 
 had cultivated them and had answered back; these 
 had been weeks in which there were other things 
 they might well prevent her from hearing. More 
 than the prospect had at first promised or threat 
 ened, she had felt herself going on in a crowd and 
 with a multiplied escort; the four ladies pictured by 
 her to Sir Luke Strett as a phalanx comparatively 
 closed and detached had in fact proved a rolling 
 snowball, condemned from day to day to cover more 
 ground. Susan Shepherd had compared this por 
 tion of the girl s excursion to the Empress Cather 
 ine s famous progress across the steppes of Russia; 
 improvised settlements appeared at each turn of the 
 road, villagers waiting with addresses drawn up in 
 
 149 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the language of London. Old friends, in fine, were 
 in ambush, Mrs. Lowder s, Kate Croy s, her own; 
 when the addresses were not in the language of Lon 
 don they were in the more insistent idioms of the 
 American centres. The current was swollen even 
 by Susie s social connections; so that there were 
 days, at hotels, at Dolomite picnics, on lake 
 steamers, when she could almost repay to Aunt 
 Maud and Kate, with interest, the debt contracted 
 by the London " success " to which they had opened 
 the door. 
 
 Mrs. Lowder s success and Kate s, amid the shock 
 of Milly s and Mrs. Stringham s compatriots, failed 
 but little, really, of the concert-pitch; it had gone 
 almost as fast as the boom, over the sea, of the last 
 great native novel. Those ladies were " so differ 
 ent " different, observably enough, from the ladies 
 so appraising them; it being, throughout, a case 
 mainly of ladies, of a dozen at once, sometimes, in 
 Milly s apartment, pointing, also at once, that moral 
 and many others. Milly s companions were ac 
 claimed not only as perfectly fascinating in them 
 selves, the nicest people yet known to the ac- 
 claimers, but as obvious helping hands, socially 
 speaking, for the eccentric young woman, evident 
 initiators and smoothers of her path, possible sub- 
 duers of her eccentricity. Short intervals, to her 
 own sense, stood now for great differences, and 
 this renewed inhalation of her native air had some 
 how left her to feel that she already, that she mainly, 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 struck the compatriot as queer and dissociated. 
 She moved such a critic, it would appear, as to 
 rather an odd suspicion, a benevolence induced by 
 a want of complete trust : all of which showed her 
 in the light of a person too plain and too ill-clothed 
 for a thorough good time, and yet too rich and too 
 befriended an intuitive cunning within her man 
 aging this last for a thorough bad one. The com 
 patriots, in short, by what she made out, approved 
 her friends for their expert wisdom with her; in 
 spite of which judicial sagacity it was the compat 
 riots who recorded themselves as the innocent 
 parties. She saw things in these days that she had 
 never seen before, and she couldn t have said why 
 save on a principle too terrible to name; whereby 
 she saw that neither Lancaster Gate was what New 
 York took it for, nor New York what Lancaster 
 Gate fondly fancied it in coquetting with the plan 
 of a series of American visits. The plan might have 
 been, humorously, on Mrs. Lowder s part, for the 
 improvement of her social position and it had 
 verily, in that direction, lights that were perhaps 
 but half-a-century too prompt; at all of which Kate 
 Croy assisted with the cool, controlled facility that 
 went so well, as the others said, with her particular 
 kind of good looks, the kind that led you to expect 
 the person enjoying them would dispose of disputa 
 tions, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly 
 and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, 
 however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, 
 
 15* 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 like rather aggravated slang. It wasn t that Kate 
 hadn t pretended too that she would like to go to 
 America; it was only that with this young woman 
 Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever 
 of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, pri 
 vate, frank ironies that made up for their public 
 grimaces and amid which, face to face, they wearily 
 put off the mask. 
 
 These puttings-off of the mask had finally quite 
 become the form taken by their moments together, 
 moments indeed not increasingly frequent and not 
 prolonged, thanks to the consciousness of fatigue 
 on Milly s side whenever, as she herself expressed it, 
 she got out of harness. They flourished their 
 masks, the independent pair, as they might have 
 flourished Spanish fans; they smiled and sighed on 
 removing them; but the gesture, the smiles, the 
 sighs, strangely enough, might have been suspected 
 the greatest reality in the business. Strangely 
 enough, we say, for the volume of effusion in general 
 would have been found by either on measurement 
 to be scarce proportional to the paraphernalia of 
 relief. It was when they called each other s atten 
 tion to their ceasing to pretend, it was then that 
 what they were keeping back was most in the air. 
 There was a difference, no doubt, and mainly to 
 Kate s advantage: Milly didn t quite see what her 
 friend could keep back, was possessed of, in fine, 
 that would be so subject to retention; whereas it 
 was comparatively plain sailing for Kate that poor 
 
 152 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Milly had a treasure to hide. This was not the 
 treasure of a shy, abject affection concealment, on 
 that head, belonging to quite another phase of such 
 states; it was much rather a principle of pride rela 
 tively bold and hard, a principle that played up like 
 a fine steel spring at the lightest pressure of too near 
 a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was the truth 
 about the girl s own conception of her validity; thus 
 was a wondering, pitying sister condemned wist 
 fully to look at her from the far side of the moat she 
 had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of the 
 connection of these young women show for us, such 
 is the twilight that gathers about them, in the like 
 ness of some dim scene in a Maeterlinck play; we 
 have positively the image, in the delicate dusk, of 
 the figures so associated and yet so opposed, so 
 mutually watchful : that of the angular, pale prin 
 cess, ostrich-plumed, black robed, hung about with 
 amulets, reminders, relics, mainly seated, mainly 
 still, and that of the upright, restless, slow-circling 
 lady of her court, who exchanges with her, across 
 the black water streaked with evening gleams, fitful 
 questions and answers. The upright lady, with 
 thick, dark braids down her back, drawing over the 
 grass a more embroidered train, makes the whole 
 circuit, and makes it again, and the broken talk, 
 brief and sparingly allusive, seems more to cover 
 than to free their sense. This is because, when it 
 fairly comes to not having others to consider, they 
 meet in an air that appears rather anxiously to wait 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for their words. Such an impression as that was in 
 fact grave, and might be tragic; so that, plainly 
 enough, systematically at last, they settled to a care 
 of what they said. 
 
 There could be no gross phrasing to Milly, in 
 particular, of the probability that if she wasn t so 
 proud she might be pitied with more comfort 
 more to the person pitying; there could be no 
 spoken proof, no sharper demonstration than the 
 consistently considerate attitude, that this marvel 
 lous mixture of her weakness and of her strength, 
 her peril, if such it were, and her option, made her, 
 kept her, irresistibly interesting. Kate s predica 
 ment in the matter was, after all, very much Mrs. 
 Stringham s own, and Susan Shepherd herself in 
 deed, in our Maeterlinck picture, might well have 
 hovered in the gloaming by the moat. It may be 
 declared for Kate, at all events, that her sincerity 
 about her friend, through this time, was deep, her 
 compassionate imagination strong; and that these 
 things gave her a virtue, a good conscience, a cred 
 ibility for herself, so to speak, that were later to be 
 precious to her. She grasped with her keen intel 
 ligence the logic of their common duplicity, went 
 unassisted through the same ordeal as Milly s other 
 hushed follower, easily saw that for the girl to be 
 explicit was to betray divinations, gratitudes, 
 glimpses of the felt contrast between her fortune and 
 her fear all of which would have contradicted her 
 systematic bravado. That was it, Kate wondering- 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ly saw: to recognise was to bring down the ava 
 lanche the avalanche Milly lived so in watch for 
 and that might be started by the lightest of breaths; 
 though less possibly the breath of her own stifled 
 plaint than that of the vain sympathy, the mere help 
 less, gaping inference of others. With so many sup 
 pressions as these, therefore, between them, their 
 withdrawal together to unmask had to fall back, as 
 we have hinted, on a nominal motive which was 
 decently represented by a joy at the drop of chatter. 
 Chatter had in truth all along attended their steps, 
 but they took the despairing view of it on purpose 
 to have ready, when face to face, some view or other 
 of something. The relief of getting out of harness 
 that was the moral of their meetings; but the 
 moral of this, in turn, was that they couldn t so much 
 as ask each other why harness need be worn. Milly 
 wore it as a general armour. 
 
 She was out of it at present, for some reason, as 
 she had not been for weeks; she was always out of 
 it, that is, when alone, and her companions had 
 never yet so much as just now affected her as dis 
 persed and suppressed. It was as if still again, still 
 more tacitly and wonderfully, Eugenio had under 
 stood her, taking it from her without a word, and 
 just bravely and brilliantly in the name, for instance, 
 of the beautiful day: " Yes, get me an hour alone; 
 take them off I don t care where; absorb, amuse, 
 detain them ; drown them, kill them if you will : so 
 that I may just a little, all by myself, see where I 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 am." She was conscious of the dire impatience of 
 it, for she gave up Susie as well as the others to him 
 Susie who would have drowned her very self for 
 her; gave her up to a mercenary monster through 
 whom she thus purchased respites. Strange were 
 the turns of life and the moods of weakness; strange 
 the flickers of fancy and the cheats of hope; yet law 
 ful, all the same weren t they? those experiments 
 tried with the truth that consisted, at the worst, but 
 in practising on one s self. She was now playing 
 with the thought that Eugenio might inclusively 
 assist her : he had brought home to her, and always 
 by remarks that were really quite soundless, the con 
 ception, hitherto ungrasped, of some complete use 
 of her wealth itself, some use of it as a counter-move 
 to fate. It had passed between them as preposter 
 ous that with so much money she should just stupid 
 ly and awkwardly want any more want a life, a ca 
 reer, a consciousness, than want a house, a carriage, 
 or a cook. It was as if she had had from him a kind 
 of expert professional measure of what he was in a 
 position, at a stretch, to undertake for her; the thor 
 oughness of which, for that matter, she could closely 
 compare with a looseness on Sir Luke Strett s part 
 that at least in Palazzo Leporelli, when mornings 
 were fine showed as almost amateurish. Sir Luke 
 hadn t said to her " Pay enough money and leave 
 the rest to me " which was distinctly what Eu 
 genio did say. Sir Luke had appeared indeed to 
 speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to 
 
 156 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 a different sort of cash. Those were amounts not 
 to be named nor reckoned, and such moreover as 
 she wasn t sure of having at her command. Eu 
 genic this was the difference could name, could 
 reckon, and prices of his kind were things she had 
 never suffered to scare her. She had been willing, 
 goodness knew, to pay enough for anything, for 
 everything, and here was simply a new view of the 
 sufficient quantity. She amused herself for it 
 came to that, since Eugenic was there to sign the 
 receipt with possibilities of meeting the bill. She 
 was more prepared than ever to pay enough, and 
 quite as much as ever to pay too much. What else 
 if such were points at which your most trusted 
 servant failed was the use of being, as the dear 
 Susies of earth called you, a princess in a palace? 
 
 She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, 
 noble and peaceful while the summer sea, stirring 
 here and there a curtain or an outer blind, breathed 
 into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging 
 to it; that perhaps Eugenic could manage. She 
 was in it, as in the ark of her deluge, and filled with 
 such a tenderness for it that why shouldn t this, in 
 common mercy, be warrant enough? She would 
 never, never leave it she would engage to that; 
 would ask nothing more than to sit tight in it and 
 float on and on. The beauty and intensity, the real 
 momentary relief of this conceit, reached their cli 
 max in the positive purpose to put the question to 
 Eugenic on his return as she had not yet put it; 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 though the design, it must be added, dropped a lit 
 tle when, coming back to the great saloon from 
 which she had started on her pensive progress, she 
 found Lord Mark, of whose arrival in Venice she 
 had been unaware, and who had now while a ser 
 vant was following her through empty rooms been 
 asked, in her absence, to wait. He had waited then, 
 Lord Mark, he was waiting oh, unmistakably; 
 never before had he so much struck her as the man 
 to do that on occasion with patience, to do it indeed 
 almost as with gratitude for the chance, though at 
 the same time with a sort of notifying firmness. 
 The odd thing, as she was afterwards to recall, was 
 that her wonder for what had brought him was not 
 immediate, but had come at the end of five minutes; 
 and also, quite incoherently, that she felt almost 
 as glad to see him, and almost as forgiving of his 
 interruption of her solitude, as if he had already been 
 in her thought or acting at her suggestion. He was 
 somehow, at the best, the end of a respite; one 
 might like him very much, and yet feel that his pres 
 ence tempered precious solitude more than any 
 other known to one : in spite of all of which, as he 
 had neither dear Susie, nor dear Kate, nor dear Aunt 
 Maud, nor even, for the least, dear Eugenio in per 
 son, the sight of him did no damage to her sense 
 of the dispersal of her friends. She had not been 
 so thoroughly alone with him since those moments 
 of his showing her the great portrait at Matcham, 
 the moments that had exactly made the high-water- 
 
 158 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 mark of her security, the moments during which 
 her tears themselves, those she had been ashamed 
 of, were the sign of her consciously rounding her 
 protective promontory, quitting the blue gulf of 
 comparative ignorance and reaching her view of the 
 troubled sea. His presence now referred itself to 
 his presence then, reminding her how kind he had 
 been, altogether, at Matcham, and telling her, unex 
 pectedly, at a time when she could particularly feel 
 it, that, for such kindness, and for the beauty of 
 what they remembered together, she hadn t lost 
 him quite the contrary. To receive him hand 
 somely, to receive him there, to see him interested 
 and charmed, as well, clearly, as delighted to have 
 found her without some other person to spoil it 
 these things were so pleasant, for the first minutes, 
 that they might have represented on her part some 
 happy foreknowledge. 
 
 She gave an account of her companions, while 
 he, on his side, failed to press her about them, even 
 though describing his appearance, so unheralded, as 
 the result of an impulse obeyed on the spot. He 
 had been shivering at Carlsbad, belated there and 
 blue, when taken by it; so that, knowing where 
 they all were, he had simply caught the first train. 
 He explained how he had known where they were; 
 he had heard what more natural? from their 
 friends, Milly s and his. He mentioned this be 
 times, but it was with his mention, singularly, that 
 the girl became conscious of her inner question 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 about his reason. She noticed his plural, which 
 added to Mrs. Lowder, or added to Kate; but she 
 presently noticed also that it didn t affect her as ex 
 plaining. Aunt Maud had written to him; Kate 
 apparently and this was interesting had written 
 to him; but their design presumably hadn t been 
 that he should come and sit there as if rather re 
 lieved, so far as they were concerned, at postpone 
 ments. He only said "Oh!" and again "Oh!" 
 when she sketched their probable morning for him, 
 under Eugenie s care and Mrs. Stringham s 
 sounding it quite as if any suggestion that he should 
 overtake them at the Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs 
 would leave him temporarily cold. This precisely 
 it was that, after a little, operated for Milly as an ob 
 scure but still fairly direct check to confidence. He 
 had known where they all were from the others, 
 but it was not for the others that, in his actual dis 
 positions, he had come. That, strange to say, was 
 a pity; for, stranger still to say, she could have 
 shown him more confidence if he himself had had 
 less intention. His intention so chilled her, from 
 the moment she found herself divining it, that, just 
 for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for 
 the pleasure of their remembrance together of 
 Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of her fort 
 une, she could have fallen to pleading with him and 
 to reasoning, to undeceiving him in time. There 
 had been, for ten minutes, with the directness of her 
 welcome to him and the way this clearly pleased 
 
 1 60 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 him, something of the grace of amends made, even 
 though he couldn t know it amends for her not 
 having been originally sure, for instance at that first 
 dinner of Aunt Maud s, that he was adequately 
 human. That first dinner of Aunt Maud s added 
 itself to the hour at Matcham, added itself to other 
 things, to consolidate, for her present benevolence, 
 the ease of their relation, making it suddenly de 
 lightful that he had thus turned up. He exclaimed, 
 as he looked about, on the charm of the place: 
 " What a temple to taste and an expression of the 
 pride of life, yet, with all that, what a jolly home! " 
 so that, for his entertainment, she could offer to 
 walk him about, though she mentioned that she had 
 just been, for her own purposes, in a general prowl, 
 taking everything in more susceptibly than before. 
 He embraced her offer without a scruple and 
 seemed to rejoice that he was to find her sus 
 ceptible. 
 
 
 VOL. ii. ii ,6 r 
 
XXV 
 
 SHE couldn t have said what it was, in the condi 
 tions, that renewed the whole solemnity, but by the 
 end of twenty minutes a kind of wistful hush had 
 fallen upon them, as if before something poignant 
 in which her visitor also participated. That was 
 nothing, verily, but the perfection of the charm or 
 nothing, rather, but their excluded, disinherited 
 state in the presence of it. The charm turned on 
 them a face that was cold in its beauty, that was full 
 of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke, with an 
 ironic smile, of a possible but forbidden life. It all 
 rolled afresh over Milly : " Oh, the impossible ro 
 mance ! " The romance for her, yet once 
 
 more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her 
 time, as in a fortress; and the idea became an image 
 of never going down, of remaining aloft in the 
 divine, dustless air, where she would hear but the 
 plash of the water against stone. The great floor 
 on which they moved was at an altitude, and this 
 prompted the rueful fancy. " Ah, not to go down 
 never, never to go down ! " she strangely sighed 
 to her friend. 
 
 " But why shouldn t you," he asked, " with that 
 tremendous old staircase in your court? There 
 ought of course always to be people at top and bot 
 tom, in Veronese costumes, to watch you do it." 
 
 162 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She shook her head both lightly and mournfully 
 enough at his not understanding. " Not even for 
 people in Veronese costumes. I mean that the 
 positive beauty is that one needn t go down. I 
 don t move in fact," she added " now. I ve not 
 been out, you know. I stay up. That s how you 
 happily found me." 
 
 Lord Mark wondered he was, oh yes, adequate 
 ly human. " You don t go about? " 
 
 She looked over the place, the storey above the 
 apartments in which she had received him, the sala 
 corresponding to the sala below and fronting the 
 great canal with its gothic arches. The casements 
 between the arches were open, the ledge of the bal 
 cony broad, the sweep of the canal, so overhung, 
 admirable, and the flutter toward them of the loose 
 white curtain an invitation to she scarce could have 
 said what. But there was no mystery, after a mo 
 ment; she had never felt so invited to anything as 
 to make that, and that only, just where she was, her 
 adventure. It would be to this it kept coming 
 back the adventure of not stirring. " I go about 
 just here." 
 
 " Do you mean," Lord Mark presently asked, 
 " that you re really not well? " 
 
 They were at the window, pausing, lingering, 
 with the fine old faded palaces opposite and the slow 
 Adriatic tide beneath; but after a minute, and be 
 fore she answered, she had closed her eyes to what 
 she saw and, unresistingly, dropped her face into her 
 
 163 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 arms, which rested on the coping. She had fallen 
 to her knees on the cushion of the window-place, 
 and she leaned there, in a long silence, with her 
 forehead down. She knew that her silence was it 
 self too straight an answer, but it was beyond her 
 now to say that she saw her way. She would have 
 made the question itself impossible to others im 
 possible, for example, to such a man as Merton Den- 
 sher; and she could wonder even on the spot what 
 it was a sign of in her feeling for Lord Mark that, 
 from his lips, it almost tempted her to break down. 
 This was doubtless really because she cared for him 
 so little; to let herself go with him thus, suffer his 
 touch to make her cup overflow, would be the relief 
 since it was actually, for her nerves, a question of 
 relief that would cost her least. If he had come 
 to her moreover with the intention she believed, 
 or even if this intention had but been determined in 
 him by the spell of their situation, he mustn t be mis 
 taken about her value for what value did she now 
 have? It throbbed within her as she knelt there 
 that she had none at all; though, holding herself, 
 not yet speaking, she tried, even in the act, to re 
 cover what might be possible of it. With that there 
 came to her a light : wouldn t her value, for the man 
 who should marry her, be precisely in the ravage of 
 her disease? She mightn t last, but her money 
 would. For a man in whom the vision of her 
 money should be intense, in whom it should be most 
 of the ground for " making up " to her, any pro- 
 
 164 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 spective failure on her part to be long for this world 
 might easily count as a positive attraction. Such 
 a man, proposing to please, persuade, secure her, 
 appropriate her for such a time, shorter or longer, 
 as nature and the doctors should allow, would make 
 the best of her, ill, damaged, disagreeable though 
 she might be, for the sake of eventual benefits : she 
 being clearly a person of the sort esteemed likely to 
 do the handsome thing by a stricken and sorrowing 
 husband. 
 
 She had said to herself betimes, in a general way, 
 that whatever habits her youth might form, that of 
 seeing an interested suitor in every bush should cer 
 tainly never grow to be one of them an attitude 
 she had early judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She 
 had had accordingly, in fact, as little to do with it 
 as possible, and she scarce knew why, at the present 
 moment, she should have had to catch herself in the 
 act of imputing an ugly motive. It didn t sit, the 
 ugly motive, in Lord Mark s cool English eyes; the 
 darker side of it, at any rate, showed, to her imagi 
 nation, but briefly. Suspicion moreover, with this, 
 simplified itself: there was a beautiful reason in 
 deed there were two why her companion s motive 
 shouldn t matter. One was that even should he 
 desire her without a penny she wouldn t marry him 
 for the world ; the other was that she felt him, after 
 all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and human 
 ly, concerned for her. They were also two things, 
 his wishing to be well, to be very well, with her, and 
 
 65 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 his beginning to feel her as threatened, haunted, 
 blighted; but they were melting together for him, 
 making him, by their combination, only the more 
 sure that, as he probably called it to himself, he liked 
 her. That was presently what remained with her 
 his really doing it; and with the natural and proper 
 incident of being conciliated by her weakness. 
 Would she really have had him she could ask her 
 self that disconcerted or disgusted by it? If he 
 could only be touched enough to do what she pre 
 ferred, not to raise, not to press any question, he 
 might render her a much better service than by 
 merely enabling her to refuse him. Again, again it 
 was strange, but he figured to her for the moment as 
 the one safe sympathiser. It would have made her 
 worse to talk to others, but she wasn t afraid with 
 him of how he might wince and look pale. She 
 would keep him, that is, her one easy relation in 
 the sense of easy for himself. Their actual outlook 
 had meanwhile such charm, what surrounded them 
 within and without did so much toward making ap 
 preciative stillness as natural as at the opera, that 
 she could consider she had not made him hang on 
 her lips when at last, instead of saying if she were 
 well or ill, she repeated : " I go about here. I don t 
 get tired of it. I never should it suits me so. I 
 adore the place," she went on, " and I don t want 
 in the least to give it up." 
 
 " Neither should I, if I had your luck. Still, with 
 that luck, for one s all ! Should you positively 
 
 like to live here?" 
 
 166 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " I think I should like," said poor Milly after an 
 instant, " to die here." 
 
 Which made him, precisely, laugh. That was 
 what she wanted when a person did care: it was 
 the pleasant human way, without depths of dark 
 ness. " Oh, it s not good enough for that! That 
 requires picking. But can t you keep it? It is, 
 you know, the sort of place to see you in; you carry 
 out the note, fill it, people it, quite by yourself, and 
 you might do much worse I mean for your friends 
 than show yourself here a while, three or four 
 months, every year. But it s not my notion for the 
 rest of the time. One has quite other uses for you." 
 
 " What sort of a use for me is it," she smilingly 
 inquired, "to kill me? " 
 
 " Do you mean we should kill you in England? " 
 
 " Well, I ve seen you, and I m afraid. You re too 
 much for me too many. England bristles with 
 questions. This is more, as you say there, my 
 form." 
 
 " Oho, oho ! " he laughed again as if to humour 
 her. " Can t you then buy it for a price? De 
 pend upon it that they ll treat, for money. That is, 
 for money enough." 
 
 " I ve exactly," she said, " been wondering if they 
 won t. I think I shall try. But if I get it I shall 
 cling to it." They were talking sincerely. " It will 
 be my life paid for as that. It will become my 
 great gilded shell; so that those who wish to find 
 me must come and hunt me up." 
 
 167 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah then, you will be alive," said Lord Mark. 
 
 " Well, not quite extinct perhaps, but shrunken, 
 wasted, wizened; rattling about here like the dried 
 kernel of a nut." 
 
 " Oh," Lord Mark returned, " we, much as you 
 mistrust us, can do better for you than that." 
 
 " In the sense that you ll feel it better for me 
 really to have it over? " 
 
 He let her see now that she worried him, and after 
 a look at her, of some duration, without his glasses 
 which always altered the expression of his eyes 
 he re-settled the nippers on his nose and went back 
 to the view. But the view, in turn, soon enough 
 released him. " Do you remember something I 
 said to you that day at Matcham or at least fully 
 meant to? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I remember everything at Matcham. 
 It s another life." 
 
 " Certainly it will be I mean the kind of thing : 
 what I then wanted it to represent for you. 
 Matcham, you know," he continued, " is symbolic. 
 I think I tried to rub that into you a little." 
 
 She met him with the full memory of what he had 
 tried not an inch, not an ounce of which was lost 
 to her. " What I meant is that it seems a hundred 
 years ago." 
 
 " Oh, for me it comes in better. Perhaps a part 
 of what makes me remember it," he pursued, " is 
 that I was quite aware of what might have been said 
 about what I was doing. I wanted you to take it 
 
 1 68 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 from me that I should perhaps be able to look after 
 you well, rather better. Rather better, of course, 
 than certain other persons in particular." 
 
 " Precisely than Mrs. Lowder, than Miss Croy, 
 even than Mrs. Stringham." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Stringham s all right ! " Lord Mark 
 promptly amended. 
 
 It amused her, even with what she had else to 
 think of; and she could show him, at all events, how 
 little, in spite of the hundred years, she had lost what 
 he alluded to. The way he was with her at this mo 
 ment made in fact the other moment so vivid as 
 almost to start again the tears it had started at the 
 time. " You could do so much for me, yes. I per 
 fectly understood you." 
 
 " I wanted, you see," he all the same explained, 
 " to fix your confidence; I mean, you know, in the 
 right place." 
 
 "Well, Lord Mark, you did it s just exactly 
 now, my confidence, where you put it then. The 
 only difference," said Milly, " is that I seem now to 
 have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, " I 
 do seem to feel you disposed to act in a way that 
 would undermine it a little." 
 
 He took no more notice of these last words than 
 if she had not said them, only watching her at pres 
 ent as with a gradual new light. " Are you really 
 in any trouble? " 
 
 To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making 
 out his light was a little a light for herself. " Don t 
 
 169 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 say, don t try to say, anything that s impossible. 
 There are much better things you can do." 
 
 He looked straight at it and then straight over it. 
 " It s too monstrous that one can t ask you as a 
 friend what one wants so to know." 
 
 " What is it you want to know? " She spoke, as 
 by a sudden turn, with a slight hardness. " Do you 
 want to know if I m badly ill? " 
 
 The sound of it in truth, though from no raising 
 of her voice, invested the idea with a kind of terror, 
 but a terror all for others. Lord Mark winced and 
 flushed clearly couldn t help it; but he kept his 
 attitude together and spoke with even unwonted 
 vivacity. " Do you imagine I can see you suffer 
 and not say a word? " 
 
 " You won t see me suffer don t be afraid. I 
 shan t be a public nuisance. That s why I should 
 have liked this: it s so beautiful in itself, and yet it s 
 out of the gangway. You won t know anything 
 about anything," she added; and then, as if to make 
 with decision an end, " And you don t ! No, not 
 even you." He faced her through it with the re 
 mains of his expression, and she saw him as clearly 
 for him bewildered; which made her wish to be 
 sure not to have been unkind. She would be kind 
 once for all; that would be the end. " I m very 
 badly ill." 
 
 " And you don t do anything? " 
 
 " I do everything. Everything s this" she smiled; 
 " I m doing it now. One can t do more than live." 
 
 170 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah, than live in the right way, no. But is that 
 what you do? Why haven t you advice? " 
 
 He had looked about at the rococo elegance as if 
 there were fifty things it didn t give her, so that he 
 suggested with urgency the most absent. But she 
 met his remedy with a smile. " I ve the best advice 
 in the world. I m acting under it now. I act upon 
 it in receiving you, in talking with you thus. One 
 can t, as I tell you, do more than live." 
 
 " Oh, live ! " Lord Mark ejaculated. 
 
 " Well, it s immense for me." She finally spoke 
 as if for amusement; now that she had uttered her 
 truth, that he had learnt it from herself as no one 
 had yet done, her emotion had, by the fact, dried up. 
 There she was; but it was as if she would never 
 speak again. " I shan t," she added, " have missed 
 everything." 
 
 " Why should you have missed anything? " She 
 felt, as he sounded this, to what, within the minute, 
 he had made up his mind. " You re the person in 
 the world for whom that s least necessary; for 
 whom one would call it in fact most impossible; for 
 whom missing at all will surely require an extraor 
 dinary amount of misplaced goodwill. Since you 
 believe in advice, for God s sake take mine. I know 
 what you want." 
 
 Oh, she knew he would know it. But she had 
 brought it on herself or almost. Yet she spoke 
 with kindness. " I think I want not to be too much 
 worried." 
 
 171 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " You want to be adored." It came at last 
 straight. " Nothing would worry you less. I 
 mean as I shall do it. It is so " he firmly kept it 
 up. " You re not loved enough." 
 
 " Enough for what, Lord Mark? " 
 
 " Why, to get the full good of it." 
 
 Well, she didn t after all moek at him. " I see 
 what you mean. That full good of it which con 
 sists in finding one s self forced to love in re 
 turn." She had grasped it, but she hesitated. 
 " Your idea is that I might find myself forced to love 
 you?" 
 
 "Oh, forced !" He was so fine and so 
 
 expert, so awake to anything the least ridiculous, 
 and of a type with which the preaching of passion 
 somehow so ill consorted he was so much all these 
 things that he had absolutely to take account of 
 them himself. And he did so, in a single intonation, 
 beautifully. Milly liked him again, liked him for 
 such shades as that, liked him so that it was woeful 
 to see him spoiling it, and still more woeful to have 
 to rank him among those minor charms of existence 
 that she gasped, at moments, to remember she must 
 give up. " Is it inconceivable to you that you 
 might try?" 
 
 " To be so favourably affected by you ? " 
 
 " To believe in me. To believe in me," Lord 
 Mark repeated. 
 
 Again she hesitated. " To try in return for 
 your trying? " 
 
 172 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh, I shouldn t have to ! " he quickly declared. 
 The prompt, neat accent, however, his manner of 
 disposing of her question, failed of real expression, 
 as he himself, the next moment, intelligently, help 
 lessly, almost comically saw a failure pointed 
 moreover by the laugh into which Milly was imme 
 diately startled. . As a suggestion to her of a heal- 
 ing and uplifting passion it was in truth deficient; 
 it wouldn t do as the communication of a force that 
 should sweep them both away. And the beauty of 
 him was that he too, even in the act of persuasion, 
 of self-persuasion, could understand that, and could 
 thereby show but the better as fitting into the pleas 
 ant commerce of prosperity. The way she let him 
 see that she looked at him was a thing to shut him 
 out, of itself, from services of danger, a thing that 
 made a discrimination against him never yet made 
 made at least to any consciousness of his own. Born 
 to float in a sustaining air, this would be his first en 
 counter with a judgment formed in the sinister light 
 of tragedy. The gathering dusk of her personal 
 world presented itself to him, in her eyes, as an ele 
 ment in which it was vain for him to pretend he 
 could find himself at home, since it was charged with 
 depressions and with dooms, with the chill of the 
 losing game. Almost without her needing to speak, 
 and simply by the fact that there could be, in such 
 a case, no decent substitute for a felt intensity, he 
 had to take it from her that practically he was afraid 
 whether afraid to protest falsely enough, or only 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 afraid of what might be eventually disagreeable in a 
 compromised alliance, being a minor question. She 
 believed she made out besides, wonderful girl, that 
 he had never quite expected to have to protest, 
 about anything, beyond his natural convenience 
 more, in fine, than his disposition and habits, his ed 
 ucation as well, his personal moyens in short, per 
 mitted. His predicament was therefore one he 
 couldn t like, and also one she willingly would have 
 spared him had he not brought it on himself. No 
 man, she was quite aware, could enjoy thus having 
 it from her that he was not good for what she would 
 have called her reality. It wouldn t have taken 
 much more to enable her positively to make out in 
 him that he was virtually capable of hinting had 
 his innermost feeling spoken at the propriety 
 rather, in his interest, of some cutting down, some 
 dressing up, of the offensive real. He would meet 
 that half-way, but the real must also meet him. 
 Milly s sense of it for herself, which was so conspic 
 uously, so financially supported, couldn t, or 
 wouldn t, so accommodate him, and the perception 
 of that fairly showed in his face, after a moment, like 
 the smart of a blow. It had marked the one min 
 ute during which he could again be touching to her. 
 By the time he had tried once more, after all, to in 
 sist, he had quite ceased to be so. 
 
 By this time she had turned from their window to 
 make a diversion, had walked him through other 
 rooms, appealing again to the inner charm of the 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 place, going even so far for that purpose as to point 
 afresh her independent moral, to repeat that if one 
 only had such a house for one s own and loved it 
 and cherished it enough, it would pay one back in 
 kind, would close one in from harm. He quite 
 grasped for the quarter of an hour the perch she held 
 out to him grasped it with one hand, that is, while 
 she felt him attached to his own clue with the other; 
 he was by no means either so sore or so stupid, to 
 do him all justice, as not to be able to behave more 
 or less as if nothing had happened. It was one of 
 his merits, to which she did justice too, that both 
 his native and his acquired notion of behaviour 
 rested on the general assumption that nothing 
 nothing to make a deadly difference for him ever 
 could happen. It was, socially, a working view like 
 another, and it saw them easily enough through the 
 greater part of the rest of their adventure. Down 
 stairs, again, however, with the limit of his stay in 
 sight, the sign of his smarting, when all was said, 
 reappeared for her, breaking out moreover, with an 
 effect of strangeness, in another quite possibly sin 
 cere allusion to her state of health. He might, for 
 that matter, have been seeing what he could do in 
 the way of making it a grievance that she should 
 snub him for a charity, on his own part, exquisitely 
 roused. " It s true, you know, all the same, and I 
 don t care a straw for your trying to freeze one up." 
 He seemed to show her, poor man, bravely, how 
 little he cared. " Everybody knows affection often 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 makes things out when indifference doesn t notice. 
 And that s why I know that / notice." 
 
 "Are you sure you ve got it right?" the girl 
 smiled. " I thought rather that affection was sup 
 posed to be blind." 
 
 " Blind to faults, not to beauties," Lord Mark 
 promptly rejoined. 
 
 " And are my extremely private worries, my en 
 tirely domestic complications, which I m ashamed 
 to have given you a glimpse of are they beau 
 ties? " 
 
 " Yes, for those who care for you as everyone 
 does. Everything about you is a beauty. Besides 
 which I don t believe," he declared, " in the serious 
 ness of what you tell me. It s too absurd you 
 should have any trouble about which something 
 can t be done. If you can t get the right thing, who 
 can, in all the world, I should like to know? You re 
 the first young woman of your time. I mean what 
 I say." He looked, to do him justice, quite as if 
 he did; not ardent, but clear simply so competent, 
 in such a position, to compare, that his quiet asser 
 tion had the force not so much perhaps of a tribute 
 as of a warrant. " We re all in love with you. I ll 
 put it that way, dropping any claim of my own, if 
 you can bear it better. I speak as one of the lot. 
 You weren t born simply to torment us you were 
 born to make us happy. Therefore you must lis 
 ten to us." 
 
 She shook her head with her slowness, but this 
 176 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 time with all her mildness. " No, I mustn t listen 
 to you that s just what I mustn t do. The reason 
 is, please, that it simply kills me. I must be as at 
 tached to you as you will, since you give that lovely 
 account of yourselves. I give you in return the 
 
 fullest possible belief of what it would be " And 
 
 she pulled up a little. " I give and give and give 
 there you are; stick to me as close as you like, and 
 see if I don t. Only I can t listen or receive or c 
 cept I can t agree. I can t make a bargain. I 
 can t really. You must believe that from me. It s 
 all I ve wanted to say to you, and why should it 
 spoil anything? " 
 
 He let her question fall though clearly, it might 
 have seemed, because, for reasons or for none, there 
 was so much that was spoiled. " You want some 
 body of your own." He came back, whether in good 
 faith or in bad, to that; and it made her repeat her 
 headshake. He kept it up as if his faith were of the 
 best. You want somebody, you want somebody." 
 
 She was to wonder afterwards if she had not been, 
 at this juncture, on the point of saying something 
 emphatic and vulgar " Well, I don t at all events 
 want you!" What somehow happened, however, 
 the pity of it being greater than the irritation the 
 sadness, to her vivid sense, of his being so painfully 
 astray, wandering in a desert in which there was 
 nothing to nourish him was that his error amount 
 ed to positive wrongdoing. She was moreover so 
 acquainted with quite another sphere of usefulness 
 
 VOL. II. -12 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for him that her having suffered him to insist almost 
 convicted her of indelicacy. Why hadn t she 
 stopped him off with her first impression of his pur 
 pose? She could do so now only by the allusion 
 she had been wishing not to make. " Do you know 
 I don t think that you re doing very right? and as 
 a thing quite apart, I mean, from my listening to 
 you. That s not right either except that I m not 
 listening. You oughtn t to have come to Venice 
 to see me and in fact you ve not come, and you 
 mustn t behave as if you had. You ve much older 
 friends than I, and ever so much better. Really, if 
 you ve come at all, you can only have come prop 
 erly, and if I may say so honourably for the best 
 one, as I believe her to be, that you have in the 
 world." 
 
 When once she had said it he took it, oddly 
 enough, as if he had been more or less expecting it. 
 Still, he looked at her very hard, and they had a mo 
 ment of this during which neither pronounced a 
 name, each apparently determined that the other 
 should. It was Milly s fine coercion, in the event, 
 that was the stronger. " Miss Croy? " Lord Mark 
 asked. 
 
 It might have been difficult to make out that she 
 smiled. " Mrs. Lowder." He did make out some 
 thing, and then fairly coloured for its attestation of 
 his comparative simplicity. " I call her on the 
 whole the best. I can t imagine a man s having a 
 better." 
 
 178 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Still with his eyes on her he turned it over. " Do 
 you want me to marry Mrs. Lowder? " 
 
 At which it seemed to her that it was he who was 
 almost vulgar ! But she wouldn t in any way have 
 that. " You know, Lord Mark, what I mean. 
 One isn t in the least turning you out into the cold 
 world. There s no cold world for you at all, I 
 think," she went on; " nothing but a very warm and 
 watchful and expectant world that s waiting for you 
 at any moment you choose to take it up." 
 
 He never budged, but they were standing on the 
 polished concrete and he had within a few minutes 
 possessed himself again of his hat. " Do you want 
 me to marry Kate Croy? " 
 
 " Mrs. Lowder wants it I do no wrong, I think, 
 in saying that; and she understands moreover that 
 you know she does." 
 
 Well, he showed how beautifully he could take 
 it; and it was not obscure to her, on her side, that 
 it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman. " It s 
 ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. 
 But what s the use of my tackling Miss Croy? " 
 
 Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to demon 
 strate. " Because she s the handsomest and clever 
 est and most charming creature I ever saw, and be 
 cause if I were a man I should simply adore her. In 
 fact I do as it is." It was a luxury of response. 
 
 " Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. 
 But that can t further the case of all." 
 
 " Ah," she went on, " I know about people. If 
 179 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the case of one s bad, the case of another s good. 
 I don t see what you have to fear from any one else," 
 she said, " save through your being foolish, this way, 
 about me" 
 
 So she said, but she was aware the next moment 
 of what he was making of what she didn t see. " Is 
 it your idea since we re talking of these things in 
 these ways that the young lady you describe in 
 such superlative terms is to be had for the ask- 
 ing? " 
 
 " Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. 
 But don t be humble." She was almost gay. 
 
 It was this apparently, at last, that was too much 
 for him. " But don t you really know? " 
 
 As a challenge, practically, to the commonest in 
 telligence she could pretend to, it made her of course 
 wish to be fair. " I know, yes, that a particular 
 person is very much in love with her." 
 
 " Then you must know, by the same token, that 
 she s very much in love with a particular person." 
 
 "Ah, I beg your pardon!" and Milly quite 
 flushed at having so crude a blunder imputed to her. 
 " You re wholly mistaken." 
 
 "It s not true?" 
 
 " It s not true." 
 
 His stare became a smile. " Are you very, very 
 sure?" 
 
 " As sure as one can be " and Milly s manner 
 could match it " when one has every assurance. 
 I speak on the best authority." 
 
 180 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He hesitated. " Mrs. Lowder s? " 
 
 " No. I don t call Mrs. Lowder s the best." 
 
 " Oh, I thought you were just now saying," he 
 laughed, " that everything about her is so good." 
 
 " Good for you " she was perfectly clear. " For 
 you," she went on, " let her authority be the best. 
 She doesn t believe what you mention, and you must 
 know yourself how little she makes of it. So you 
 
 can take it from her. / take it But Milly, 
 
 with the positive tremor of her emphasis, pulled up. 
 
 "You take it from Kate?" 
 
 " From Kate herself." 
 
 " That she s thinking of no one at all? " 
 
 " Of no one at all." Then, with her intensity, 
 she went on. " She has given me her word for it." 
 
 "Oh!" said Lord Mark. To which he next 
 added: " And what do you call her word? " 
 
 It made Milly, on her side, stare though perhaps 
 partly but with the instinct of gaining time for the 
 consciousness that she was already a little further 
 " in " than she had designed. " Why, Lord Mark, 
 what should you call her word? " 
 
 " Ah, I m not obliged to say. I ve not asked 
 her. You apparently have." 
 
 Well, it threw her on her defence a defence that 
 she felt, however, as especially of Kate. " We re 
 very intimate," she said in a moment; " so that, 
 without prying into each other s affairs, she natur 
 ally tells me things." 
 
 Lord Mark smiled as at a lame conclusion. 
 181 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 You mean then she made you of her own move 
 ment the declaration you quote? " 
 
 Milly thought again, though with hindrance 
 rather than help in her sense of the way their eyes 
 now met met as for their each seeing in the other 
 more than either said. What she most felt that she 
 herself saw was the strange disposition on her com 
 panion s part to disparage Kate s veracity. She 
 could be only concerned to " stand up " for that. 
 
 " I mean what I say : that when she spoke of her 
 having no private interest " 
 
 " She took her oath to you? " Lord Mark inter 
 rupted. 
 
 Milly didn t quite see why he should so catechise 
 her; but she met it again for Kate. " She left me 
 in no doubt whatever of her being free." 
 
 At this Lord Mark did look at her, though he 
 continued to smile. " And thereby in no doubt of 
 your being too?" It was as if as soon as he had 
 said it, however, he felt it as something of a mistake, 
 and she couldn t herself have told by what queer 
 glare at him she had instantly signified that. He 
 at any rate gave her glare no time to act further; he 
 fell back on the spot and with a light enough move 
 ment, within his rights. " That s all very well, but 
 why in the world, dear lady, should she be swearing 
 to you?" 
 
 She had to take this " dear lady " as applying to 
 herself; which disconcerted her when he might 
 now, so gracefully, have used it for the aspersed 
 
 182 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Kate. Once more it came to her that she must 
 claim her own part of the aspersion. " Because, as 
 I ve told you, we re such tremendous friends." 
 
 " Oh," said Lord Mark, who for the moment 
 looked as if that might have stood rather for an ab 
 sence of such rigours. He was going, however, as 
 if he had, in a manner, at the last, got more or less 
 what he wanted. Milly felt, while he addressed his 
 next few words to leavetaking, that she had given 
 rather more than she intended or than she should 
 be able, when once more getting herself into hand, 
 theoretically to defend. Strange enough in fact 
 that he had had from her, about herself and, under 
 the searching spell of the place, infinitely straight 
 what no one else had had : neither Kate, nor Aunt 
 Maud, nor Merton Densher, nor Susan Shepherd. 
 He had made her within a minute, in particular, she 
 was aware, lose her presence of mind, and she now 
 wished that he would get off quickly, so that she 
 might either recover it or bear the loss better in sol 
 itude. If he paused, however, she almost at the 
 same time saw, it was because of his watching the 
 approach, from the end of the sala, of one of the 
 gondoliers, who, whatever excursions were appoint 
 ed for the party with the attendance of the others, al 
 ways, as the most decorative, most besashed and be- 
 starched, remained at the palace on the theory that 
 she might whimsically want him which she never, 
 in her caged freedom, had yet done. Brown Pas- 
 quale, slipping in white shoes over the marble and 
 
 183 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 suggesting to her perpetually charmed vision she 
 could scarce say what, either a mild Hindoo, too 
 noiseless almost for her nerves, or simply a bare 
 footed seaman on the deck of a ship Pasquale 
 offered to sight a small salver, which he obsequious 
 ly held out to her with its burden of a visiting-card. 
 Lord Mark and as if also for admiration of him 
 delayed his departure to let her receive it; on which 
 she read it with the instant effect of another blow 
 to her presence of mind. This precarious quantity 
 was indeed now so gone that even for dealing with 
 Pasquale she had to do her best to conceal its dis 
 appearance. The effort was made, none the less, 
 by the time she had asked if the gentleman were be 
 low and had taken in the fact that he had come up. 
 He had followed the gondolier and was waiting at 
 the top of the staircase. 
 
 " I ll see him with pleasure." To which she 
 added for her companion, while Pasquale went off : 
 " Mr. Merton Densher." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lord Mark in a manner that, mak 
 ing it resound through the great, cool hall, might 
 have carried it even to Densher s ear as a judgment 
 of his identity heard and noted once before. 
 
 184 
 
BOOK EIGHTH 
 
BOOK EIGHTH 
 
 XXVI 
 
 DENSHER became aware, afresh, that he dis 
 liked his hotel and all the more promptly 
 that he had had occasion of old to make the same 
 discrimination. The establishment, choked at that 
 season with the polyglot herd, cockneys of all 
 climes, mainly German, mainly American, mainly 
 English, it appeared as the corresponding sensitive 
 nerve was touched, sounded loud and not sweet, 
 sounded anything and everything but Italian, but 
 Venetian. The Venetian was all a dialect, he knew; 
 yet it was pure Attic beside some of the dialects at 
 the bustling inn. It made, " abroad," both for his 
 pleasure and his pain that he had to feel at almost 
 any point how he had been through everything be 
 fore. He had been three or four times, in Venice, 
 in the other years, through this pleasant irritation of 
 paddling away away from the concert of false 
 notes in the vulgarised hall, away from the amiable 
 American families and overfed German porters. 
 He had in each case made terms for a lodging more 
 private and not more costly, and he recalled with ten 
 derness these shabby but friendly asylums, the win 
 dows of which he should easily know again in pass- 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ing on canal or through campo. The shabbiest now 
 failed of an appeal to him, but he found himself at 
 the end of forty-eight hours forming views in re 
 spect to a small independent quartiere, far down the 
 Grand Canal, which he had once occupied for a 
 month with a sense of pomp and circumstance, and 
 yet also with a sense of initiation into the homelier 
 Venetian mysteries. The humour of those days 
 came back to him for an hour, and what further be 
 fell in this interval, to be brief, was that, emerging 
 on a traghetto in sight of the house in question, he 
 recognised on the green shutters of his old, of his 
 young windows the strips of white pasted paper that 
 figure in Venice as an invitation to tenants. This 
 was in the course of his very first walk apart, a walk 
 replete with impressions to which he responded with 
 force. He had been almost without cessation, since 
 his arrival, at Palazzo Leporelli, where, as happened, 
 a turn of bad weather, on the second day, had kept 
 the w r hole party continuously at home. The epi 
 sode had passed for him like a series of hours in a 
 museum, though without the fatigue of that; and 
 it had also resembled something that he was still, 
 with a stirred imagination, to find a name for. He 
 might have been looking for the name while he gave 
 himself up, subsequently, to the ramble he saw 
 that even after years he couldn t lose his way^- 
 crowned with his stare across the water at the little 
 white papers. 
 
 He was to dine at the palace in an hour or two, 
 188 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and he had lunched there, at an early luncheon, that 
 morning. He had then been out with the three 
 ladies, the three being Mrs. Lowder, Mrs. String- 
 ham and Kate, and had kept afloat with them, under 
 a sufficient Venetian spell, until Aunt Maud had 
 directed him to leave them and return to Miss 
 Theale. Of two circumstances connected with this 
 disposition of his person he was even now not un 
 mindful; the first being that the lady of Lancaster 
 Gate had addressed him with high publicity and as 
 if expressing equally the sense of her companions, 
 who had not spoken, but who might have been 
 taken yes, Susan Shepherd quite equally with 
 Kate for inscrutable parties to her plan. What 
 he could as little contrive to forget was that he had, 
 before the two others, as it struck him that was to 
 say especially before Kate done exactly as he was 
 bidden; gathered himself up without a protest and 
 retraced his way to the palace. Present with him 
 still was the question of whether he looked like a 
 fool for it, of whether the awkwardness he felt as the 
 gondola rocked with the business of his leaving it 
 they could but make, in submission, for a landing- 
 place that was none of the best had furnished his 
 friends with such entertainment as was to cause 
 them, behind his back, to exchange intelligent 
 smiles. He had found Milly Theale twenty minutes 
 later alone, and he had sat with her till the others 
 returned to tea. The strange part of this was that it 
 had been very easy, extraordinarily easy. He knew 
 
 189 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 it for strange only when he was away from her, be 
 cause when he was away from her he was in contact 
 with particular things that made it so. At the time, 
 in her presence, it was as simple as sitting with his 
 sister might have been, and not, if the point were 
 urged, very much more thrilling. He continued to 
 see her as he had first seen her that remained in- 
 effaceably behind. Mrs. Lowder, Susan Shepherd, 
 his own Kate, might, each in proportion, see her as a 
 princess, as an angel, as a star, but for himself, luck 
 ily, she hadn t as yet complications to any point of 
 discomfort : the princess, the angel, the star were 
 muffled over, ever so lightly and brightly, with the 
 little American girl who had been kind to him in 
 New York and to whom, certainly though without 
 making too much o f it for either of them he was 
 perfectly willing to be kind in return. She appre 
 ciated his coming in on purpose, but there was noth 
 ing in that from the moment she was always at 
 home that they couldn t easily keep up. The only 
 note the least bit high that had even yet sounded be 
 tween them was this admission on her part that she 
 found it best to remain within. She wouldn t let 
 him call it keeping quiet, for she insisted that her 
 palace with all its romance and art and history 
 had set up round her a whirlwind of suggestion that 
 never dropped for an hour. It wasn t, therefore, 
 within such walls, confinement, it was the freedom 
 of all the centuries: in respect to which Densher 
 granted good-humouredly that they were then 
 
 190 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 blown together, she and he, as much as she liked, 
 through space. 
 
 Kate had found on the present occasion a moment 
 to say to him that he suggested a clever cousin call 
 ing on a cousin afflicted, and bored for his pains; 
 and though he denied on the spot the " bored," he 
 could so far see it as an impression he might make 
 that he wondered if the same image wouldn t have 
 occurred to Milly. As soon as Kate appeared again 
 the difference came up the oddity, as he then in 
 stantly felt it, of his having sunk so deep. It was 
 sinking because it was all doing what Kate had con 
 ceived for him; it was not in the least doing and 
 that had been his notion of his life anything he 
 himself had conceived. The difference, according 
 ly, renewed, sharp, sore, was the irritant under 
 which he had quitted the palace and under which he 
 was to make the best of the business of again dining 
 there. He said to himself that he must make the 
 best of everything; that was in his mind, at the 
 traghetto, even while, with his preoccupation about 
 changing quarters, he studied, across the canal, the 
 look of his former abode. It had done for the past, 
 would it do for the present? would it play in any 
 manner into the general necessity of which he was 
 conscious? That necessity of making the best was 
 the instinct as he indeed himself knew of a man 
 somehow aware that if he let go at one place he 
 should let go everywhere. If he took off his hand, 
 the hand that at least helped to hold it together, the 
 
 191 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 whole queer fabric that built him in would fall away 
 in a minute and admit the light. It was really a mat 
 ter of nerves; it was exactly because he was nervous 
 that he could go straight; yet if that condition 
 should increase he must surely go wild. He was 
 walking, in short, on a high ridge, steep down on 
 either side, where the proprieties once he could 
 face at all remaining there reduced themselves to 
 his keeping his head. It was Kate who had so 
 perched him, and there came up for him at moments, 
 as he found himself planting one foot exactly before 
 another, a sensible sharpness of irony as to her man 
 agement of him. It wasn t that she had put him in 
 danger to be in real danger with her would have 
 had another quality. There glowed for him in fact 
 a kind of rage for what he was not having; an ex 
 asperation, a resentment, begotten truly by the very 
 impatience of desire, in respect to his postponed and 
 relegated, his so extremely manipulated state. It 
 was beautifully done of her, but what was the real 
 meaning of it unless that he was perpetually bent to 
 her will? His idea from the first, from the very first 
 of his knowing her, had been to be, as the French 
 called it, bon prince with her, mindful of the good 
 humour and generosity, the contempt, in the matter 
 of confidence, for small outlays and small savings, 
 that belonged to the man who wasn t generally 
 afraid. There were things enough, goodness knew 
 for it was the moral of his plight that he couldn t 
 afford; but what had had a charm for him if not the 
 
 192 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 notion of living handsomely, to make up for it, in 
 another way? of not at all events reading the ro 
 mance of his existence in a cheap edition. All he 
 had originally felt in her came back to him, was in 
 deed actually as present as ever how he had ad 
 mired and envied what he called to himself her 
 direct talent for life, as distinguished from his own, 
 a poor weak thing of the occasion, amateurishly 
 patched up; only it irritated him the more that this 
 was exactly what was now, ever so characteristically, 
 standing out in her. 
 
 It was thanks to her direct talent for life, verily, 
 that he was just where he was, and that he was above 
 all just how he was. The proof of a decent reaction 
 in him against so much passivity was, with no great 
 richness, that he at least knew knew, that is, how 
 he was, and how little he liked it as a thing accepted 
 in mere helplessness. He was, for the moment, 
 wistful that above all described it; that was so 
 large a part of the force that, as the autumn after 
 noon closed in, kept him, on his traghetto, positively 
 throbbing with his question. His question con 
 nected itself, even while he stood, with his special 
 smothered soreness, his sense almost of shame; and 
 the soreness and the shame were less as he let him 
 self, with the help of the conditions about him, re 
 gard it as serious. It was born, for that matter, 
 partly of the conditions, those, conditions that Kate 
 had so almost insolently braved, had been willing, 
 without a pang, to see him ridiculously ridiculously 
 
 VOL. II.-is I93 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 so far as just complacently exposed to. How 
 little it could be complacently he was to feel with the 
 last thoroughness before he had moved from his 
 point of vantage. His question, as we have called 
 it, was the interesting question of whether he had 
 really no will left. How could he know that was 
 the point without putting the matter to the test? 
 It had been right to be bon prince, and the joy, some 
 thing of the pride, of having lived, in spirit, hand 
 somely was even now compatible with the impulse 
 to look into their account; but he held his breath a 
 little as it came home to him with supreme sharp 
 ness that, whereas he had done absolutely every 
 thing that Kate had wanted, she had done nothing 
 whatever that he had. So it was, in fine, that his 
 idea of the test by which he must try that possibility 
 kept referring itself, in the warm, early dusk, the ap 
 proach of the southern night " conditions " these, 
 such as we just spoke of to the glimmer, more and 
 more ghostly as the light failed, of the little white 
 papers on his old green shutters. By the time he 
 looked at his watch he had been for a quarter-of-an- 
 hour at this post of observation and reflection; but 
 by the time he walked away again he had found his 
 answer to the idea that had grown so importunate. 
 Since a proof of his will was wanted it was indeed 
 very exactly in wait for him, lurking there on the 
 other side of the Canal. A ferryman at the little 
 pier had from time to time accosted him; but it was 
 a part of the play of his nervousness to turn his back 
 
 194 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 on that facility. He would go over, but he walked, 
 very quickly, round and round, crossing finally by 
 the Rialto. The rooms, in the event, were unoccu 
 pied; the ancient padrona was there, with her smile 
 all a light, but her recognition all a fable; the an 
 cient rickety objects too, refined in their shabbiness, 
 amiable in their decay, as to which, on his side, dem 
 onstrations were tenderly veracious; so that, before 
 he took his way again, he had arranged to come in 
 on the morrow. 
 
 He was amusing about it that evening at dinner 
 in spite of an odd first impulse, which at the palace 
 quite melted away, to treat it merely as matter for 
 his own satisfaction. This need, this propriety, he 
 had taken for granted even up to the moment of sud 
 denly perceiving, in the course of talk, that the in 
 cident would minister to innocent gaiety. Such 
 was quite its effect, with the aid of his picture an 
 evocation of the quaint, of the humblest rococo, of a 
 Venetian interior in the true old note. He made 
 the point for his hostess that her own high cham 
 bers, though they were a thousand grand things, 
 weren t really this; made it in fact with such success 
 that she presently declared it his plain duty to invite 
 her, on some near day, to tea. She had expressed 
 as y e t he could feel it as felt among them all no 
 such clear wish to go anywhere, not even to make 
 an effort for a parish feast, or an autumn sunset, nor 
 to descend her staircase for Titian or Gianbellini. 
 It was constantly Densher s view that, as between 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 himself and Kate, things were understood without 
 saying, so that he could catch in her, as she but too 
 freely could in him, innumerable signs of it, the 
 whole soft breath of consciousness meeting and pro 
 moting consciousness. This view was so far justi 
 fied to-night as that Milly s offer to him of her com 
 pany was, to his sense, taken up by Kate in spite of 
 her doing nothing to show it. It fell in so perfectly 
 with what she had desired and foretold that she was 
 and this was what most struck him sufficiently 
 gratified and blinded by it not to know, from the 
 false quality of his response, from his tone and his 
 very look, which for an instant instinctively sought 
 her own, that he had answered, inevitably, almost 
 shamelessly, in a mere time-gaining sense. It gave 
 him on the spot, her failure of perception, almost a 
 beginning of the advantage he had been planning 
 for that is, at least, if she too were not darkly dis 
 honest. She might, he was not unaware, have 
 made out, from some deep part of her, the bearing, 
 in respect to herself, of the little fact he had an 
 nounced; for she was after all capable of that, capa 
 ble of guessing and yet of simultaneously hiding her 
 guess. It wound him up a turn or two further, 
 none the less, to impute to her now a weakness of 
 vision by which he could himself feel the stronger. 
 Whatever apprehension of his motive in shifting his 
 abode might have brushed her with its wings, she at 
 all events certainly didn t guess that he was giving 
 their friend a hollow promise. That was what she 
 
 196 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 had herself imposed on him; there had been from 
 the first, in the prospect, a definite particular point 
 at which hollowness, to call it by its least compro 
 mising name, would have to begin. Therefore its 
 hour had now charmingly sounded. 
 
 Whatever in life he had recovered his old rooms 
 for, he had not recovered them to receive Milly 
 Theale : which made no more difference in his ex 
 pression of happy readiness than if he had been 
 just what he was trying not to be fully hardened 
 and fully base. So rapid in fact was the rhythm of 
 his inward drama that the quick vision of impossi 
 bility produced in him by his hostess direct and 
 unexpected appeal had the effect, slightly sinister, 
 of positively scaring him. It gave him a measure 
 of the intensity, the reality of his now mature mo 
 tive. It prompted in him certainly no quarrel with 
 these things, but it made them as vivid as if they 
 already flushed with success. It was before the 
 flush of success that his heart beat almost to dread. 
 The dread was but the dread of the happiness to be 
 compassed; only that was in itself a symptom. 
 That a visit from Milly should, in this projection of 
 necessities, strike him as of the last incongruity, 
 quite as a hateful idea, and above all as spoiling, 
 should one put it grossly, his game the adoption 
 of such a view might of course have an identity with 
 one of those numerous ways of being a fool that 
 seemed so to abound for him. It would remain, 
 none the less, the way to which he should be in ad- 
 
 197 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 vance most reconciled. His mature motive, as to 
 which he allowed himself no grain of illusion, had 
 thus in an hour taken imaginative possession of the 
 place : that precisely was how he saw it seated there, 
 already unpacked and settled, for Milly s innocence, 
 for Milly s beauty, no matter how short a time, to 
 be housed with. There were things she would 
 never recognise, never feel, never catch in the air; 
 but this made no difference in the fact that her 
 brushing against them would do nobody any good. 
 The discrimination and the scruple were for him. 
 So he felt all the parts of the case together, while 
 Kate showed, admirably, as feeling none of them. 
 Of course, however when hadn t it to be his last 
 word? Kate was always sublime. 
 
 That came up in all connections during the rest 
 of these first days; came up in especial under pres 
 sure of the fact that each time our plighted pair 
 snatched, in its passage, at the good fortune of half- 
 an-hour together, they were doomed though Den- 
 sher felt it as all by his act to spend a part of the 
 rare occasion in wonder at their luck and in study of 
 its queer character. This was the case after he 
 might be supposed to have got, in a manner, used 
 to it; it was the case even after the girl ready al 
 ways, as we say, with the last word had given him 
 the benefit of her righting of every wrong appear 
 ance, a support familiar to him now in reference to 
 other phases. It was still the case after he possibly 
 might, with a little imagination, as she freely insist- 
 
 198 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ed, have made out, by the visible working of the 
 crisis, what idea, on Mrs. Lowder s part, had deter 
 mined it. Such as the idea was and that it suited 
 Kate s own book she openly professed he had only 
 to see how things were turning out to feel it strik 
 ingly justified. Densher s reply to all this vividness 
 was that of course Aunt Maud s intervention had 
 not been occult, even for his vividness, from the 
 moment she had written him, with characteristic 
 concentration, that if he should see his way to come 
 to Venice for a fortnight she should engage he 
 would find it no blunder. It took Aunt Maud, 
 really, to do such things in such ways; just as it took 
 him, he was ready to confess, to do such others as 
 he must now strike them all didn t he? as com 
 mitted to. Mrs. Lowder s admonition had been of 
 course a direct reference to what she had said to him 
 at Lancaster Gate, on his withdrawing, the night 
 Milly had failed them through illness; only it had at 
 least matched that remarkable outbreak in respect 
 to the quantity of good nature it attributed to him. 
 The young man s discussions of his situation which 
 were confined to Kate; he had none with Aunt 
 Maud herself suffered a little, it may be divined, by 
 the sense that he couldn t put everything off, as he 
 privately expressed it, on other people. His ears, 
 in solitude, were apt to burn with the reflection that 
 Mrs. Lowder had simply sounded him, seen him as 
 he was and made out what could be done with him. 
 She had had but to whistle for him and he had come. 
 
 199 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 If she had taken for granted his good nature she was 
 as justified as Kate declared. This awkwardness of 
 his conscience, both in respect to his general plas 
 ticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits, 
 to be a mode of life like another certainly better 
 than some, and particularly in respect to such con 
 fusion as might reign about what he had really come 
 for this inward ache was not wholly dispelled by 
 the style, charming as that was, of Kate s poetic 
 versions. Even the high wonder and delight of 
 Kate couldn t set him right with himself when there 
 was something quite distinct from these things that 
 kept him wrong. 
 
 In default of being right with himself he had 
 meanwhile, for one thing, the interest of seeing 
 and quite for the first time in his life whether, on a 
 given occasion, that might be quite so necessary to 
 happiness as was commonly assumed and as he had 
 up to this moment never doubted. He was en 
 gaged distinctly in an adventure he who had never 
 thought himself cut out for them, and it fairly helped 
 him that he was able at moments to say to himself 
 that he mustn t fall below it. At his hotel, alone, at 
 night, or in the course of the few late strolls he was 
 finding time to take through dusky labyrinthine al 
 leys and empty campi, overhung with mouldering 
 palaces, where he paused in disgust at his want of 
 ease and where the sound of a rare footstep on the 
 enclosed pavement was like that of a retarded dancer 
 in a banquet-hall deserted during these interludes 
 
 200 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 h e entertained cold views, even to the point, at mo 
 ments, on the principle that the shortest follies are 
 the best, of thinking of immediate departure as not 
 only possible but as indicated. He had, however, 
 only to cross again the threshold of Palazzo Lepo- 
 relli to see all the elements of the business compose, 
 as painters called it, differently. It began to strike 
 him then that departure wouldn t curtail, but would 
 signally coarsen his folly, and that, above all, as he 
 hadn t really " begun " anything, had only submit 
 ted, consented, but too generously indulged and 
 condoned the beginnings of others, he had no call 
 to treat himself with superstitious rigour. The sin 
 gle thing that was clear, in complications, was that, 
 whatever happened, one was to behave as a gentle 
 man to which was added indeed the perhaps slight 
 ly less shining truth that complications might some 
 times have their tedium beguiled by a study of the 
 question how a gentleman would behave. This ques 
 tion, I hasten to add, was not in the last resort Den- 
 sher s greatest worry. Three women were looking 
 to him at once, and, though such a predicament 
 could never be, from the point of view of facility, 
 quite the ideal, it yet had, thank goodness, its imme 
 diate workable law. The law was not to be a brute 
 in return for amiabilities. He hadn t come all 
 the way out from England to be a brute. He hadn t 
 thought of what it might give him to have a fort 
 night, however handicapped, with Kate in Venice, 
 to be a brute. He hadn t treated Mrs. Lowder as 
 
 201 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 if in responding to her suggestion he had understood 
 her he hadn t done that either to be a brute. And 
 what he had prepared least of all for such an anti 
 climax was the prompt and inevitable, the achieved 
 surrender ay a gentleman, oh that indubitably! 
 to the unexpected impression made by poor pale 
 exquisite Milly as the mistress of a grand old palace 
 and the dispenser of an hospitality more irresistible, 
 thanks to all the conditions, than any ever known 
 to him. 
 
 This spectacle had for him an eloquence, an au 
 thority, a felicity he scarce knew by what strange 
 name to call it for which he said to himself that 
 he had not consciously bargained. Her welcome, 
 her frankness, sweetness, sadness, brightness, her 
 disconcerting poetry, as he made shift at moments 
 to call it, helped as it was by the beauty of her whole 
 setting and by the perception, at the same time, on 
 the observer s part, that this element gained from 
 her, in a manner, for effect and harmony, as much as 
 it gave her whole attitude had, to his imagination, 
 meanings that hung about it, waiting upon her, 
 hovering, dropping and quavering forth again, like 
 vague, faint snatches, mere ghosts of sound, of old- 
 fashioned melancholy music. It was positively well 
 for him, he had his times of reflecting, that he 
 couldn t put it off on Kate and Mrs. Lowder, as a 
 gentleman so conspicuously wouldn t, that well, 
 that he had been rather taken in by not having 
 known in advance ! There had been now five days 
 
 202 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of it all without his risking even to Kate alone any 
 hint of what he ought to have known and of what in 
 particular therefore had taken him in. The truth was 
 doubtless that really, when it came to any free hand 
 ling and naming of things, they were living together, 
 the five of them, in an air in which an ugly effect of 
 " blurting out " might easily be produced. He 
 came back with his friend on each occasion to the 
 blessed miracle of renewed propinquity, which had 
 a double virtue in that favouring air. He breathed 
 on it as if he could scarcely believe it, yet the time 
 had passed, in spite of this privilege, without his 
 quite committing himself, for her ear, to any such 
 comment on Milly s high style and state as would 
 have corresponded with the amount of recognition 
 it had produced in him. Behind everything, for 
 him, was his renewed remembrance, which had fair 
 ly become a habit, that he had been the first to know 
 her. This was what they had all insisted on, in her 
 absence, that day at Mrs. Lowder s; and this was in 
 especial w r hat had made him feel its influence on his 
 immediately paying her a second visit. Its influ 
 ence was all there, was in the high-hung, rumbling 
 carriage with them, from the moment she took him 
 to drive, covering them in together as if had been 
 a rug of softest silk. It had worked as a clear con 
 nection with something lodged in the past, some 
 thing already their own. He had more than once 
 recalled how he had said to himself even at that mo 
 ment, at some point in the drive, that he was not 
 
 203 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 there, not just as he was in so doing it, through 
 Kate and Kate s idea, but through Milly and Milly s 
 own, and through himself and his own, unmistaka 
 bly, as well as through the little facts, whatever they 
 had amounted to, of his time in New York. 
 
 204 
 
XXVII 
 
 THERE was at last, with everything that made for it, 
 an occasion when he got from Kate, on what she 
 now spoke of as his eternal refrain, an answer of 
 which he was to measure afterwards the precipitat 
 ing effect. His eternal refrain was the way he came 
 back to the riddle of Mrs. Lowder s view of her 
 profit a view so hard to reconcile with the chances 
 she gave them to meet. Impatiently, at this, the 
 girl denied the chances, wanting to know from him, 
 with a fine irony that smote him rather straight, 
 whether he felt their opportunities as anything so 
 grand. He looked at her deep in the eyes when she 
 had sounded this note ; it was the least he could let 
 her off with for having made him visibly flush. For 
 some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped 
 out of her tone, which became sweet and sincere. 
 " Meet/ my dear man," she expressively echoed; 
 " does it strike you that we get, after all, so very 
 much out of our meetings? " 
 
 " On the contrary they re starvation diet. All 
 I mean is and all I have meant from the day I 
 came that we at least get more than Aunt Maud." 
 
 " Ah, but you see," Kate replied, " you don t 
 understand what Aunt Maud gets." 
 
 " Exactly so and it s what I don t understand 
 205 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 that keeps me so fascinated with the question. She 
 gives me no light; she s prodigious. She takes 
 everything as of a natural ! " 
 
 " She takes it as of a natural that, at this rate, 
 I shall be making my reflections about you. 
 There s every appearance for her," Kate went on, 
 " that what she had made up her mind to as possible 
 is possible; that what she had thought more likely 
 than not to happen is happening. The very essence 
 of her, as you surely by this time have made out for 
 yourself, is that, when she adopts a view, she well, 
 to her own sense, really brings the thing about, 
 fairly terrorises, with her view, any other, any oppo 
 site view, and those with it who represent it. I ve 
 often thought success comes to her " Kate con 
 tinued to study the phenomenon " by the spirit in 
 her that dares and defies her idea not to prove the 
 right one. One has seen it so again and again, in 
 the face of everything, become the right one." 
 
 Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the 
 largest response. " Ah, my dear child, if you can 
 explain, I of course needn t not understand. I m 
 condemned to that," he on his side presently ex 
 plained, " only when understanding fails." He took 
 a moment; then he pursued: " Does she think she 
 terrorises us? " To which he added while, without 
 immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place : 
 " Does she believe anything so stiff as that you ve 
 really changed about me? " He knew now that he 
 was probing the girl deep something told him so; 
 
 206 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 but that was a reason the more. " Has she got it 
 into her head that you dislike me? " 
 
 To this, of a sudden, Kate s answer was strong. 
 " You could yourself easily put it there ! " 
 
 He wondered. " By telling her so? " 
 
 " No," said Kate as with amusement at his sim 
 plicity; " I don t ask that of you." 
 
 " Oh, my dear," Densher laughed, " when you 
 ask, you know, so little ! " 
 
 There was a full irony in this, on his own part, 
 that he saw her resist the impulse to take up. " I m 
 perfectly justified in what I ve asked," she quietly 
 returned. " It s doing beautifully for you." Their 
 eyes again intimately met, and the effect was to 
 make her proceed. " You re not a bit unhap- 
 
 py." 
 
 " Oh, ain t I? " he brought out very roundly. 
 
 " It doesn t practically show which is enough 
 for Aunt Maud. You re wonderful, you re beauti 
 ful," Kate said; " and if you really want to know 
 whether I believe you re doing it, you may take from 
 me, perfectly, that I see it coming." With which, 
 by a quick transition, as if she had settled the case, 
 she asked him the hour. 
 
 " Oh, only twelve-ten " he had looked at his 
 watch. " We ve taken but thirteen minutes; we ve 
 time yet." 
 
 " Then we must walk. We must go toward 
 them." 
 
 Densher, from where they had been standing, 
 207 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 measured the long reach of the Square. " They re 
 still in their shop. They re safe for half-an-hour." 
 
 " That shows then, that shows ! " said Kate. 
 
 This colloquy had taken place in the middle of 
 Piazza. San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, 
 a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber of amenity, 
 favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the 
 middle, but at the point where our pair had paused 
 by a common impulse after leaving the great 
 mosque-like church. It rose now, domed and pin 
 nacled, but a little way behind them, and they had 
 in front the vast empty space, enclosed by its ar 
 cades, to which at that hour movement and traffic 
 were mostly confined. Venice was at breakfast, the 
 Venice of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, 
 and, except for the parties of importunate pigeons 
 picking up the crumbs of perpetual feasts, their 
 prospect was clear and they could see their compan 
 ions had not yet been, and were not for a while 
 longer likely to be, disgorged by the laceshop, in 
 one of the loggie, where, shortly before, they had 
 left them for a look-in the expression was artfully 
 Densher s at St. Mark. Their morning had hap 
 pened to take such a turn as brought this chance to 
 the surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, had 
 not been an overstatement of their general oppor 
 tunity. The worst that could be said of their 
 general opportunity was that it was essentially in 
 presence in presence of everyone; everyone con 
 sisting at this juncture, in a peopled world, of Susan 
 
 208 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly. But the proof 
 how, even in presence, the opportunity could be 
 come special was furnished precisely by this view 
 of the compatibility of their comfort with a certain 
 amount of lingering. The others had assented to 
 their not waiting in the shop; it was the least, of 
 course, the others could do. What had really helped 
 them this morning was the fact that, on his turning 
 up, as he always called it, at the palace, Milly had 
 not, as before, been able to present herself. Cus 
 tom and use had hitherto seemed fairly established; 
 on his coming round, day after day eight days had 
 been now so conveniently marked their friends, 
 Milly s and his, conveniently dispersed and left him 
 to sit with her till luncheon. Such was the perfect 
 operation of the scheme on which he had been, as 
 he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly 
 there was that amount of justification for Kate s 
 vision of success. He had, for Mrs. Lowder he 
 couldn t help having, while sitting there the air, 
 which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption 
 in Kate sufficiently deep to be alarming. He had 
 failed their young hostess, each morning, as little as 
 she had failed him; it was only to-day that she 
 hadn t been well enough to see him. 
 
 That had made a mark, all round; the mark was 
 in the way in which, gathered in the room of state, 
 with the place, from the right time, all bright and 
 cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her de 
 scent, they the rest of them simply looked at 
 
 VOL. II. 14 209 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 each other. It was lurid lurid, in all probability, 
 for each of them privately that they had uttered 
 no common regrets. It was strange for our young 
 man above all that, if the poor girl was indisposed 
 to that- degree, the hush of gravity, of apprehension, 
 of significance of some sort, should be the most the 
 case that of the guests could permit itself. The 
 hush, for that matter, continued after the party of 
 four had gone down to the gondola and taken their 
 places in it. Milly had sent them word that she 
 hoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and 
 this indeed had produced a second remarkable look, 
 a look as of their knowing, one quite as well as the 
 other, what such a message meant as provision for 
 the alternative beguilement of Densher. She 
 wished not to have spoiled his morning, and he had 
 therefore, in civility, to take it as pleasantly patched 
 up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs. 
 Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their 
 friend better than any of them. She knew her so 
 well that she knew herself as acting in exquisite 
 compliance with conditions comparatively obscure, 
 approximately awful to them, by not thinking it 
 necessary to stay at home. She had corrected that 
 element of the perfunctory which was the slight 
 fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had in 
 vented a preference for Mrs. Lowder and herself; 
 she had remembered the fond dreams of the visita 
 tion of lace that had hitherto always been brushed 
 away by accidents, and it had come up as well for 
 
 210 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her that Kate had, the day before, spoken of the 
 part played by fatality in her own failure of real 
 acquaintance with the inside of St. Mark s. Den- 
 sher s sense of Susan Shepherd s conscious interven 
 tion had by this time a corner of his mind all to it 
 self; something that had begun for them at Lan 
 caster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; 
 her action, ineffably discreet, had at all events a way 
 of affecting him as for the most part subtly, even 
 when not superficially, in his own interest. They 
 were not, as a pair, as a " team," really united; there 
 were too many persons, at least three, and too many 
 things, between them; but meanwhile something 
 was preparing that would draw the closer. He 
 scarce knew what: probably nothing but his find 
 ing, at some hour when it would be a service to do 
 so, that she had all the while understood him. He 
 even had a presentiment of a juncture at which the 
 understanding of everyone else would fail and this 
 deep little person s alone survive. 
 
 Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as 
 we may say, that hung about our young friends; 
 these had been the small accidents and quiet forces 
 to which they owed the advantage we have seen 
 them in some sort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly 
 to deepen for them as they stayed their course again; 
 the splendid Square, which had so notoriously, in all 
 the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than any 
 equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their re 
 moteness from earshot, with solitude and security. 
 
 211 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 It was as if, being in possession, they could say what 
 they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence of 
 that, each had an apprehension of what the other 
 wanted to say. It was most of all, for them, more 
 over, as if this very quantity, seated on their lips in 
 the bright, historic air, where the only sign for their 
 ears was the flutter of the doves, begot in the heart 
 of each a fear. There might have been a betrayal 
 of that in the way Densher broke the silence that 
 had followed her last words. " What did you mean 
 just now that I can do to make Mrs. Lowder be 
 lieve? For myself, stupidly, if you will, I don t see, 
 from the moment I can t lie to her, what else there 
 is but lying." 
 
 Well, she could tell him. " You can say some 
 thing both handsome and sincere to her about Milly 
 whom you honestly like so much. That wouldn t 
 be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an 
 effect. You don t, you know, say much about 
 her." And Kate put before him the fruit of ob 
 servation. " You don t, you know, speak of her 
 at all." 
 
 " And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, " told 
 you so? " Then as the girl, for answer, only hesi 
 tated, " You must have extraordinary conversa 
 tions !" he exclaimed. 
 
 Yes, she had hesitated. But she decided. " We 
 have extraordinary conversations." 
 
 His look, while their eyes met, marked him as 
 disposed to hear more about them; but there was 
 
 212 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 something in her own, apparently, that defeated the 
 opportunity. He asked in a moment for something 
 else instead, something that had been in his mind for 
 a week, yet in respect to which he had had no 
 chance so good as this. " Do you happen to know 
 then, as such wonderful things pass between you, 
 what she makes of the incident, the other day, of 
 Lord Mark s so very superficial visit? his having 
 spent here, as I gather, but the two or three hours 
 necessary for seeing our friend and yet taken no 
 time at all, since he went off by the same night s 
 train, for seeing any one else? What can she make 
 of his not having waited to see you, or to see herself 
 with all he owes her?" 
 
 " Oh, of course," said Kate, " she understands. 
 He came to make Milly his offer of marriage he 
 came for nothing but that. As Milly wholly de 
 clined it his business was for the time at an end. He 
 couldn t quite on the spot turn round to make up 
 to us." 
 
 Kate had looked surprised that, as a matter of 
 taste on such an adventurer s part, Densher 
 shouldn t see it. But Densher was lost in another 
 thought. " Do you mean that when, turning up 
 myself, I found him leaving her, that was what had 
 been taking place between them? " 
 
 " Didn t you make it out, my dear? " Kate in 
 quired. 
 
 " What sort of a blundering weathercock then 
 is he? " the young man went on in his wonder. 
 
 213 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh, don t make too little of him ! " Kate smiled. 
 " Do you pretend that Milly didn t tell you? " 
 
 " How great an ass he had made of himself? " 
 
 Kate continued to smile. " You are in love with 
 her, you know." 
 
 He gave her another long look. " Why, since 
 she has refused him, should my opinion of Lord 
 Mark show it? I m not obliged, however, to think 
 well of him for such treatment of the other persons 
 I ve mentioned, and I feel I don t understand from 
 you why Mrs. Lowder should." 
 
 " She doesn t but she doesn t care," Kate ex 
 plained. " You know perfectly the terms on which 
 lots of London people live together even when they 
 are supposed to live very well. He s not committed 
 to us he was having his try. Mayn t an unsatis 
 fied man," she asked, " always have his try? " 
 
 " And come back afterwards, with confidence in 
 a welcome, to the victim of his inconstancy? " 
 
 Kate consented, as for argument, to be thought 
 of as a victim. " Oh, but he has had his try at me. 
 So it s all right." 
 
 " Through your also having, you mean, refused 
 him?" 
 
 She balanced an instant during which Densher 
 might have just wondered if pure historic truth 
 were to suffer a slight strain. But she dropped on 
 the right side. " I haven t let it come to that. I ve 
 been too discouraging. Aunt Maud," she went on 
 now as lucid as ever " considers, no doubt, that 
 
 214 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 she has a pledge from him in respect to me; a pledge 
 that would have been broken if Milly had accepted 
 him. As the case stands, that makes no difference." 
 
 Densher laughed out. " It isn t his merit that he 
 has failed." 
 
 " It s still his merit, my dear, that he s Lord 
 Mark. He s just what he was, and what he knew 
 he was. It s not for me either to reflect on him 
 after I ve so treated him." 
 
 " Oh," said Densher impatiently, " you ve treated 
 him beautifully." 
 
 " I m glad," she smiled, " that you can still be 
 jealous." But before he could take it up she had 
 more to say. " I don t see why it need puzzle you 
 that Milly s so marked line gratifies Aunt Maud 
 more than anything else can displease her. What 
 does she see but that Milly herself recognises her 
 situation with you as too precious to be spoiled? 
 Such a recognition as that can t but seem to her to 
 involve in some degree your own recognition. Out 
 of which she therefore gets it that the more you 
 have for Milly the less you have for me." 
 
 There were moments again we know that from 
 the first they had been numerous when he felt 
 with a strange mixed passion the mastery of her 
 mere way of putting things. There was something 
 in it that bent him at once to conviction and to re 
 action. And this effect, however it be named, now 
 broke into his tone. " Oh, if she began to know 
 
 what I have for you ! " 
 
 215 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 It was not ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. 
 " Luckily for us we may really consider that she 
 doesn t. So successful have we been." 
 
 " Well," he presently said, " I take from you what 
 you give me, and I suppose that, to be consistent 
 to stand on my feet where I do stand at all I ought 
 to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me 
 seems to me, more than anything else, the larger and 
 larger size of my job. It seems to me more than 
 anything else what you expect of me. It never 
 seems to me, somehow, what I may expect of you. 
 There s so much you don t give me." 
 
 "And pray what is it?" 
 
 " I give you proof," said Densher. You give 
 me none." 
 
 " What then do you call proof? " she after a mo 
 ment ventured to ask. 
 
 " Your doing something for me." 
 
 She considered with surprise. " Am I not doing 
 this for you? Do you call this nothing? " 
 
 " Nothing at all." 
 
 " Ah, I risk, my dear, everything for it." 
 
 They had strolled slowly further, but he was 
 brought up short. " I thought you exactly con 
 tend that, with your aunt so beguiled, you risk 
 nothing ! " 
 
 It was the first time since the launching of her 
 wonderful idea that he had seen her at a loss. He 
 judged the next instant moreover that she didn t 
 like it either the being so or the being seen, for 
 
 216 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 she soon spoke with an impatience that showed her 
 as wounded; an appearance that produced in him 
 self, he no less quickly felt, a sharp pang of indul 
 gence. " What then do you wish me to risk? " 
 
 The appeal from danger touched him, but all to 
 make him, as he would have said, worse. " What 
 I wish is to be loved. How can I feel at this rate 
 that I am? " Oh, she understood him, for all she 
 might so bravely disguise it, and that made him feel 
 straighter than if she hadn t. Deep, always, was 
 his sense of life with her deep as it had been from 
 the moment of those signs of life that in the dusky 
 London of two winters ago they had originally ex 
 changed. He had never taken her for unguarded, 
 ignorant, weak ; and if he put to her a claim for some 
 intenser faith between them it was because he be 
 lieved it could reach her and she could meet it. " I 
 can go on perhaps," he said, " with help. But I 
 can t go on without." 
 
 She looked away from him now, and it showed 
 him how she understood. " We ought to be there 
 I mean when they come out." 
 
 " They won t come out not yet. And I don t 
 care if they do." To which he straightway added, 
 as if to deal with the charge of selfishness that his 
 words, sounding for himself, struck him as enabling 
 her to make : " Why not have done with all and 
 face the music as we are? " It broke from him in 
 perfect sincerity. " Good God, if you d only take 
 
 me!" 
 
 217 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 It brought her eyes round to him again, and he 
 could see how, after all, somewhere deep within, she 
 tasted his rebellion as more sweet than bitter. Its 
 effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold 
 her for an instant. " We ve gone too far," she none 
 the less pulled herself together to reply. " Do you 
 want to kill her? " 
 
 He had an hesitation that was not all candid. 
 " Kill, you mean, Aunt Maud? " 
 
 :< You know whom I mean. We ve told too 
 many lies." 
 
 Oh, at this his head went up. " I, my dear, have 
 told none ! " 
 
 He had brought it out with a sharpness that did 
 him good, but he had naturally, none the less, to take 
 the look it made her give him. " Thank you very 
 much." 
 
 Her expression, however, failed to check the 
 words that had already risen to his lips. " Rather 
 than lay myself open to the least appearance of it 
 I ll go this very night." 
 
 " Then go," said Kate Croy. 
 
 He knew after a little, while they walked on again 
 together, that what was in the air for him, and dis 
 concertingly, was not the violence, but much rather 
 the cold quietness, of the way this had come from 
 her. They walked on together, and it was quite, for 
 a minute, as if their difference had become, of a sud 
 den, in all truth, a split as if the basis of his de 
 parture had been settled. Then, incoherently and 
 
 218 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 still more suddenly, recklessly moreover, since they 
 now might easily, from under the arcades, be ob 
 served, he passed his hand into her arm with a force 
 that produced for them another pause. " I ll tell 
 any lie you want, any your idea requires, if you ll 
 only come to me." 
 
 " Come to you? " She spoke low. 
 
 " Come to me." 
 
 "How? Where?" 
 
 She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his 
 uncertainty, a wonder in her being so equal to him. 
 " To my rooms, which are perfectly possible, and in 
 taking which, the other day, I had you, as you must 
 have felt, in view. We can arrange it with two 
 grains of courage. People in our case always ar 
 range it." She listened as for the good informa 
 tion, and there was support for him since it was a 
 question of his going step by step in the way she 
 took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He 
 had in truth not expected of her that particular vul 
 garity but the absence of it only added the thrill of 
 a deeper reason to his sense of possibilities. For 
 the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely 
 to see her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for 
 him in all the light of the day and of his admirable, 
 merciless meaning. Her mere listening in fact 
 made him even understand himself as he had not yet 
 done. Idea for idea, his own was thus already, and 
 in the germ, beautiful. " There s nothing for me 
 possible but to feel that I m not a fool. It s all I 
 
 219 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 have to say, but you must know what it means. 
 With you I can do it I ll go as far as you demand, 
 or as you will yourself. Without you I ll be 
 hanged ! And I must be sure." 
 
 She listened so well that she was really listening 
 after he had ceased to speak. He had kept his grasp 
 of her, drawing her close, and though they had 
 again, for the time, stopped walking, his talk for 
 others at a distance might have been, in the match 
 less place, that of any impressed tourist to any 
 slightly more detached companion. On possessing 
 himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that 
 they faced afresh to St. Mark s, over the great pres 
 ence of which his eyes moved while she twiddled her 
 parasol. She now, however, made a motion that 
 confronted them finally with the opposite end. 
 Then only she spoke " Please take your hand out 
 of my arm." He understood at once: she had 
 made out in the shade of the gallery the issue of the 
 others from their place of purchase. So they went 
 to them side by side, and it was all right. The 
 others had seen them as well and waited for them, 
 complacent enough, under one of the arches. They 
 themselves too he argued that Kate would argue 
 looked perfectly ready, decently patient, properly 
 accommodating. They suggested nothing worse 
 always by Kate s system than a pair of the chil 
 dren of a supercivilised age making the best of an 
 awkwardness. They didn t nevertheless hurry that 
 would overdo it; so he had time to feel, as it were, 
 
 220 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 what he felt. He felt, ever so distinctly it was 
 with this he faced Mrs. Lowder that he was 
 already, in a sense, possessed of what he wanted. 
 There was more to come everything; he had by 
 no means, with his companion, had it all out. Yet 
 what he was possessed of was real the fact that she 
 hadn t thrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow 
 of cheap reprobation. Of this he had had so sore a 
 fear that its being dispelled was in itself of the nature 
 of bliss. The danger had dropped it was behind 
 him there in the great sunny space. So far she was 
 good. 
 
 221 
 
XXVIII 
 
 SHE was good enough, as it proved, for him to put 
 to her that evening, and with further ground for it, 
 the next sharpest question that had been on his lips 
 in the morning which his other preoccupation had 
 then, to his consciousness, crowded out. His op 
 portunity was again made, as befell, by his learning 
 from Mrs. Stringham, on arriving, as usual, with the 
 close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail them 
 again at dinner, but would to all appearance be able 
 to come down later. He had found Susan Shep 
 herd alone in the great saloon, where even more 
 candles than their friend s large common allowance 
 she grew daily more splendid; they were all 
 struck with it and chaffed her about it lighted up 
 the pervasive mystery of Style. He had thus five 
 minutes with the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and 
 Kate appeared minutes illumined indeed to a 
 longer reach than by the number of Milly s candles. 
 
 " May she come down ought she if she isn t 
 really up to it?" 
 
 He had asked that in the wonderment that was 
 always with him before glimpses rare as were these 
 of the inner truth about the girl. There was of 
 course a question of health it was in the air, it was 
 in the ground he trod, in the food he tasted, in the 
 sounds he heard, it was everywhere. But it was 
 
 222 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 everywhere with the effect of a request to him to 
 his very delicacy, to the common discretion of 
 others as well as himself that no allusion to it 
 should be made. There had had practically been 
 none, that morning, on her explained non-appear 
 ance the absence of it, as we know, quite un 
 natural; and this passage with Mrs. Stringham 
 offered him his first licence to open his eyes. He 
 had gladly enough held them closed; all the more 
 that his doing so performed for his own spirit a use 
 ful function. If he positively wanted not to be 
 brought up with his nose against Milly s facts, what 
 better proof could he have that his conduct was 
 marked by straightness? It was perhaps pathetic 
 for her, and for himself it was perhaps even ridicu 
 lous; but he hadn t even the amount of curiosity 
 that he would have had about an ordinary friend. 
 He might have shaken himself at moments to try, 
 for a sort of dry decency, to have it; but that too, it 
 appeared, wouldn t come. Where, therefore, was 
 the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feel 
 ings it being so established that he had none at all. 
 They were all for Kate, without a feather s weight to 
 spare. He was acting for Kate, and not, by the de 
 viation of an inch, for her friend. He was accord 
 ingly not interested, for had he been interested he 
 would have cared, and had he cared he would have 
 wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he 
 wouldn t have been purely passive, and it was his 
 pure passivity that had to represent his honour. 
 
 223 
 
 or THF 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 His honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately 
 fell short, to-night, of spoiling his little talk with 
 Susan Shepherd. One glimpse it was as if she 
 had wished to give him that; and it was as if, for 
 himself, on current terms, he could oblige. She 
 not only permitted, she fairly invited him to open his 
 eyes. " I m so glad you re here." It was no an 
 swer to his question, but it had, for the moment, to 
 do. And the rest was fully to come. 
 
 He smiled at her, and he presently found himself, 
 as a kind of consequence of communion with her, 
 talking her own language. " It s a very wonderful 
 experience." 
 
 " Well " and her raised face shone up at him 
 " that s all I want you to feel about it. If I weren t 
 afraid," she added, " there are things I should like 
 to say to you." 
 
 " And what are you afraid of, please? " he encour 
 agingly asked. 
 
 " Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Be 
 sides, I don t, you know, seem to have the chance. 
 You re always, you know, with her." 
 
 He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his 
 fixed smile; which was the more fixed as he felt in 
 these last words an exact description of his course. 
 It was an odd thing to have come to, but he was 
 always with her. " Ah," he none the less smiled, 
 " I m not with her now." 
 
 " NO and I m so glad, since I get this from it. 
 She s ever so much better." 
 
 224 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Better? Then she has been worse? " 
 
 Mrs. Stringham waited. " She has been marvel 
 lous that s what she has been. She is marvellous. 
 But she s really better." 
 
 " Oh then, if she s really better ! " But he 
 
 checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it 
 and above all not to show as engaged to the point 
 of mystification. " We shall miss her the more at 
 dinner." 
 
 Susan Shepherd, however, was all there for him. 
 "She s keeping herself. You ll see. You ll not 
 really need to miss anything. There s to be a little 
 party." 
 
 " Ah, I do see by this aggravated grandeur." 
 
 " Well, it is lovely, isn t it? I want the whole 
 thing. She s lodged for the first time as she ought, 
 from her type, to be; and doing it I mean bring 
 ing out all the glory of the place makes her really 
 happy. It s a Veronese picture, as near as can be 
 with me as the inevitable dwarf, the small blacka 
 moor, put into a corner of the foreground for effect. 
 If I only had a hawk or a hound or something of 
 that sort I should do the scene more honour. The 
 old housekeeper, the woman in charge here, has a 
 big red cockatoo that I might borrow and perch on 
 my thumb for the evening." These explanations 
 and sundry others Mrs. Stringham gave, though not 
 all with the result of making him feel that the picture 
 closed him in. What part was there for him, with 
 his attitude that lacked the highest style, in a com- 
 
 VOL. IL 15 225 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 position in which everything else would have it? 
 " They won t, however, be at dinner, the few people 
 she expects; they come round afterwards, from 
 their respective hotels; and Sir Luke Strett and his 
 niece, the principal ones, will have arrived in Lon 
 don but an hour or two ago. It s for him she has 
 wanted to do something just, this evening, to be 
 gin. We shall see more of him, because she likes 
 him; and I m so glad she ll be glad too that 
 you re to see him." The good lady, in connection 
 with it, was urgent, was almost unnaturally bright. 
 
 "So I greatly hope !" But her hope fairly 
 
 lost itself in the wide light of her cheer. 
 
 He considered a little this appearance, while she 
 let him, he thought, into still more knowledge than 
 she uttered. " What is it you hope? " 
 
 " Well, that you ll stay on." 
 
 " Do you mean after dinner? " She meant, he 
 seemed to feel, so much that he could scarce tell 
 where it ended or began. 
 
 " Oh that, of course. Why, we re to have music 
 beautiful instruments and songs; and not Tasso 
 declaimed as in the guide-books either. She has 
 arranged it or at least I have. That is Eugenio 
 has. Besides, you re in the picture." 
 
 " Oh I ! " said Densher almost with the gravity 
 of a real protest. 
 
 " You ll be the grand young man who surpasses 
 the others and holds up his head and the wine-cup. 
 What we hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, " is that 
 
 226 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 you ll be faithful to us that you ve not come for a 
 mere foolish few days." 
 
 Densher s more private and particular shabby 
 realities turned, without comfort, he was conscious, 
 at this touch, in the artificial repose he had but half 
 managed to induce. The way smooth ladies, travel 
 ling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese pict 
 ures, talked to plain, embarrassed working-men, en 
 gaged in an unprecedented sacrifice of time and of 
 the opportunity of modest acquisition ! The things 
 they took for granted and the general misery of 
 explaining ! He couldn t tell them how he had tried 
 to work, how it was partly what he had moved into 
 rooms for, only to find himself, almost for the first 
 time in his life, stricken and sterile; because that 
 would give them a false view of the source of his 
 restlessness, if not of the degree of it. It would 
 operate indirectly perhaps, but infallibly, to add to 
 that weight, on his heart, of conscious responsibility 
 which these very moments with Mrs. Stringham 
 caused more and more to settle. He had incurred 
 it, conscious responsibility; the thing was done, and 
 there was no use talking; again, again the cold 
 breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And 
 at best he floundered. " I m afraid you won t 
 understand when I say I ve very tiresome things to 
 consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The 
 pinch, the pressure in London." 
 
 But she understood in perfection; she rose to the 
 pinch and the pressure and showed how they had 
 
 227 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 been her own very element. " Oh, the daily task 
 and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? 
 No one knows better than I how they haunt one in 
 the flight of the precious, deceiving days. Aren t 
 they just what I myself have given up? I ve given 
 up all to follow her. I wish you could feel as I do. 
 And can t you," she inquired, " write about Ven 
 ice? " 
 
 He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he 
 could feel as she did; and he smiled for her kindly. 
 " Do you write about Venice? " 
 
 " No; but I would oh, wouldn t I? if I hadn t 
 so completely given up. She s, you know, my prin 
 cess, and to one s princess " 
 
 " One makes the whole sacrifice? " 
 
 " Precisely. There you are ! " 
 
 It pressed on him with this that never had a man 
 been in so many places at once. " I quite under 
 stand that she s yours. Only, you see, she s not 
 mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, 
 risk that, as he had the moral certainty that she 
 wouldn t repeat it, least of all to Mrs. Lowder, who 
 would find in it a disturbing implication. This was 
 part of what he liked in the good lady, that she 
 didn t repeat, and that she gave him moreover a del 
 icate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. 
 That was in itself a hint of possibilities between 
 them, of a relation, beneficent and elastic for him, 
 which wouldn t engage him further than he could 
 see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt 
 
 228 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 how strange it all was. She wanted, Susan Shep 
 herd then, as appeared, the same thing that Kate 
 wanted, only she wanted it, as still further appeared, 
 in so different a way and from a motive so different, 
 even though scarce less deep. Then Mrs. Lowder 
 wanted, by so odd an evolution of her exuberance, 
 exactly what each of the others did; and he was be 
 tween them all, he was in the midst. Such percep 
 tions made occasions well, occasions for fairly 
 wondering if it mightn t be best just to consent, lux 
 uriously, to be the ass the whole thing involved. 
 Trying not to be and yet keeping in it was of the 
 two things the more asinine. He was glad there 
 was no male witness; it was a circle of petticoats; 
 he shouldn t have liked a man to see him. He only 
 had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir Luke 
 Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in 
 London had spoken of Milly as in commerce with, 
 and whose renewed intervention, at such a distance, 
 just announced to him, required some accounting 
 for. He had a vision of great London surgeons 
 if this one was a surgeon as incisive all round; so 
 that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape 
 the ironic attention of his own sex. The most he 
 might be able to do was not to care; while he was 
 trying not to he could take that in. It was a train, 
 however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark 
 as well. Lord Mark had caught him twice in the 
 fact the fact of his absurd posture; and that made 
 a second male. But it was comparatively easy not 
 to mind Lord Mark. 
 
 229 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 His companion had before this taken him up, and 
 in a tone to confirm her discretion, on the matter 
 of Milly s not being his princess. " Of course she s 
 not. You must do something first." 
 
 Densher gave it his thought. " Wouldn t it be 
 rather she who must? " 
 
 It had more than he intended the effect of bring 
 ing her to a stand. " I see. No doubt, if one takes 
 it so." Her cheer was for the time in eclipse, and 
 she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as if in 
 the wonder of what Milly could do. " And yet she 
 has wanted to be kind." 
 
 It made him feel on the spot like a brute. " Of 
 course she has. No one could be more charming. 
 She has treated me as if 7 were somebody. Call her 
 my hostess as I ve never had nor imagined a hostess, 
 and I m with you altogether. Of course," he added 
 in the right spirit for her, " I do see that it s quite 
 court life." 
 
 She promptly showed that this was almost all she 
 wanted of him. " That s all I mean, if you under 
 stand it of such a court as never was: one of the 
 courts of heaven, the court of an angel. That will 
 do perfectly." 
 
 " Oh well then, I grant it. Only court life as a 
 general thing, you know," he observed, " isn t sup 
 posed to pay." 
 
 Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. 
 That s just the beauty here; it s why she s the great 
 and only princess. With her, at her court," said 
 
 230 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Mrs. Stringham, " it does pay." Then as if she 
 had quite settled it for him : " You ll see for your 
 self." 
 
 He waited a moment, but said nothing to discour 
 age her. " I think you were right just now. One 
 must do something first." 
 
 " Well, you ve done something." 
 
 " No I don t see that. I can do more." 
 
 Oh, well, she seemed to say, if he would have it 
 so ! : * You can do everything, you know." 
 
 " Everything " was rather too much for him to 
 take up gravely, and he modestly let it alone, speak 
 ing the next moment, to avert fatuity, of a different 
 but a related matter. " Why has she sent for Sir 
 Luke Strett if, as you tell me, she s so much bet 
 ter? " 
 
 " She hasn t sent. He has come of himself," Mrs. 
 Stringham explained. " He has wanted to come." 
 
 " Isn t that rather worse then if it shows him as 
 not easy? " 
 
 " He was coming, from the first, for his holiday. 
 She has known that these several weeks." After 
 which Mrs. Stringham added : " You can make him 
 easy." 
 
 "I can?" he candidly wondered. It was truly 
 the circle of petticoats. " What have I to do with 
 it for a man like that? " 
 
 " How do you know," said his friend, " what he s 
 like? He s not like any one you ve ever seen. 
 He s a great beneficent being." 
 
 231 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah, then he can do without me. I ve no call, 
 as an outsider, to meddle." 
 
 " Tell him, all the same," Mrs. Stringham urged, 
 " what you think." 
 
 " What I think of Miss Theale? " Densher stared. 
 It was, as they said, a large order. But he found the 
 right note. " It s none of his business." 
 
 It did seem a moment, for Mrs. Stringham too, 
 the right note. She fixed him at least with an ex 
 pression still bright, but searching, that showed al 
 most to excess what she saw in it; though what this 
 might be he was not to make out till afterwards. 
 " Say that to him then. Anything will do for him 
 as a means of getting at you." 
 
 " And why should he get at me? " 
 
 " Give him a chance to. Let him talk to you. 
 Then you ll see." 
 
 All of which, on Mrs. Stringham s part, sharpened 
 his sense of immersion in an element rather more 
 strangely than agreeably warm a sense that was 
 moreover, during the next two or three hours, to be 
 fed to satiety by several other impressions. Milly 
 came down after dinner, half-a-dozen friends ob 
 jects of interest mainly, it appeared, to the ladies of 
 Lancaster Gate having by that time arrived; and 
 with this call on her attention, the further call of her 
 musicians ushered by Eugenio, but personally and 
 separately welcomed, and the supreme opportunity 
 offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came 
 last of all, he felt her as diffusing, in wide warm 
 
 232 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 waves, the spell of a general, a kind of beatific mild 
 ness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for 
 some than for others; what he, at any rate, in par 
 ticular knew of it was that he seemed to stand in it 
 up to his neck. He moved about in it, and it made 
 no plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it; and 
 they were all together, for that matter, like fishes 
 in a crystal pool. The effect of the place, the beauty 
 of the scene, had probably much to do with it; the 
 golden grace of the high rooms, chambers of art in 
 themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general 
 manner, and made people bland without making 
 them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. 
 Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at 
 the inns, people who during the day had fingered 
 their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, 
 over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But 
 Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white 
 dress, brought them somehow into relation with 
 something that made them more finely genial; so 
 that if the Veronese picture of which he had talked 
 with Mrs. Stringham was not quite constituted, the 
 comparative prose of the previous hours, the traces 
 of insensibility qualified by " beating down," were 
 at last almost nobly disowned. There was perhaps 
 something for him in the accident of his seeing her 
 for the first time in white, but she had not yet had 
 occasion circulating with a clearness intensified 
 to strike him as so happily pervasive. She was dif 
 ferent, younger, fairer, with the colour of her 
 
 2 33 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 braided hair more than ever a not altogether lucky 
 challenge to attention; yet he was loath wholly to 
 explain it by her having quitted this once, for some 
 obscure, yet doubtless charming reason, her almost 
 monastic, her hitherto inveterate black. Much as 
 the change did for the value of her presence, she had 
 never yet, when all was said, made it for him; and 
 he was not to fail of the further amusement of seeing 
 her as determined in the matter by Sir Luke Strett s 
 visit. If he could in this connection have felt jeal 
 ous of Sir Luke Strett, whose strong face and type, 
 less assimilated by the scene perhaps than any 
 others, he was anon to study from the other side of 
 the saloon, that would doubtless have been most 
 amusing of all. But he couldn t be invidious, even 
 to profit by so high a tide; he felt himself too much 
 " in " it, as he might have said : a moment s reflec 
 tion put him more in than any one. The way Milly 
 neglected him for other cares while Kate and Mrs. 
 Lowder, without so much as the attenuation of a 
 joke, introduced him to English ladies that was 
 itself a proof; for nothing really of so close a com 
 munion had up to this time passed between them as 
 the single bright look and the three gay words 
 all ostensibly of the last lightness with which her 
 confessed consciousness brushed by him. 
 
 She was acquitting herself to-night as hostess, he 
 could see, under some supreme idea, an inspiration 
 which was half her nerves and half an inevitable har 
 mony; but what he especially recognised was the 
 
 234 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 character that had already several times broken out 
 in her and that she so oddly appeared able by choice 
 or by instinctive affinity, to keep down or to display. 
 She was the American girl as he had originally found 
 her found her at certain moments, it was true, in 
 New York, more than at certain others; she was 
 the American girl as, still more than then, he had 
 seen her on the day of her meeting him, in London, 
 in Kate s company. It affected him as a large 
 though queer social resource in her such as a man, 
 for instance, to his diminution, would never in the 
 world be able to command; and he wouldn t have 
 known whether to see it in an extension or a con 
 traction of " personality," taking it as he did most 
 directly for a confounding extension of surface. 
 Clearly too it was the right thing, this evening, all 
 round : that came out for him in a word from Kate 
 as she approached him to wreak on him a second 
 introduction. He had, under cover of the music, 
 melted away from the lady toward whom she had 
 first pushed him; and there was something in her 
 that he made out as telling, evasively, a tale of their 
 talk in the Piazza. To what did she want to coerce 
 him as a form of payment for what he had done to 
 her there? It was thus, in contact, uppermost for 
 him that he had done something; not only caused 
 her perfect intelligence to act in his interest, but left 
 her unable to get away, by any mere private effort, 
 from his inattackable logic. With him thus in pres 
 ence, and near him and it had been so unmistaka- 
 
 235 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 bly through dinner there was no getting away for 
 her at all, there was less of it than ever : so that she 
 could only either deal with the question straight, 
 either frankly yield or ineffectually struggle or in 
 sincerely argue, or else merely express herself by 
 following up the advantage she did possess. It was 
 part of that advantage, for the hour a brief, falla 
 cious makeweight to his pressure that there were 
 plenty of things left in which he must feel her will. 
 They only told him, these indications, how much 
 she was, in such close quarters, feeling his; and it 
 was enough for him again that her very aspect, as 
 great a variation, in its way, as Milly s own, gave him 
 back the sense of his action. It had never yet in 
 life been granted him to know, almost materially to 
 taste, as he could do in these minutes, the state of 
 what was vulgarly called victory. He had lived 
 long enough to have been on occasion " liked," but 
 it had never begun to be allowed him to be liked to 
 any such tune in any such quarter. It was a liking 
 greater than Milly s or it would be: he felt it in 
 him to answer for that. So at all events he read the 
 case while he noted that Kate was somehow for 
 Kate wanting in lustre. As a striking young 
 presence she was practically superseded; of the 
 mildness that Milly diffused she had assimilated all 
 her share; she might fairly have been dressed to 
 night in the little black frock, superficially indistin 
 guishable, that Milly had laid aside. This repre 
 sented, he perceived, the opposite pole from such an 
 
 236 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 effect as that of her wonderful entrance, under her 
 aunt s eyes he had never forgotten it the day of 
 their younger friend s failure at Lancaster Gate. 
 She was, in her accepted effacement it was actually 
 her acceptance that made the beauty and repaired 
 the damage under her aunt s eyes now; but whose 
 eyes were not effectually preoccupied? It struck 
 him, none the less, certainly, that almost the first 
 thing she said to him showed an exquisite attempt 
 to appear if not unconvinced, at least self-possessed. 
 " Don t you think her good enough now? " 
 She looked at Milly from where they stood, noted 
 her in renewed talk, over her further wishes, with 
 her little orchestra, who had approached her with 
 demonstrations of deference enlivened by native 
 freedoms that were quite in the note of old Venetian 
 comedy. The girl s idea of music had been happy 
 a real solvent of shyness, yet not drastic; thanks 
 to the intermissions, discretions, a general habit of 
 mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the 
 good manners of its interpreters, representatives 
 though these might be but of the order in which 
 taste was natural and melody rank. It was easy, at 
 all events, to answer Kate. " Ah, my dear, you 
 know how good I think her ! " 
 
 " But she s too nice," Kate returned with appreci 
 ation. " Everything suits her so especially her 
 pearls. They go so with her old lace. I ll trouble 
 you really to look at them." Densher, though 
 aware he had seen them before, had perhaps not 
 
 237 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " really " looked at them, and had thus not done 
 justice to the embodied poetry his mind, for Mil- 
 ly s aspects, kept coming back to that which owed 
 them part of its style. Kate s face, as she consid 
 ered them, struck him; the long, priceless chain, 
 wound twice round the neck, hung, heavy and pure, 
 down the front of the wearer s breast so far down 
 that Milly s trick, evidently unconscious, of holding 
 and vaguely fingering and entwining a part of it, 
 conduced presumably to convenience. " She s a 
 dove," Kate went on, " and one somehow doesn t 
 think of doves as bejewelled. Yet they suit her 
 down to the ground." 
 
 Yes down to the ground is the word." Den- 
 sher saw now how they suited her, but was perhaps 
 still more aware of something intense in his compan 
 ion s feeling about them. Milly was indeed a dove; 
 this was the figure, though it most applied to her 
 spirit. But he knew in a moment that Kate was 
 just now, for reasons hidden from him, exception 
 ally under the impression of that element of wealth 
 in her which was a power, which was a great power, 
 and which was dove-like only so far as one remem 
 bered that doves have wings and wondrous flights, 
 have them as well as tender tints and soft sounds. 
 It even came to Densher dimly that such wings 
 could in a given case had, in fact, in the case in 
 which he was concerned spread themselves for 
 protection. Hadn t they, for that matter, lately 
 taken an inordinate reach, and weren t Kate and 
 
 238 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Mrs. Lowder, weren t Susan Shepherd and he, 
 wasn t he in particular, nestling under them to a 
 great increase of immediate ease? All this was a 
 brighter blur in the general light, out of which he 
 heard Kate presently going on. 
 
 " Pearls have such a magic that they suit every 
 
 one." 
 
 " They would uncommonly suit you," he frankly 
 returned. 
 
 " Oh yes, I see myself ! " 
 
 As she saw herself, suddenly, he saw her she 
 would have been splendid; and with it he felt more 
 what she was thinking of. Milly s royal ornament 
 had under pressure now not wholly occult taken 
 on the character of a symbol of differences, differ 
 ences of which the vision was actually in Kate s face. 
 It might have been in her face too that, well as she 
 certainly would look in pearls, pearls were exactly 
 what Merton Densher would never be able to give 
 her. Wasn t that the great difference that Milly 
 to-night symbolised? She unconsciously repre 
 sented to Kate, and Kate took it in at every pore, 
 that there was nobody with whom she had less in 
 common than a remarkably handsome girl married 
 to a man unable to make her on any such lines as 
 that the least little present. Of these absurdities, 
 however, it was not till afterwards that Densher 
 thought. He could think now, to any purpose, 
 only of what Mrs. Stringham had said to him before 
 dinner. He could but come back to his friend s 
 
 239 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 question of a minute ago. " She s certainly good 
 enough, as you call it, in the sense that I m assured 
 she s better. Mrs. Stringham, an hour or two since, 
 was gay to me about it. She evidently believes her 
 better." 
 
 " Well, if they choose to call it so ! " 
 
 " And what do you call it as against them? " 
 
 " I don t call it anything to any one but you. I m 
 not against them ! " Kate added as with just a 
 fresh breath of impatience for all he had to be 
 taught. 
 
 "That s what I m talking about," he said. 
 " What do you call it to me? " 
 
 It made her wait a little. " She isn t better. 
 She s worse. But that has nothing to do with 
 it." 
 
 " Nothing to do? " He wondered. 
 
 But she was clear. " Nothing to do with us. 
 Except of course that we re doing our best for her. 
 We re making her want to live." And Kate again 
 watched her. " To-night she does want to live." 
 She spoke with a kindness that had the strange 
 property of striking him as inconsequent so much, 
 and doubtless so unjustly, had all her clearness been 
 an implication of the hard. " It s wonderful. It s 
 beautiful." 
 
 " It s beautiful indeed." 
 
 He hated somehow the helplessness of his own 
 note; but she had given it no heed. " She s doing 
 it for him " and she nodded in the direction of 
 
 240 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Milly s medical visitor. " She wants to be for him 
 at her best. But she can t deceive him." 
 
 Densher had been looking too; which made him 
 say in a moment : " And do you think you can? I 
 mean, if he s to be with us here, about your senti 
 ments. If Aunt Maud s so thick with him ! " 
 
 Aunt Maud now occupied in fact a place at his 
 side, and was visibly doing her best to entertain him, 
 though this failed to prevent such a direction of his 
 own eyes determined, in the way such things hap 
 pen, precisely by the attention of the others as 
 Densher became aware of and as Kate promptly 
 noted. " He s looking at you. He wants to speak 
 to you." 
 
 " So Mrs. Stringham," the young man laughed, 
 " advised me he would." 
 
 " Then let him. Be right with him. I don t 
 need," Kate went on in answer to the previous 
 question, " to deceive him. Aunt Maud, if it s nec 
 essary, will do that. I mean that, knowing nothing 
 about me, he can see me only as she sees me. She 
 sees me now so well. He has nothing to do with 
 me." 
 
 " Except to reprobate you," Densher suggested. 
 
 " For not caring for you? Perfectly. As a bril 
 liant young man driven by it into your relation with 
 Milly as all that I leave you to him." 
 
 " Well," said Densher sincerely enough, " I think 
 I can thank you for leaving me to some one easier 
 
 perhaps with me than yourself." 
 VOL. II. -16 24I 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She had been looking about again meanwhile, the 
 lady having changed her place, for the friend of Mrs. 
 Lowder s to whom she had spoken of introducing 
 him. " All the more reason why I should commit 
 you then to Lady Mills." 
 
 " Oh, but wait." It was not only that he distin 
 guished Lady Mills from afar, that she inspired him 
 with no eagerness, and that, somewhere at the back 
 of his head, he was fairly aware of the question, in 
 germ, of whether this was the kind of person he 
 should be involved with when they were married. 
 It was furthermore that the consciousness of some 
 thing he had not got from Kate in the morning, and 
 that logically much concerned him, had been made 
 more keen by these very moments to say nothing 
 of the consciousness that, with their general small- 
 ness of opportunity, he must squeeze each stray in 
 stant hard. If Aunt Maud, over there with Sir 
 Luke, noted him as a little " attentive," that might 
 pass for a futile demonstration on the part of a gen 
 tleman who had to confess to having, not very 
 gracefully, changed his mind. Besides, just now, 
 he didn t care for Aunt Maud except in so far as he 
 was immediately to show. " How can Mrs. Low- 
 der think me disposed of, with any finality, if I m dis 
 posed of only to a girl who s dying? If you re right 
 about that about the true state of the case, you re 
 wrong about Mrs. Lowder s being squared. If 
 Milly, as you say," he lucidly pursued, " can t de 
 ceive a great surgeon, or whatever, the great sur- 
 
 242 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 geon won t deceive other people not those, that 
 is, who are closely concerned. He won t at any rate 
 deceive Mrs. Stringham, who s Milly s greatest 
 friend; and it will be very odd if Mrs. Stringham 
 deceives Aunt Maud, who s her own." 
 
 Kate showed him at this the cold glow of an idea 
 that really was worth his having kept her for. 
 " Why will it be odd? I marvel at how little you 
 see your way." 
 
 Mere curiosity, even, about his companion had 
 now for him its quick, its slightly quaking intensi 
 ties. He had compared her once, we know, to a 
 " new book," an uncut volume of the highest, the 
 rarest quality; and his emotion, to justify that, was 
 again and again like the thrill of turning the page. 
 " Well, you know how deeply I marvel at the way 
 you see it ! " 
 
 " It doesn t in the least follow," Kate went on, 
 " that anything in the nature of what you call de 
 ception on Mrs. Stringham s part will be what 
 you call odd. Why shouldn t she hide the 
 truth? " 
 
 " From Mrs. Lowder? " Densher stared. " Why 
 should she? " 
 
 " To please you." 
 
 " And how in the world can it please me? " 
 
 Kate turned her heid away as if really at last 
 almost tired of his density. But she looked at him 
 again as she spoke. " Well then, to please Milly." 
 And before he could question : " Don t you feel by 
 
 243 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 this time that there s nothing Susan Shepherd won t 
 do for you? " 
 
 He had in truth, after an instant, to take it in, so 
 sharply it corresponded with the good lady s recent 
 reception of him. It was queerer than anything 
 again, the way they all came together round him. 
 But that was an old story, and Kate s multiplied 
 lights led him on and on. It was with a reserve, 
 however, that he confessed this. " She s ever so 
 kind. Only her view of the right thing may not be 
 the same as yours." 
 
 " How can it be anything different if it s the view 
 of serving you? " 
 
 Densher for an instant, but only for an instant, 
 hung fire. " Oh, the difficulty is that I don t, upon 
 my honour, even yet, quite make out how yours 
 does serve me." 
 
 " It helps you put it then," said Kate very sim 
 ply " to serve me. It gains you time." 
 
 " Time for what? " 
 
 " For everything ! " She spoke at first, once 
 more, with impatience; then, as usual, she qualified. 
 " For anything that may happen." 
 
 Densher had a smile, but he felt it himself as 
 strained. " You re cryptic, my love ! " 
 
 It made her keep her eyes on him, and he could 
 thus see that, by one of those incalculable motions 
 in her without which she wouldn t have been a quar 
 ter so interesting, they half filled with tears from 
 some source he had too roughly touched. "I m 
 
 244 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 taking a trouble for you I never dreamed I should 
 take for any human creature." 
 
 Oh, it went home, making him flush for it; yet he 
 soon enough felt his reply on his lips. " Well, isn t 
 my whole insistence to you now that I can conjure 
 trouble away? " And he let it, his insistence, come 
 out again; it had so constantly had, all the week, 
 but its step or two to make. " There need be none 
 whatever between us. There need be nothing but 
 our sense of each other." 
 
 It had only the effect, at first, that her eyes grew 
 dry while she took up again one of the so numerous 
 links in her close chain. " You can tell her any 
 thing you like, anything whatever." 
 
 " Mrs. Stringham? I have nothing to tell her." 
 
 " You can tell her about us. I mean," she won 
 derfully pursued, " that you do still like me." 
 
 It was indeed so wonderful that it amused him. 
 " Only not that you still like me." 
 
 She let his amusement pass. " I m absolutely 
 certain she wouldn t repeat it." 
 
 " I see. To Aunt Maud." 
 
 " You don t quite see. Neither to Aunt Maud 
 nor to any one else." Kate then, he saw, was al 
 ways seeing Milly much more, after all, than he was; 
 and she showed it again as she went on. " There, 
 accordingly, is your time." 
 
 She did at last make him think, and it was fairly 
 as if light broke, though not quite all at once. 
 " You must let me say I do see. Time for some- 
 
 245 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 thing in particular that, I understand, you regard as 
 possible. Time too that, I further understand, is 
 time for you as well." 
 
 Time indeed for me as well." And, encour 
 aged, visibly, by his glow of concentration, she 
 looked at him as through the air she had painfully 
 made clear. Yet she was still on her guard. 
 " Don t think, however, I ll do all the work for you. 
 If you want things named you must name them." 
 
 He had quite, within the minute, been turning 
 names over; and there was only one, which at last 
 stared at him there dreadful, that properly fitted. 
 " Since she s to die I m to marry her? " 
 
 It struck him even at the moment as fine in her 
 that she met it with no wincing nor mincing. She 
 might, for the grace of silence, for favour to their 
 conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. 
 But her lips bravely moved. " To marry her." 
 
 " So that when her death has taken place I shall 
 in the natural course have money? " 
 
 It was before him enough now, and he had noth 
 ing more to ask; he had only to turn, on the spot, 
 considerably cold with the thought that all along 
 to his stupidity, his timidity it had been, it had been 
 only what she meant. Now that he was in posses 
 sion, moreover, she couldn t forbear, strangely 
 enough, to pronounce the words she had not 
 pronounced: they broke through her controlled 
 and colourless voice as if she should be ashamed, to 
 the very end, to have flinched. " You ll in the nat- 
 
 246 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ural course have money. We shall in the natural 
 course be free." 
 
 " Oh, oh, oh ! " Densher softly murmured. 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes." But she broke off. " Come to 
 Lady Mills." 
 
 He never budged there was too much else. 
 " I m to propose it then, marriage, on the spot? " 
 
 There was no ironic sound he needed to give it; 
 the more simply he spoke the more he seemed 
 ironic. But she remained consummately proof. 
 " Oh, I can t go into that with you, and from the 
 moment you don t wash your hands of me I don t 
 think you ought to ask me. You must act as you 
 like and as you can." 
 
 He thought again. " I m far as I sufficiently 
 showed you this morning from washing my hands 
 of you." 
 
 " Then," said Kate, " it s all right." 
 
 " All right? " His eagerness flamed. " You ll 
 come? " 
 
 But he had had to see in a moment that it wasn t 
 what she meant. " You ll have a free hand, a clear 
 field, a chance well, quite ideal." 
 
 " Your descriptions " her " ideal " was such a 
 touch ! " are prodigious. And what I don t make 
 out is how, caring for me, you can like it." 
 
 " I don t like it, but I m a person, thank goodness, 
 who can do what I don t like." 
 
 It was not till afterwards that, going back to it, I 
 was to read into this speech a kind of heroic ring, a 
 
 247 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 note of character that belittled his own incapacity for 
 action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time the 
 greatness of knowing so well what one wanted. At 
 the time, too, moreover, he next reflected that he 
 after all knew what he did. But something else, on 
 his lips, was uppermost. " What I don t make out 
 then is how you can even bear it." 
 
 " Well, when you know me better you ll find out 
 how much I can bear." And she went on before he 
 could take up, as it were, her too many implications. 
 That it was left to him to know her, spiritually, " bet 
 ter " after his long sacrifice to knowledge this, for 
 instance, was a truth he hadn t been ready to receive 
 so full in the face. She had mystified him enough, 
 heaven knew, but that was rather by his own gener 
 osity than by hers. And what, with it, did she seem 
 to suggest she might incur at his hands? In spite 
 of these questions she was carrying him on. " All 
 you ll have to do will be to stay." 
 
 " And proceed to my business under your eyes? " 
 
 " Oh dear, no we shall go." 
 
 " Go? " he wondered. " Go when, go where? " 
 
 "In a day or two straight home. Aunt Maud 
 wishes it now." 
 
 It gave him all he could take in to think of. 
 " Then what becomes of Miss Theale? " 
 
 " What I tell you. She stays on, and you stay 
 with her." 
 
 He stared. "All alone?" 
 
 She had a smile that was apparently for his tone. 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " You re old enough with plenty of Mrs. String- 
 ham." 
 
 Nothing might have been so odd for him now, 
 could he have measured it, as his being able to feel, 
 quite while he drew from her these successive cues, 
 that he was essentially " seeing what she would say " 
 an instinct compatible for him therefore with 
 that absence of a need to know her better to which 
 she had a moment before done injustice. If it hadn t 
 been appearing to him in gleams that she would 
 somewhere break down, he probably couldn t have 
 gone on. Still, as she wasn t breaking down there 
 was nothing for him but to continue. " Is your 
 going Mrs. Lowder s idea? " 
 
 " Very much indeed. Of course again you see 
 what it does for us. And I don t," she added, " refer 
 only to our going, but to Aunt Maud s view of the 
 general propriety of it." 
 
 " I see again, as you say," Densher said after a 
 moment. " It makes everything fit." 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 The word, for a little, held the air, and he might 
 have seemed the while to be looking, by no means 
 dimly now, at all it stood for. But he had in fact 
 been looking at something else. " You leave her 
 here then to die?" 
 
 " Ah, she believes she won t die. Not if you stay. 
 I mean," Kate explained, " Aunt Maud believes." 
 
 " And that s all that s necessary? " 
 
 Still, indeed, she didn t break down. " Didn t we 
 249 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 long ago agree that what she believes is the princi 
 pal thing for us? " 
 
 He recalled it, under her eyes, but it came as from 
 long ago. " Oh yes. I can t deny it." Then he 
 
 added : " So that if I stay " 
 
 " It won t " she was prompt " be our fault." 
 " If Mrs. Lowder still, you mean, suspects us? " 
 " If she still suspects us. But she won t." 
 Kate gave it an emphasis that might have ap 
 peared to leave him nothing more; and he might in 
 fact well have found nothing if he had not presently 
 found : " But what if she doesn t accept me? " 
 
 It produced in her a look of weariness that made 
 the patience of her tone the next moment touch 
 him. "You can but try." 
 
 " Naturally, I can but try. Only, you see, one 
 has to try a little hard to propose to a dying girl." 
 
 " She isn t for you as if she s dying." It had deter 
 mined in Kate the flash of justesse that he could per 
 haps most, on consideration, have admired, for her 
 retort touched the truth. There before him was the 
 fact of how Milly to-night impressed him, and his 
 companion, with her eyes in his own and pursuing 
 his impression to the depths of them, literally now 
 perched on the fact in triumph. She turned her 
 head to where their friend was again in range, and it 
 made him turn his, so that they watched a minute in 
 concert. Milly, from the other side, happened at 
 the moment to notice them, and she sent across to 
 ward them in response all the candour of her smile, 
 
 250 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the lustre of her pearls, the value of her life, the 
 essence of her wealth. It brought them, with faces 
 made fairly grave by the reality she put into their 
 plan, together again; Kate herself grew a little pale 
 for it, and they had for a time only a silence. 
 The music, however, gay and vociferous, had broken 
 out afresh and protected more than interrupted 
 them. When Densher at last spoke it was under 
 cover. 
 
 " I might stay, you know, without trying." 
 
 "Oh, to stay is to try." 
 
 " To have for herself, you mean, the appearance 
 of it?" 
 
 " I don t see how you can have the appearance 
 
 more." 
 
 Densher waited. You think it then possible she 
 may offer marriage? " 
 
 " I can t think if you really want to know 
 what she may not offer ! " 
 
 " In the manner of princesses, who do such 
 things? " 
 
 " In any manner you like. So be prepared." 
 
 Well, he looked as if he almost were. " It will be 
 for me then to accept. But that s the way it must 
 come." 
 
 Kate s silence, so far, let it pass; but she presently 
 said : :< You ll, on your honour, stay then? " 
 
 His answer made her wait, but when it came it was 
 distinct. " Without you, you mean? " 
 
 " Without us." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " And you go yourselves, at latest- 
 " Not later than Thursday." 
 
 It made three days. " Well," he said, " I ll stay, 
 on my honour, if you ll come to me. On your hon 
 our." 
 
 Again, as before, this made her momentarily rigid, 
 with a rigour out of which, at a loss, she vaguely cast 
 about her. Her rigour was more to him, neverthe 
 less, than all her readiness; for her readiness was the 
 woman herself, and this other thing was a mask, a 
 " dodge." She cast about, however, as happened, 
 not, for the instant, in vain. Her eyes, turned over 
 the room, caught at a pretext. " Lady Mills is tired 
 of waiting : she s coming see to us." 
 
 Densher saw in fact, but there was a distance for 
 their visitor to cross, and he still had time. " If you 
 decline to understand me I wholly decline to under 
 stand you. I ll do nothing." 
 
 " Nothing? " It was as if she tried for the min 
 ute to plead. 
 
 " I ll do nothing. I ll leave before you. I ll leave 
 to-morrow. " 
 
 He was to have afterwards the sense of her having 
 then, as the phrase was and for vulgar triumphs too 
 seen he meant it. She looked again at Lady 
 Mills, who was nearer, but she quickly came back. 
 "And if I do understand?" 
 
 " I ll do everything." 
 
 She found anew a pretext in her approaching 
 friend : he was fairly playing with her pride. He had 
 
 252 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 never, he then knew, tasted, in all his relation with 
 her, of anything so sharp too sharp for mere sweet 
 ness as the vividness with which he saw himself 
 master in the conflict. " Well, I understand." 
 
 " On your honour? " 
 
 " On my honour." 
 
 " You ll come? " 
 
 " I ll come." 
 
BOOK NINTH 
 
BOOK NINTH 
 XXIX 
 
 IT was after they had gone that he ,truly felt the 
 difference, which was most to be felt moreover 
 in his faded old rooms. He had recovered from the 
 first a part of his attachment to this scene of contem 
 plation, within sight, as it was, of the Rialto bridge, 
 on the hither side of that arch of associations and the 
 left going up the Canal; he had seen it in a particular 
 light, to which, more and more, his mind and his 
 hands adjusted it; but the interest the place now 
 wore for him had risen at a bound, becoming a force 
 that, on the spot, completely engaged and absorbed 
 him, and relief from which if relief was the name 
 he could find only by getting away and out of reach. 
 What had come to pass within his walls lingered 
 there as an obsession importunate to all his senses; 
 it lived again, as a cluster of pleasant memories, at 
 every hour and in every object; it made everything 
 but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It remained, in a 
 word, a conscious, watchful presence, active on its 
 own side, forever to be reckoned with, in face of 
 which the effort at detachment was scarcely less fu 
 tile than frivolous. Kate had come to him; it was 
 only once and this not from any failure of their 
 VOL. II. 17 257 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 need, but from such impossibilities, for bravery alike 
 and for subtlety, as there was at the last no blinking; 
 yet she had come, that once, to stay, as people called 
 it; and what survived of her, what reminded and in 
 sisted, was something he couldn t have banished if 
 he had wished. Luckily he didn t wish, even though 
 there might be for a man almost a shade of the awful 
 in so unqualified a consequence of his act. It had 
 simply worked, his idea, the idea he had made her 
 accept; and all erect before him, really covering the 
 ground as far as he could see, was the fact of the 
 gained success that this represented. It was, other 
 wise, but the fact of the idea as directly applied, as 
 converted from a luminous conception into an his 
 toric truth. He had known it before but as desired 
 and urged, as convincingly insisted on for the help it 
 would render; so that at present, with the help ren 
 dered, it seemed to acknowledge its office and to set 
 up, for memory and faith, an insistence of its own. 
 He had, in fine, judged his friend s pledge in advance 
 as an inestimable value, and what he must not know 
 his case for was that of a possession of the value to the 
 full. Wasn t it perhaps even rather the value that 
 possessed him, kept him thinking of it and waiting 
 on it, turning round and round it and making sure 
 of it again from this side and that. 
 
 It played for him certainly in this prime after 
 glow the part of a treasure kept, at home, in safety 
 and sanctity, something he was sure of finding in its 
 place when, with each return, he worked his heavy 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 old key in the lock. The door had but to open for 
 him to be with it again and for it to be all there; so 
 intensely there that, as we say, no other act was pos 
 sible to him than the renewed act, almost the hallu 
 cination, of intimacy. Wherever he looked or sat 
 or stood, to whatever aspect he gave for the instant 
 the advantage, it was in view as nothing of the mo 
 ment, nothing begotten of time or of chance could 
 be, or ever would; it was in view as, when the curtain 
 has risen, the play on the stage is in view, night after 
 night, for the fiddlers. He remained thus, in his 
 own theatre, in his single person, perpetual orches 
 tra to the ordered drama, the confirmed " run "; 
 playing low and slow, moreover, in the regular way, 
 for the situations of most importance. No other 
 visitor was to come to him; he met, he bumped occa 
 sionally, in the Piazza or in his walks, against claim 
 ants to acquaintance, remembered or forgotten, at 
 present mostly effusive, sometimes even inquisitive; 
 but he gave no address and encouraged no ap 
 proach; he couldn t, for his life, he felt, have opened 
 his door to a third person. Such a person would have 
 interrupted him, would have profaned his secret or 
 perhaps have guessed it; would at any rate have 
 broken the spell of what he conceived himself in 
 the absence of anything " to show " to be inwardly 
 doing. He was giving himself up that was quite 
 enough to the general feeling of his renewed en 
 gagement to fidelity. The force of the engage 
 ment, the quantity of the article to be supplied, the 
 
 2 59 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 special solidity of the contract, the way, above all, as 
 a service for which the price named by him had been 
 magnificently paid, his equivalent office was to take 
 effect such items might well fill his consciousness 
 when there was nothing from outside to interfere. 
 Never was a consciousness more rounded and fast 
 ened down over what filled it; which is precisely what 
 we have spoken of as, in its degree, the oppression of 
 success, the somewhat chilled state tending to the 
 solitary of supreme recognition. If it was lightly 
 awful to feel so justified, this was by the loss of the 
 warmth of the element of mystery. The lucid reigned 
 instead of it, and it was into the lucid that he sat and 
 stared. He shook himself out of it a dozen times 
 a day, tried to break by his own act his constant still 
 communion. It wasn t still communion she had 
 meant to bequeath him; it was the very different 
 business of that kind of fidelity of which the other 
 name was careful action. 
 
 Nothing, he perfectly knew, was less like careful 
 action than the immersion he enjoyed at home. The 
 actual grand queerness was that to be faithful to 
 Kate he had positively to take his eyes, his arms, his 
 lips straight off her he had to let her alone. He 
 had to remember it was time to go to the palace 
 which, in truth, was a mercy, since the check was 
 imperative. What it came to, fortunately, as yet, 
 was that when he closed the door behind him for an 
 absence he always shut her in. Shut her out it 
 came to that rather, when once he had got a little 
 
 260 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 away; and before he reached the palace, much more 
 after hearing at his heels the bang of the greater 
 portone, he felt free enough not to know his position 
 as oppressively false. As Kate was all in his poor 
 rooms, and not a ghost of her left for the grander, 
 it was only on reflection that the falseness came out; 
 so long as he left it to the mercy of beneficent 
 chance it offered him no face and made of him no 
 claim that he couldn t meet without aggravation of 
 his inward sense. This aggravation had been his 
 original horror; yet what in Milly s presence, each 
 day was horror doing with him but virtually letting 
 him off? He shouldn t perhaps get off to the end; 
 there was time enough still for the possibility of 
 shame to pounce. Still, however, he did constantly a 
 little more what he liked best, and that kept him, for 
 the time, more safe. What he liked best was, in any 
 case, to know why things were as he felt them; and 
 he knew it pretty well, in this case, ten days after the 
 retreat of his other friends. He then fairly per 
 ceived that even putting their purity of motive at 
 its highest it was neither Kate nor he who made 
 his strange relation to Milly, who made her own, so 
 far as it might be, innocent; it was neither of them 
 who practically purged it if practically purged it 
 was. Milly herself did everything so far at least 
 as he was concerned Milly herself, and Milly s 
 house, and Milly s hospitality, and Milly s manner, 
 and Milly s character, and, perhaps still more than 
 anything else, Milly s imagination, Mrs. Stringham 
 
 261 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and Sir Luke indeed a little aiding : whereby he knew 
 the blessing of a fair pretext to ask himself what 
 more he had to do. Something incalculable wrought 
 for them for him and Kate; something outside, be 
 yond, above themselves, and doubtless ever so much 
 better, than they : which wasn t a reason, however 
 its being so much better for them not to profit by 
 it. Not to profit by it, so far as profit could be reck 
 oned, would have been to go directly against it; and 
 the spirit of generosity at present engendered in 
 Densher could have felt no greater pang than by his 
 having to go directly against Milly. 
 
 To go with her was the thing, so far as she could 
 herself go; which, from the moment her tenure of 
 her loved palace was prolonged, was only possible by 
 his remaining near her. This remaining was of 
 course, on the face of it, the most " marked " of 
 demonstrations which was exactly why Kate had 
 required it; it was so marked that on the very even 
 ing of the day it had taken effect Milly herself had 
 not been able not to reach out to him, with an ex 
 quisite awkwardness, for some account of it. It was 
 as if she had wanted from him some name that, now 
 they were to be almost alone together, they 
 could, for their further ease, know it and call 
 it by it being, after all, almost rudimentary that 
 his presence, of which the absence of the oth 
 ers made quite a different thing, couldn t but 
 have for himself some definite basis. She only 
 wondered about the basis it would have for himself, 
 
 262 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and how he would describe it; that would quite 
 do for her it even would have done for her, 
 he could see, had he produced some reason merely 
 common, had he said he was waiting for money, or 
 for clothes, or for letters, or for orders from Fleet 
 Street, without which, as she might have heard, 
 newspaper men never took a step. He hadn t, in 
 the event, quite sunk to that; but he had none the 
 less had three with her, that night, on Mrs. String- 
 ham s leaving them alone Mrs. Stringham proved 
 really prodigious his acquaintance with a shade 
 of awkwardness darker than any Milly could know. 
 He had supposed himself, beforehand, on the ques 
 tion of what he was doing or pretending, in posses 
 sion of some tone that would serve; but there were 
 three minutes in which he found himself incapable 
 of promptness quite as a gentleman whose pocket 
 has been picked finds himself incapable of purchase. 
 It even didn t help him, oddly, that he was sure Kate 
 would in some way have spoken for him or, rather, 
 not so much in some way as in one very particular 
 way. He hadn t asked her, at the last, what she 
 might, in the connection, have said; nothing would 
 have induced him to ask, after she had been to see 
 him : his lips were so sealed by that passage, his spirit 
 in fact so hushed, in respect to any charge upon her 
 freedom. There was something he could only 
 therefore read back into the probabilities, and when 
 he left the palace, an hour afterwards, it was with a 
 sense of having breathed there, in the very air, the 
 truth he imagined. 
 
 263 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Just this perception it was, however, that had 
 made him, for the time, ugly to himself in his awk 
 wardness. It was horrible, with this creature, to be 
 awkward; it was odious to be seeking excuses for 
 the relation that involved it. Any relation that 
 involved it was by the very fact as much discredited 
 as a dish would be at dinner if one had to take medi 
 cine as a sauce. What Kate would have said in one of 
 the young women s last talks was that if Milly 
 absolutely must have the truth about it Mr. Den- 
 sher was staying because she had really seen no way 
 but to require it of him. If he stayed he didn t fol 
 low her or didn t appear to her aunt to be doing 
 so; and when she kept him from following her Mrs. 
 Lowder couldn t pretend, in scenes, the renewal of 
 which at this time of day was painful, that she after 
 all didn t snub him as she might. She did nothing 
 in fact but snub him wouldn t that have been part 
 of the story? only Aunt Maud s suspicions were of 
 the sort that had repeatedly to be dealt with. He 
 had been, by the same token, reasonable enough 
 as he now, for that matter, well might; he had con 
 sented to oblige them, aunt and niece, by giving the 
 plainest sign possible that he could exist away from 
 London. To exist away from London was to exist 
 away from Kate Croy which was a gain, much ap 
 preciated, to the latter s comfort. There was a min 
 ute, at this hour, out of Densher s three, during 
 which he knew the terror of Milly s bringing out 
 some such allusion to their friend s explanation as 
 
 264 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 he must meet with words that wouldn t destroy it. 
 To destroy it was to destroy everything, to destroy 
 probably Kate herself, to destroy in particular by a 
 breach of faith still uglier than anything else, the 
 beauty of their own last passage. He had given her 
 his word of honour that if she would come to him he 
 would act absolutely in her sense, and he had done 
 so with a full enough vision of what her sense im 
 plied. What it implied, for one thing, was that, to 
 night, in the great saloon, noble in its half-lighted 
 beauty, and straight in the white face of his young 
 hostess, divine in her trust, or at any rate inscrutable 
 in her mercy what it implied was that he should lie 
 with his lips. The single thing, of all things, that 
 could save him from it would be Milly s letting him 
 off after having thus scared him. What made her 
 mercy inscrutable was that if she had already more 
 than once saved him it was yet apparently without 
 knowing how nearly he was lost. 
 
 These were transcendent motions, not the less 
 blessed for being obscure; whereby, yet once more, 
 he was to feel the pressure lighten. He was kept on 
 his feet, in short, by the felicity of her not presenting 
 him with Kate s version as a version to adopt. He 
 couldn t stand up to lie he felt as if he would have 
 to go down on his knees. As it was he just sat there 
 shaking a little for nervousness the leg he had 
 crossed over the other. She was sorry for his snub, 
 but he had nothing more to subscribe to, to perjure 
 himself about, than the three or four inanities he 
 
 265 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 had, on his own side, feebly prepared for the crisis. 
 He scrambled a little higher than the reference to 
 money and clothes, letters and directions from his 
 manager; but he brought out the beauty of the 
 chance for him there before him like a temptress 
 painted by Titian to do a little quiet writing. He 
 was vivid, for a moment, on the difficulty of writing 
 quietly in London; and he was precipitate, almost 
 explosive, on his idea, long cherished, of a book. 
 
 The explosion lighted her face. " You ll do your 
 book here? " 
 
 " I hope to begin it." 
 
 " It s something you haven t begun? " 
 
 " Well, only just." 
 
 " And since you came? " 
 
 She was so full of interest that he shouldn t per 
 haps after all be too easily let off. " I tried to think 
 a few days ago that I had broken ground." 
 
 Scarcely anything, it was indeed clear, could have 
 let him in deeper. " I m afraid we ve made an awful 
 mess of your time." 
 
 " Of course you have. But what I m hanging on 
 for now is precisely to repair that ravage." 
 
 " Then you mustn t mind me, you know." 
 
 " You ll see," he tried to say with ease, " how lit 
 tle I shall mind anything." 
 
 " You ll want " Milly had thrown herself into it 
 " the best part of your days." 
 
 He thought a moment; he did what he could to 
 wreathe it in smiles. " Oh, I shall make shift with 
 
 266 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the worst part. The best will be for you." And he 
 wished Kate could hear him. It didn t help him 
 moreover that he visibly, even pathetically, imaged 
 to her by such touches his quest for comfort against 
 discipline. He was to sink Kate s snub, and also 
 the hard law she had now laid on him, in a high intel 
 lectual effort. This at least was his crucifixion 
 that Milly was so interested. She was so interested 
 that she presently asked him if he found his rooms 
 propitious, while he felt that in just decently answer 
 ing her he put on a brazen mask. He should need 
 it quite particularly were she to express again her 
 imagination of coming to tea with him an extrem 
 ity that he saw he was not to be spared. " We 
 depend on you, Susie and I, you know, not to forget 
 we re coming " the extremity was but to face that 
 remainder, yet it demanded all his tact. Facing 
 their visit itself to this, no matter what he might 
 have to do, he would never consent, as we know, to 
 be pushed; and that even though it might be exactly 
 such a demonstration as would figure for him at the 
 top of Kate s list of his proprieties. He could 
 wonder freely enough, deep within, if Kate s view 
 of that especial propriety had not been modified 
 by a subsequent occurrence; but his deciding 
 that it was quite likely not to have been had 
 no effect on his own preference for tact. It 
 pleased him to think of " tact " as his present 
 prop in doubt; that glossed his predicament 
 over, for it was of application among the sensitive 
 
 267 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and the kind. He wasn t inhuman, in fine, so long 
 as it would serve. It had to serve now, accordingly, 
 to help him not to sweeten Milly s hopes. He didn t 
 want to be rude to them, but he still less wanted 
 them to flower again in the particular connection; so 
 that, casting about him, in his anxiety, for a middle 
 way to meet her, he put his foot, with unhappy 
 effect, just in the wrong place. " Will it be safe for 
 you to break into your custom of not leaving the 
 house?" 
 
 " Safe ? " She had for twenty seconds an 
 
 exquisite pale glare. Oh, but he didn t need it, by 
 that time, to wince; he had winced, for himself, as 
 soon as he had made his mistake. He had done 
 what, so unforgettably, she had asked him in Lon 
 don not to do; he had touched, all alone with her 
 here, the supersensitive nerve of which she had 
 warned him. He had not, since the occasion in 
 London, touched it again till now; but he saw him 
 self freshly warned that it was able to bear still less. 
 So for the moment he knew as little what to do as he 
 had ever known it in his life. He couldn t emphasise 
 that he thought of her as dying, yet he couldn t pre 
 tend he thought of her as indifferent to precau 
 tions. Meanwhile too she had narrowed his choice. 
 You suppose me so awfully bad? " 
 
 He turned, in his pain, within himself; but by the 
 time the colour had mounted to the roots of his hair 
 he had found what he wanted. " I ll believe what 
 ever you tell me." 
 
 268 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Well then, I m splendid." 
 
 " Oh, I don t need you to tell me that." 
 
 " I mean I m capable of life." 
 
 " I ve never doubted it." 
 
 " I mean," she went on, " that I want so to 
 live !" 
 
 "Well? " he asked while she paused with the in 
 tensity of it. 
 
 " Well, that I know I can." 
 
 " Whatever you do? " He shrank from solem 
 nity about it. 
 
 " Whatever I do. If I want to." 
 
 " If you want to doit?" 
 
 " If I want to live. I can" Milly repeated. 
 
 He had clumsily brought it on himself, but he hes 
 itated with all the pity of it. "Ah then, that I 
 believe." 
 
 " I will, I will," she declared; yet with the weight 
 of it somehow turned for him to mere light and 
 sound. 
 
 He felt himself smiling through a mist. " You 
 simply must ! " 
 
 It brought her straight again to the fact. " Well 
 then, if you say it, why mayn t we pay you our 
 visit?" 
 
 "Will it help you to live?" 
 
 " Every little helps," she laughed; " and it s very 
 little for me, in general, to stay at home. Only I 
 shan t want to miss it ! " 
 
 " Yes? " she had dropped again. 
 269 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Well, on the day you give us a chance." 
 
 It was amazing what this brief exchange had at 
 this point done with him. His great scruple sud 
 denly broke, giving way to something inordinately 
 strange, something of a nature clear to him only 
 when he had left her. You can come/ he said, 
 " when you like." 
 
 What had taken place for him, however the 
 drop, almost with violence, of everything but a sense 
 of her own reality apparently showed in his face or 
 his manner, and even so vividly that she could take 
 it for something else. " I see how you feel that 
 I m an awful bore about it and that, sooner than have 
 any such upset, you ll go. So it s no matter." 
 
 " No matter? Oh ! " he quite protested now. 
 
 " If it drives you away to escape us. We want 
 you not to go." 
 
 It was beautiful how she spoke for Mrs. String- 
 ham. Whatever it was, at any rate, he shook his 
 head. " I won t go." 
 
 " Then 7 won t go ! " she brightly declared. 
 
 " You mean you won t come to me? " 
 
 " No never now. It s over. But it s all right. 
 I mean, apart from that," she went on, " that 
 I won t do anything that I oughtn t, or that I m not 
 forced to." 
 
 " Oh, who can ever force you? " he asked with his 
 hand-to-mouth way, at all times, of speaking for her 
 encouragement. " You re the least coercible of 
 creatures." 
 
 270 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Because, you think, I m so free? " 
 
 " The freest person probably now in the world. 
 You ve got everything." 
 
 " Well, " she smiled, " call it so. I don t com 
 plain." 
 
 On which again, in spite of himself, it let him in. 
 " No, I know you don t complain." 
 
 As soon as he had said it he had himself heard the 
 pity in it. His telling her she had " everything " 
 was extravagant kind humour, whereas his knowing 
 so tenderly that she didn t complain was terrible 
 kind gravity. Milly felt, he could see, the differ 
 ence; he might as well have praised her outright for 
 looking death in the face. She looked him again, 
 for the moment, and it made nothing better for him 
 that she took him up more gently than ever. " It 
 isn t a merit when one sees one s way." 
 
 " To peace and plenty? Well, I dare say not." 
 
 " I mean to keeping what one has." 
 
 " Oh, that s success. If what one has is good," 
 Densher said at random, " it s enough to try 
 for." 
 
 " Well, it s my limit. I m not trying for more." 
 To which then she added with a change : " And 
 now about your book." 
 
 " My book ? " He had got, in a moment, far 
 
 from it. 
 
 " The one you re now to understand that noth 
 ing will induce either Susie or me to run the risk of 
 spoiling." 
 
 271 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He hesitated, but he made up his mind. " I m 
 not doing a book." 
 
 "Not what you said?" she asked in a won 
 der. " You re not writing? " 
 
 He already felt relieved. " I don t know, upon 
 my honour, what I m doing." 
 
 It made her visibly grave; so that, disconcerted in 
 another way, he was afraid of what she would see in 
 it. She saw in fact exactly what he feared, but 
 again his honour, as he called it, was saved even 
 while she didn t know she had threatened it. Tak 
 ing his words for a betrayal of the sense that he, on 
 his side, might complain, what she clearly wanted 
 was to urge on him some such patience as he should 
 be perhaps able to arrive at with her indirect help. 
 Still more clearly, however, she wanted to be sure 
 of how far she might venture; and he could see her 
 make out in a moment that she had a sort of test. 
 " Then if it s not for your book ? " 
 
 " What am I staying for? " 
 
 " I mean with your London work with all you 
 have to do. Isn t it rather empty for you? " 
 
 " Empty for me? " He remembered how Kate 
 had said that she might propose marriage, and he 
 wondered if this were the way she would naturally 
 begin it. It would leave him, such an incident, he 
 already felt, at a loss, and the note of his finest anx 
 iety might have been in the vagueness of his reply. 
 -Oh, well !" 
 
 " I ask too many questions? " She settled it for 
 272 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 herself before he could protest. " You stay because 
 you ve got to. " 
 
 He grasped at it. " I stay because I ve got to." 
 And he couldn t have said when he had uttered it if it 
 were loyal to Kate or disloyal. It gave her, in a 
 manner, away; it showed the tip of the ear of her 
 plan. Yet Milly took it, he perceived, but as a plain 
 statement of his truth. He was waiting for what 
 Kate would have told her of the permission, from 
 Lancaster Gate, to come any nearer. To remain 
 friends with either niece or aunt he mustn t stir with 
 out it. All this Densher read in the girl s sense of the 
 spirit of his reply; so that it made him feel he was ly 
 ing, and he had to think of something to correct it. 
 What he thought of was, in an instant, " Isn t it 
 enough, whatever may be one s other complications, 
 to stay, after all, for you? " 
 
 " Oh, you must judge." 
 
 He was on his feet, by this time, to take leave, 
 and also because he was at last too restless. The 
 speech in question, at least, wasn t disloyal to Kate; 
 that was the very tone of their bargain. So was it, 
 by being loyal, another kind of lie, the lie of the un- 
 candid profession of a motive. He was staying so 
 little " for " Milly that he was staying positively 
 against her. He didn t, none the less, know, and at 
 last, thank goodness, he didn t care. The only 
 thing he could say might make it either better or 
 worse. " Well then, so long as I don t go, you 
 
 must think of me all as judging ! " 
 VOL. II. 18 
 
XXX 
 
 HE didn t go home, on leaving her he didn t want 
 to; he walked, instead, through his narrow ways and 
 his campi with gothic arches, to a small and compar 
 atively sequestered cafe where he had already more 
 than once found refreshment and comparative re 
 pose, together with solutions that consisted, mainly 
 and pleasantly, of further indecisions. It was a lit 
 eral fact that those awaiting him there to-night, 
 while he leaned back on his velvet bench with his 
 head against a florid mirror and his eyes not looking 
 further than the fumes of his tobacco, might have 
 been regarded by him as a little less limp than usual. 
 This was not because, before he had got to his feet 
 again, there was a step he had seen his way to; it was 
 simply because the acceptance of his position took 
 sharper effect from his sense of what he had just had 
 to deal with. When he had turned about, to Milly, 
 at the palace, half-an-hour before, on the question of 
 the impossibility he had so strongly felt, turned 
 about on the spot and under her eyes, he had acted, 
 of a sudden, as a consequence of seeing much fur 
 ther, seeing how little, how not at all, impossibilities 
 mattered. It wasn t a case for pedantry; when peo 
 ple were at her pass everything was allowed. And 
 
 274 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her pass was now, as by the sharp click of a spring, 
 just completely his own to the extent, as he felt, 
 of her deep dependence on him. Anything he 
 should do, or he shouldn t, would have reference, 
 directly, to her life, which was thus absolutely in his 
 hands and ought never to have reference to any 
 thing else. It was on the cards for him that he 
 might kill her that was the way he read the cards 
 as he sat in his customary corner. The fear in this 
 thought made him let everything go, kept him there, 
 actually, motionless, for three hours on end. He 
 renewed his consumption and smoked more cigar 
 ettes than he had ever done in the time. What had 
 come out for him had come out, with this first inten 
 sity, as a terror; so that action itself, of any sort, 
 the right as well as the wrong if the difference even 
 survived had heard in it a vivid " Hush ! " the in 
 junction, from that moment, to keep intensely still. 
 He thought, in fact, while his vigil lasted, of the 
 different ways of doing so, and the hour might have 
 served him as a lesson in going on tip-toe. 
 
 What he finally took home, when he ventured to 
 leave the place, was the perceived truth that he might 
 on any other system go straight to destruction. 
 Destruction was represented for him by the idea of 
 his really bringing to a point, on Milly s side, any 
 thing whatever. Nothing so " brought," he easily 
 argued, but must be in one way or another a catas 
 trophe. He was mixed up in her fate, or her fate, 
 if that were better, was mixed up in him, so that a sin- 
 
 275 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 gle false motion might, either way, snap the coil. 
 They helped him, it was true, these considerations, 
 to a degree of eventual peace, for what they lumi 
 nously amounted to was that he was to do nothing, 
 and that fell in, after all, with the burden laid on him 
 by Kate. He was only not to budge without the 
 girl s leave not, oddly enough, at the last, to move 
 without it, whether further or nearer, any more than 
 without Kate s. It was to this his wisdom reduced 
 itself to the need again simply to be kind. That was 
 the same as being still as creating, studiously, the 
 minimum of vibration. He felt himself, as he smoked, 
 shut up to a room, on the wall of which something 
 precious was too precariously hung. A false step 
 would bring it down, and it must hang as long 1 as 
 possible. He was aware when he walked away 
 again that even Fleet Street, at this juncture, 
 wouldn t successfully touch him. His manager 
 might wire that he was wanted, but he could easily 
 be deaf to his manager. His money, for the idle life, 
 might be none to much; happily, however, Venice 
 was cheap, and it was moreover the queer fact that 
 Milly in a manner supported him. The greatest of 
 his expenses really was to walk to the palace to din 
 ner. He didn t want, in short, to give that up, and 
 he could probably, he felt, be still enough. 
 
 He tried it then for three weeks, and with the 
 sense, after a little, of not having failed. There had 
 to be a delicate art in it, for he was not trying 
 quite the contrary to be either distant or dull. 
 
 276 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 That would not have been being " nice "; which, in 
 its own form, was the real law. That too might just 
 have produced the vibration he desired to avert; so 
 that he best kept everything in place by not hesitat 
 ing or fearing, as it were, to let himself go go in the 
 direction, that is to say, of staying. It depended on 
 where he went; which was what he meant by taking 
 care. When one went on tip-toe one could turn off 
 for retreat without betraying the manoeuvre. Per 
 fect tact the necessity for which he had from the 
 first, as we know, happily recognised was to keep 
 all intercourse in the key of the absolutely settled. It 
 was settled thus, for instance, that they were indisso 
 luble good friends, and settled as well that her being 
 the American girl was, just in time, and for the rela 
 tion which they found themselves concerned, a boon 
 inappreciable. If, at least, as the days went on, she 
 was to fall short of her prerogative of the great 
 national feminine and juvenile ease, if she didn t, 
 diviningly, responsively, desire and labour to record 
 herself as possessed of it, this would not have been 
 for want of Densher s keeping her, with his idea, 
 well up to it, for want, in fine, of his encouragement 
 and reminder. He didn t perhaps in so many words 
 speak to her of the quantity itself as of the thing she 
 was least to intermit; but he talked of it, freely, in 
 what he flattered himself was an impersonal way, and 
 this held it there before her since he was careful 
 also to talk pleasantly. It was at once their idea, 
 when all was said, and the most marked of their con- 
 
 277 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 veniences. The type was so elastic that it could be 
 stretched to almost anything; and yet, not stretched, 
 it kept down, remained normal, remained properly 
 within bounds. And he had meanwhile, thank 
 goodness, without being too much disconcerted, the 
 sense, for the girl s part of the business, of the queer 
 est conscious compliance, of her doing very much 
 what he wanted, even though without her quite see 
 ing why. She fairly touched this once in saying: 
 " Oh yes, you like us to be as we are because it s a 
 kind of facility to you that we don t quite measure : I 
 think one would have to be English to measure it ! " 
 and that too, strangely enough, without preju 
 dice to her good nature. She might have been con 
 ceived as doing that is of being what he liked, if 
 only to judge where it would take them. They really, 
 as it went on, saw each other at the game; she know 
 ing he tried to keep her in tune with his notion, and 
 he knowing she thus knew it. Add that he, again, 
 knew she knew, and yet that nothing was spoiled by 
 it, and we get a fair impression of their most com 
 pletely workable line. The strangest fact of all for 
 us must be that the success he himself thus pro 
 moted was precisely what figured, to his gratitude, 
 as the something above and beyond him, above and 
 beyond Kate, that made for daily decency. There 
 would scarce have been felicity certainly too little 
 of the right lubricant had not the national charac 
 ter so invoked been, not less inscrutably than com 
 pletely, in Milly s chords. It made her unity and was 
 
 278 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the one thing he could unlimitedly take for granted 
 in her. 
 
 He did so then, daily, for twenty days, without 
 deepened fear of the undue vibration that was keep 
 ing him watchful. He was living at best, he knew, 
 in his nervousness, from day to day, and from hand 
 to mouth; but he had succeeded, he believed, in 
 avoiding a mistake. All women had alternatives, 
 and Milly s would doubtless be shaky too; but the 
 national character was firm in her, whether as all of 
 her, practically, by this time, or as but a part; the 
 national character that, in a woman who was young, 
 made of the air breathed a virtual non-conductor. It 
 was not till a certain occasion when the twenty days 
 had passed that, going to the palace at tea-time, he 
 was met by the information that the signorina pad- 
 rona was not " receiving." The announcement 
 was made him, in the court, by one of the gondoliers, 
 and made, he thought, with such a conscious eye 
 as the knowledge of his freedoms of access, hitherto 
 conspicuously shown, could scarce fail to beget. 
 Densher had not been, at Palazzo Leporelli, among 
 the receivable, but had taken his place once for all 
 among the involved and included, so that on being 
 so flagrantly braved he recognised after a moment 
 the propriety of a further appeal. Neither of the 
 two ladies, it appeared, received, and yet Pasquale 
 was not prepared to say that either was not well. 
 He was yet not prepared to say that either was well, 
 and he would have been blank, Densher mentally 
 
 279 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 observed, if the term could ever apply to members 
 of a race in whom vacancy was but a nest of dark 
 nesses not a vain surface, but a place of withdrawal 
 in which something obscure, something always omi 
 nous, indistinguishably lived. He felt afresh indeed, 
 at this hour, the force of the veto laid, in the house, 
 on any mention, any cognition, of the liabilities of its 
 mistress. Her health, or her illness, was not con 
 fessed to there as a reason. Whether it was inwardly 
 known as one was another matter; of which he grew 
 fully aware on carrying his inquiry further. His 
 appeal was to his friend Eugenio, whom he imme 
 diately sent for, with whom, for three rich minutes, 
 protected from the weather, he was confronted in 
 the gallery that led from the water-steps to the court, 
 and whom he always called, in meditation, his friend 
 because it was unmistakable that he would have 
 put an end to him if he could. That produced a rela 
 tion which required a name of its own, an intimacy 
 of consciousness, in truth, for each an intimacy of 
 eye, of ear, of general sensibility, of everything but 
 tongue. It had been, in other words, for the five 
 weeks, far from occult to our young man that 
 Eugenio took a vulgar view of him, which was at the 
 same time a view he was definitely hindered from 
 preventing. It was all in the air now again; it was 
 as much between them as ever while Eugenio waited 
 on him in the court. 
 
 The weather, from early morning, had turned to 
 storm, the first sea-storm of the autumn, and Den- 
 
 280 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 sher had almost invidiously brought him down the 
 outer staircase the massive ascent, the great feat 
 ure of the court, to Milly s piano nobile. This was 
 to pay him it was the one chance for the vulgar 
 view; the view that, clever and not rich, the young 
 man from London was by the obvious way after 
 Miss Theale s fortune. It was to pay him for the 
 further implication that he must take the young 
 lady s most devoted servant (interested scarcely less 
 in the high attraction) for a strangely superficial per 
 son if he counted, in such a connection, on impunity 
 and prosperity. The view was a vulgar one for 
 Densher because it was but the view that might have 
 been taken of another man, ,and three things alone, 
 accordingly, had kept him from righting himself. 
 One of these was that his critic sought expression 
 only in an impersonality, a positive inhumanity, of 
 politeness; the second was that refinements of ex 
 pression in a friend s servant were not a thing a vis 
 itor could take action on; and the third was the fact 
 that the particular attribution of motive did him, 
 after all, no wrong. It was his own fault if the vul 
 gar view and the view that might have been taken 
 of another man happened so incorrigibly to fit him. 
 He apparently wasn t so different from another man 
 as that came to. If therefore, in fine, Eugenic figured 
 to him as " my friend " because he was conscious of 
 his seeing so much in him, what he made him see, on 
 the same lines, in the course of their present inter 
 view was ever so much more. Densher felt that he 
 
 281 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 marked himself, no doubt, as insisting, by dissatis 
 faction with the gondolier s answer, on the pursuit 
 imputed to him; and yet felt it only in the augment 
 ed, the exalted distance that was by this time 
 established between them. Eugenio had of course 
 reflected that a word to Miss Theale, from such 
 a pair of lips, would cost him his place; but 
 he could also bethink himself that, so long as the 
 word never came and it was, on the basis he had 
 arranged, impossible he enjoyed the imagination 
 of mounting guard. He had never so mounted 
 guard, Densher could see, as during these minutes 
 in the damp loggia, where the storm-gusts were 
 strong; and there came in fact for our young man, 
 as a result of his presence, a sudden sharp sense that 
 everything had turned to the dismal. Something 
 had happened he didn t know what; and it wasn t 
 Eugenio who would tell him. What Eugenio told 
 him was that he thought the ladies as if their liabil 
 ity had been equal were a " leetle " fatigued, just 
 a " leetle leetle," and without any cause named for it. 
 It was one of the signs of what Densher felt in him 
 that, by a refinement of resource, he always met the 
 latter s Italian with English and his English with 
 Italian. He now, as usual, slightly smiled at him in 
 the process but ever so slightly, this time, his man 
 ner also being attuned, our young man made out, to 
 the thing, whatever it was, that constituted the rupt 
 ure of peace. 
 
 This manner, while they stood for a long minute 
 282 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 facing each other over all they didn t say, played a 
 part as well in the sudden jar to Densher s protected 
 state. It was a Venice all of evil that had broken 
 out for them alike, so that they were together in 
 their anxiety, if they really could have met on it; a 
 Venice of cold, lashing rain from a low black sky, of 
 wicked wind raging through narrow passes, of gen 
 eral arrest and interruption, with the people engaged 
 in all the water-life huddled, stranded and wageless, 
 bored and cynical, under archways and bridges. Our 
 young man s mute exchange with his friend con 
 tained meanwhile such a depth of reference that, had 
 the pressure been but slightly prolonged, they might 
 have reached a point at which they were equally 
 weak. Each had verily something in mind that 
 would have made a hash of mutual suspicion and in 
 the presence of which, as a possibility, they were 
 more united than disjoined. But it was to have 
 been a moment, for Densher, that nothing could 
 ease off not even the formal propriety with which 
 his interlocutor finally attended him to the portone 
 and bowed upon his retreat. Nothing had passed 
 about his coming back, and the air had made itself 
 felt as a non-conductor of messages. Densher knew 
 of course, as he took his way again, that Eugenie s 
 invitation to return was not what he missed; yet he 
 knew at the same time that what had happened to 
 him was part of his punishment. Out in the square 
 beyond the fondamenta that gave access to the land- 
 gate of the palace, out where the wind was higher, 
 
 283 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 he fairly, with the thought of it, pulled his umbrella 
 closer down. It couldn t be, his consciousness, un 
 seen enough by others the base predicament of 
 having, by a concatenation, just to take such things : 
 such things as the fact that one very acute person 
 in the world, whom he couldn t dispose of as an in 
 terested scoundrel, enjoyed an opinion of him that 
 there was no attacking, no disproving, no what 
 was worst of all even noticing. One had come to 
 a queer pass when a servant s opinion mattered. 
 Eugenie s would have mattered even if, as founded 
 on a low vision of appearances, it had been quite 
 wrong. It was the more disagreeable, accordingly, 
 that the vision of appearances was quite right, and 
 yet was scarcely less low. 
 
 Such as it was, at any rate, Densher shook it off 
 with the more impatience that he was independently 
 restless. He had to walk in spite of weather, and 
 he took his course, through crooked ways, to the 
 Piazza, where he should have the shelter of the gal 
 leries. Here, in the high arcade, half Venice was 
 crowded close, while, on the Molo, at the limit of 
 the expanse, the old columns of St. Mark and of the 
 Lion were like the lintels of a door wide open to the 
 storm. It was odd for him, as he moved, that it 
 should have made such a difference if the differ 
 ence wasn t only that the palace had for the first time 
 failed of a welcome. There was more, but it came 
 from that; that gave the harsh note and broke the 
 spell. The wet and the cold were now to reckon 
 
 284 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 with, and it was precisely, to Densher, as if he had 
 seen the obliteration, at a stroke, of the margin on a 
 faith in which they were all living. The margin 
 had been his name for it for the thing that, though 
 it had held out, could bear no shock. The shock, in 
 some form, had come, and he wondered about it 
 while, threading his way among loungers as vague 
 as himself, he dropped his eyes sightlessly on the 
 rubbish in shops. There were stretches of the gal 
 lery paved with squares of red marble, greasy now 
 with the salt spray; and the whole place, in its huge 
 elegance, the grace of its conception and the beauty 
 of its detail, was more than ever like a great draw 
 ing-room, the drawing-room of Europe, profaned 
 and bewildered by some reverse of fortune. He 
 brushed shoulders with brown men whose hats 
 askew, and the loose sleeves of whose pendent jack 
 ets, made them resemble melancholy maskers. The 
 tables and chairs that overflowed from the cafes were 
 gathered, still with a pretence of service, into 
 the arcade, and here and there a spectacled German, 
 with his coat-collar up, partook publicly of food and 
 philosophy. These were impressions for Densher 
 too, but he had made the whole circuit thrice before 
 he stopped short, in front of Florian s, with the force 
 of his sharpest. His eye had caught a face within 
 the cafe he had spotted an acquaintance behind the 
 glass. The person he had thus paused long enough 
 to look at twice was seated, well within range, at a 
 small table on which a tumbler, half emptied and evi- 
 
 285 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 dently neglected, still remained; and though he had 
 on his knee, as he leaned back, a copy of a French 
 newspaper the heading of the Figaro was visible 
 he stared straight before him at the little opposite 
 rococo wall. Densher had him for a minute in pro 
 file, had him for a time during which his identity pro 
 duced, however quickly, all the effect of establishing 
 connections connections startling and direct; and 
 then, as if it were the one thing more needed, took in 
 the look, determined by a turn of the head, that 
 might have been a prompt result of the sense of be 
 ing noticed. This wider view showed him all Lord 
 Mark Lord Mark as encountered, several weeks 
 before, the day of the first visit of each to Palazzo 
 Leporelli. For it had been all Lord Mark that was 
 going out, on that occasion, as he came in he had 
 felt it, in the hall, at the time; and he was accordingly 
 the less at a loss to recognise in a few seconds, as 
 renewed meeting brought it to the surface, the same 
 potential quantity. 
 
 It was a matter, the whole passage it could only 
 be but of a few seconds; for as he could neither 
 stand there to stare nor on the other hand make any 
 advance from it, he had presently resumed his walk 
 and this time to another pace. It had been, for 
 all the world, during his pause, as if he had caught 
 his answer to the -riddle of the day. Lord Mark had 
 simply faced him as he had faced him, not placed 
 by him, not at first as one of the damp, shuffling 
 crowd. Recognition, though hanging fire, had 
 
 286 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 then clearly come; yet no light of salutation had 
 been struck from these certainties. Acquaintance 
 between them was scant enough for neither to take 
 it up. That neither had done so was not, however, 
 what now mattered, but that the gentleman at Flor- 
 ian s was in the place at all. He couldn t have been 
 in it long; Densher, as inevitably a haunter of the 
 great meeting-ground, would in that case have seen 
 him before. He paid short visits; he was on the 
 wing; the question for him even as he sat there was 
 of his train or of his boat. He had come back for 
 something as a sequel to his earlier visit; and what 
 ever he had come back for it had had time to be 
 done. He might have arrived but last night or that 
 morning; he had already made the difference. It 
 was a great thing for Densher to get this answer. He 
 held it close, he hugged it, quite leaned on it as he 
 continued to circulate. It kept him going and go 
 ingit made him no less restless. But it explained 
 and that was much, for with explanations he 
 might somehow deal. The vice in the air, other 
 wise, was too much like the breath of fate. The 
 weather had changed, the rain was ugly, the wind 
 wicked, the sea impossible, because of Lord Mark. 
 It was because of him, a fortiori, that the palace was 
 closed. Densher went round again twice, and 
 found the visitor each time as he had found him 
 first. Once, that is, he was staring before him; the 
 next time he was looking over his Figaro, which he 
 had opened out. Densher didn t again stop, but he 
 
 287 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 left him apparently unconscious of his passage on 
 another repetition of which Lord Mark had disap 
 peared. He had spent but the day; he would be off 
 that night; he had now gone to his hotel for 
 arrangements. These things were as plain to Den- 
 sher as if he had had them in words. The obscure 
 had cleared for him if cleared it was; there was 
 something he didn t see, the great thing; but he 
 saw so round it and so close to it that this was almost 
 as good. He had been looking at a man who had 
 done what he had come for, and for whom, as done, 
 it temporarily sufficed. The man had come again 
 to see Milly, and Milly had received him. His visit 
 would have taken place just before or just after 
 luncheon, and it was the reason why he himself had 
 found her door shut. 
 
 He said to himself that evening, he still said 
 even on the morrow, that he only wanted a reason, 
 and that with this perception of one he could now 
 mind, as he called it, his business. His business, he 
 had settled, as we know, was to keep thoroughly 
 still; and he asked himself why it should prevent this 
 that he could feel, in connection with the crisis, so 
 remarkably blameless. He gave the appearances 
 before him all the benefit of being critical, so that if 
 blame were to accrue he shouldn t feel he had 
 dodged it. But it wasn t a bit he who, that day, had 
 touched her, and if she was upset it wasn t a bit his 
 act. The ability so to think about it amounted for 
 Densher, during several hours, to a kind of exhilara- 
 
 288 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 tion. The exhilaration was heightened fairly, be 
 sides, by the visible conditions sharp, striking, ugly 
 to him of Lord Mark s return. His constant view 
 of it, for all the next hours, of which there were 
 many, was as a demonstration on the face of it sinis 
 ter even to his own actual ignorance. He didn t 
 need, for seeing it as evil, seeing it as, to a certainty, 
 in a high degree " nasty," to know more about it 
 than he had so easily and so wonderfully picked up. 
 You couldn t drop on the poor girl that way with 
 out, by the fact, being brutal. Such a visit was a 
 descent, an invasion, an aggression, constituting 
 precisely one or other of the stupid shocks that he 
 himself had so decently sought to spare her. Den- 
 sher had indeed drifted, by the next morning, to the 
 reflection which, positively, with the occasion, he 
 might have brought straight out that the only deli 
 cate and honourable way of treating a person in 
 such a state was to treat her as he, Merton Densher, 
 did. With time, actually for the impression but 
 deepened this sense of the contrast, to the advan 
 tage of Merton Densher, became a sense of relief, 
 and that, in turn, a sense of escape. It was for all 
 the world and he drew a long breath on it as if a 
 special danger for him had passed. Lord Mark had, 
 without in the least intending such a service, got it 
 straight out of the way. It was he, the brute, who 
 had stumbled into just the wrong inspiration, and 
 who had therefore produced, for the very person he 
 had wished to hurt, an impunity that was compara- 
 II 19 289 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 tive innocence, that was almost like purification. 
 The person he had wished to hurt could only be the 
 person so unaccountably hanging about. To keep 
 still, meanwhile, was, for this person, more compre 
 hensively, to keep it all up; and to keep it all up was, 
 if that seemed on consideration best, not, for the day 
 or two, to go back to the palace. 
 
 The day or two passed stretched to three days; 
 and with the effect extraordinarily, that Densher felt 
 himself, in the course of them, washed but the more 
 clean. Some sign would come if his presence there 
 were better; and he was at all events, in absence, 
 without the particular scruple. It wouldn t have 
 been meant for him by either of the women that he 
 was to return but to face Eugenio. That was impos 
 sible the being again denied; for it made him, prac 
 tically, answerable, and answerable was what he was 
 not. There was no neglect, either, in absence, inas 
 much as, from the moment he didn t get in, the one 
 message he could send up would be some hope on 
 the score of health. Since, accordingly, that sort of 
 expression was definitely forbidden him he had only 
 to wait which he was actually helped to do by his 
 feeling, with the lapse of each day, more and more 
 wound up to it. The days in themselves were any 
 thing but sweet; the wind and the weather lasted, the 
 fireless cold hinted at worse; the broken charm of the 
 world about was broken into smaller pieces. He 
 walked up and down his rooms and listened to the 
 wind listened also to tinkles of bells and watched 
 
 290 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for some servant of the palace. He might get a 
 note, but the note never came; there were hours 
 when he stayed at home not to miss it. When he 
 was not at home he was in circulation again as he had 
 been at the hour of his seeing Lord Mark. He 
 strolled about the Square with the herd of refu 
 gees; he raked the approaches and the cafes on the 
 chance the brute, as he now regularly imaged him, 
 might be still there. He could only be there, he 
 knew, to be received afresh; and that one had but 
 to think of it would be indeed stiff. He had gone, 
 however it was proved; though Densher s care for 
 the question, either way, only added to what was of 
 least savour in the taste of his present ordeal. It all 
 came round to what he was doing for Milly spend 
 ing days that neither relief nor escape could purge 
 of a smack of the abject. What was it but abject 
 for a man of his parts to be reduced to such pastimes? 
 What was it but sordid for him, shuffling about in 
 the rain, to have to peep into shops and to consider 
 possible meetings? What was it but odious to find 
 himself wondering what, as between him and an 
 other man, a possible meeting would produce? 
 There recurred moments when, in spite of every 
 thing, he felt no straighter than another man. And 
 yet even on the third day, when still nothing had 
 come, he more than ever knew that he wouldn t 
 have budged for the world. 
 
 He thought of the two women, in their silence, at 
 last he at all events thought of Milly as probably, 
 
 291 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for her reasons, now intensely wishing him to go. 
 The cold breath of her reasons was, with everything 
 else, in the air; but he didn t care for them any more 
 than for her wish itself, and he would stay in spite 
 of her, stay in spite of odium, stay in spite perhaps 
 of some final experience that would be, for the pain 
 of it, all but unbearable. That would be his one 
 way, purified though he was, to mark his virtue 
 beyond any mistake. It would be accepting the 
 disagreeable, and the disagreeable would be a proof; 
 a proof of his not having stayed for the thing the 
 agreeable, as it were that Kate had named. The 
 thing Kate had named was not to have been the 
 odium of staying in spite of hints. It was part of 
 the odium, as actual, too, that Kate was, for her 
 comfort, just now well aloof. These were the first 
 hours, since her flight, in which his sense of what 
 she had done for him on the eve of that event was to 
 incur a qualification. It was strange, it was per 
 haps base, to be thinking such things so soon; but 
 one of the intimations of his solitude was that she 
 had provided for herself. She was out of it all, by 
 her act, as much as he was in it; and this difference 
 grew, positively, as his own intensity increased. She 
 had said in their last sharp snatch of talk sharp 
 though thickly muffled, and with every word in it 
 final and deep, unlike even the deepest words they 
 had ever yet spoken: "Letters? Never now. 
 Think of it. Impossible." So that as he had suf 
 ficiently caught her sense into which he read, all 
 
 292 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the same, a strange inconsequence they had prac 
 tically wrapped their understanding in the breach of 
 their correspondence. He had moreover, on los 
 ing her, done justice to her law of silence; for there 
 was doubtless a finer delicacy in his not writing to 
 her than in his writing as he must have written had 
 he spoken of themselves. That would have been a 
 turbid strain, and her idea had been to be noble; 
 which, in a degree, was a manner. Only it left her, 
 for the pinch, comparatively at ease. And it left 
 him, in the conditions, peculiarly alone. He was 
 alone, that is, till, on the afternoon of his third day, 
 in gathering dusk and renewed rain, with his shabby 
 rooms looking, doubtless, in their confirmed drear 
 iness, for the mere eyes of others, at their worst, the 
 grinning padrona threw open the door and intro 
 duced Mrs. Stringham. That made, at a bound, a 
 difference, especially when he saw that his visitor 
 was weighted. It appeared a part of her weight 
 that she was in a wet waterproof, that she allowed 
 her umbrella to be taken from her by the good 
 woman without consciousness or care, and that her 
 face, under her veil, richly rosy with the driving 
 wind, was and the veil too as splashed as if the 
 rain were her tears. 
 
 293 
 
XXXI 
 
 THEY came to it almost immediately; he was to won 
 der afterwards at the fewness of their steps. " She 
 has turned her face to the wall." 
 You mean she s worse? " 
 
 The poor lady stood there as she had stopped; 
 Densher had, in the instant flare of his eagerness, his 
 curiosity, all responsive at sight of her, waved away, 
 on the spot, the padrona, who had offered to relieve 
 her of her mackintosh. She looked vaguely about 
 through her wet veil, intensely conscious now of the 
 step she had taken and wishing it not to have been in 
 the dark, but clearly, as yet, seeing nothing. " I 
 don t know how she is and it s why I ve come to 
 you." 
 
 " I m glad enough you ve come," he said, " and 
 it s quite you make me feel as if I had been 
 wretchedly waiting for you." 
 
 She showed him again her blurred eyes she had 
 caught at his word. " Have you been wretched? " 
 
 Now, however, on his lips, the word expired. It 
 would have sounded for him like a complaint, and 
 before something he already made out in his visitor 
 he knew his own trouble as small. Hers, under her 
 damp draperies, which shamed his lack of a fire, was 
 great, and he felt she had brought it all with her. 
 
 294 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He answered that he had been patient and above all 
 that he had been still. " As still as a mouse 
 you ll have seen it for yourself. Stiller, for three 
 days together, than I ve ever been in my life. It has 
 seemed to me the only thing." 
 
 This qualification of it as a policy or a remedy was 
 straightway, for his friend, plainly, a light that her 
 own light could answer. " It has been best. 
 I ve wondered for you. But it has been best," she 
 said again. 
 
 " Yet it has done no good? " 
 
 " I don t know. I ve been afraid you were gone." 
 Then as he gave a headshake which, though slow, 
 was deeply mature : " You won t go? " 
 
 " Is to go/ " he asked, " to be still? " 
 
 " Oh, I mean if you ll stay for me." 
 
 " I ll do anything for you. Isn t it for you alone 
 now I can? " 
 
 She thought of it, and he could see even more of 
 the relief she was taking from him. His presence, 
 his face, his voice, the old rooms themselves, so mea 
 gre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been 
 to him these things counted for her, now she had 
 them, as the help she had been wanting : so that she 
 still only stood there taking them all in. With it, 
 however, characteristically, popped up a throb of her 
 conscience. What she thus tasted was almost a per 
 sonal joy. It told Densher of the three days she on 
 her side had spent. " Well, anything you do for me 
 
 is for her too. Only, only ! " 
 
 295 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Only nothing now matters? " 
 
 She looked at him a minute as if he were the 
 fact itself that he expressed. " Then you know? " 
 
 " Is she dying? " he asked for all answer. 
 
 Mrs. Stringham waited her face seemed to 
 sound him. Then her own reply was strange. 
 " She hasn t so much as named you. We haven t 
 spoken." 
 
 "Not for three days?" 
 
 " No more," she simply went on, " than if it were 
 all over. Not even by the faintest allusion." 
 
 " Oh," said Densher with more light, " you mean 
 you haven t spoken about me." 
 
 "About what else? No more than if you were 
 dead." 
 
 " Well," he answered after a moment, " I am 
 dead." 
 
 "Then / am," said Susan Shepherd with a drop of 
 her arms on her waterproof. 
 
 It was a tone that, for the minute, imposed itself 
 in its dry despair; it represented, in the bleak place, 
 which had no life of its own, none but the life Kate 
 had left the sense of which, for that matter, by 
 mystic channels, might fairly be reaching the visitor 
 the very impotence of their extinction. And 
 Densher had nothing to oppose it, nothing but 
 again : " Is she dying? " 
 
 It made her, however, as if these were crudities, 
 almost material pangs, only say as before : " Then 
 you know? " 
 
 296 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Yes," he at last returned, " I know. But the 
 marvel to me is that you do. I ve no right in fact to 
 imagine, or to assume, that you do." 
 
 " You may," said Susan Shepherd, " all the same. 
 I know." 
 
 " Everything? " 
 
 Her eyes, through her veil, kept pressing him. 
 " No not everything. That s why I ve come." 
 
 " That I shall really tell you? " With which, as 
 she hesitated, and it affected him, he brought out, 
 in a groan, a doubting " Oh, oh ! " It turned him 
 from her to the place itself, which was a part of what 
 was in him, was the abode, the worn shrine more 
 than ever, of the fact in possession, the fact, now an 
 association, for which he had hired it. That was 
 not for telling, but Susan Shepherd was, none the 
 less, so decidedly wonderful that the sense of it 
 might really have begun, by an effect already operat 
 ing, to be a part of her knowledge. He saw, and it 
 stirred him, that she hadn t come to judge him; had 
 come rather, so far as she might dare, to pity. This 
 showed him her own abasement that, at any rate, 
 of grief; and made him feel with a rush of friendli 
 ness that he liked to be with her. The rush had 
 quickened when she met his groan with an attenua 
 tion. 
 
 " We shall at all events if that s anything be 
 together." 
 
 It was his own good impulse in herself. " It s 
 what I ve ventured to feel. It s much," She re- 
 
 297 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 plied in effect, silently, that it was whatever he liked; 
 on which, so far as he had been afraid for anything, 
 he knew his fear had dropped. The comfort was 
 huge, for it gave back to him something precious, 
 over which, in the effort of recovery, his own hand 
 had too imperfectly closed. Kate, he remembered, 
 had said to him, with her sole and single boldness 
 and also on grounds he hadn t then measured that 
 Mrs. Stringham was a person who wouldn t, at a 
 pinch, in a stretch of confidence, wince. It was but 
 another of the cases in which was Kate showing. 
 " You don t think then very horridly of me? " 
 
 And her answer was the more valuable that it 
 came without nervous effusion quite as if she un 
 derstood what he might conceivably have believed. 
 She turned over in fact what she thought, and that 
 was what helped him. " Oh, you ve been extraor 
 dinary ! " 
 
 It made him aware the next moment of how they 
 had been planted there. She took off her cloak 
 with his aid, though when she had also, accepting a 
 seat, removed her veil, he recognised in her personal 
 ravage that the words she had just uttered to him 
 were the one flowers she had to throw. They were 
 all her consolation for him, and the consolation, 
 even, still depended on the event. She sat with him, 
 at any rate, in the grey clearance as sad as a win 
 ter dawn made by their meeting. The image she 
 again evoked for him loomed in it but the larger. 
 " She has turned her face to the wall." 
 
 298 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 He saw, with the last vividness, and it was as if, in 
 their silences, they were simply so leaving what he 
 saw. " She doesn t speak at all? I don t mean not 
 of me." 
 
 " Of nothing of no one." And she went on, 
 Susan Shepherd, giving it out as she had had to take 
 it. " She doesn t want to die. Think of her age. 
 Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. 
 Think of all she is. Think of all she has. She lies 
 there stiffening herself and clinging to it. So I 
 
 thank God ! " the poor lady wound up with a 
 
 kind of wan inconsequence. 
 
 He wondered. " You thank God ? " 
 
 " That she s so quiet." 
 
 He continued to wonder. " Is she so quiet? " 
 
 " She s more than quiet. She s grim. It s what 
 she has never been. So you see all these days. I 
 can t tell you but it s better so. It would kill me 
 if she were to tell me." 
 
 " To tell you? " He was still at a loss. 
 
 " How she feels. How she clings. How she 
 doesn t want it." 
 
 " How she doesn t want to die? Of course she 
 doesn t want it." He had a long pause, and they 
 might have been thinking together of what they 
 could even now do to prevent it. This, however, 
 was not what he brought out. Milly s " grimness," 
 and the great hushed palace, were present to him; 
 present with the little woman before him as she 
 must have been waiting there and listening. " Only, 
 what harm have you done her? " 
 
 299 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Mrs. Stringham looked about in her darkness. " I 
 don t know. I come and talk of her here with you." 
 
 It made him again hesitate. " Does she utterly 
 hate me? " 
 
 "I don t know. How can I? No one ever 
 will." 
 
 "She ll never tell?" 
 
 " She ll never tell." 
 
 Once more he thought. " She must be magnifi 
 cent." 
 
 " She is magnificent." 
 
 His friend, after all, helped him, and he turned it, 
 so far as he could, all over. " Would she see me 
 again?" 
 
 It made his companion stare. " Should you like 
 to see her? " 
 
 You mean as you describe her? " He saw her 
 surprise, and it took him some time. " No." 
 
 " Ah then ! " Mrs. Stringham sighed. 
 
 " But if she could bear it I d do anything." 
 
 She had for the moment her vision of this, but it 
 collapsed. " I don t see what you can do." 
 
 " I don t, either. But she might." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham continued to think. " It s too 
 late." 
 
 " Too late for her to see ? " 
 
 " Too late." 
 
 The very decision of her despair it was after all 
 so lucid kindled in him a heat. " But the doctor, 
 
 all the while ? " 
 
 300 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Tacchini? Oh, he s kind. He comes. He s 
 proud of having been approved and coached by a 
 great London man. He hardly in fact goes away; 
 so that I scarce know what becomes of his other pa 
 tients. He thinks her, justly enough, a great per 
 sonage; he treats her like royalty; he s waiting on 
 events. But she has barely consented to see him, 
 and, though she has told him, generously for she 
 thinks of me, dear creature that he may come, that 
 he may stay, for my sake, he spends most of his 
 time only hovering at her door, prowling through 
 the rooms, trying to entertain me, in that ghastly 
 saloon, with the gossip of Venice, and meeting me, 
 in doorways, in the sala, on the staircase, with an 
 agreeable, intolerable smile. We don t," said Susan 
 Shepherd, " talk of her." 
 
 "By her request?" 
 
 " Absolutely. I don t do . what she doesn t 
 wish. We talk of the price of provisions." 
 
 " By her request too?" 
 
 " Absolutely. She named it to me as a subject 
 when she said, the first time, that if it would be any 
 comfort to me he might stay as much as we liked." 
 
 Densher took it all in. " But he isn t any comfort 
 to you ! " 
 
 " None whatever. That, however," she added, 
 " is not his fault. Nothing s any comfort." 
 
 " Certainly," Densher observed, " as I but too 
 horribly feel, I m not." 
 
 " No. But I didn t come for that." 
 301 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " You came for me" 
 
 " Well, then, call it that." But she looked at him 
 a moment with eyes filled full, and something came 
 up in her, the next instant, from deeper still. " I 
 came at bottom of course " 
 
 You came at bottom of course for our friend 
 herself. But if it s, as you say, too late for me to do 
 anything? " 
 
 She continued to look at him, and with an impa 
 tience, which he saw growing in her, of the truth 
 itself. " So I did say. But, with you here " and 
 she turned her vision again strangely about her 
 " with you here, and with everything, I feel that we 
 mustn t abandon her." 
 
 " God forbid we should abandon her." 
 
 Then you won t? " His tone had made her 
 flush again. 
 
 " How do you mean I won t/ if she abandons 
 me? What can I do if she won t see me? " 
 
 " But you said just now you wouldn t like it." 
 
 " I said I shouldn t like it in the light of what you 
 tell me. I shouldn t like it only to see her as you 
 make me. I should like it if I could help her. But 
 even then," Densher pursued without faith, " she 
 would have to want it first herself. And there," 
 he continued to make out, " is the devil of it. She 
 won t want it herself. She can t ! " 
 
 He had got up in his impatience of it, and she 
 watched him while he helplessly moved. "There s 
 one thing you can do. There s only that, and even 
 
 302 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for that there are difficulties. But there is that." 
 He stood before her with his hands in his pockets, 
 and he had soon enough, from her eyes, seen what 
 was coming. She paused as if waiting for his leave 
 to utter it, and, as he only let her wait, they heard, in 
 the silence, on the Canal, the renewed downpour of 
 rain. She had at last to speak, but, as if still with 
 her fear, she only half spoke. " I think you really 
 know yourself what it is." 
 
 He did know what it was, and with it even, as she 
 said rather! there were difficulties. He turned 
 away on them, on everything, for a moment; he 
 moved to the other window and looked at the 
 sheeted channel, wider, like a river, where the houses 
 opposite, blurred and belittled, stood at twice their 
 distance. Mrs. Stringham said nothing, was as 
 mute, in fact, for the minute as if she had " had " 
 him, and he was the first again to speak. When he 
 did so, however, it was not in straight answer to her 
 last remark he only started from that. He said, 
 as he came back to her, " Let me, you know, see 
 one must understand," almost as if, for the time, he 
 had accepted it. And what he wished to under 
 stand was where, on the essence of the question, was 
 the voice of Sir Luke Strett. If they talked of not 
 giving her up shouldn t he be the one least of all to 
 do it? " Aren t we, at the worst, in the dark with 
 out him? " 
 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Stringham, " it s he who has 
 kept me going. I wired the first night, and he an- 
 
 33 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 swered like an angel. He ll come like one. Only 
 he can t arrive, at the nearest, till Thursday after 
 noon." 
 
 " Well then, that s something." 
 
 She hesitated. " Something yes. She likes 
 him." 
 
 " Rather ! I can see it still, the face with which, 
 when he was here in October that night when she 
 was in white, when she had people there and those 
 musicians she committed him to my care. It was 
 beautiful for both of us she put us in relation. She 
 asked me, for the time, to take him about; I did so, 
 and we quite hit it off. That proved," Densher said 
 with a quick sad smile, " that she liked him." 
 
 " He liked you" Susan Shepherd presently risked. 
 
 " Ah, I know nothing about that." 
 
 You ought to then. He went with you to gal 
 leries and churches; you saved his time for him, 
 showed him the choicest things, and you perhaps 
 will remember telling me, myself, that if he hadn t 
 been a great surgeon he might really have been a 
 great judge. I mean of the beautiful." 
 
 " Well," the young man admitted, " that s what 
 he is in having judged her. He hasn t," he went 
 on, " judged her for nothing. His interest in her 
 which we must make the most of can only be su 
 premely beneficent." 
 
 He still roamed, while he spoke, with his hands in 
 his pockets, and she saw him, on this, as her eyes 
 sufficiently betrayed, trying to keep his distance 
 
 34 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 from the recognition he had a few moments before 
 partly confessed to. " I m glad/ she dropped, 
 " you like him ! " 
 
 There was something for him in the sound of it. 
 " Well, I do no more, dear lady, than you do your 
 self. Surely you like him. Surely, when he was 
 here, we all liked him." 
 
 Yes, but I seem to feel I know what he thinks. 
 And I should think, with all the time you spent with 
 him, you would know it," she said, " yourself." 
 
 Densher stopped short, though at first without a 
 word. " We never spoke of her. Neither of us 
 mentioned her, even to sound her name, and noth 
 ing whatever, in connection with her, passed be 
 tween us." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham stared up at him, surprised at this 
 picture. But she had plainly an idea that, after an 
 instant, resisted it. " That was his professional pro 
 priety." 
 
 " Precisely. But it was also my sense of that, and 
 it was something more besides." And he spoke 
 with sudden intensity. " I couldn t talk to him 
 about her ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Susan Shepherd. 
 
 " I can t talk to any one about her." 
 
 " Except to me," his friend continued. 
 
 " Except to you." The ghost of her smile, a 
 gleam of significance, had waited on her words, and 
 it kept him, for honesty, looking at her. For hon 
 esty too that is for his own words he had quickly 
 
 VOL. ii. 20 305 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 coloured : he was sinking so, at a stroke, the burden 
 of his discourse with Kate. His visitor, for the min 
 ute, while their eyes met, might have been watching 
 him hold it down. And he had to hold it down 
 the effort of which, precisely, made him red. He 
 couldn t let it come up; at least not yet. She might 
 make what she would of it. He attemped to repeat 
 his statement, but he really modified it. " Sir Luke, 
 at all events, had nothing to tell me, and I had noth 
 ing to tell him. Make-believe talk was impossible 
 for us, and " 
 
 " And real " she had taken him right up with a 
 huge emphasis " was more impossible still." No 
 doubt he didn t deny it; and she had straightway 
 drawn her conclusion. " Then that proves what I 
 say that there were immensities between you. 
 Otherwise you d have chattered." 
 
 " I dare say," Densher granted, " we were both 
 thinking of her." 
 
 " You were neither of you thinking of any one 
 else. That s why you kept together." 
 
 Well, that too, if she desired, he admitted; but he 
 came straight back to what he had originally said. 
 " I haven t a notion, all the same, of what he thinks." 
 She faced him, visibly, with the question into which 
 he had already observed that her special shade of ear 
 nestness was perpetually, right and left, flowering 
 " Are you very sure? " and he could only note her 
 apparent difference from himself. " You, I judge, 
 believe that he thinks she s gone." 
 
 306 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She took it, but she bore up. " It doesn t matter 
 what I believe. " 
 
 " Well, we shall see " and he felt almost basely 
 superficial. More and more, for the last five min 
 utes, had he known she had brought something 
 with her, and never, in respect to anything, had he 
 had such a \vish to postpone. He would have liked 
 to put everything off till Thursday; he was sorry it 
 was now Tuesday; he wondered if he were afraid. 
 Yet it wasn t of Sir Luke, who was coming; nor of 
 Milly, who was dying; nor of Mrs. Stringham, who 
 was sitting there. It wasn t, strange to say, of Kate 
 either, for Kate s presence affected him suddenly as 
 having swooned or trembled away. Susan Shep 
 herd s, thus prolonged, had suffused it with some 
 influence under which it had ceased to act. She was 
 as absent to his sensibility as she had constantly 
 been, since her departure, absent, as an echo or a 
 reference, from the palace; and it was the first time, 
 among the objects now surrounding him, that his 
 sensibility so noted her. He knew soon enough 
 that it was of himself he was afraid, and that even, if 
 he didn t take care, he should infallibly be more so. 
 " Meanwhile," he added for his companion, " it has 
 been everything for me to see you." 
 
 She slowly rose, at the words, which might almost 
 have conveyed to her the hint of his taking care. 
 She stood there as if, in fact, she had seen him 
 abruptly moved to dismiss her. But the abruptness 
 would have been in this case so marked as fairly to 
 
 307 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 offer ground for insistence to her imagination of his 
 state. It would take her moreover, she clearly 
 showed him she was thinking, but a minute or two 
 to insist. Besides, she had already said it. " Will 
 you do it if he asks you? I mean if Sir Luke himself 
 puts it to you. And will you give him " oh, she 
 was earnest now ! " the opportunity to put it to 
 you? " 
 
 The opportunity to put what? " 
 
 " That if you deny it to her, that may still do 
 something." 
 
 Densher felt himself as had already once befallen 
 him in the quarter-of-an-hour turn red to the top 
 of his forehead. Turning red had, however, for him, 
 as a sign of shame, been, so to speak, discounted; his 
 consciousness of it at the present moment was rather 
 as a sign of his fear. It showed him sharply enough 
 of what he was afraid. " If I deny what to her? " 
 
 Hesitation, on the demand, revived in her, for 
 hadn t he all along, been letting her see that he 
 knew? " Why, what Lord Mark told her? " 
 
 " And what did Lord Mark tell her? " 
 
 Mrs. Stringham had a look of bewilderment of 
 seeing him as suddenly perverse. " I ve been judg 
 ing that you yourself know." And it was she who 
 now blushed deep. 
 
 It quickened his pity for her, but he was beset too 
 by other things. " Then you know " 
 
 "Of his dreadful visit?" She stared. "Why, 
 it s what has done it." 
 
 308 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Yes I understand that. But you also 
 know 
 
 He had faltered again, but all she knew she now 
 wanted to say. " I m speaking," she said sooth 
 ingly, " of what he told her. It s that that I ve taken 
 you as knowing." 
 
 " Oh ! " he sounded in spite of himself. 
 
 It appeared to have for her, he saw the next mo 
 ment, the quality of relief, as if he had supposed her 
 thinking of something else. Thereupon, straight 
 way, that lightened it. " Oh, you thought I ve 
 known it for true! " 
 
 Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw 
 that he had betrayed himself. Not, however, that 
 it mattered, as he immediately saw still better. 
 There it was now, all of it, at last, and this at least 
 there was no postponing. They were left there 
 with her idea the one she was wishing to make him 
 recognise. He had expressed ten minutes before 
 his need to understand, and she was acting, after all, 
 but on that. Only what he was to understand was no 
 small matter; it might be larger even than as yet ap 
 peared. 
 
 He took again one of his turns, not meet 
 ing what she had last said; he mooned a minute, as 
 he would have called it, at a window; and of course 
 she could see that she had driven him to the wall. 
 She did clearly, without delay, see it; on which her 
 sense of having " caught " him became, as promptly, 
 a scruple, and she spoke as if not to press it. " What 
 
 39 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 I mean is that he told her you ve been all the while 
 engaged to Miss Croy." 
 
 He gave a jerk round; it was almost to hear it 
 the touch of a lash; and he said idiotically, as he 
 afterwards knew the first thing that came into his 
 head. " All what while? " 
 
 " Oh, it s not I who say it." She spoke in gentle 
 ness. " I only repeat to you what he told her." 
 
 Densher, from whom an impatience had escaped, 
 had already caught himself up. " Pardon my bru 
 tality. Of course I know what you re talking about. 
 I saw him, toward the evening," he further ex 
 plained, " in the Piazza; only just saw him through 
 the glass at Florian s without any words. In fact 
 I scarcely know him, and there wouldn t have been 
 occasion. It was but once, moreover he must 
 have gone that night. But I knew he wouldn t 
 have come for nothing, and I turned it over what 
 he would have come for." 
 
 Oh, so had Mrs. Stringham. " He came for exas 
 peration." 
 
 Densher approved. " He came to let her know 
 that he knows better than she for whom it was she 
 had a couple of months before, in her fool s para 
 dise, refused him." 
 
 " How you do know ! " and Mrs. Stringham al 
 most smiled. 
 
 " I know that but I don t know the good it does 
 him." 
 
 " The good, he thinks, if he has patience not too 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 much may be to come. He doesn t know what he 
 has done to her. Only we, you see, do that." 
 
 He saw, but he wondered. " She kept from him 
 what she felt?" 
 
 " She was able I m sure of it not to show any 
 thing. He dealt her his blow, and she took it with 
 out a sign." Mrs. Stringham, it was plain, spoke by 
 book, and it brought into play again her apprecia 
 tion of what she related. " She s magnificent." 
 
 Densher again gravely assented. " Magnifi 
 cent ! " 
 
 " And he," she went on, " is an idiot of idiots." 
 
 " An idiot of idiots." For a moment, on it all, on 
 the stupid doom in it, they looked at each other. 
 " Yet he s thought so awfully clever." 
 
 " So awfully it s Maud Lowder s own view. 
 And he was nice, in London," said Mrs. Stringham, 
 " to me. One could almost pity him he has had 
 such a good conscience." 
 
 " That s exactly the inevitable ass." 
 
 " Yes, but it wasn t I could see from the only 
 few things she first told me that he meant her the 
 least harm. He intended none whatever." 
 
 " That s always the ass at his worst," Densher re 
 plied. " He only of course meant harm to me." 
 
 " And good to himself he thought that would 
 come. He had been unable to swallow," Mrs. 
 Stringham pursued, " what had happened on his 
 other visit. He had been then too sharply humil 
 iated." 
 
 3" 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh, I saw that." 
 
 Yes, and he also saw you. He saw you received, 
 as it were, while he was turned away." 
 
 " Perfectly," Densher said" I ve filled it out. 
 And also that he has known meanwhile for what I 
 was then received. For a stay of all these weeks. 
 He had had it to think of." 
 
 " Precisely it was more than he could bear. But 
 he has it," said Mrs. Stringham, " to think of still." 
 " Only, after all," asked Densher, who himself, 
 somehow, at this point, was having more to think of 
 even than he had yet had " only, after all, how has 
 he happened to know? That is, to know enough." 
 
 " What do you call enough? " Mrs. Stringham in 
 quired. 
 
 " He can only have acted it would have been his 
 only safety from full knowledge." 
 
 He had gone on without heeding her question; 
 but, face to face as they were, something had none 
 the less passed between them. It was this that, 
 after an instant, made her again interrogative. 
 " What do you mean by full knowledge? " 
 
 Densher met it indirectly. " Where has he been 
 since October? " 
 
 " I think he has been back to England. He came, 
 in fact, I have reason to believe, straight from there." 
 
 " Straight to do this job? All the way for his 
 half-hour? " 
 
 " Well, to try again with the help perhaps of a 
 new fact. To make himself right with her, possibly 
 
 3" 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 a different attempt from the other. He had at 
 any rate something to tell her, and he didn t know his 
 opportunity would reduce itself to half-an-hour. Or 
 perhaps indeed half-an-hour would be just what was 
 most effective. It has been ! " said Susan Shep 
 herd. 
 
 Her companion took it in, understanding but too 
 well; yet as she lighted the matter for him more, 
 really, than his own courage had quite dared put 
 ting the absent dots on several i s he saw new ques 
 tions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, 
 entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each 
 showing for itself. The first he put to her was at 
 any rate abrupt. " Have you heard of late from 
 Mrs. Lowder? " 
 
 " Oh yes, two or three times. She depends, nat 
 urally, upon news of Milly." 
 
 He hesitated. " And does she depend, naturally, 
 upon news of we? " 
 
 His friend matched for an instant his deliberation. 
 " I ve given her none that hasn t been decently 
 good. This will have been the first." 
 
 " This? " Densher was thinking. 
 
 " Lord Mark s having been here, and her being as 
 she is." 
 
 He thought a moment longer. " What has she 
 written about him? Has she written that he has 
 been with them? " 
 
 " She has mentioned him but once it was in her 
 letter before the last. Then she said something." 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 "And what did she say?" 
 
 Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. 
 " Well, it was in reference to Miss Croy. That she 
 thought Kate was thinking of him. Or perhaps I 
 should say, rather, that he was thinking of her 
 only, it seemed this time to have struck Mrs. Low- 
 der, because of his seeing the way more open to 
 him/ 
 
 Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but 
 he presently raised them to speak, and there was that 
 in his face which proved him aware of a queerness in 
 his question. " Does she mean he has been encour 
 aged to propose to her niece? " 
 
 " I don t know what she means." 
 
 " Of course not " he recovered himself; " and I 
 oughtn t to seem to trouble you to piece together 
 what I can t piece myself. Only, I think," he added, 
 " I can piece it." 
 
 She spoke a little timidly, but she risked it. " I 
 dare say I can piece it too." 
 
 It was one of the things in her and his conscious 
 face took it from her as such that, from the mo 
 ment of her coming in, had seemed to mark for him, 
 as to what concerned him, the long jump of her per 
 ception. They had parted four da.ys earlier with 
 many things, between them, deep down. But these 
 things were now on their troubled surface, and it 
 wasn t he who had brought them so quickly up. 
 Women were wonderful at least this one was. But 
 so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so, most of 
 
 3*4 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what 
 he had been feeling about the circle of petticoats. 
 They were all such petticoats ! It was just the fine 
 ness of his tangle. The sense of that, in its turn, for 
 us too, might have been not unconnected with his 
 making an inquiry of his visitor that quite passed 
 over her remark. " Has Miss Croy meanwhile writ 
 ten to our friend? " 
 
 " Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, " her friend also. 
 But not a single word that I know of." 
 
 He had taken it for certain she hadn t the thing 
 being, after all, but a shade more strange than his 
 having himself, for six weeks, with Milly, never 
 mentioned the young lady in question. It was, for 
 that matter, but a shade more strange than Milly s 
 not having mentioned her. In spite of which, and 
 however inconsequently, he blushed, once more, for 
 Kate s silence. He got away from it in fact as 
 quickly as possible, and the furthest he could get was 
 by reverting for a minute to the man they had been 
 judging. " How did he manage to get at her? She 
 had only with what had passed between them be 
 fore to say she couldn t see him." 
 
 " Oh, she was disposed to kindness. She was eas 
 ier," the good lady explained with a slight embar 
 rassment, " than at the other time." 
 
 " Easier? " 
 
 " She was off her guard. There was a difference." 
 
 " Yes. But exactly not the difference." 
 
 " Exactly not the difference of her having to be 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 harsh. Perfectly. She could afford to be the oppo 
 site." With which, as he said nothing, she just 
 impatiently completed her sense. " She had had you 
 here for six weeks." 
 
 " Oh," Densher softly groaned. 
 
 " Besides, I think he must have written her first 
 written, I mean, in a tone to smooth his way. 
 That it would be a kindness to himself. Then on 
 the spot " 
 
 " On the spot," Densher broke in, " he un 
 masked? The horrid little beast ! " 
 
 It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, 
 though quickened, as for hope, the intensity of her 
 look at him. " Oh, he went off without an alarm." 
 
 " And he must have gone off also without a 
 hope." 
 
 " Ah that, certainly." 
 
 " Then it was mere base revenge. Hasn t he 
 known her, into the bargain," the young man asked 
 " didn t he, weeks before, see her, judge her, feel 
 her, as having, for such a suit as his, not more per 
 haps than a few months to live? " 
 
 Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at 
 him in silence; and it gave more force to what she 
 then remarkably added. " He has doubtless been 
 aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself 
 been aware." 
 
 " He has wanted her, you mean, just because 
 
 p 
 
 " Just because," said Susan Shepherd. 
 316 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " The hound ! " Merton Densher brought out. 
 He moved off, however, with a hot face, as soon as 
 he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in his 
 visitor s reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after 
 he had once more taken counsel of the dreariness 
 without he turned to his companion. " Shall we 
 have lights a lamp or the candles? " 
 
 " Not for me." 
 
 " Nothing? " 
 
 " Not for me." 
 
 He waited at the window another moment; then 
 he faced his friend with a thought. " He will have 
 proposed to Miss Croy. That s what has hap 
 pened." 
 
 Her reserve continued. " It s you who must 
 judge." 
 
 " Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done 
 so too only she, poor lady, wrong. Miss Croy s 
 refusal of him will have struck him " Densher con 
 tinued to make it out " as a phenomenon requiring 
 a reason." 
 
 " And you ve been clear to him a? the reason? " 
 
 " Not too clear since I m sticking here, and 
 since that has been a fact to make his descent upon 
 Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has 
 believed," said Densher bravely, " that I may have 
 been a reason at Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same 
 time have been up to something in Venice." 
 
 Mrs. Stringham took her courage from his own. 
 " Up to something? Up to what? " 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " God knows. To some game/ as they say. To 
 some deviltry. To some duplicity." 
 
 " Which of course," Mrs. Stringham observed, 
 " is a monstrous supposition." Her companion, 
 after a stiff minute long, sensibly, for each fell- 
 away from her again, and then added to it another 
 minute, which he spent once more looking out with 
 his hands in his pockets. This was no answer, he 
 perfectly knew, to what she had dropped, and it even 
 seemed to state, for his own ears, that no answer was 
 possible. She left him to himself, and he was glad 
 she had declined, for their further colloquy, the ad 
 vantage of lights. These would have been an 
 advantage mainly to herself. Yet she got her bene 
 fit, too;- even from the absence of them. It came 
 out in her very tone when at last she addressed him 
 so differently, for confidence in words she had 
 already used. " If Sir Luke himself asks it of you as 
 something you can do for him, will you deny to Milly 
 herself what she has been made so dreadfully to be 
 lieve? " 
 
 Oh, how he knew he hung back ! But at last he 
 said : " You re absolutely certain then that she 
 does believe it? " 
 
 " Certain? " She appealed to their whole situa 
 tion. " Judge ! " 
 
 He took his time again to judge. " Do you be 
 lieve it? " 
 
 He was conscious that his own appeal pressed her 
 hard; it eased him a little that her answer must be a 
 
 318 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 pain to her discretion. She answered, none the less, 
 and he was truly the harder pressed. " What I be 
 lieve will inevitably depend more or less on your ac 
 tion. You can perfectly settle it if you care. I 
 promise to believe you down to the ground if, to 
 save her life, you consent to a denial." 
 
 " But a denial, when it comes to that confound 
 the whole thing, don t you see ! of exactly what? " 
 
 It was as if he were hoping she would narrow; but 
 in fact she enlarged. " Of everything." 
 
 Everything had never even yet seemed to him so 
 incalculably much. " Oh ! " he simply moaned into 
 the gloom. 
 
XXXII 
 
 THE near Thursday, coming nearer and bringing Sir 
 Luke Strett, brought also blessedly an abatement of 
 other rigours. The weather changed, the stubborn 
 storm yielded, and the autumn sunshine, baffled for 
 many days, but now hot and almost vindictive, came 
 into its own again and, with an almost audible paean, 
 a suffusion of bright sound that was one with the 
 bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed 
 and plashed and called and chimed again; the air 
 was like a clap of hands, and the scattered pinks, yel 
 lows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of 
 vivid stuffs, a laying down of fine carpets. Densher 
 rejoiced in this on the occasion of his going to the 
 station to meet the great doctor. He went after 
 consideration, which, as he was constantly aware, 
 was at present his imposed, his only, way of doing 
 anything. That was where the event had landed 
 him where no event in his life had landed him be 
 fore. He had thought, no doubt, from the day he 
 was born, much more than he had acted; except in 
 deed that he remembered thoughts a few of them 
 which at the moment of their coming to him had 
 thrilled him almost like adventures. But anything 
 like his actual state he had not, as to the prohibition 
 
 320 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of impulse, accident, range the prohibition, in 
 other words, of freedom hitherto known. The 
 great oddity was that if he had felt his arrival, so few 
 weeks back, especially as an adventure, nothing 
 could now less resemble one than the fact of his stay 
 ing. It would be an adventure to break away, to 
 depart, to go back, above all, to London, and tell 
 Kate Croy he had done so; but there was something 
 of the merely, the almost meanly, obliged and in 
 volved sort in his going on as he was. That was the 
 effect in particular of Mrs. Stringham s visit, which 
 had left him as with such a taste in his mouth of what 
 he couldn t do. It had made this quantity clear 
 to him, and yet had deprived him of the sense, 
 the other sense, of what, for a refuge, he possibly 
 could. 
 
 It was but a small make-believe of freedom, he 
 knew, to go to the station for Sir Luke. Nothing 
 equally free, at all events, had he yet turned over so 
 long. What then was his odious position but that, 
 again and again, he was afraid? He stiffened him 
 self under this consciousness as if it had been a tax 
 levied by a tyrant. He had not at any time pro 
 posed to himself to live long enough for fear to pre 
 ponderate in his life. Such was simply the advan 
 tage it had actually got of him. He was afraid, for 
 instance, that an advance to his distinguished friend 
 might prove for him somehow a pledge or a commit 
 tal. He was afraid of it as a current that would 
 draw him too far; yet he thought with an equal 
 VOL. II. -2i 221 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 shrinking of being shabby, being poor, through fear. 
 What finally prevailed with him was the reflection 
 that, whatever might happen, the great man had, 
 after that occasion at the palace, their friend s brief 
 sacrifice to society and the hour of Mrs. String- 
 ham s appeal had brought it well to the surface 
 shown him marked benevolence. Mrs. Stringham s 
 comments on the relation in which Milly had placed 
 them made him it was unmistakable feel things 
 he perhaps hadn t felt. It was in fact in the spirit of 
 seeking a chance to feel again adequately whatever 
 it was he had missed it was, no doubt, in that spirit, 
 so far as it went a stroke for freedom, that Densher, 
 arriving betimes, paced the platform before the 
 train came in. Only, after it had come and he had 
 presented himself at the door of Sir Luke s com 
 partment with everything that followed only, as 
 the situation developed, the sense of an anticlimax 
 to so many intensities deprived his apprehensions 
 and hesitations even of the scant dignity they might 
 claim. He could scarce have said if the visitor s 
 manner less showed the remembrance that might 
 have suggested expectation, or made shorter work 
 of surprise in the presence of the fact. 
 
 Sir Luke had clean forgotten so Densher read 
 the rather remarkable young man he had formerly 
 gone about with, though he picked him up again, on 
 the spot, with one large quiet look. The young 
 man felt himself so picked, and the thing immediate 
 ly affected him as the proof of a splendid economy. 
 
 322 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 In presence of all the waste with which he was now 
 connected, the exhibition was of a nature quite no 
 bly to admonish him. The eminent pilgrim, in the 
 train, all the way, had used the hours as he had 
 needed, thinking not a moment in advance of what 
 finally awaited him. An exquisite case awaited him 
 of which, in this queer way, the remarkable young 
 man was an outlying part; but the single motion of 
 his face, the motion into which Densher, on the plat 
 form, lightly stirred its stillness, was his first re 
 newed cognition. If, however, he had suppressed 
 the matter by leaving Victoria he would suppress 
 now, in a minute, instead, whatever else suited. The 
 perception of this became as a symbol for Densher of 
 the whole pitch, so far as Densher himself might be 
 concerned, of his visit. One saw, our friend further 
 meditated, everything that, in contact, he appeared 
 to accept if only, for much, not to trouble to sink 
 it : what one didn t see was the inward use he made 
 of it. Densher began wondering, at the great water- 
 steps outside, what use he would make of the anom 
 aly of their having there to separate. Eugenio had 
 been on the platform, in the respectful rear, and the 
 gondola from the palace, under his direction, be 
 stirred itself, with its attaching mixture of alacrity 
 and dignity, on their coming out of the station to 
 gether. Densher didn t at all mind now that, he 
 himself of necessity refusing a seat, on the deep black 
 cushions, beside the guest of the palace, he had 
 Milly s three emissaries for spectators; and this, sus- 
 
 323 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ceptibility, he also knew, it was something to have 
 left behind. He only, vaguely, smiled down from 
 the steps they could see him, the donkeys, as shut 
 out as they would. " I don t/ he said with a sad 
 headshake, " go there now." 
 
 " Oh ! " Sir Luke Strett returned, and made no 
 more of it; so that the thing was splendid, Densher 
 fairly thought, as an inscrutability quite inevitable 
 and unconscious. His friend appeared not even to 
 make of it that he supposed that it might be for re 
 spect to the crisis. He didn t moreover afterwards 
 make much more of anything after the classic 
 craft, that is, obeying in the main Pasquale s inimita 
 ble stroke from the poop, had performed the ma 
 noeuvre by which it presented, receding, a back, so to 
 speak, rendered positively graceful by the high black 
 hump of its felze. Densher watched the gondola 
 out of sight he heard Pasquale s cry, borne to him 
 across the water, for the sharp, firm swerve into a 
 side-canal, a short cut to the palace. He had no 
 gondola of his own; it was his habit never to take 
 one ; and he humbly as in Venice it is humble 
 walked away, though not without having, for some 
 time longer, stood, as if fixed, where the guest of 
 the palace had left him. It was strange enough, but 
 he found himself, as never yet, and as he couldn t 
 have reckoned, in presence of the truth that was the 
 truest about Milly. He couldn t have reckoned on 
 the force of the difference instantly made for it 
 was all in the air as he heard Pasquale s cry and saw 
 
 324 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 the boat to disappear by the mere visibility, on the 
 spot, of the personage summoned to her aid. He 
 had not only never been near the facts of her condi 
 tion which had been such a blessing for him; he 
 had not only, with all the world, hovered outside an 
 impenetrable ring fence, within which there reigned 
 a kind of expensive vagueness, made up of smiles 
 and silences and beautiful fictions and priceless ar 
 rangements, all strained to breaking; but he had 
 also, with everyone else, as he now felt, actively fos 
 tered suppressions which were in the direct interest 
 of everyone s good manner, everyone s pity, every 
 one s really quite generous ideal. It was a conspiracy 
 of silence, as the cliche went, to which no one had 
 made an exception, the great smudge of mortality 
 across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, 
 finding in no quarter a surface of spirit or of speech 
 that consented to reflect it. " The mere aesthetic in 
 stinct of mankind ! " our young man had more 
 
 than once, in the connection, said to himself; letting 
 the rest of the proposition drop, but touching again 
 thus sufficiently on the outrage even to taste in 
 volved in one s having to see. So then it had been a 
 general conscious fool s paradise, from which the 
 specified had been chased like a dangerous animal. 
 What therefore had at present befallen was that the 
 specified, standing all the while at the gate, had now 
 come in, as in Sir Luke Strett s person, and quite on 
 such a scale as to fill out the whole of the space. 
 Densher s nerves, absolutely his heart-beats too, had 
 
 3 2 5 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 measured the change before he, on this occasion, 
 moved away. 
 
 The facts of physical suffering, of incurable pain, 
 of the chance grimly narrowed, had been made, at a 
 stroke, intense, and this was to be the way he was 
 now to feel them. The clearance of the air, in short, 
 making vision not only possible but inevitable, the 
 one thing left to be thankful for was the breadth of 
 Sir Luke s shoulders, which, should one be able to 
 keep in line with them, might in some degree inter 
 pose. It was, however, far from plain to Densher 
 for the first day or two that he was again to see his 
 distinguished friend at all. That he could not, on 
 any basis actually serving, return to the palace 
 that was as solid to him, every whit, as the other 
 feature of his case, the fact of the publicity attaching 
 to his proscription through his not having taken 
 himself off. He had been seen often enough in the 
 Leporelli gondola. As, accordingly, he was not, to 
 any appearance, destined to meet Sir Luke about 
 the town, where the latter would have neither time 
 nor taste to lounge, nothing more would occur be 
 tween them unless the great man should surprisingly 
 wait upon him. His doing that, Densher further 
 reflected, wouldn t even simply depend on Mrs. 
 Stringham s having decided to as they might say 
 turn him on. It would depend as well for there 
 would be practically some difference to her on her 
 actually attempting it; and it would depend above all 
 on what Sir Luke would make of such an overture. 
 
 326 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Densher had, for that matter, his own view of the 
 amount, to say nothing of the particular sort, of 
 response it might expect from him. He had his 
 own view of the ability of such a personage even to 
 understand such an appeal. To what extent could 
 he be prepared, and what importance, in fine, could 
 he attach? Densher asked himself these questions, 
 in truth, to put his own position at the worst. He 
 should miss the great man completely unless the 
 great man should come to see him, and the great 
 man could only come to see him for a purpose 
 unsupposable. Therefore he wouldn t come at all, 
 and therefore there was nothing to hope. 
 
 It wasn t in the least that Densher hoped for a 
 visit in that particular light; but it pressed on him 
 that there were few possible diversions he could af 
 ford now to miss. Nothing in his predicament was 
 so odd as that, incontestably afraid of himself, he was 
 not afraid of Sir Luke. He had an impression, which 
 he clung to, based on a previous taste of his com 
 pany, that he would somehow let him off. The 
 truth about Milly perched on his shoulders and 
 sounded in his tread, became by the fact of his pres 
 ence the name and the form, for the time, of every 
 thing in the place; but it didn t, for the difference, 
 sit in his face, the face so squarely and easily turned 
 to Densher at the earlier season. His presence on 
 the first occasion, not as the result of a summons, but 
 as a friendly fancy of his own, had had quite another 
 value; and though our young man could scarce re- 
 
 327 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 gard that value as recoverable, he yet reached out in 
 imagination to a renewal of the old contact. He 
 didn t propose, as he privately and forcibly phrased 
 the matter, to be a hog; but there was something, 
 after all, he did want for himself. It was something 
 this stuck to him that Sir Luke would have had for 
 him if it hadn t been impossible. These were his 
 worst days, the two or three; those on which even the 
 sense of the tension at the palace didn t much help 
 him not to feel that his destiny made but light of him. 
 He had never been, as he judged it, so down. In 
 mean conditions, without books, without society, al 
 most without money, he had nothing to do but to 
 wait. His main support really was his original idea, 
 which didn t leave him, of waiting for the deepest 
 depth his predicament could sink him to. Fate 
 would invent, if he but gave it time, some refinement 
 of the horrible. 
 
 It was just inventing meanwhile this suppres 
 sion of Sir Luke. When the third day came 
 without a sign he knew what to think. He had 
 given Mrs. Stringham, during her call on him, no 
 such answer as would have armed her faith, and the 
 ultimatum she had described as ready for him when 
 he should be ready was therefore if on no other 
 ground than her want of this power to answer for 
 him not to be presented. The presentation, 
 heaven knew, was not what he desired. 
 
 That was not, either, we hasten to declare as 
 Densher then soon enough saw the idea with 
 
 3*8 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 which Sir Luke finally stood before him again. For 
 stand before him again he finally did; just when our 
 friend had gloomily embraced the belief that the 
 limit of his power to absent himself from London 
 obligations would have been reached. Four or five 
 days, exclusive of journeys, represented the largest 
 supposable sacrifice to a head not crowned on 
 the part of one of the highest medical lights in the 
 world; so that, really, when the personage in ques 
 tion, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in 
 the doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision 
 that for the instant cut like a knife. It spoke, the 
 fact, in a single dreadful word, of the magnitude 
 he shrank from calling it anything else of Milly s 
 case. The great man had not gone then, and an 
 immense surrender to her immense need was so ex 
 pressed in it that some effect, some help, some hope, 
 were, flagrantly, part of the expression. It was for 
 Densher, with his reaction from disappointment, as 
 if he were conscious of ten things at once the fore 
 most being that, just conceivably, since Sir Luke 
 was still there, she had been saved. Close upon its 
 heels, however, and quite as sharply came the sense 
 that the crisis plainly, even now, to be prolonged 
 for him was to have none of that sound simplicity. 
 Not only had his visitor not dropped in to gossip 
 about Milly, he had not dropped in to mention her 
 at all; he had dropped in fairly to show that during 
 the brief remainder of his stay, the end of which was 
 now in sight, as little as possible of that was to be 
 
 329 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 looked for. The demonstration, such as it was, was 
 in the key of their previous acquaintance, and it was 
 their previous acquaintance that had made him 
 come. He was not to stop longer than the Satur 
 day next at hand, but there were things of interest 
 he should like to see again meanwhile. It was for 
 these things of interest, for Venice and the oppor 
 tunity of Venice, for a prowl or two, as he called it, 
 and a turn about, that he had looked his young man 
 up producing on the latter s part, as soon as the 
 case had, with the lapse of a further twenty-four 
 hours, so defined itself, the most incongruous, yet 
 most beneficent revulsion. Nothing could in fact 
 have been more monstrous on the surface and 
 Densher was well aware of it than the relief he 
 found, during this short period, in the tacit drop of 
 all reference to the palace, in neither hearing news 
 nor asking for it. That was what had come out for 
 him, on his visitor s entrance, even in the very sec 
 onds of suspense that were connecting the fact also 
 directly and intensely with Milly s state. He had 
 come to say he had saved her he had come, as from 
 Mrs. Stringham, to say how she might be saved 
 he had come, in spite of Mrs. Stringham, to say she 
 was lost : the distinct throbs of hope, of fear, simul 
 taneous for all their distinctness, merged their iden 
 tity in a bound of the heart just as immediate and 
 which remained after they had passed. It simply 
 did wonders for him that was the truth that Sir 
 Luke was, as he would have said, quiet. 
 
 33 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 The result of it was the oddest consciousness as of 
 a blessed calm after a storm. He had been trying, 
 for weeks, as we know, to keep superlatively still, and 
 trying it largely in solitude and silence; but he 
 looked back on it now as on the heat of fever. The 
 real, the right stillness was this particular form of 
 society. They walked together and they talked, 
 looked up pictures again and recovered impressions 
 Sir Luke knew just what he wanted; haunted a 
 little the dealers in old wares; sat down at Florian s 
 for rest and mild drinks; blessed, above all, the grand 
 weather, a bath of warm air, a pageant of autumn 
 light. Once or twice, while they rested, the great 
 man closed his eyes keeping them so for some 
 minutes while his companion, the more easily watch 
 ing his face for it, made private reflections on the 
 subject of lost sleep. He had been up at night with 
 her he in person, for hours; but this was all he 
 showed of it, and this was apparently to remain his 
 nearest approach to an allusion. The extraordinary 
 thing was that Densher could take it in perfectly as 
 evidence, could turn cold at the image looking out 
 of it; and yet that he could at the same time not in 
 termit a throb of his response to accepted liberation. 
 The liberation was an experience that held its own, 
 and he continued to know why, in spite of his de 
 serts, in spite of his folly, in spite of everything, he 
 had so fondly hoped for it. He had hoped for it, 
 had sat in his room there waiting for it, because he 
 had thus divined in it, should it come, some power 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 to let him off. He was being let off; dealt with in 
 the only way that didn t aggravate his responsibility. 
 The" beauty was, too, that this wasn t on system or 
 on any basis of intimate knowledge; it was just by 
 being a man of the world and by knowing life, by 
 feeling the real, that Sir Luke did him good. 
 There had been, in all the case, too many women. 
 A man s sense of it, another man s, changed the air; 
 and he wondered what man, had he chosen, would 
 have been more to his purpose than this one. He 
 was large and easy that was the great thing; he 
 knew what mattered and what didn t; he distin 
 guished between the just grounds and the unjust for 
 fussing. One was thus if one were concerned 
 with him or exposed to him at all in his hands for 
 whatever he should do, and not much less affected by 
 his mercy than one might have been by his rigour. 
 The beautiful thing it did come to that was the 
 way he carried off, as one might fairly call it, the 
 business of making odd things natural. Nothing, 
 if they hadn t taken it so, could have exceeded the 
 unexplained oddity, between them, of Densher s 
 now complete detachment from the poor ladies at 
 the palace; nothing could have exceeded the no less 
 marked anomaly of the great man s own abstentions 
 of speech. He made, as he had done when they 
 had met at the station, nothing whatever of any 
 thing; and the effect of it, Densher would have said, 
 was a relation with him quite resembling that of doc 
 tor and patient. One took the cue from him as one 
 
 33 2 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 might have taken a dose except that the cue was 
 pleasant in the taking. 
 
 That was why one could leave it to his tacit ..dis 
 cretion, why, for the three or four days, again and 
 again, Densher did so leave it; merely wondering a 
 little, at the most, on the eve of Saturday, the an 
 nounced term of the episode. Waiting once more, 
 on this latter occasion, the Saturday morning, for 
 Sir Luke s reappearance at the station, our friend had 
 to recognise the drop of his own borrowed ease, the 
 result, naturally enough, of the prospect of losing 
 a support. The difficulty was that, on such lines as 
 had served them, the support was Sir Luke s per 
 sonal jj^esence. Would he go without leaving some 
 substitute for that? and without breaking, either, 
 his silence in respect to his errand? Densher was 
 in still deeper ignorance than at the hour of his call, 
 and what was truly prodigious at so supreme a 
 moment was that as was immediately to ap 
 pear no gleam of light on what he had been liv 
 ing with for a week found its way out of him. 
 What he had been doing was proof of a huge 
 interest as well as of a huge fee; yet when 
 the Leporelli gondola again, and somewhat tar 
 dily, approached, his companion, watching from 
 the water-steps, studied his fine closed face as 
 much as ever in vain. It was like a lesson, from the 
 highest authority, on the subject of the relevant, so 
 that its blankness affected Densher, of a sudden, al 
 most as a cruelty, feeling it quite awfully compatible, 
 
 333 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as he did, with Milly s having ceased to exist. And 
 the suspense continued after they had passed to 
 gether, as time was short, directly into the station, 
 where Eugenio, in the field early, was mounting 
 guard over the compartment he had secured. The 
 strain, though probably lasting, at the carriage-door, 
 but a couple of minutes, prolonged itself so for Den- 
 sher s nerves that he involuntarily directed a long 
 look at Eugenio, who met it, however, as only Eu 
 genio could. Sir Luke s attention was given for the 
 time to the right bestowal of his numerous effects, 
 about which he was particular, and Densher fairly 
 found himself, so far as silence could go, questioning 
 the representative of the palace. It didn t humiliate 
 him now; it didn t humiliate him even to feel that 
 that personage exactly knew how little he satisfied 
 him. Eugenio resembled to that extent Sir Luke 
 to the extent of the extraordinary things with 
 which his facial habit was compatible. By the 
 time, however, that Densher had taken from it all 
 its possessor intended Sir Luke was free and with 
 a hand out for farewell. He offered the hand at 
 first without speech; only on meeting his eyes could 
 our young man see that they had never yet so com 
 pletely looked at him. It was never, with Sir Luke, 
 that they looked harder at one time than at another; 
 but they looked longer, and this, even a shade of it, 
 might mean, in him, everything. It meant, Den 
 sher for ten seconds believed, that Milly Theale was 
 dead; so that the word at last spoken made him start. 
 
 334 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " I shall come back." 
 
 " Then she s better?" 
 
 " I shall come back within the month," Sir Luke 
 repeated without heeding the question. He had 
 dropped Densher s hand, but he held him otherwise 
 still. " I bring you a message from Miss Theale," 
 he said as if they had not spoken of her. " I m com 
 missioned to ask you from her to go and see her." 
 
 Densher s rebound from his supposition had a 
 violence that his stare betrayed. " She asks me? " 
 
 Sir Luke had got into the carriage, the door of 
 which the guard had closed; but he spoke again as 
 he stood at the window, bending a little but not lean 
 ing out. " She told me she would like it, and I 
 promised that, as I expected to find you here, I 
 would let you know." 
 
 Densher, on the platform, took it from him, but 
 what he took brought the blood into his face quite 
 as what he had had to take from Mrs. Stringham. 
 And he was also bewildered. " Then she can re 
 ceive ? " 
 
 " She can receive you." 
 
 " And you re coming back ? " 
 
 " Oh, because I must. She s not to move. She s 
 to stay. I come to her." 
 
 " I see, I see," said Densher, who indeed did see 
 saw the sense of his friend s words and saw beyond it 
 as well. What Mrs. Stringham had announced, and 
 what he had yet expected not to have to face, had 
 then come. Sir Luke had kept it for the last, but 
 
 335 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 there it was, and the colourless, compact form it was 
 now taking the tone of one man of the world to an 
 other, who, after what had happened, would under 
 stand was but the characteristic manner of his 
 appeal. Densher was to understand remarkably 
 much; and the great thing, certainly, was to show 
 that he did. " I m particularly obliged, I ll go to 
 day." He brought that out, but in his pause, while 
 they continued to look at each other, the train had 
 slowly creaked into motion. There was time but for 
 one more word, and the young man chose it, out of 
 twenty, with intense concentration. " Then she s 
 
 better? " 
 
 Sir Luke s face was wonderful. " Yes, she s bet 
 ter." And he kept it at the window while the train 
 receded, holding him with it still. It was to be his 
 nearest approach to the uttered reference they had 
 hitherto so successfully avoided. If it stood for 
 everything, never had a face had to stand for more. 
 So Densher, held after the train had gone, sharply 
 reflected; so he reflected, asking himself into what 
 abyss it pushed him, even while conscious of retreat 
 ing under the sustained observation of Eugenio. 
 
 336 
 
BOOK TENTH 
 
T 
 
 BOOK TENTH 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 HEN it has been what do you say? a 
 whole fortnight? without your making a 
 sign?" 
 
 Kate put that to him distinctly, in the December 
 dusk of Lancaster Gate, and on the matter of the 
 time he had been back; but he saw with it, straight 
 way, that she was as admirably true as ever to her 
 instinct which was a system as well of not admit 
 ting the possibility between them of small resent 
 ments, of trifles to trip up their general trust. That 
 by itself, the renewed beauty of it, would, at this fresh 
 sight of her, have stirred him to his depths if some 
 thing else, something no less vivid, but quite sepa 
 rate, hadn t stirred him still more. It was in seeing 
 her that he felt what their interruption had been, and 
 that they met across it even as persons whose adven 
 tures, on either side, in time and space, of the nature 
 of perils and exiles, had had a peculiar strangeness. 
 He wondered if he were as different for her as she 
 herself had immediately appeared : which was but his 
 way indeed of taking it in, with his thrill, that even 
 going by the mere first look she had never been so 
 
 339 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 handsome. That fact bloomed for him, in the fire 
 light and lamplight that glowed their welcome 
 through the London fog, as the flower of her differ 
 ence; just as her difference itself part of which was 
 her striking him as older in a degree for which no 
 mere couple of months could account was the fruit 
 of their intimate relation. If she was different it 
 was because they had chosen together that she 
 should be, and she might now, as a proof of their 
 wisdom, their success, of the reality of what had hap 
 pened of what in fact, for the spirit of each, was 
 still happening been showing it to him for pride. 
 His having returned and yet kept, for numbered 
 days, so still, had been, he was quite aware, the first 
 point he should have to tackle; with which con 
 sciousness indeed he had made a clean breast of it in 
 finally addressing Mrs. Lowder a note that had led 
 to his present visit. He had written to Aunt Maud, 
 as the finer way; and it would doubtless have been 
 to be noted that he needed no effort not to write to 
 Kate. Venice was three weeks behind him he had 
 come up slowly; but it was still as if even in London 
 he must conform to her law. That was exactly how 
 he was able, with his faith in her steadiness, to ap 
 peal to her feeling for the situation and explain his 
 stretched delicacy. He had come to tell her every 
 thing, so far as occasion would serve them; and if 
 nothing was more distinct than that his slow jour 
 ney, his waits, his delay to reopen communication 
 had kept pace with this resolve, so the inconse- 
 
 340 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 quence was doubtless at bottom but one of the acci 
 dents of intensity. He was gathering everything 
 up, everything he should tell her. That took time, 
 and the proof was that, as he felt on the spot, he 
 couldn t have brought it all with him before this af 
 ternoon. He had brought it, to the last syllable, and, 
 out of the quantity it wouldn t be hard as he in 
 fact found to produce, for Kate s understanding, 
 his first reason. 
 
 " A fortnight, yes it was a fortnight Friday; but 
 I ve only been keeping in, you see, with our wonder 
 ful system." He was so easily justified as that this 
 of itself plainly enough prevented her saying she 
 didn t see. Their wonderful system was accordingly 
 still vivid for her; and such a gage of its equal vivid 
 ness for himself was precisely what she must have 
 asked. He hadn t even to dot his i s beyond the 
 remark that, on the very face of it, she would remem 
 ber, their wonderful system attached no premium to 
 rapidities of transition. " I couldn t quite don t 
 you know? take my rebound with a rush; and I 
 suppose I ve been instinctively hanging off to mini 
 mise, for you as well as for myself, the appearance 
 of rushing. There s a sort of fitness. But I knew 
 you d understand." It was presently as if she really 
 understood so well that she almost appealed from 
 his insistence yet looking at him too, he was not 
 unconscious, as if this mastery of fitnesses was a 
 strong sign for her of what she had done to him. He 
 might have struck her as expert for contingencies 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in the very degree in which, in Venice, she had 
 struck him as expert. He smiled over his plea for a 
 renewal with stages and steps, a thing shaded, as 
 they might say, and graduated; though finely as 
 she must respond she met the smile but as she had 
 met his entrance five minutes before. Her soft 
 gravity at that moment which was yet not solem 
 nity, but the look of a consciousness charged with 
 life to the brim and wishing not to overflow had 
 not qualified her welcome; what had done this being 
 much more the presence in the room, for a couple of 
 minutes, of the footman who had introduced him 
 and who had been interrupted in preparing the tea- 
 table. 
 
 Mrs. Lowder s reply to Densher s note had 
 been to appoint the tea-hour, five o clock on Sun 
 day, for his seeing them. Kate had thereafter wired 
 him, without a signature, " Come on Sunday before 
 time about a quarter-of-an-hour, which will help 
 us "; and he had arrived therefore, scrupulously, at 
 twenty minutes to five. Kate was alone in the 
 room, and she had not delayed to tell him that Aunt 
 Maud, as she had happily gathered, was to be, for 
 the interval not long, but precious engaged with 
 an old servant, retired and pensioned, who had been 
 paying her a visit and who was, within the hour, to 
 depart again for the suburbs. They were to have 
 the scrap of time, after the withdrawal of the foot 
 man, to themselves, and there was a moment when, 
 in spite of their wonderful system, in spite of the pro- 
 
 342 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 scription of rushes and the propriety of shades, it 
 proclaimed itself indeed precious. And all without 
 prejudice that was what kept it noble to Kate s 
 high sobriety and her beautiful self-command. If 
 he had his discretion she had her perfect manner, 
 which was her decorum. Mrs. Stringham, he had, 
 to finish with the question of his delay, furthermore 
 observed, would have written to Mrs. Lowder of his 
 having quitted the place; so that it wasn t as if he 
 were hoping to cheat them. They would know he 
 was no longer there. 
 
 " Yes, we ve known it." 
 
 " And you continue to hear? " 
 
 " From Mrs. Stringham? Certainly. By which 
 I mean Aunt Maud does." 
 
 " Then you ve recent news?" 
 
 Her face showed a wonder. " Up to within a 
 day or two I believe. But haven t you? " 
 
 " No I ve heard nothing." And it was now that 
 he felt how much he had to tell her. " I don t get 
 letters. But I ve been sure Mrs. Lowder does." 
 With which he added : " Then of course you 
 know." He waited as if she would show what she 
 knew; but she only showed, in silence, the dawn of 
 a surprise that she couldn t control. There was 
 nothing but for him to ask what he wanted. " Is 
 Miss Theale alive? " 
 
 Kate s look, at this, was large. " Don t you 
 know? " 
 
 " How should I, my dear in the absence of 
 343 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 everything? " And he himself stared as for light. 
 " She s dead? " Then as, with her eyes on him, she 
 slowly shook her head, he uttered a strange " Not 
 yet? " 
 
 It came out in Kate s face that there were several 
 questions on her lips, but the one she presently put 
 was : " Is it very terrible? " 
 
 " The manner of her so consciously and helplessly 
 dying? " He had to think a moment. " Well, yes 
 since you ask me : very terrible to me so far as, 
 before I came away, I had any sight of it. But I don t 
 think," he went on, " that though I ll try I can 
 quite tell you what it was, what it is, for me. That s 
 why I probably just sounded to you," he explained, 
 " as if I hoped it might be over." 
 
 She gave him her quietest attention, but he by this 
 time saw that, so far as telling her all was concerned, 
 she would be divided between the wish and the re 
 luctance to hear it; between the curiosity that, not 
 unnaturally, would consume her and the opposing 
 scruple of a respect for misfortune. The more she 
 studied him too and he had never so felt her closely 
 attached to his face the more the choice of an atti 
 tude would become impossible to her. There 
 would be a feeling, simply, uppermost, and the feel 
 ing wouldn t be eagerness. This perception grew in 
 him fast, and he even, with his imagination, had for 
 a moment the quick forecast of her possibly break 
 ing out at him, should he go too far, with a wonder 
 ful: "What horrors are you telling me?" It 
 
 344 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 would have the sound wouldn t it be open to him 
 fairly to bring that out himself? of a repudiation, 
 for pity and almost for shame, of everything that, in 
 Venice, had passed between them. Not that she 
 would confess to any return upon herself; not that 
 she would let compunction or horror give her away; 
 but it was in the air for him yes that she wouldn t 
 want details, that she positively wouldn t take them, 
 and that, if he would generously understand it from 
 her, she would prefer to keep him down. Nothing, 
 however, was more definite for him than that he, at 
 the same time, must remain down but so far as it 
 suited him. Something rose strong within him 
 against his not being free with her. She had been 
 free enough, about it all, three months before, with 
 him. That was what she was at present only in the 
 sense of treating him handsomely. " I can believe," 
 she said with perfect consideration, " how dreadful 
 for you much of it must have been." 
 
 He didn t, however, take this up; there were 
 things about which he wished first to be clear. 
 " There s no other possibility, by what you now 
 know? I mean for her life." And he had just to 
 insist she would say as little as she could. " She is 
 dying? " 
 
 " She s dying." 
 
 It was strange to him, in the matter of Milly, that 
 Lancaster Gate could make him any surer; yet what 
 in the world, in the matter of Milly, was not strange? 
 Nothing was so much so as his own behaviour his 
 
 345 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 present as well as his past. He could but do as he 
 must. " Has Sir Luke Strett," he asked, " gone 
 back to her? " 
 
 " I believe he s there now." 
 
 " Then," said Densher, " it s the end." 
 
 She took it in silence for whatever he deemed it to 
 be; but she spoke otherwise after a minute. You 
 won t know, unless you ve perhaps seen him your 
 self, that Aunt Maud has been to him." 
 
 " Oh ! " Densher exclaimed, with nothing to add 
 to it. 
 
 " For real news," Kate herself after an instant 
 added. 
 
 " She hasn t thought Mrs. Stringham s real? " 
 
 " It s perhaps only I who haven t. It was on Aunt 
 Maud s trying again, three days ago, to see him, 
 that she heard, at his house, of his having gone. He 
 had started, I believe, some days before." 
 
 " And won t then by this time be back? " 
 
 Kate shook her head. " She sent yesterday to 
 know." 
 
 " He won t leave her then " Densher had turned 
 it over " while she lives. He ll stay to the end. 
 He s magnificent." 
 
 " I think she is," said Kate. 
 
 It had made them again look at each other long; 
 and what it drew from him, rather oddly, was : " Oh, 
 you don t know ! " 
 
 " Well, she s after all my friend." 
 
 It was somehow, with her handsome demur, the 
 346 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 answer he had least expected of her; and it fanned 
 with its breath, for a brief instant, his old sense of 
 her variety. " I see. You would have been sure of 
 it. You were sure of it." 
 
 " Of course I was sure of it." 
 
 And a pause again, with this, fell upon them; 
 which Densher, however, presently broke. " If you 
 don t think Mrs. Stringham s news real/ what do 
 you think of Lord Mark s? " 
 
 She didn t think anything. " Lord Mark s? " 
 
 " You haven t seen him? " 
 
 " Not since he saw her." 
 
 " You ve known then of his seeing her? " 
 
 " Certainly. From Mrs. Stringham." 
 
 " And have you known," Densher went on, "the 
 rest?" 
 
 Kate wondered. " What rest? " 
 
 " Why, everything. It was his visit that she 
 couldn t stand it was what then took place that 
 simply killed her." 
 
 " Oh ! " Kate seriously breathed. But she had 
 turned pale, and he saw that, whatever her degree of 
 ignorance of these connections, it was not put on. 
 " Mrs. Stringham hasn t said that" 
 
 He observed, none the less, that she didn t ask 
 what had then taken place; and he went on with his 
 contribution to her knowledge. " The way it af 
 fected her was that it made her give up. She has 
 given up beyond all power to care again, and that s 
 why she s dying." 
 
 347 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh ! " Kate once more slowly sighed, but with a 
 vagueness that made him pursue. 
 
 " One can see now that she was living by will 
 which was very much what you originally told me of 
 her." 
 
 " I remember. That was it." 
 
 " Well then, her will, at a given moment, broke 
 down, and the collapse was determined by that fel 
 low s dastardly stroke. He told her, the scoundrel, 
 that you and I are secretly engaged." 
 
 Kate gave a quick glare. " But he doesn t know 
 it!" 
 
 " That doesn t matter. She did, when he had left 
 her. Besides," Densher added, " he does know it. 
 When," he continued, " did you last see him? " 
 
 But she was lost now in the picture before her. 
 " That was what made her worse? " 
 
 He watched her take it in it so added to her 
 sombre beauty. Then he spoke as Mrs. Stringham 
 had spoken. " She turned her face to the wall." 
 
 " Poor Milly!" said Kate. 
 
 Slight as it was, her beauty somehow gave it 
 style; so that he continued consistently: "She 
 learned it, you see, too soon since of course one s 
 idea had been that she might never even learn it at all. 
 And she had felt sure through everything we had 
 done of there not being, between us, so far at least 
 as you were concerned, anything she need regard as 
 a warning." 
 
 She took another moment for thought. " It 
 348 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 wasn t through anything you did whatever that 
 may have been that she gained her certainty. It 
 was by the conviction she got from me." 
 
 " Oh, it s very handsome," Densher said, " for 
 you to take your share ! " 
 
 " Do you suppose," Kate asked, " I think of deny 
 ing it?" 
 
 Her look and her tone made him, for the instant, 
 regret his comment, which indeed had been the first 
 that rose to his lips as an effect, absolutely, of what 
 they would have called between them her straight- 
 ness. Her straightness, visibly, was all his own loy 
 alty could ask. Still, that was comparatively beside 
 the mark. " Of course I don t suppose anything 
 but that we re together in our recognitions, our re 
 sponsibilities whatever we choose to call them. It 
 isn t a question for us of apportioning shares or dis 
 tinguishing invidiously among such impressions as 
 it was our idea to give." 
 
 " It wasn t your idea to give impressions," said 
 Kate. 
 
 He met this with a smile that he himself felt, in its 
 strained character, as queer. " Don t go into that ! " 
 
 It was perhaps not as going into it then that she 
 had another idea an idea born, as she showed, of 
 the vision he had just evoked. " Wouldn t it have 
 been possible then to deny the truth of the informa 
 tion? I mean of Lord Mark s." 
 
 Densher wondered. " Possible for whom? " 
 
 " Why, for you." 
 
 349 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 "To tell her that he lied?" 
 
 " To tell her he s mistaken." 
 
 Densher stared he was stupefied; the " possi 
 ble " thus glanced at by Kate being exactly the 
 alternative he had had to face in Venice, and to put 
 utterly away from him. Nothing was stranger than 
 such a difference in their view of it. " And to lie 
 myself, you mean, to do it ? We are, my dear child," 
 he said, " I suppose, still engaged." 
 
 " Of course we re still engaged. But to save her 
 life !" 
 
 He took in for a little the way she talked of it. Of 
 course, it was to be remembered, she had always 
 simplified, and it brought back his sense of the de 
 gree in which, to her energy as compared with his 
 own, many things were easy; the very sense that so 
 often before had moved him to admiration. " Well, 
 if you must know and I want you to be clear about 
 it I didn t even seriously think of a denial to her 
 face. The question of it as possibly saving her 
 was put to me definitely enough; but to turn it over 
 was only to dismiss it. Besides," he added, " it 
 wouldn t have done any good." 
 
 * You mean she would have had no faith in your 
 correction? " She had spoken with a promptitude 
 that affected him of a sudden as almost glib; but he 
 himself paused with the overweight of all he meant, 
 and she meanwhile went on. " Did you try? " 
 
 " I hadn t even the chance." 
 
 Kate maintained her wonderful manner, the man- 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ner of at once having it all before her and yet keep 
 ing it all at its distance. " She wouldn t see you? " 
 
 " Not after your friend had been with her." 
 
 She hesitated. " Couldn t you write? " 
 
 It made him also think, but with a difference. 
 " She had turned her face to the wall." 
 
 This again for a moment hushed her, and they 
 were both too grave now for parenthetic pity. But 
 her interest came out for at least the minimum of 
 light. " She refused even to let you speak to her? " 
 
 " My dear girl," Densher returned, "she was mis 
 erably, prohibitively ill." 
 
 "Well, that was what she had been before." 
 
 " And it didn t prevent? No," Densher admitted, 
 " it didn t; and I don t pretend that she s not mag 
 nificent." 
 
 " She s prodigious," said Kate Croy. 
 
 He looked at her a moment. " So are you, my 
 dear. But so it is," he wound up; " and there we 
 are." 
 
 His idea had been, in advance, that she would per 
 haps sound him much more deeply, asking him, 
 above all, two or three specific things. He had 
 fairly fancied her even wanting to know and trying 
 to find out how far, as the odious phrase was, he and 
 Milly had gone, and how near, by the same token, 
 they had come. He had asked himself if he were 
 prepared to hear her do that, and had had to take for 
 answer that he was prepared of course for every 
 thing. Wasn t he prepared for her ascertaining if 
 
 35 1 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her two or three prophecies had found time to be 
 made true? He had fairly believed himself ready 
 to say whether or no the overture on Milly s part, 
 promised according to the boldest of them, had 
 taken place. But what was in fact blessedly coming 
 to him was that, so far as such things were con 
 cerned, his readiness wouldn t be taxed. Kate s 
 pressure on the question of what had taken place 
 remained so admirably general that even her present 
 inquiry kept itself free of sharpness. u So then that 
 after Lord Mark s interference you never again 
 met?" 
 
 It was what he had been all the while coming to. 
 
 " No; we met once so far as it could be called a 
 meeting. I had stayed I didn t come away." 
 
 " That," said Kate, " was no more than decent." 
 
 " Precisely " he felt himself wonderful; " and I 
 wanted to be no less. She sent for me, I went to 
 her, and that night I left Venice." 
 
 His companion waited. " Wouldn t that then 
 have been your chance? " 
 
 " To refute Lord Mark s story? No, not even if, 
 before her there, I had wanted to. What did it mat 
 ter, either? She was dying." 
 
 " Well," Kate in a manner persisted. " Why not 
 just because she was dying? " She had, however, 
 all her discretion. " But of course, I know, seeing 
 her, you could judge." 
 
 " Of course, seeing her, I could judge. And I 
 did see her ! If I had denied you, moreover," Den- 
 
 352 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 sher said with his eyes on her, " I would have stuck 
 to it." 
 
 She took for a moment the intention of his face. 
 " You mean that, to convince her, you would have 
 insisted or somehow proved ? " 
 
 " I mean that, to convince you, I would have in 
 sisted or somehow proved ! " 
 
 Kate looked for her moment at a loss. " To con 
 vince me ? " 
 
 " I wouldn t have made my denial, in such condi 
 tions, only to take it back afterwards." 
 
 With this quickly light came for her, and with it 
 also her colour flamed. " Oh, you would have 
 broken with me to make your denial a truth? You 
 would have chucked me " she embraced it per 
 fectly " to save your conscience? " 
 
 " I couldn t have done anything else," said Mer- 
 ton Densher. " So you see how right I was not to 
 commit myself, and how little I could dream of it. 
 If it ever again appears to you that I might have done 
 so, remember what I say." 
 
 Kate again considered, but not with the effect at 
 once to which he pointed. " You have fallen in 
 love with her." 
 
 " Well then, say so with a dying woman. Why 
 need you mind, and what does it matter? " 
 
 It came from him, the question, straight out of the 
 intensity of relation and the face-to-face necessity 
 into which, from the first, from his entering the 
 room, they had found themselves thrown; but it 
 
 VOL. IL-a 3 353 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 gave them their most extraordinary moment. 
 " Wait till she is dead ! Mrs. Stringham," Kate 
 added, " is to telegraph." After which, in a tone 
 still different, " For what then," she asked, " did 
 Milly send for you? " 
 
 " It was what I tried to make out before I went. 
 I must tell you moreover that I had no doubt of its 
 really being to give me, as you say, a chance. She 
 believed, I suppose, that I might deny; and what, to 
 my own mind, was before me in going to her was the 
 certainty that she would put me to my test. She 
 wanted from my own lips so I saw it the truth. 
 But I was with her for twenty minutes, and she 
 never asked me for it." 
 
 " She never wanted the truth " Kate had a high 
 headshake. " She wanted you. She would have 
 taken from you what you could give her, and been 
 glad of it even if she had known it false. You 
 might have lied to her from pity, and she have seen 
 you and felt you lie, and yet since it was all for ten 
 derness she would have thanked you and blessed 
 you and clung to you but the more. For that was 
 your strength, my dear man that she loves you 
 with passion." 
 
 " Oh, my strength ! " Densher coldly mur 
 mured. 
 
 " What then, at least, since she had sent for you, 
 was it to ask of you?" And then -quite without 
 irony as he waited a moment to say : " Was it 
 just once more to look at you? " 
 
 354 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " She had nothing to ask of me nothing, that is, 
 but not to stay any longer. She did, to that extent, 
 want to see me. She had supposed, at first after 
 he had been with her that I had seen the propriety 
 of taking myself off. Then, since I hadn t seeing 
 my propriety as I did in another way she found, 
 days later, that I was still there. This," said Den- 
 sher, " affected her." 
 
 " Of course it affected her." 
 
 Again she struck him, for all her dignity, as glib. 
 " If it was, somehow, for her I was still staying, she 
 wished that to end, she wished me to know how 
 little there was need of it. And, as a manner of fare 
 well, she wished herself to tell me so." 
 
 " And she did tell you so? " 
 
 " Face-to-face, yes. Personally, as she desired." 
 
 " And as you of course did." 
 
 " No, Kate," he returned with all their mutual 
 consideration; " not as I did. I hadn t desired it in 
 the least." 
 
 " You only went to oblige her? " 
 
 " To oblige her. And of course also to oblige 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, for myself, certainly, I m glad." 
 
 " Glad? he echoed vaguely the way it rang 
 out. 
 
 " I mean you did quite the right thing. You did 
 it especially in having stayed. But that was all? " 
 Kate went on. " That you mustn t wait? " 
 
 That was really all and in perfect kindness." 
 355 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah, kindness naturally: from the moment she 
 asked of you such a well, such an effort. That you 
 mustn t wait that was the point," Kate added 
 11 to see her die." 
 
 " That was the point, my dear," Densher said. 
 
 " And it took twenty minutes to make it? " 
 
 He thought a little. " I didn t time it to a sec 
 ond. I paid her the visit just like another." 
 
 " Like another person? " 
 
 " Like another visit." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Kate. Which had apparently the 
 effect of slightly arresting his speech an arrest she 
 took advantage of to continue; making with it in 
 deed her nearest approach to an inquiry of the kind 
 against which he had braced himself. " Did she re 
 ceive you in her condition in her room? " 
 
 " Not she," said Merton Densher. " She received 
 me just as usual : in that glorious great salone, in the 
 dress she always wears, from her inveterate corner 
 of her sofa." And his face, for the moment, con 
 veyed the scene, just as hers, equally, embraced it. 
 " Do you remember what you originally said to me 
 of her? " 
 
 " Ah, I ve said so many things." 
 
 " That she wouldn t smell of drugs, that she 
 wouldn t taste of medicine. Well, she didn t." 
 
 " So that it was really almost happy? " 
 
 It took him a long time to answer, occupied as he 
 partly was in feeling how nobody but Kate could 
 have invested such a question with the tone that was 
 
 356 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 perfectly right. She meanwhile, however, patiently 
 waited. " I don t think I can attempt to say now 
 what it was. Some day perhaps. For it would 
 be worth it for us." 
 
 " Some day certainly." She took it as a gener 
 ous promise. Yet she spoke again abruptly. 
 " She ll recover." 
 
 " Well," said Densher, " you ll see." 
 
 She had the air an instant of trying to. " Did 
 she show anything of her feeling? I mean," Kate 
 explained, " of her feeling of having been misled." 
 
 She didn t press hard, surely; but he had just 
 mentioned that he would have rather to glide. 
 " She showed nothing but her beauty and her 
 strength. " 
 
 Then," his companion asked, " what s the use of 
 her strength? " 
 
 He seemed to look about for a use he could 
 name; but he had soon given it up. " She must die, 
 my dear, in her own extraordinary way." 
 
 " Naturally. But I don t see then what proof 
 you have that she was ever alienated." 
 
 " I have the proof that she refused for days and 
 days to see me." 
 
 " But she was ill." 
 
 " That hadn t prevented her as you yourself a 
 moment ago said during the previous time. If it 
 had been only illness it would have .made no differ 
 ence with her." 
 
 " She would still have received you? " 
 357 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " She would still have received me." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Kate, " if you know ! " 
 
 " Of course I know. I know moreover, as well, 
 from Mrs. Stringham." 
 
 " And what does Mrs. Stringham know? " 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 She looked at him longer. " Everything? " 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 " Because you ve told her? " 
 
 " Because she has seen for herself. I ve told her 
 nothing. She s a person who does see." 
 
 Kate thought. " That s by her liking you too. 
 She, as well, is prodigious. You see what interest 
 in a man does. It does it all round. So you needn t 
 be afraid." 
 
 " I m not afraid," said Densher. 
 
 Kate moved from her place then, looking at the 
 clock, which marked five. She gave her attention 
 to the tea-table, where Aunt Maud s huge silver ket 
 tle, which had been exposed to its lamp and which 
 she had not soon enough noticed, was hissing too 
 hard. " Well, it s all most wonderful ! " she ex 
 claimed as she rather too profusely a sign her 
 friend noticed ladled tea into the pot. He watched 
 her a moment at this occupation, coming nearer the 
 table while she put in the steaming water. You ll 
 have some? " 
 
 He hesitated. " Hadn t we better wait ? " 
 
 " For Aunt Maud? " She saw what he meant 
 the deprecation, by their old law, of betrayals of the 
 
 358 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 intimate note. " Oh, you needn t mind now. 
 We ve done it ! " 
 
 " Humbugged her? " 
 
 " Squared her. You ve pleased her." 
 
 Densher mechanically accepted his tea. He was 
 thinking of something else, and his thought in a 
 moment came out. " What a brute then I must 
 be!" 
 
 A brute ? " 
 
 " To have pleased so many people." 
 
 " Ah," said Kate with a gleam of gaiety, " you ve 
 done it to please me." But she was already, with 
 her gleam, reverting a little. " What I don t under 
 stand is won t you have any sugar? " 
 
 " Yes, please." 
 
 " What I don t understand," she went on when 
 she had helped him, " is what it was that had oc 
 curred to bring her round again. If she gave you 
 up for days and days, what brought her back to 
 you?" 
 
 She asked the question with her own cup in her 
 hand, but it found him ready enough, in spite of his 
 sense of the ironic oddity of their going into it over 
 the tea-table. " It was Sir Luke Strett who brought 
 her back. His visit, his presence there did it." 
 
 " He brought her back then to life." 
 
 " Well, to what I saw." 
 
 " And by interceding for you? " 
 
 " I don t think he interceded. I don t indeed 
 know what he did." 
 
 359 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Kate wondered. " Didn t he tell you? " 
 
 " I didn t ask him. I met him again, but we prac 
 tically didn t speak of her." 
 
 Kate stared. " Then how do you know? " 
 
 " I see. I feel. I was with him again as I had 
 been before " 
 
 " Oh, and you pleased him too ? That was 
 it?" 
 
 " He understood," said Densher. 
 
 " But understood what? " 
 
 He waited a moment. " That I had meant aw 
 fully well." 
 
 " Ah, and made her understand ? I see," she went 
 on as he said nothing. " But how did he convince 
 her? " 
 
 Densher put down his cup and turned away. 
 " You must ask Sir Luke." 
 
 He stood looking at the fire, and there was a time 
 without sound. " The great thing," Kate then re 
 sumed, " is that s she s satisfied. Which," she con 
 tinued, looking across at him, " is what I ve worked 
 for." 
 
 " Satisfied to die in the flower of her youth? " 
 
 " Well, at peace with you/ 
 
 " Oh, peace ! " he murmured with his eyes on 
 the fire. 
 
 " The peace of having loved." 
 
 He raised his eyes to her. " Is that peace? " 
 
 " Of having been loved," she went on. " That is. 
 Of having," she wound up, " realised her passion. 
 
 360 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She wanted nothing more. She has had all she 
 wanted." 
 
 Lucid and always grave, she gave this out with a 
 beautiful authority that he could for the time 
 meet with no words. He could only again look at 
 her, though with the sense, in so doing, that he made 
 her, more than he intended, take his silence for as 
 sent. Quite indeed as if she did so take it she quitted 
 the table and came to the fire. " You may think it 
 hideous that I should now, that I should yet " she 
 made a point of the word " pretend to draw con 
 clusions. But we ve not failed." 
 
 * Oh ! " he only again murmured. 
 
 She was once more close to him, close as she had 
 been the day she came to him in Venice, the 
 quickly-returning memory of which intensified and 
 enriched the fact. He could practically deny in 
 such conditions nothing that she said, and what she 
 said was, with it, visibly, a fruit of that knowledge. 
 " We ve succeeded. * She spoke with her eyes deep 
 in his own. " She won t have loved you for noth 
 ing." It made him wince, but she insisted. " And 
 you won t have loved me" 
 
XXXIV 
 
 HE was to remain for several days under the deep 
 impression of this inclusive passage, so luckily pro 
 longed from moment to moment, but interrupted, 
 at its climax, as may be said, by the entrance of Aunt 
 Maud, who found them standing together near the 
 fire. The bearings of the colloquy, however, sharp 
 as they were, were less sharp to his intelligence, 
 strangely enough, than those of a talk with Mrs. 
 Lowder alone for which she soon gave him or for 
 which perhaps rather Kate gave him full occasion. 
 What had happened on her at last joining them was 
 to conduce, he could immediately see, to her desir 
 ing to have him to herself. Kate and he, no doubt, 
 at the opening of the door, had fallen apart with a 
 certain suddenness, so that she had turned her hard 
 fine eyes from one to the other; but the effect of this 
 lost itself, to his mind, the next minute, in the effect 
 of his companion s rare alertness. She instantly 
 spoke to her aunt of what had first been uppermost 
 for herself, inviting her thereby intimately to join 
 them, and doing it the more happily also, no doubt, 
 because the fact that she resentfully named gave her 
 ample support. " Had you quite understood, my 
 dear, that it s full three weeks ? " And she ef 
 faced herself as if to leave Mrs. Lowder to deal from 
 
 362 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her own point of view with this extravagance. Den- 
 sher of course straightway noted that his cue for the 
 protection of Kate was to make, no less, all of it he 
 could; and their tracks, as he might have said, were 
 fairly covered by the time their hostess had taken 
 afresh, on his renewed admission, the measure of his 
 scant eagerness. Kate had moved away as if no 
 great showing were needed for her personal situa 
 tion to be seen as delicate. She had been entertain 
 ing their visitor on her aunt s behalf a visitor she 
 had been at one time suspected of favouring too 
 much and who had now come back to them as the 
 stricken suitor of another person. It wasn t that 
 the fate of the other person, her exquisite friend, 
 didn t, in its tragic turn, also concern herself : it was 
 only that her acceptance of Mr. Densher as a source 
 of information could scarcely help having an awk 
 wardness. She invented the awkwardness under 
 Densher s eyes, and he marvelled on his side at the 
 instant creation. It served her as the fine cloud that 
 hangs about a goddess in an epic, and the young 
 man was but vaguely to know at what point of the 
 rest of his visit she had, for consideration, melted 
 into it and out of sight. 
 
 He was taken up promptly with another matter 
 the truth of the remarkable difference, neither 
 more nor less, than the events of Venice had intro 
 duced into his relation with Aunt Maud and that 
 these weeks of their separation had caused quite 
 richly to ripen for him. She had not sat down to 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 her tea-table before he felt himself on terms with her 
 that were absolutely new, nor could she press on him 
 a second cup without her seeming herself, and quite 
 wittingly, so to define and establish them. She re 
 gretted, but she quite understood, that what was tak 
 ing place had obliged him to hang off; they had 
 after hearing of him from poor Susan as gone 
 been hoping for an early sight of him; they would 
 have been interested, naturally, in his arriving 
 straight from the scene. Yet she needed no re 
 minder that the scene precisely by which she meant 
 the tragedy that had so detained and absorbed him, 
 the memory, the shadow, the sorrow of it was what 
 marked him for unsociability. She thus presented 
 him to himself, as it were, in the guise in which she 
 had now adopted him, and it was the element of 
 truth in the character that he found himself, for his 
 own part, adopting. She treated him as blighted 
 and ravaged, as frustrate and already bereft; and for 
 him to feel that this opened for him a new chapter 
 of frankness with her he scarce had also to perceive 
 how it smoothed his approaches to Kate. It made 
 the latter accessible as she had not yet begun to be; 
 it set up for him at Lancaster Gate an association 
 positively hostile to any other legend. It was quick 
 ly vivid to him that, were he minded, he could 
 "work" this association; he had but to use the 
 house freely for his prescribed attitude and he need 
 hardly ever be out of it. Stranger than anything 
 moreover was to be the way that by the end of a 
 
 3 6 4 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 week he stood convicted to his own sense of a sur 
 render to Mrs. Lowder s view. He had somehow 
 met it at a point that had brought him on brought 
 him on a distance that he couldn t again re 
 trace. He had private hours of wondering what 
 had become of his sincerity; he had others of simply 
 reflecting that he had it all in use. His only want 
 of candour was Aunt Maud s wealth of sentiment. 
 She was hugely sentimental, and the worst he did 
 was to take it from her. He wasn t so himself 
 everything was too real; but it was none the less 
 not false that he had been through a mill. 
 
 It was in particular not false, for instance, that 
 when she had said to him, on the Sunday, almost cos 
 ily, from her sofa behind the tea, " I want you not to 
 doubt, you poor dear, that I m with you to the 
 end ! " his meeting her half way had been the only 
 course open to him. She was with him to the end 
 or she might be in a way Kate wasn t; and even 
 if it literally made her society meanwhile more 
 soothing, he must just brush away the question of 
 why it shouldn t. Was he professing to her in any 
 degree the possession of an aftersense that wasn t 
 real? How in the world could he, when his after- 
 sense, day by day, was his greatest reality? That 
 was at bottom all that there was between them, 
 and two or three times over it made the hour pass. 
 These were occasions two and a scrap on which 
 he had come and gone without mention of Kate. 
 Now that, almost for the first time, he was free to ask 
 
 365 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 for her, the queer turn of their affair made it a false 
 note. It was another queer turn that when he 
 talked with Aunt Maud about Milly nothing else 
 seemed to come up. He called upon her almost 
 avowedly for that purpose, and it was the queerest 
 turn of all that the state of his nerves should require 
 it. He liked her better; he was really behaving, he 
 had occasion to say to himself, as if he liked her best. 
 The thing was, absolutely, that she met him half 
 way. Nothing could have been broader than her 
 vision, than her loquacity, than her sympathy. It 
 appeared to gratify, to satisfy her to see him as he 
 was; that too had its effect. It was all of course the 
 last thing that could have seemed on the cards, a 
 change by which he was completely free with this 
 lady; and it wouldn t indeed have come about if 
 for another monstrosity he hadn t ceased to be free 
 with Kate. Thus it was that, on the third time, in 
 especial, of being alone with her, he found himself 
 uttering to the elder woman what had been impos 
 sible of utterance to the younger. Mrs. Lowder 
 gave him in fact, in respect to what he must keep 
 from her, but one uneasy moment. That was when, 
 on the first Sunday, after Kate had suppressed her 
 self, she referred to her regret that he mightn t have 
 stayed to the end. He found his reason difficult to 
 give her, but she came, after all, to his help. 
 
 " You simply couldn t stand it? " 
 
 " I simply couldn t stand it. Besides you see 
 But he paused. 
 
 366 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Besides what?" He had been going to say 
 more then he saw dangers; luckily, however, she 
 had again assisted him. " Besides oh, I know ! 
 men haven t, in many relations, the courage of 
 women. * 
 
 " They haven t the courage of women." 
 
 " Kate or I would have stayed," she declared 
 " if we hadn t come away for the special reason that 
 you so frankly appreciated." 
 
 Densher had said nothing about his appreciation : 
 hadn t his behaviour since the hour itself sufficiently 
 shown it? But he presently said he couldn t help 
 going so far : " I don t doubt, certainly, that Miss 
 Croy would have stayed." And he saw again, into 
 the bargain, what a marvel was Susan Shepherd. 
 She did nothing but protect him she had done 
 nothing but keep it up. In copious communication 
 with the friend of her youth, she had yet, it was 
 plain, favoured this lady with nothing that compro 
 mised him. Milly s act of renouncement she had 
 described but as a change for the worse; she had 
 mentioned Lord Mark s descent, as even without her 
 it might be known, so that she mustn t appear to 
 conceal it; but she had suppressed explanations and 
 connections, and indeed, for all he knew, blessed 
 Puritan soul, had invented commendable fictions. 
 Thus it was absolutely that he was at his ease. Thus 
 it was that, shaking for ever, in the unrest that didn t 
 drop, his crossed leg, he leaned back in deep yellow- 
 satin chairs and took such comfort as came. She 
 
 367 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 asked, it was true, Aunt Maud, questions that Kate 
 hadn t; but this was just the difference, that from her 
 he positively liked them. He had taken with him 
 self, on leaving Venice, the resolution to regard 
 Milly as already dead to him that being, for his 
 spirit, the only thinkable way to pass the time of 
 waiting. He had left her because it was what suited 
 her, and it wasn t for him to go, as they said in Amer 
 ica, behind this; which imposed on him but the 
 sharper need to arrange himself with his interval. 
 Suspense was the ugliest ache to him, and he would 
 have nothing to do with it; the last thing he wished 
 was to be unconscious of her what he wished to 
 ignore was her own consciousness, tortured, for all 
 he knew, crucified by its pain. Knowingly to hang 
 about in London while the pain went on what 
 would that do but make his days impossible? His 
 scheme was accordingly to convince himself and 
 by some art about which he was vague that the 
 sense of waiting had passed. " What in fact," he 
 restlessly reflected. " have I, any further, to do with 
 it? Let me assume the thing actually over as it 
 at any moment may be and I become good again 
 for something at least to somebody. I m good, as 
 it is, for nothing to anybody, least of all to her." He 
 consequently tried, so far as shutting his eyes and 
 stalking grimly about was a trial; but his plan was 
 carried out, it may well be guessed, neither with 
 marked success nor with marked consistency. The 
 days, whether lapsing or lingering, were a stiff real- 
 
 368 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ity; the suppression of anxiety was a thin idea; the 
 taste of life itself was the taste of suspense. That he 
 was waiting was in short at the bottom of every 
 thing; and it required no great sifting presently to 
 feel that, if he took so much more, as he called it to 
 Mrs. Lowder, this was just for that reason. 
 
 She helped him to hold out, all the while that she 
 was subtle enough and he could see her divine it 
 as what he wanted not to insist on the actuality of 
 their tension. His nearest approach to success was 
 thus in being good for something to Aunt Maud, in 
 default of any one better; her company eased his 
 nerves even while they pretended together that they 
 had seen their tragedy out. They spoke of the dying 
 girl in the past tense; they said no worse of her than 
 that she had been stupendous. On the other hand, 
 however and this was what wasn t, for Densher, 
 pure peace they insisted enough that stupendous 
 was the word. It was the thing, this recognition, 
 that kept him most quiet; he came to it with her 
 repeatedly; talking about it against time and, in par 
 ticular, we have noted, speaking of his supreme per 
 sonal impression as he had not spoken to Kate. It 
 was almost as if she herself enjoyed the perfection of 
 the pathos; she sat there before the scene, as he 
 couldn t help giving it out to her, very much as a 
 stout citizen s wife might have sat, during a play 
 that made people cry, in the pit or the family-circle. 
 What most deeply stirred her was the way the poor 
 girl must have wanted to live. 
 
 VOL. II. 34 369 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah, yes indeed she did, she did : why in pity 
 shouldn t she, with everything to fill her world? The 
 mere money of her, the darling, if it isn t too disgust 
 ing at such a time to mention that ! " 
 
 Aunt Maud mentioned it and Densher quite un 
 derstood but as fairly giving poetry to the life 
 Milly clung to : a view of the " might have been " 
 before which the good lady was hushed anew to 
 tears. She had had her own vision of these possi 
 bilities, and her own social use for them, and since 
 Milly s spirit had been after all so at one with her 
 about them, what was the cruelty of the event but a 
 cruelty, of a sort, to herself? That came out when 
 he named, as the horrible thing to know, the fact of 
 their young friend s unapproachable terror of the 
 end, keep it down though she would; coming out 
 therefore often, since in so naming it he found the 
 strangest of reliefs. He allowed it all its vividness, 
 as if on the principle of his not at least spiritually 
 shirking. Milly had held with passion to her dream 
 of a future, and she was separated from it, not shriek 
 ing indeed, but grimly, awfully silent, as one might 
 imagine some noble young victim of the scaffold, in 
 the French Revolution, separated, in the prison-cell, 
 from some object clutched for resistance. Densher, 
 in a cold moment, so pictured the case for Mrs. Low- 
 der, but no moment cold enough had yet come to 
 make him so picture it to Kate. And it was the 
 front so presented that had been, in Milly, heroic; 
 presented with the highest heroism, Aunt Maud 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 by this time knew, on the occasion of his taking leave 
 of her. He had let her know, absolutely for the 
 girl s glory, how he had been received on that occa 
 sion with a positive effect since she was indeed so 
 perfectly the princess that Mrs. Stringham always 
 called her of princely state. 
 
 Before the fire in the great room that was all 
 arabesques and cherubs, all gaiety and gilt, and that 
 was warm at that hour too with a wealth of autumn 
 sun, the state in question had been maintained and 
 the situation well, Densher said for the conven 
 ience of exquisite London gossip, sublime. The 
 gossip for it came to as much at Lancaster Gate 
 was not the less exquisite for his use of the silver 
 veil, nor, on the other hand, was the veil, so touched, 
 too much drawn aside. He himself, for that matter, 
 at moments, took in the scene again as from the 
 page of a book. He saw a young man, far off, in a 
 relation inconceivable, saw him hushed, passive, 
 staying his breath, but half understanding, yet dimly 
 conscious of something immense and holding him 
 self, not to lose it, painfully together. The young 
 man, at these moments, so seen, was too distant and 
 too strange for the right identity; and yet outside, 
 afterwards, it was his own face Densher had known. 
 He had known then, at the same time, of what the 
 young man had been conscious, and he was to meas 
 ure, after that, day by day, how little he had lost. At 
 present there, with Mrs. Lowder, he knew he had 
 gathered all: that passed between them mutely as, 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in the intervals of their associated gaze, they ex 
 changed looks of intelligence. This was as far as 
 association could go; but it was far enough when 
 she knew the essence. The essence was that some 
 thing had happened to him too beautiful and too 
 sacred to describe. He had been, to his recovered 
 sense, forgiven, dedicated, blessed; but this he 
 couldn t coherently express. It would have re 
 quired an explanation fatal to Mrs. Lowder s faith 
 in him of the nature of Milly s wrong. So, as to 
 the wonderful scene, they just stood at the door. 
 They had the sense of the presence within they 
 felt the charged stillness; after which, with their 
 association deepened by it, they turned together 
 away. 
 
 That itself indeed, for our restless friend, became 
 by the end of a week the very principle of reaction : 
 so that he woke up one morning with such a sense 
 of having played a part as he needed, for self-respect, 
 to gainsay. He had not in the least stated at Lan 
 caster Gate that, as a haunted man a man haunted 
 with a memory he was harmless; but the degree to 
 which Mrs. Lowder accepted, admired and explained 
 his new aspect laid upon him practically the weight 
 of a declaration. What he hadn t in the least stated 
 her own manner was perpetually stating; it was as 
 haunted and harmless that she was constantly put 
 ting him down. There offered itself, however, to 
 his purpose, such an element as plain honesty, and 
 he had embraced, by the time he dressed, his proper 
 
 372 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 p 
 
 corrective. They were on the edge of Christmas, 
 but Christmas this year was, as, in London, in so 
 many other years, disconcertingly mild; the still air 
 was soft, the thick light was grey, the great town 
 looked empty, and in the Park, where the grass was 
 green, where the sheep browsed, where the birds 
 multitudinously twittered, the straight walks lent 
 themselves to slowness and the dim vistas to pri 
 vacy. He held it fast this morning till he had got 
 out, his sacrifice to honour, and then went with it 
 to the nearest post-office and fixed it fast in a tele 
 gram; thinking of it moreover as a sacrifice only 
 because he had, for reasons, felt it as an effort. Its 
 character of effort it would owe to Kate s expected 
 resistance, not less probable than on the occasion of 
 past appeals; which was precisely why he perhaps 
 innocently made his telegram persuasive. It had, 
 as a recall of tender hours, to be, for the young 
 woman at the counter, a trifle cryptic; but there was 
 a good deal of it, in one way and another, represent 
 ing it as did a rich impulse, and it cost him a couple 
 of shillings. There was also a moment later on, that 
 day, when, in the Park, as he measured watch 
 fully one of their old alleys, he might have been sup 
 posed by a cynical critic to be reckoning his chance 
 of getting his money back. He was waiting but 
 he had waited of old; Lancaster Gate as a dan 
 ger, was practically at hand but she had risked 
 that danger before. Besides, it was smaller now, 
 with the queer turn of their affair; in spite of 
 
 373 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 which indeed he was graver as he lingered and 
 looked out. 
 
 Kate came at last by the way he had thought least 
 likely came as if she had started from the Marble 
 Arch; but her advent was response that was the 
 great matter; response marked in her face and 
 agreeable to him, even after Aunt Maud s responses, 
 as nothing had been since his return to London. She 
 had not, it was true, answered his wire, and he had 
 begun to fear, as she was late, that with the instinct 
 of what he might be again intending to press upon 
 her, she had decided though not with ease to de 
 prive him of his chance. He would have of course, 
 she knew, other chances, but she perhaps saw this 
 one as offering her special danger. That, in fact, 
 Densher could himself feel, was exactly why he had 
 so prepared it, and he had rejoiced, even while he 
 waited, in all that the conditions had to say to him 
 of their simpler and better time. The shortest day 
 of the year though it might be, it was, in the same 
 place, by a whim of the weather, almost as much 
 to their purpose as the days of sunny afternoons 
 when they had taken their first trysts. This and 
 that tree, within sight, on the grass, stretched bare 
 boughs over the couple of chairs in which they had 
 sat of old and in which for they really could sit 
 down again they might recover the clearness of 
 their beginnings. It was to all intents, however, 
 this very reference that showed itself in Kate s face 
 as, with her quick walk, she came toward him. It 
 
 374 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 helped him, her quick walk, when it finally brought 
 her nearer; helped him, for that matter, at first, if 
 only by showing him afresh how terribly well she 
 looked. It had been all along, he certainly remem 
 bered, a phenomenon of no rarity that he had felt 
 her, at particular moments, handsomer than ever 
 before; one of these, for instance, being still present 
 to him as her entrance, under her aunt s eyes, at Lan 
 caster Gate, the day of his dinner there after his re 
 turn from America; and another her aspect, on the 
 same spot, two Sundays ago the light in which she 
 struck the eyes he had brought back from Venice. 
 In the course of a minute or two now he got, as he 
 had got it the other times, his impression of the spe 
 cial stamp of the fortune of the moment. 
 
 Whatever it had been determined by as the differ 
 ent hours recurred to him, it took on at present a 
 prompt connection with an effect produced for him, 
 in truth, more than once during the past week, only 
 now much intensified. This effect he had already 
 noted and named : it was that of the attitude assumed 
 by his friend in the presence of the degree of re 
 sponse, on his part, to Mrs. Lowder s welcome which 
 she couldn t possibly have failed to notice. She had 
 noticed it, and she had beautifully shown him so; 
 wearing in its honour the finest shade of studied se 
 renity, a shade almost of gaiety over the workings 
 of time. Everything of course was relative, with the 
 shadow they were living under; but her condonation 
 of the way in which he now, for confidence, distin- 
 
 375 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 guished Aunt Maud had almost the note of cheer. 
 She had so consecrated, by her own air, the distinc 
 tion, invidious in respect to herself though it might 
 be; and nothing, really, more than this demonstra 
 tion, could have given him, had he still wanted it, the 
 measure of her superiority. It was doubtless, for 
 that matter, this superiority simply that, on the win 
 ter noon, gave smooth decision to her step 
 and charming courage to her eyes a courage that 
 deepened in them when he had got, after a little, to 
 what he wanted. He had delayed after she had 
 joined him not much more than long enough for 
 him to say to her, drawing her hand into his arm and 
 turning off where they had turned of old, that he 
 wouldn t pretend he hadn t lately had moments of 
 not quite believing he should ever again be so happy. 
 She answered, passing over the reasons, whatever 
 they had been, of his doubt, that her own belief was 
 in high happiness for them if they would only have 
 patience; though nothing, at the same time, could 
 be dearer than his idea for their walk. It was only 
 make-believe, of course, with what had taken place 
 for them, that they couldn t meet at home; she spoke 
 of their opportunities as suffering at no point. He 
 had at any rate soon let her know that he wished the 
 present one to suffer at none, and in a quiet spot, 
 beneath a great wintry tree, he let his entreaty come 
 sharp. 
 
 " We ve played our dreadful game, and we ve 
 lost. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our feel- 
 
 376 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ing for ourselves and for each other, not to wait an 
 other day. Our marriage will fundamentally, 
 somehow, don t you see? right everything that s 
 wrong, and I can t express to you my impatience. 
 We ve only to announce it and it takes off the 
 weight." 
 
 " To announce it? " Kate asked. She spoke as 
 if not understanding, though she had listened to 
 him without confusion. 
 
 " To accomplish it then to-morrow if you will; 
 do it and announce it as done. That s the least part 
 of it after it nothing will matter. We shall be so 
 right," he said, " that we shall be strong; we shall 
 only wonder at our past fear. It will seem an ugly 
 madness. It will seem a bad dream." 
 
 She looked at him without flinching with the 
 look she had brought at his call; but he felt now the 
 strange chill of her brightness. " My dear man, 
 what has happened to you? " 
 
 " Well, that I can bear it no longer. Thai s sim 
 ply what has happened. Something has snapped, 
 has broken in me, and here I am. It s as I am that 
 you must have me." 
 
 He saw her try, for a time, to appear to consider 
 it; but he saw her also not consider it. Yet he saw 
 her, felt her, further he heard her, with her clear 
 voice try to be intensely kind with him. " I don t 
 see, you know, what has changed." She had a large, 
 strange smile. " We ve been going on together so 
 well, and you suddenly desert me? " 
 
 377 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 It made him helplessly gaze. : You call it so 
 well ? You ve touches, upon my soul ! " 
 
 " I call it perfect from my original point of view. 
 I m just where I was; and you must give me some 
 better reason than you do, my dear, for your not be 
 ing. It seems to me," she continued, " that we re 
 only right, as to what has been between us, so long 
 as we do wait. I don t think we wish to have be 
 haved like fools." He took in, while she talked, her 
 imperturbable consistency; which it was quietly, 
 queerly hopeless to see her stand there and breathe 
 into their mild, remembering air. He had brought 
 her there to be moved, and she was only immovable 
 which was not moreover, either, because she 
 didn t understand. She understood everything 
 and things he wouldn t; and she had reasons, deep 
 down, the sense of which nearly sickened him. She 
 had too again, most of all, her strange, significant 
 smile. " Of course, if it is that you really know 
 
 something ? " It was quite conceivable and 
 
 possible to her, he could see, that he did. But he 
 didn t even know what she meant, and he only 
 looked at her in gloom. His gloom, however, 
 didn t upset her. " You do, I believe, only you ve 
 a delicacy about saying it. Your delicacy to me, 
 my dear, is a scruple too much. I should have no 
 delicacy in hearing it, so that if you can tell me you 
 know " 
 
 " Well? " he asked as she still kept what depended 
 on it. 
 
 378 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Why then, I ll do what you want. We needn t, 
 I grant you, in that case wait; and I can see what you 
 mean by thinking it nicer of us not to. I don t even 
 ask you," she continued, " for a proof. I m content 
 with your moral certainty." 
 
 By this time it had come over him it had the 
 force of a rush. The point she made was clear, as 
 clear, as that the blood, while he recognised it, man 
 tled in his face. " I know nothing whatever." 
 
 " You ve not an idea? " 
 
 " I ve not an idea." 
 
 " I d consent," she said " I d announce it to 
 morrow, to-day, I d go home this moment and an 
 nounce it to Aunt Maud, for an idea : I mean an idea 
 straight from you, I mean as your own, given me in 
 good faith. There, my dear ! " and she smiled 
 again. " I call that really meeting you." 
 
 If it zvas then what she called it, it disposed of his 
 appeal, and he could but stand there with his wasted 
 passion for it was in high passion that he had, 
 from the morning, acted in his face. She made it 
 all out, bent upon her, the idea he didn t have, and 
 the idea he had, and his failure of insistence when it 
 brought up that challenge, and his sense of her per 
 sonal presence, and his horror, almost, of her lucid 
 ity. They made in him a mixture that might have 
 been rage, but that was turning quickly to mere cold 
 thought, thought which led to something else and 
 was like a new dim dawn. It affected her then, and 
 she had one of the impulses, in all sincerity, that had 
 
 379 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 before this, between them, saved their position. 
 When she had come nearer to him, when, putting 
 her hand upon him and making him sink with her, as 
 she leaned to him, into their old pair of chairs, she 
 prevented, irresistibly, the waste of his passion. She 
 had an advantage with his passion now. 
 
 380 
 
XXXV 
 
 HE had said to her in the Park, when challenged on 
 it, that nothing had " happened " to him as a cause 
 for the demand he there made of her happened, he 
 meant, since the account he had given, after his re 
 turn, of his recent experience. But in the course of 
 a few days they had brought him to Christmas 
 morning he was conscious enough, in preparing 
 again to seek her out, of a difference on that score. 
 Something had in this case happened to him, and, 
 after his taking the night to think of it, he felt that 
 what it most, if not absolutely first, involved was his 
 immediately again putting himself in relation with 
 her. The fact itself had met him there in his own 
 small quarters on Christmas eve, and had not then 
 indeed instantly affected him as implying that conse 
 quence. So far as he on the spot and for the next 
 hours took its measure a process that made his 
 night mercilessly wakeful the consequences possi 
 bly implied were numerous to distraction. His 
 spirit dealt with them, in the darkness, as the slow 
 hours passed; his intelligence and his imagination, 
 his soul and his sense had never, on the whole, been 
 so intensely engaged. It was his difficulty for the 
 moment that he was face to face with alternatives, 
 and that it was scarce even a question of turning 
 
 381 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 from one to the other. They were not in a perspec 
 tive in which they might be compared and consid 
 ered; they were, by a strange effect, as close as a pair 
 of monsters of whom he might have felt on either 
 cheek the hot breath and the huge eyes. He saw 
 them at once and but by looking straight before 
 him; he wouldn t, for that matter, in his cold appre 
 hension, have turned his head by an inch. So it was 
 that his agitation was still was not, for the slow 
 hours, a matter of restless motion. He lay long, 
 after the event, on the sofa on which, extinguishing 
 at a touch the white light of convenience that he 
 hated, he had thrown himself without undressing. 
 He stared at the buried day and wore out the time; 
 with the arrival of the Christmas dawn, moreover, 
 late and grey, he felt himself somehow determined. 
 The common wisdom had had its say to him that 
 safety, in doubt, was not action; and perhaps what 
 most helped him was this very commonness. In 
 his case there was nothing of that in no case in his 
 life had there ever been less : which association, from 
 one thing to another, now worked for him as a 
 choice. He acted, after his bath and his breakfast, 
 in the sense of that marked element of the rare 
 which he felt to be the sign of his crisis. And that is 
 why, dressed with more state than usual and quite as 
 if for church, he went out into the soft Christmas 
 day. 
 
 Action, for him, on coming to the point, it ap 
 peared, carried with it a certain complexity. We 
 
 382 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 should have known, walking by his side, that his 
 final prime decision had not been to call at the door 
 of Sir Luke Strett, and yet that this step, though sub 
 ordinate, was none the less urgent. His prime de 
 cision was for another matter, to which impatience, 
 once he was on the way, had now added itself; but 
 he remained sufficiently aware that he must compro 
 mise with the perhaps excessive earliness. This, and 
 the ferment set up within him, were, together, a rea 
 son for not driving; to say nothing of the absence 
 of cabs in the dusky festal desert. Sir Luke s great 
 square was not near, but he walked the distance 
 without seeing a hansom. He had his interval thus 
 to turn over his view the view to which what had 
 happened the night before had now sharply reduced 
 itself; but the complexity just mentioned was to be 
 offered, within the next few minutes, another item to 
 assimilate. Before Sir Luke s house, when he 
 reached it, a brougham was drawn up at the sight 
 of which his heart had a lift that brought him, for the 
 instant, to a stand. This pause was not long, but 
 it was long enough to flash upon him a revelation in 
 the light of which he caught his breath. The car 
 riage, so possibly at such an hour and on such a day 
 Sir Luke s own, had struck him as a sign that the 
 great doctor was back. This would prove something 
 else, in turn, still more intensely, and it was in the act 
 of the double apprehension that Densher felt him 
 self turn pale. His mind rebounded for the moment 
 like a projectile that has suddenly been met by an- 
 
 383 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 other: he stared at the strange truth that what he 
 wanted more than to see Kate Croy was to see the 
 witness who had just arrived from Venice. He 
 wanted positively to be in his presence and to hear 
 his voice which was the spasm of his consciousness 
 that produced the flash. Fortunately for him, on 
 the spot, there supervened something in which the 
 flash went out. He became aware within this min 
 ute that the coachman on the box of the brougham 
 had a face kno\vn to him, whereas he had never seen 
 before, to his knowledge, the great doctor s car 
 riage. The carriage, as he came nearer, was simply 
 Mrs. Lowder s; the face on the box was just the face 
 that, in coming and going at Lancaster Gate, he 
 would vaguely have noticed, outside, in attendance. 
 With this the rest came : the lady of Lancaster Gate 
 had, on a prompting not wholly remote from his 
 own, presented herself for news; and news, in the 
 house, she was clearly getting, since her brougham 
 had stayed. Sir Luke was then back only Mrs. 
 Lowder was with him. 
 
 It was under the influence of this last reflection 
 that Densher again delayed; and it was while he de 
 layed that something else occurred to him. It was 
 all round, visibly given his own new contribution 
 a case of pressure; and in a case of pressure Kate, 
 for quicker knowledge, might have come out with 
 her aunt. The possibility that in this event she 
 might be sitting in the carriage the thing most 
 likely had had the effect, before he could check it, 
 
 384 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 of bringing him within range of the window. It 
 wasn t there he had wished to see her; yet if she was 
 there he couldn t pretend not to. What he had, 
 however, the next moment made out was that if 
 some one was there it wasn t Kate Croy. It was, 
 with a sensible shock from him, the person who had 
 last offered him a conscious face from behind the 
 clear plate of a cafe in Venice. The great glass at 
 Florian s was a medium less obscure, even with the 
 window down, than the air of the London Christ 
 mas; yet at present also, none the less, between the 
 two men, an exchange of recognitions could occur. 
 Densher felt his own look a gaping arrest -which, 
 he disgustedly remembered, his back as quickly 
 turned, appeared to repeat itself as his special privi 
 lege. He mounted the steps of the house and 
 touched the bell with a keen consciousness of being 
 habitually looked at by Kate s friend from positions 
 of almost insolent vantage. He forgot, for the time, 
 the moment when, in Venice, at the palace, the en 
 couraged young man had in a manner assisted at the 
 departure of the disconcerted, since Lord Mark was 
 not looking disconcerted now any more than he had 
 looked from his bench at his cafe. Densher was 
 thinking that he seemed to show as vagrant while 
 another was ensconced. He was thinking of the 
 other as in spite of the difference of situation 
 more ensconced than ever; he was thinking of him 
 above all as the friend of the person with whom his 
 recognition had, the minute previous, associate4 
 VOL. IL ^ 285 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 him. The man was seated in the very place in 
 which, beside Mrs. Lowder s, he had looked to find 
 Kate, and that was a sufficient identity. Mean 
 while, at any rate, the door of the house had opened 
 and Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was some 
 thing at least that she wasn t Kate. She was herself, 
 on the spot, in all her affluence; with presence of 
 mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in the 
 brougham, didn t matter and to prevent Sir Luke s 
 butler, by a firm word thrown over her shoulder, 
 from standing there to listen to her passage with the 
 gentleman who had rung. " / // tell Mr. Densher; 
 you needn t wait ! " And the passage, promptly 
 and richly, took place on the steps. 
 
 " He arrives, travelling straight, to-morrow early. 
 I could not come to learn." 
 
 " No more," said Densher simply, " could I. On 
 my way," he added, " to Lancaster Gate." 
 
 " Sweet of you." She beamed on him dimly, 
 and he saw her face was attuned. It made him, 
 with what she had just before said, know all, and 
 he took the thing in while he met the air of por 
 tentous, of almost functional, sympathy that had 
 settled itself as her medium with him and that yet 
 had now a fresh glow. " So you have had your 
 message? " 
 
 He knew so well what she meant, and so equally 
 with it what he " had had," no less than what he 
 hadn t, that, with but the smallest hesitation, he 
 strained the point. " Yes my message." 
 
 386 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Our dear dove then, as Kate calls her, has folded 
 her wonderful wings." 
 
 " Yes folded them." 
 
 It rather racked him, but he tried to receive it as 
 she intended, and she evidently took his formal as 
 sent for self-control. " Unless it s more true," she 
 accordingly added, " that she has spread them the 
 wider." 
 
 He again but formally assented, though, strangely 
 enough, the words fitted an image deep in his own 
 consciousness. " Rather, yes spread them the 
 wider." 
 
 " For a flight, I trust, to some happiness great 
 er " 
 
 " Exactly. Greater," Densher broke in; but now 
 with a look, he feared, that did, a little, warn her off. 
 
 " You were certainly," she went on with more re 
 serve, " entitled to direct news. Ours came, last 
 night, late : I m not sure, otherwise, I shouldn t have 
 gone to you. But you re coming," she asked, " to 
 mef" 
 
 He had had a minute, by this time, to think fur 
 ther; and the window of the brougham was still with 
 in range. Her rich " me," reaching him, moreover, 
 through the mild damp, had the effect of a thump on 
 his chest. " Squared," Aunt Maud? She was in 
 deed squared, and the extent of it, just now, per 
 versely enough, took away his breath. His look, 
 from where they stood, embraced the aperture at 
 which the person sitting in the carriage might have 
 
 38? 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 shown, and he saw his interlocutress, on her side, 
 understand the question in it, which he moreover 
 then uttered. " Shall you be alone?" It was, as 
 an immediate instinctive parley with the image of his 
 condition that now flourished in her, almost hypo 
 critical. It sounded as if he wished to come and 
 overflow to her, yet this was exactly what he didn t. 
 The need to overflow had suddenly since the night 
 before dried up in him, and he had never been con 
 scious of a deeper reserve. 
 
 But she had meanwhile largely responded. 
 " Completely alone. I should otherwise never have 
 dreamed ; feeling, dear friend, but too much ! " 
 What she felt, failing on her lips, came out for him in 
 the offered hand with which, the next moment, she 
 had condolingly pressed his own. " Dear friend, 
 dear friend ! " she was deeply " with " him, and 
 she wished to be still more so : which was what made 
 her immediately continue. " Or wouldn t you, this 
 evening, for the sad Christmas it makes us, dine with 
 me tete-a-tete? " 
 
 It put the thing off, the question of a talk with her 
 making the difference, to his relief, of several 
 hours ; but it also rather mystified him. This, how 
 ever, didn t diminish his need of caution. " Shall 
 you mind if I don t tell you at once? " 
 
 " Not in the least leave it open : it shall be as you 
 may feel, and you needn t even send me word. I 
 only will mention that to-day, of all days, I shall 
 otherwise sit there alone." 
 
 388 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Now at least he could ask. " Without Miss 
 Croy?" 
 
 " Without Miss Croy. Miss Croy," said Mrs. 
 Lowder, " is spending her Christmas in the bosom of 
 her more immediate family." 
 
 - He was afraid, even while he spoke, of what his 
 face might show. " You mean she has left you ? " 
 
 Aunt Maud s own face, for that matter, met the 
 inquiry with a consciousness in which he saw a re 
 flection of events. He perceived from it, even at 
 the moment and as he had never done before, that, 
 since he had known these two women, no confessed 
 nor commented tension, no crisis of the cruder sort, 
 would really have taken form between them : which 
 was precisely a high proof of how Kate had steered 
 her boat. The situation exposed in Mrs. Lowder s 
 present expression lighted up by contrast that super 
 ficial smoothness ; which afterwards, with his time to 
 think of it, was to put before him again the art, the 
 particular gift, in the girl, now so placed and classed, 
 so intimately familiar for him, as her talent for life. 
 The peace, clearly, within a day or two since his 
 seeing her last had been broken; differences, deep 
 down, kept there by a diplomacy, on Kate s part, as 
 deep, had been shaken to the surface by some excep 
 tional jar; with which, in addition, he felt Lord 
 Mark s odd attendance at such an hour and season 
 vaguely associated. The talent for life indeed, it at 
 the same time struck him, would probably have 
 shown equally in the breach, or whatever had oc- 
 
 389 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 curred; Aunt Maud having suffered, he judged, a 
 strain rather than a stroke. With these quick 
 thoughts, at all events, that lady was already abreast. 
 " She went yesterday morning and not with my 
 approval, I don t mind telling you to her sister: 
 Mrs. Condrip, if you know who I mean, who lives 
 somewhere in Chelsea. My other niece and her af 
 fairs that I should have to say such things to-day ! 
 are a constant worry; so that Kate, in conse 
 quence well, of events ! has simply been called in. 
 My own idea, I m bound to say, was that with such 
 events she need have, in her situation, next to noth 
 ing to do." 
 
 " But she differed with you ? " 
 
 " She differed with me. And when Kate differs 
 with you ! " 
 
 " Oh, I can imagine." He had reached the point, 
 in the matter of hypocrisy, at which he could ask 
 himself why a little more or less should signify. Be 
 sides, with the intention he had had, he must know. 
 Kate s move, if he didn t know, might simply discon 
 cert him ; and of being disconcerted his horror was 
 by this time fairly superstitious. " I hope you don t 
 allude to events at all calamitous." 
 
 " No only horrid and vulgar." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Merton Densher. 
 
 Mrs. Lowder s soreness, it was still not obscure, 
 had discovered in free speech to him a momentary 
 balm. " They ve the misfortune to have, I suppose 
 you know, a dreadful, horrible father." 
 
 390 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Oh ! " said Densher again. 
 
 " He s too bad almost to name, but he has 
 come upon Marian, and Marian has shrieked for 
 help." 
 
 Densher wondered, at this, with intensity ; and his 
 curiosity compromised for an instant with his dis 
 cretion. " Come upon her for money? " 
 
 " Oh, for that, of course, always. But, at this 
 blessed season, for refuge, for safety : for God knows 
 what. He s there, the brute. And Kate s with 
 them. And that," Mrs. Lowder wound up, going 
 down the steps, " is her Christmas." 
 
 She had stopped again at the bottom, while he 
 thought of an answer. " Yours then is after all 
 rather better." 
 
 " It s at least more decent." And her hand, once 
 more, came out. " But why do I talk of our 
 troubles ? Come if you can." 
 
 He showed a faint smile. " Thanks. If I can." 
 
 " And now I dare say you ll go to church ? " 
 
 She had asked it, with her good intention, rather 
 in the air and by way of sketching for him, in the line 
 of support, something a little more to the purpose 
 than what she had been giving him. He felt it as 
 finishing off their intensities of expression that he 
 found himself, to all appearance, receiving her hint 
 as happy. " Why, yes I think I will " : after 
 which, as the door of the brougham, at her approach, 
 had opened from within, he was free to turn his back. 
 He heard the door, behind him, sharply close again 
 
 39 1 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and the vehicle move off in another direction than 
 his own. 
 
 He had in fact, for the time, no direction; in spite 
 of which indeed, at the end of ten minutes, he was 
 aware of having walked straight to the south. That, 
 he afterwards recognised, was, very sufficiently, be 
 cause there had formed itself in his mind, even while 
 Aunt Maud finally talked, an instant recognition of 
 his necessary course. Nothing was open to him but 
 to follow Kate, nor was anything more marked than 
 the influence of the step she had taken on the emo 
 tion itself that possessed him. Her complications, 
 which had fairly, with everything else, an awful 
 sound what were they, a thousand times over, but 
 his own? His present business was to see that they 
 didn t escape an hour longer taking their proper 
 place in his life. He accordingly would have held 
 his course had it not suddenly come over him that he 
 had just lied to Mrs. Lowder a term it perversely 
 eased him to keep using even more than was neces 
 sary. To what church was he going, to what 
 church, in such a state of his nerves, could he go? 
 he pulled up short again, as he had pulled up in sight 
 of Mrs. Lowder s carriage, to ask it. And yet the 
 desire queerly stirred in him not to have wasted his 
 word. He was just then, however, by a happy 
 chance, in the Brompton Road, and he bethought 
 himself, with a sudden light, that the Oratory was at 
 hand. He had but to turn the other way and he 
 should find himself soon before it. At the door then, 
 
 39 2 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 in a few minutes, his idea was really as it struck him 
 consecrated : he was, pushing in, on the edge of a 
 splendid service the flocking crowd told of it 
 which glittered and resounded, from distant depths, 
 in the blaze of altar-lights and the swell of organ 
 and choir. It didn t match his own day, but it was 
 much less of a discord than some other things actual 
 and possible. The Oratory, in short, to make him 
 right, would do. 
 
 393 
 
XXXVI 
 
 THE difference was thus that the dusk of afternoon 
 dusk thick from an early hour had gathered 
 when he knocked at Mrs. Condrip s door. He had 
 gone from the church to his club, wishing not to pre 
 sent himself in Chelsea at luncheon-time, and also 
 remembering that he must attempt independently to 
 make a meal. This, in the event, he but imperfectly 
 achieved: he dropped into a chair in the great dim 
 void of the club library, with nobody, up or down, to 
 be seen, and there after a while, closing his eyes, 
 recovered an hour of the sleep that he had lost dur 
 ing the night. Before doing this indeed he had 
 written it was the first thing he did a short note, 
 which, in the Christmas desolation of the place, he 
 had managed only with difficulty and doubt to com 
 mit to a messenger. He wished it carried by hand, 
 and he was obliged, rather blindly, to trust the hand, 
 as the messenger, for some reason, was unable to 
 return with a gage of delivery. When, at four 
 o clock, he was face to face with Kate in Mrs. Con- 
 drip s small drawing-room, he found, to his relief, 
 that his notification had reached her. She was ex 
 pectant, and to that extent prepared; which simpli 
 fied a little if a little, at the present pass, counted. 
 Her conditions were vaguely vivid to him from the 
 
 394 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 moment of his coming in, and vivid partly by their 
 difference, a difference sharp and suggestive, from 
 those in which he had hitherto constantly seen her. 
 He had seen her but in places comparatively great 
 in her aunt s pompous house, under the high trees of 
 Kensington and the storied ceilings of Venice. He 
 had seen her, in Venice, on a great occasion, as the 
 centre itself of the splendid Piazza : he had seen her 
 there, on a still greater one, in his own poor rooms, 
 which yet had consorted with her, having state and 
 ancientry even in their poorness; but Mrs. Condrip s 
 interior, even by this best view of it and though not 
 flagrantly mean, showed itself as a setting almost 
 grotesquely inapt. Pale, grave and charming, she 
 affected him at once as a distinguished stranger a 
 stranger to the little Chelsea street who was mak 
 ing the best of a queer episode and a place of exile. 
 The extraordinary thing was that at the end of three 
 minutes he felt himself less appointedly a stranger in 
 it than she. 
 
 A part of the queerness this was to come to him 
 in glimpses sprang from the air as of a general 
 large misfit imposed on the narrow room by the 
 scale and mass of its furniture. The objects, the or 
 naments were, for the sisters, clearly relics and sur 
 vivals of what would, in the case of Mrs. Condrip at 
 least, have been called better days. The curtains 
 that overdraped the windows, the sofas and tables 
 that stayed circulation, the chimney-ornaments that 
 reached to the ceiling and the florid chandelier that 
 
 395 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 almost dropped to the floor, were so many memen 
 tos of earlier homes and so many links with their 
 unhappy mother. Whatever might have been in 
 itself the quality of these elements, Densher could 
 feel the effect proceeding from them, as they lump- 
 ishly blocked out the decline of the dim day, to be 
 ugly almost to the point of the sinister. They failed 
 to accommodate or to compromise; they asserted 
 their differences without tact and without taste. It 
 was truly having a sense of Kate s own quality thus 
 promptly to see them in reference to it. But that 
 Densher had this sense was no new thing to him, nor 
 did he in strictness need, for the hour, to be remind 
 ed of it. He only knew, by one of the tricks his im 
 agination so constantly played him, that he was, so 
 far as her present tension went, very specially sorry 
 for her which was not the view that had determined 
 his start in the morning; yet also that he himself 
 would have taken it all, as he might say, less hard. 
 He could have lived in such a place; but it was not 
 given to those of his complexion, so to speak, to be 
 exiles anywhere. It was by their comparative gross- 
 ness that they could somehow make shift. His nat 
 ural, his inevitable, his ultimate home left, that is, 
 to itself wasn t at all unlikely to be as queer and 
 impossible as what was just round them, though 
 doubtless in less ample masses. As he took in more 
 over how Kate wouldn t have been in the least the 
 creature she was if what was just round them hadn t 
 mismatched her, hadn t made for her a medium in- 
 
 39 6 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 volving compunction in the spectator, so, by the 
 same stroke, that became the very fact of her relation 
 with her companions there, such a fact as filled him 
 at once, oddly, both with certainty and with sus 
 pense. If he himself, on this brief vision, felt her as 
 alien and as, ever so unwittingly, ironic, how must 
 they not feel her, and how, above all, must she not 
 feel them? 
 
 Densher could ask himself that even after she had 
 presently lighted the tall candles on the mantelshelf. 
 This was all their illumination but the fire, and she 
 had proceeded to it with a quiet dryness that yet left 
 play, visibly, to her implication, between them, in 
 their trouble, and in default of anything better, of 
 the presumably genial Christmas hearth. So far as 
 the genial went this had, in strictness, given their 
 conditions, to be all their geniality. He had told 
 her in his note nothing but that he must promptly 
 see her and that he hoped she might be able to make 
 it possible; but he understood, from the first look at 
 her, that his promptitude was already having for her 
 its principal reference. " I was prevented, this morn 
 ing, in the few minutes," he explained, " asking Mrs. 
 Lowder if she had let you know, though I rather 
 gathered she had; and it s what I ve been in fact, 
 since then, assuming. It was because I was so 
 struck at the moment with your having, as she did 
 tell me, so suddenly come here." 
 
 " Yes, it was sudden enough." Very neat and 
 fine in the contracted firelight, with her hands in her 
 
 397 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 lap, Kate considered what he had said. He had 
 spoken immediately of what had happened at Sir 
 Luke Strett s door. " She has let me know nothing. 
 But that doesn t matter if it s what you mean." 
 
 " It s part of what I mean," Densher said; but 
 what he went on with, after a pause during which she 
 waited, was apparently not the rest of that. " She 
 had had, from Mrs. Stringham, her telegram; late 
 last night. But to me the poor lady has not wired. 
 The event," he added, " will have taken place yester 
 day, and Sir Luke, starting immediately, one can see, 
 and travelling straight, will get back to-morrow 
 morning. So that Mrs. Stringham, I judge, is left 
 to face in some solitude the situation bequeathed to 
 her. But of course," he wound up, " Sir Luke 
 couldn t stay." 
 
 Her look at him might have had in it a vague 
 betrayal of the sense that he was gaming time. 
 " Was your telegram from Sir Luke? " 
 " No I ve had no telegram." 
 
 She wondered. " But not a letter ? " 
 
 " Not from Mrs. Stringham no." He failed 
 again, however, to develop this for which her for 
 bearance from another question gave him occasion. 
 From whom then had he heard? He might, at last 
 confronted with her, really have been gaining time; 
 and as if to show that she respected this impulse she 
 made her inquiry different. " Should you like to 
 go out to her to Mrs. Stringham? " 
 
 About that at least he was clear. " Not at all. 
 398 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 She s alone, but she s very capable and very coura 
 geous. " Besides " He had been going on, 
 
 but he dropped. 
 
 " Besides," she said, "there s Eugenic ? Yes, 
 of course one remembers Eugenio." 
 
 She had uttered the words as definitely to show 
 them for not untender; and he showed, equally, 
 every reason to assent. " One remembers him in 
 deed, and with every ground for it. He ll be of the 
 highest value to her he s capable of anything. 
 What I was going to say," he went on, " is that 
 some of their people, from America, must quickly 
 arrive." 
 
 On this, as happened, Kate was able at once to 
 satisfy him. " Mr. Someone-or-other, the person 
 principally in charge of Milly s affairs her first 
 trustee, I suppose had just got there at Mrs. 
 Stringham s last writing." 
 
 " Ah, that then was after your aunt last spoke 
 to me I mean the last time before this morn 
 ing. I m relieved to hear it. So," he said, " they ll 
 do." 
 
 " Oh, they ll do." And it came from each, still, as 
 if it were not what each was most thinking of. Kate 
 presently got, however, a step nearer to that. " But 
 if you had been wired to by nobody, what the n this 
 morning had taken you to Sir Luke? " 
 
 " Oh, something else which I ll presently tell 
 you. It s what made me instantly need to see you; 
 it s what I ve come to speak to you of. But in a 
 
 399 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 minute. I feel too many things," he went on, " at 
 seeing you in this place." He got up as he spoke; 
 she herself remained perfectly still. His movement 
 had been to the fire, and, leaning a little, with his 
 back to it, to look down on her from where He 
 stood, he confined himself to his point. " Is it any 
 thing very bad that has brought you? " 
 
 He had now, however, said enough to justify her 
 wish for more; so that, passing this matter by, she 
 pressed her own challenge. " Do you mean, if I 
 may ask, that she, dying ? " Her face, won 
 dering, pressed it more than her words. 
 
 " Certainly you may ask," he after a moment said. 
 " What has come to me is what, as I say, I came ex 
 pressly to tell you. I don t mind letting you know," 
 he went on, " that my decision to do this took for 
 me, last night and this morning, a great deal of 
 thinking of. But here I am." And he indulged in 
 a smile that couldn t, he was well aware, but strike 
 her as mechanical. 
 
 She went straighter with him, she seemed to 
 show, than he really went with her. " You didn t 
 want to come? " 
 
 " It would have been simple, my dear " and he 
 continued to smile " if it had been, one way or the 
 other, only a question of * wanting. It took, I ad 
 mit it, the idea of what I had best do, all sorts of dif 
 ficult and portentous forms. It came up for me, 
 really well, not at all to my happiness." 
 
 This word apparently puzzled her she studied 
 400 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 him in the light of it. " You look upset you ve 
 certainly been tormented. You re not well." 
 
 "Oh well enough!" 
 
 But she continued without heeding. " You hate 
 what you re doing." 
 
 " My dear girl, you simplify " and he was now 
 serious enough. " It isn t so simple even as that." 
 
 She had the air of thinking what it then might be. 
 " I of course can t, with no clue, know what it is." 
 She remained, however, patient and still. " If at 
 such a moment she could write you, one is inevitably 
 quite at sea. One doesn t, with the best will in trie 
 world, understand." And then as Densher had a 
 pause which might have stood for all the involved 
 explanation that, to his discouragement, loomed 
 before him : " You haven t decided what to do." 
 
 She had said it very gently, almost sweetly, and he 
 didn t instantly say otherwise. But he said so after 
 a look at her. " Oh yes, I have. Only with this 
 sight of you here and what I seem to see in it for 
 
 you ! " And his eyes, as at suggestions that 
 
 pressed, turned from one part of the room to an 
 other. 
 
 " Horrible place, isn t it? " said Kate. 
 
 It brought him straight back to his inquiry. ." Is 
 it for anything awful you ve had to come? " 
 
 " Oh, that will take as long to tell you as anything 
 you may have. Don t mind," she continued, " the 
 * sight of me here, nor whatever which is more 
 
 than I yet know myself may be in it for me. 
 VOL. II. 26 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 And kindly consider too that I, after all, if you re in 
 trouble, can a little wish to help you. Perhaps I 
 can absolutely even do it." 
 
 " My dear child, it s just because of the sense of 
 your wish ! I suppose I am in trouble I sup 
 pose that s it." He said this with so odd a sudden 
 ness of simplicity that she could only stare for it 
 which he as promptly saw. So he turned off as he 
 could his vagueness. " And yet I oughtn t to be." 
 Which sounded indeed vaguer still. 
 
 She waited a moment. " Is it, as you say for my 
 own business, anything very awful? " 
 
 " Well," he slowly replied, " you ll tell me if you 
 find it so. I mean if you find my idea " 
 
 He was so slow that she took him up. " Awful? " 
 A sound of impatience the form of a laugh at 
 last escaped her. " I can t find it anything at all till 
 I know what you re talking about." 
 
 It brought him then more to the point, though it 
 did so at first but by making him, on the hearthrug 
 before her, with his hands in his pockets, turn awhile 
 to and fro. There rose in him even with this move 
 ment a recall of another time the hour, in Venice, 
 the hour of gloom and storm, when Susan Shepherd 
 had sat in his quarters there very much as Kate was 
 sitting now, and he had wondered, in pain even as 
 now, what he might say and might not. Yet the 
 present occasion, after all, was somehow the easier. 
 He tried at any rate to attach that feeling to it while 
 he stopped before his companion. " The communi- 
 
 402 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 cation I speak of can t possibly belong so far as its 
 date is concerned to these last days. The post 
 mark, which is legible, does; but it isn t thinkable, 
 
 for anything else, that she wrote " He 
 
 dropped, looking at her as if she would understand. 
 
 It was easy to understand. " On her death 
 bed? " But Kate took an instant s thought. 
 " Aren t we agreed that there was never any one in 
 the world like her? " 
 
 " Yes." And looking over her head he spoke 
 clearly enough. " There was never any one in the 
 world like her." 
 
 Kate from her chair, always without a movement, 
 raised her eyes to the unconscious reach of his own. 
 Then, when the latter again dropped to her, she 
 added a question. " And won t it, further, depend 
 a little on what the communication is? " 
 
 " A little perhaps but not much. It s a commu 
 nication," said Densher. 
 
 " Do you mean a letter? " 
 
 " Yes, a letter. Addressed to me in her hand in 
 hers unmistakably." 
 
 Kate thought. " Do you know her hand very 
 well?" 
 
 "Oh, perfectly." 
 
 It was as if his tone for this prompted with a 
 slight strangeness her next demand. "Have you 
 had many letters from her? " 
 
 " No. Only three notes." He spoke looking 
 straight at her. " And very, very short ones." 
 
 403 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Ah," said Kate, " the number doesn t matter. 
 Three lines would be enough if you re sure you re 
 member." 
 
 " I m sure I remember. Besides," Densher con 
 tinued, " I ve seen her hand in other ways. I seem 
 to recall how you once, before she went to Venice, 
 showed me one of her notes precisely for that. And 
 then she once copied me something." 
 
 " Oh," said Kate, almost with a smile, " I don t 
 ask you for the detail of your reasons. One good 
 one s enough." To which, however, she added, as 
 if precisely not to speak with impatience or with any 
 thing like irony : " And the writing has its usual 
 look?" 
 
 Densher answered as if even to better that de 
 scription of it. " It s beautiful." 
 
 " Yes it was beautiful. Well," Kate, to defer 
 to him still, further remarked, " it s not news to us 
 now that she was stupendous. Anything s possi 
 ble." 
 
 "Yes, anything s possible" he appeared oddly 
 to catch at it. " That s what I say to myself. It s 
 what I ve been seeing you," he a trifle vaguely ex 
 plained, " as still more certain to feel." 
 
 She waited for him to say more, but he only, 
 with his hands in his pockets, turned again away, 
 going this time to the single window of the room, 
 where, in the absence of lamplight, the blind had not 
 been drawn. He looked out into the lamplit fog, 
 lost himself in the small sordid London street for 
 
 404 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as sordid, with his other association, he saw it as he 
 had lost himself, with Mrs. Stringham s eyes on him, 
 in the vista of the Grand Canal. It was present then 
 to his recording consciousness that when he had last 
 been driven to such an attitude the very depth of his 
 resistance to the opportunity to give Kate away was 
 what had so driven him. His waiting companion 
 had on that occasion waited for him to say he would; 
 and what he had meantime glowered forth at was the 
 inanity of such a hope. Kate s attention, on her 
 side, during these minutes, rested on the back and 
 shoulders he thus familiarly presented rested as 
 with a view of their expression, a reference to things 
 unimparted, links still missing and that she must 
 ever miss, try to make them out as she would. The 
 result of her tension was that she again took him up. 
 " You received what you spoke of last night ? " 
 
 It made him turn round. " Coming in from 
 Fleet Street earlier by an hour than usual I found 
 it with some other letters on my table. But my eyes 
 went straight to it, in an extraordinary way, from the 
 door. I recognised it, knew what it was, without 
 , touching it." 
 
 " One can understand." She listened with re 
 spect. His tone, however, was so singular that she 
 presently added : " You speak as if, all this while, 
 you hadn t touched it." 
 
 " Oh yes, I ve touched it. I feel as if, ever since, 
 I d been touching nothing else. I quite firmly," 
 he pursued as if to be plainer, " took hold of it." 
 
 405 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 "Then where is it?" 
 
 " Oh, I have it here." 
 
 " And you ve brought it to show me? " 
 
 " I ve brought it to show you." 
 
 So he said with a distinctness that had, among his 
 other oddities, almost a sound of cheer, yet making 
 no movement that matched his words. She could 
 accordingly but show again her expectant face, 
 while his own, to her impatience, seemed to fill, per 
 versely, with still another thought. " But now that 
 you ve done so you feel you don t want to." 
 
 " I want to immensely," he said, " but you tell me 
 nothing." 
 
 She smiled at him, with this, finally, as if he were 
 an unreasonable child. " It seems to me I tell you 
 quite as much as you tell me. You haven t yet even 
 told me how it is that such explanations as you re 
 quire don t come from your document itself." Then, 
 as he answered nothing, she had a flash. You 
 mean you haven t read it? " 
 
 " I haven t read it." 
 
 She stared. " Then how am I to help you with 
 it?" 
 
 Again leaving her while she never budged he 
 paced five strides and again he was before her. " By 
 telling me this. It s something, you know, that you 
 wouldn t tell me the other day." 
 
 She was vague. " The other day? " 
 
 " The first time after my return the Sunday 1 
 came to you. What is he doing," Densher went on, 
 
 406 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " at that hour of the morning with her? What does 
 his having been with her there mean? " 
 
 " Of whom are you talking? " 
 
 " Of that man Lord Mark of course. What does 
 it represent? " 
 
 " Oh, with Aunt Maud? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear and with you. It comes more or 
 less to the same thing; and it s what you didn t tell 
 me, the other day, when I put you the question." 
 
 Kate tried to remember. " You asked me noth 
 ing about any hour." 
 
 " I asked you when it was you last saw him pre 
 vious, I mean, to his second descent at Venice. You 
 wouldn t say, and as we were talking of a matter 
 comparatively more important, I let it pass. But 
 the fact remains you know, my dear, that you 
 haven t told me." 
 
 Two things, in this speech, appeared to have 
 reached Kate more distinctly than the others. " I 
 wouldn t say ? and you let it pass ? " She 
 looked just coldly blank. You really speak as if I 
 were keeping something back." 
 
 " Well, you see," Densher persisted, " you re not 
 even telling me now. All I want to know," he, 
 however, explained, " is if there was a connection 
 between that proceeding, on his part, which was 
 practically oh, beyond all doubt ! the shock pre 
 cipitating for her what has now happened, and any 
 thing that had occurred with him previously for 
 yourself. How in the world did he know we re en 
 gaged? " 
 
 407 
 
XXXVII 
 
 KATE slowly rose; it was, since she had lighted the 
 candles and sat down, the first movement she had 
 made. "Are you trying to fix it on me that I must 
 have told him? " 
 
 She spoke not so much in resentment as in pale 
 dismay which he showed that he immediately took 
 in. " My dear child, I m not trying to fix any 
 thing; but I m extremely tormented and I seem not 
 to understand. What has the brute to do with us 
 any way? " 
 
 " What has he indeed? " Kate asked. 
 
 She shook her head as if in recovery, within the 
 minute, of some mild allowance for his unreason. 
 There was in it and for his reason really one of 
 those half-inconsequent sweetnesses by- which she 
 had often before made, over some point of differ 
 ence, her own terms with him. Practically she was 
 making them now, and essentially he was knowing 
 it; yet, inevitably, all the same, he was accepting it. 
 She stood there close to him, with something in her 
 patience that suggested her having supposed, when 
 he spoke more appealingly, that he was going to kiss 
 her. He had not been, it appeared; but his contin 
 ued appeal was none the less the quieter. " What s 
 
 408 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 he doing, from ten o clock on Christmas morning, 
 with Mrs. Lowder? " 
 
 Kate looked surprised. " Didn t she tell you he s 
 staying there? " 
 
 " At Lancaster Gate? " Densher s surprise met 
 it. " * Staying ? since when? " 
 
 " Since day before yesterday. He was there be 
 fore I came away." And then she explained con 
 fessing it in fact anomalous. " It s an accident like 
 Aunt Maud s having herself remained in town for 
 Christmas, but it isn t after all so monstrous. We 
 stayed and, with my having come here, she s sorry 
 now because we neither of us, waiting from day to 
 day for the news you brought, seemed to want to be 
 with a lot of people." 
 
 " You stayed for thinking of Venice? " 
 
 " Of course we did. For what else? And even a 
 little," Kate wonderfully added "it s true at least 
 of Aunt Maud for thinking of you." 
 
 He appreciated. " I see. Nice of you every 
 way. But whom," he inquired, " has Lord Mark 
 stayed for thinking of? " 
 
 " His being in London, I believe, is a very com 
 monplace matter. He has some rooms which he 
 has had, suddenly, some rather advantageous chance 
 to let such as, with his confessed, his decidedly pro 
 claimed want of money, he hasn t had it in him, in 
 spite of everything, not to jump at." 
 
 Densher s attention was entire. " In spite of 
 everything? In spite of what? " 
 
 409 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Well, I don t know. In spite, say, of his being 
 scarcely supposed to do that sort of thing." 
 
 " To try to get money? " 
 
 " To try, at any rate, in little thrifty ways. Ap 
 parently, however, he has had, for some reason, to 
 do what he can. He turned, at a couple of days no 
 tice, out of his place, making it over to his tenant; 
 and Aunt Maud, who is deeply in his confidence 
 about all such matters, said : Come then to Lan 
 caster Gate to sleep at least till, like all the world, 
 you go to the country. He was to have gone to the 
 country I think to Matcham yesterday after 
 noon : Aunt Maud, that is, told me he was." 
 
 Kate had been, somehow, for her companion, 
 through this statement, beautifully, quite soothing 
 ly suggestive. " Told you, you mean, so that you 
 needn t leave the house? " 
 
 " Yes so far as she had taken it into her head 
 that his being there was part of my reason." 
 
 " And was it part of your reason? " 
 
 " A little, if you like. Yet there s plenty here 
 as I knew there would be without it. So that," 
 she said candidly, " doesn t matter. I m glad I am 
 here : even if for all the good I do ! " She im 
 plied, however, that that didn t matter either. " He 
 didn t, as you tell me, get off then to Matcham; 
 though he may possibly, if it is possible, be going 
 this afternoon. But what strikes me as most prob 
 able and it s really, I m bound to say, quite amia 
 ble of him is that he has declined to leave Aunt 
 
 410 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 Maud, as I ve been so ready to do, to spend her 
 Christmas alone. If, moreover, he has given up 
 Matcham for her, it s a precede that won t please her 
 less. It s small wonder therefore that she insists, 
 on a dull day, in driving him about. I don t pretend 
 to know," she wound up, " what may happen be 
 tween them; but that s all I see in it." 
 
 " You see in everything, and you always did," 
 Densher returned, " something that, while I m with 
 you at least, I always take from you as the truth it 
 self." 
 
 She looked at him as if consciously and even care 
 fully extracting the sting of his reservation; then she 
 spoke with a quiet gravity that seemed to show how 
 fine she found it. " Thank you." It had for him, 
 like everything else, its effect. They were still close 
 ly face to face, and, yielding to the impulse to which 
 he had not yielded just before, he laid his hands on 
 her shoulders, held her hard a minute and shook her 
 a little, far from untenderly, as if in expression of 
 more mingled things, all difficult, than he could 
 speak. Then, bending, he applied his lips to her 
 cheek. He fell, after this, away for an instant, re 
 suming his unrest, while she kept the position in 
 which, all passive and as a statue, she had taken his 
 demonstration. It didn t prevent her, however, 
 from offering him, as if what she had had was 
 enough for the moment, a further indulgence. She 
 made a quiet, lucid connection and, as she made it, 
 sat down again. "I ve been trying to place exactly, 
 
 411 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as to its date, something that did happen to me while 
 you were in Venice. I mean a talk with him. He 
 spoke to me spoke out." 
 
 " Ah, there you are ! " said Densher who had 
 wheeled round. 
 
 " Well, if I m there/ as you so gracefully call it, 
 by having refused to meet him as he wanted as he 
 pressed I plead guilty to being so. Would you 
 have liked me," she went on, " to give him an answer 
 that would have kept him from going? " 
 
 It made him, a little awkwardly, think. " Did you 
 know he was going? " 
 
 " Never for a moment; but I m afraid that even 
 if it doesn t fit your strange suppositions I should 
 have given him just the same answer if I had known. 
 If it s a matter I haven t, since your return, thrust 
 upon you, that s simply because it s not a matter in 
 the memory of which I find a particular joy. I hope 
 that if I ve satisfied you about it," she continued, 
 " it s not too much to ask of you to let it rest." 
 
 "Certainly," said Densher kindly, "Til let it 
 rest." But the next moment he pursued : " He saw 
 something. He guessed." 
 
 " If you mean," she presently returned, " that he 
 was unfortunately the one person we hadn t de 
 ceived, I can t contradict you." 
 
 " No of course not. But why" Densher still 
 
 risked, " was he unfortunately the one person ? 
 
 He s not clever." 
 
 " He s clever enough, apparently, to have seen a 
 412 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 mystery, a riddle, in anything so unnatural as all 
 things considered, and when it came to the point 
 my attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and 
 on his conviction he acted." 
 
 Densher seemed, for a little, to look at Lord 
 Mark s conviction as if it were a blot on the face of 
 nature. " Do you mean because you had ap 
 peared to him to have encouraged him? " 
 
 " Of course I had been decent to him. Otherwise 
 where were we? " 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 You and I. What I appeared to him, however, 
 hadn t mattered. What mattered was how I ap 
 peared to Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remem 
 ber that he has had all along his impression of you. 
 You can t help it," she said, " but you re after all 
 well, yourself." 
 
 " As much myself as you please. But when I 
 took myself to Venice and kept myself there 
 what," Densher asked, " did he make of that? " 
 
 " Your being in Venice and liking to be which is 
 never on any one s part a monstrosity was explica 
 ble for him in other ways. He was quite capable 
 moreover of seeing it as dissimulation." 
 
 " In spite of Mrs. Lowder? " 
 
 " No," said Kate, " not in spite of Mrs. Lowder 
 now. Aunt Maud, before what you call his second 
 descent, hadn t convinced him all the more that 
 my refusal of him didn t help. But he came back 
 convinced." And then as her companion still 
 
 413 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 showed a face at a loss : " I mean after he had seen 
 Milly, spoken to her and left her. Milly convinced 
 him." 
 
 " Milly? " Densher again but vaguely echoed. 
 
 " That you were sincere. That it was her you 
 loved." It came to him from her in such a way that 
 he instantly, once more, turned, found himself yet 
 again at his window. "Aunt Maud, on his return 
 here," she meanwhile continued, " had it from him. 
 And that s why you re now so well with Aunt 
 Maud." 
 
 He only, for a minute, looked out in silence 
 after which he came away. " And why you are." It 
 was almost, in its extremely affirmative effect be 
 tween them, the note of recrimination; or it would 
 have been perhaps rather if it hadn t been so much 
 more the note of truth. It was sharp because it was 
 true, but its truth appeared to impose it as an argu 
 ment so conclusive as to permit on neither side a 
 sequel. That made, while they faced each other over 
 it without speech, the gravity of everything. It 
 was as if there were almost danger, which the wrong 
 word might start. Densher accordingly, at last, 
 acted to better purpose : he drew, standing there be 
 fore her, a pocketbook from the breast of his waist 
 coat and he drew from the pocketbook a folded letter, 
 to which her eyes attached themselves. He re 
 stored then the receptacle to its place, and, with a 
 movement not the less odd for being visibly instinct 
 ive and unconscious, carried the hand containing 
 
 414 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 his letter behind him. What he thus finally spoke 
 of was a different matter. " Did I understand from 
 Mrs. Lowder that your father s in the house? " 
 
 If it never had taken her long, in such excursions, 
 to meet him, it was not to take her so now. " In the 
 house, yes. But we needn t fear his interruption " 
 she spoke as if he had thought of that. " He s in 
 bed." 
 
 " Do you mean with illness? " 
 
 She sadly shook her head. " Father s never ill. 
 He s a marvel. He s only endless." 
 
 Densher thought. " Can I, in any way, help you 
 with him? " 
 
 " Yes." She perfectly, wearily, almost serenely, 
 had it all. " By our making your visit as little of an 
 affair as possible for him and for Marian too. 
 
 " I see. They hate so your seeing me. Yet I 
 couldn t could I? not have come." 
 
 " No, you couldn t not have come." 
 
 " But I can only, on the other hand, go as soon 
 as possible? " 
 
 Quickly, it almost upset her. " Ah, don t, to-day, 
 put ugly words into my mouth. I ve enough of my 
 trouble without it." 
 
 " I know I know ! " He spoke in instant plead 
 ing. " It s all, only, that I m as troubled for you. 
 When did he come? " 
 
 " Three days ago after he had not been near her 
 for more than a year, after he had apparently, and 
 not regrettably, ceased to remember her existence; 
 
 415 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 and in a state which made it impossible not to take 
 him in." 
 
 Densher hesitated. " Do you mean in such want 
 p 
 
 " No, not of food, of necessary things not even, 
 so far as his appearance went, of money. He 
 looked as wonderful as ever. But he was well, in 
 terror." 
 
 " In terror of what? " 
 
 " I don t know. Of somebody of something. 
 He wants, he says, to be quiet. But his quietness is 
 awful." 
 
 She suffered, but she couldn t not question. 
 "What does he do?" 
 
 It made Kate herself hesitate. " He cries." 
 
 Again for a moment he hung fire, but he risked it. 
 " What has he done?" 
 
 It made her slowly rise, and they were fully, once 
 more, face to face. Her eyes held his own, and she 
 was paler than she had been. " If you love me 
 now don t ask me about father." 
 
 He waited again a moment. " I love you. It s 
 because I love you that I m here. It s because I 
 love you that I ve brought you this." And he 
 drew from behind him the letter that had remained 
 in his hand. 
 
 But her eyes only though he held it out 
 met the offer. " Why, you ve not broken the 
 seal!" 
 
 " If I had broken the seal exactly I should 
 416 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 know what s within. It s for you to break the seal 
 that I bring it." 
 
 She looked still not touching the thing inordi 
 nately grave. " To break the seal of something to 
 you from her? " 
 
 "Ah, precisely because it s from her. I ll abide 
 by whatever you think of it." 
 
 " I don t understand," said Kate. " What do you 
 yourself think?" And then as he didn t answer: 
 " It seems to me / think you know. You have your 
 instinct. You don t need to read. It s the proof." 
 
 Densher faced her words like an accusation, but 
 like an accusation for which he had been prepared 
 and which there was but one way to face. " I have 
 indeed my instinct. It came to me, while I worried 
 it out, last night. It came to me as an effect of the 
 hour." He held up his letter, and seemed now to 
 insist more than to confess. " This thing had been 
 timed." 
 
 "For Christmas eve?" 
 
 " For Christmas eve." 
 
 Kate had suddenly a strange smile. " The season 
 of gifts ! " After which, as he said nothing, she 
 went on : " And had been written, you mean, while 
 she could write, and kept to be so timed? " 
 
 Only meeting her eyes while he thought, he again 
 didn t reply. " What do you mean by the proof? " 
 
 " Why, of the beauty with which you ve been 
 loved. But I won t," she said, " break your seaJ." 
 
 " You positively decline? " 
 VOL. II. 37 i - 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " Positively. Never." To which she added 
 oddly : " I know without." 
 
 He had another pause. " And what is it you 
 know? " 
 
 " That she announces to you she has made 
 you rich." 
 
 His pause this time was longer. " Left me her 
 fortune?" 
 
 " Not all of it, no doubt, for it s immense. But 
 money to a large amount. I don t care," Kate went 
 on, " to know how much." And her strange smile 
 recurred. " I trust her." 
 
 " Did she tell you? " Densher asked. 
 
 " Never ! " Kate visibly flushed at the thought. 
 " That wouldn t, on my part, have been playing fair 
 with her. And I did," she added, " play fair." 
 
 Densher, who had believed her he couldn t help 
 it continued, holding his letter, to face her. He 
 was much quieter now, as if his torment had some 
 how passed. " You played fair with me, Kate; and 
 that s why since we talk of proofs I want to give 
 you one. I ve wanted to let you see and in 
 preference even to myself something I feel as sa 
 cred." 
 
 She frowned a little. " I don t understand." 
 
 " I ve asked myself for a tribute, for a sacrifice by 
 which I can specially recognise " 
 
 " Specially recognise what? " she demanded as he 
 dropped. 
 
 " The admirable nature of your own sacrifice. 
 418 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 You were capable in Venice of an act of splendid 
 generosity." 
 
 " And the privilege you offer me with that docu 
 ment is my reward? " 
 
 He made a movement. " It s all I can do as a 
 symbol of my attitude." 
 
 She looked at him long. "Your attitude, my 
 dear, is that you re afraid of yourself. You ve had 
 to take yourself in hand. You ve had to do yourself 
 violence." 
 
 " So it is then you meet me? " 
 
 She bent her eyes hard a moment to the letter, 
 from which her hand still stayed itself. " You abso 
 lutely desire me to take it? " 
 
 " I absolutely desire you to take it." 
 
 " To do what I like with it? " 
 
 " Short, of course, of making known its terms. 
 It must remain pardon my making the point be 
 tween you and me." 
 
 She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke 
 it, " Trust me." Taking from him the sacred script, 
 she held it a little, while her eyes again rested on 
 those fine characters of Milly s which they had 
 shortly before discussed. " To hold it," she brought 
 out, " is to know." 
 
 " Oh, I know! " said Merton Densher. 
 
 " Well then, if we both do ! " She had al 
 ready turned to the fire, nearer to which she had 
 moved, and, with a quick gesture, had jerked the 
 thing into the flame. He started but only half 
 
 419 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as if to undo her action : his arrest was as prompt as 
 the latter had been decisive. He only watched, 
 with her, the paper burn ; after which their eyes again 
 met. " You ll have it all," Kate said, " from New 
 York." 
 
 420 
 
XXXVIII 
 
 IT was after he had in fact, two months later, heard 
 from New York that she paid him a visit one morn 
 ing in his own quarters coming not as she had 
 come in Venice, under his extreme solicitation, but 
 as a need recognised in the first instance by herself, 
 even though also as the prompt result of a missive 
 delivered to her. This had consisted of a note from 
 Densher, accompanying a letter, " just to hand," ad 
 dressed to him by an eminent American legal firm, 
 a firm of whose high character he had become con 
 scious while in New York as of a thing in the air it 
 self, and whose head and front, to the principal ex 
 ecutor of Milly Theale s copious will, had been 
 duly identified at Lancaster Gate as the gen 
 tleman hurrying out, by the straight southern 
 course, before the girl s death, to the support 
 of Mrs. Stringham. Densher s act on receipt 
 of the document in question an act as to which, 
 and the bearings of which, his resolve had had 
 time to mature constituted, in strictness, sin 
 gularly enough, the first reference to Milly, or to 
 what Milly might or might not have done, that had 
 passed between our pair since they had stood to 
 gether watching the destruction, in the little vulgar 
 grate at Chelsea, of the unrevealed work of her hand. 
 
 421 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 They had, at the time, and in due deference now, on 
 his part, to Kate s mention of her responsibility for 
 his call, immediately separated, and when they met 
 again the subject was made present to them at all 
 events till some flare of new light only by the in 
 tensity with which it mutely expressed its absence. 
 They were not moreover in these weeks to meet 
 often, in spite of the fact that this had, during Jan 
 uary and a part of February, actually become for 
 them a comparatively easy matter. Kate s stay at 
 Mrs. Condrip s prolonged itself under allowances 
 from her aunt which would have been a mystery to 
 Densher had he not been admitted, at Lancaster 
 Gate, really in spite of himself, to the esoteric view 
 of them. " It s her idea," Mrs. Lowder had there 
 said to him as if she really despised ideas which she 
 didn t; " and I ve taken up with my own, which is to 
 give her, till she has had enough of it, her head. She 
 has had enough of it she had that soon enough ; but 
 as she s as proud as the deuce she ll come back when 
 she has found some reason having nothing in com 
 mon with her disgust of which she can make a 
 show. She calls it her holiday, which she s spending 
 in her own way the holiday to which, once a year or 
 so, as she says, the very maids in the scullery have a 
 right. So we re taking it on that basis. But we shall 
 not soon, I think, take another of the same sort. 
 Besides, she s quite decent ; she comes often when 
 ever I make her a sign; and she has been good, on 
 the whole, this year or two, so that, to be decent my- 
 
 422 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 self, I don t complain. She has really been, poor 
 dear, very much what one hoped ; though I needn t, 
 you know," Aunt Maud wound up, " tell you, after 
 all, you clever creature, what that was." 
 
 It had been partly, in truth, to keep down the op 
 portunity for this that Densher s appearances under 
 the good lady s roof markedly, after Christmas, in 
 terspaced themselves. The phase of his situation 
 that, on his return from Venice, had made them for 
 a short time almost frequent was at present quite ob 
 scured, and with it the impulse that had then acted. 
 Another phase had taken its place, which he would 
 have been painfully at a loss as yet to name or other 
 wise set on its feet, but of which the steadily rising 
 tide left Mrs. Lowder, for his desire, quite high and 
 dry. There had been a moment when it seemed 
 possible that Mrs. Stringham, returning to America 
 under convoy, would pause in London on her way 
 and be housed with her old friend; in which case he 
 was prepared for some apparent zeal of attendance. 
 But this danger passed he had felt it a danger, and 
 the person in the world whom he would just now 
 have most valued seeing on his own terms sailed 
 away westward from Genoa. He thereby only 
 wrote to her, having broken, in this respect, after 
 Milly s death, the silence as to the sense of which, be 
 fore that event, their agreement had been so deep. 
 She had answered him from Venice twice and had 
 had time to answer him twice again from New York. 
 The last letter of her four had come by the same post 
 
 4 2 3 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 as the document he sent on to Kate, but he had not 
 gone into the question of also enclosing that. His 
 correspondence with Milly s companion was some 
 how already presenting itself to him as a feature 
 as a factor, he would have said in his newspaper 
 of the time, whatever it might be, long or short, in 
 store for him; but one of his acutest current 
 thoughts was apt to be devoted to his not having yet 
 mentioned it to Kate. She had put him no ques 
 tion, no " Don t you ever hear? " so that he had 
 not been brought to the point. This he described 
 to himself as a mercy, for he liked his secret. It was 
 as a secret that, in the same personal privacy, he de 
 scribed his transatlantic commerce, scarce even 
 wincing while he recognised it as the one connection 
 in which he wasn t straight. He had in fact for this 
 connection a vivid mental image he saw it as a 
 small emergent rock in the waste of waters, the bot 
 tomless grey expanse of straightness. The fact that 
 he had now, on several occasions, taken with Kate 
 an out-of-the-way walk that had, each time, defined 
 itself as more remarkable for what they didn t say 
 than for what they did this fact failed somehow to 
 mitigate for him a strange consciousness of expos 
 ure. There was something deep within him that 
 he had absolutely shown to no one to the compan 
 ion of these walks in particular not a bit more than 
 he could help; but he was none the less haunted, un 
 der its shadow, with a dire apprehension of publicity. 
 It was as if he had invoked that ugliness in some stu- 
 
 424 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 pid good faith; and it was queer enough that on his 
 emergent rock, clinging to it and to Susan Shep 
 herd, he should figure himself as hidden from view. 
 That represented, no doubt, his belief in her power, 
 or in her delicate disposition, to protect him. Only 
 Kate, at all events, knew what Kate did know, and 
 she was also the last person interested to tell it; in 
 spite of which it was as if his act, so deeply associated 
 with her and never to be recalled nor recovered, was 
 abroad on the winds of the world. His honesty, as 
 he viewed it, with Kate, was the very element of that 
 menace : to the degree that he saw at moments, as to 
 their final impulse or their final remedy, the need to 
 bury in the dark blindness of each other s arms the 
 knowledge of each other that they couldn t undo. 
 
 Save indeed that the sense in which it was in these 
 days a question of arms was limited, this might have 
 been the intimate expedient to which they were act 
 ually resorting. It had its value, in conditions that 
 made everything count, that thrice over, in Batter- 
 sea Park where Mrs. Lowder now never drove 
 he had adopted the usual means, in sequestered al 
 leys, of holding her close to his side. She could 
 make absences, on her present footing, without hav 
 ing too inordinately to account for them at home 
 which was exactly what, for the first time, gave them 
 an appreciable margin. He supposed she could al 
 ways say in Chelsea though he didn t press it that 
 she had been across the town, in decency, for a look 
 at her aunt; whereas there had always been reasons 
 
 425 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 at Lancaster Gate for her not being able to plead 
 the look at her other relatives. It was therefore 
 between them a freedom of a purity as yet untasted; 
 which, for that matter, also, they made, in various 
 ways, no little show of cherishing as such. They 
 made the show indeed in every way but the way of a 
 large use an inconsequence that they almost 
 equally gave time to helping each other to regard as 
 natural. He put it to his companion that the kind 
 of favour he now enjoyed at Lancaster Gate, the 
 wonderful warmth of his reception there, cut, in a 
 manner, the ground from under their feet. He was 
 too horribly trusted they had succeeded too well. 
 He couldn t in short make appointments with her 
 without abusing Aunt Maud, and he couldn t on the 
 other hand haunt that lady without tying his hands. 
 Kate saw what he meant just as he saw what she did 
 when she admitted that she was herself, to a degree 
 scarce less embarrassing, in the enjoyment of Aunt 
 Maud s confidence. It was special at present she 
 was handsomely used; she confessed accordingly 
 to a scruple about misapplying her licence. Mrs. 
 Lowder then finally had found and all unconscious 
 ly now the way to baffle them. It was not, how 
 ever, that they didn t meet a little, none the less, in 
 the southern quarter, to point, for their common 
 benefit, the moral of their defeat. They crossed the 
 river; they wandered in neighbourhoods sordid 
 and safe; the winter was mild, so that, mounting to 
 the top of trams, they could rumble together to Clap- 
 
 426 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ham or to Greenwich. If at the same time their 
 minutes had never been so counted it struck Den- 
 sher that, by a singular law, their tone he scarce 
 knew what to call it had never been so bland. Not 
 to talk of what they might have talked of drove them 
 to other ground; it was as if they used a perverse in 
 sistence to make up what they ignored. They con 
 cealed their pursuit of the irrelevant by the charm 
 of their manner; they took precautions for a cour 
 tesy that they had formerly left to come of itself; 
 often, when he had quitted her, he stopped short, 
 walking off, with the aftersense of their change. He 
 would have described their change had he so far 
 faced it as to describe it by their being so damned 
 civil. That had even, with the intimate, the famil 
 iar at the point to which they had brought them, 
 a touch almost of the funny. What danger had 
 there ever been of their becoming rude after each 
 had, long since, made the other so tremendously ten 
 der? Such were the things he asked himself when 
 he wondered what in particular he most feared. 
 
 Yet all the while too the tension had its charm 
 such being the interest of a creature who could bring 
 one back to her by such different roads. It was her 
 talent for life again ; which found in her a difference 
 for the differing time. She didn t give their tradi 
 tion up; she but made of it something new. Frank 
 ly, moreover, she had never been more agreeable, 
 nor, in a way to put it prosaically better com 
 pany : he felt almost as if he were knowing her on 
 
 427 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 that defined basis which he even hesitated whether 
 to measure as reduced or as extended; as if at all 
 events he were admiring her as she was probably ad 
 mired by people she met " out." He hadn t, in fine, 
 reckoned that she would still have something fresh 
 for him; yet this was what she had that on the top 
 of a tram in the Borough he felt as if he were next 
 her at dinner. What a person she would be if they 
 had been rich with what a genius for the so-called 
 great life, what a presence for the so-called great 
 house, what a grace for the so-called great posi 
 tions ! He might regret at once, while he was about 
 it, that they weren t princes or billionaires. She had 
 treated him on their Christmas to a softness that had 
 struck him at the time as of the quality of fine velvet, 
 meant to fold thick, but stretched a little thin; at 
 present, however, she gave him the impression of a 
 contact multitudinous as only the superficial can be. 
 Moreover, throughout, she had nothing to say of 
 what went on at home. She came out of that, and 
 she returned to it, but her nearest reference was the 
 look with which, each time, she bade him good-bye. 
 The look was her repeated prohibition : " It s what 
 I have to see and to know so don t touch it. That 
 but wakes up the old evil, which I keep still, in my 
 way, by sitting by it. I go now leave me alone ! 
 to sit by it again. The way to pity me if that s 
 what you want is to believe in me. If we could 
 really do anything it would be another matter." 
 He watched her, when she went her way, with the 
 428 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 vision of what she thus a little stiffly carried. It was 
 confused and obscure, but how, with her head high, 
 it made her hold herself! He in truth, in his own 
 person, might at these moments have been swaying 
 a little, aloft, as one of the objects in her poised bas 
 ket. It was doubtless thanks to some such con 
 sciousness as this that he felt the lapse of the weeks, 
 before the day of Kate s mounting of his stair, al 
 most swingingly rapid. They contained for him the 
 contradiction that, whereas periods of waiting are 
 supposed in general to keep the time slow, it was the 
 wait, actually, that made the pace trouble him. The 
 secret of that anomaly, to be plain, was that he was 
 aware of how, while the days melted, something rare 
 went with them. This something was only a 
 thought, but a thought precisely of that freshness 
 and that delicacy that made the precious, of what 
 ever sort, most subject to the hunger of time. The 
 thought was all his own, and his intimate companion 
 was the last person he might have shared it with. He 
 kept it back like a favourite pang ; left it behind him, 
 so to say, when he went out, but came home again 
 the sooner for the certainty of finding it there. Then 
 he took it out of its sacred corner and its soft wrap 
 pings; he undid them one by one, handling them, 
 handling it, as a father, baffled and tender, might 
 handle a maimed child. But so it was before him 
 in his dread of who else might see it. Then he took 
 to himself at such hours, in other words, that he 
 should never, never know what had been in Milly s 
 
 429 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 letter. The intention announced in it he should but 
 too probably know; but that would have been, but 
 for the depths of his spirit, the least part of it. The 
 part of it missed forever was the turn she would have 
 given her act. That turn had possibilities that, 
 somehow, by wondering about them, his imagina 
 tion had extraordinarily rilled out and refined. It 
 had made of them a revelation the loss of which was 
 like the sight of a priceless pearl cast before his eyes 
 his pledge given not to save it into the fathom 
 less sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice of 
 something sentient and throbbing, something that, 
 for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a 
 faint, far wail. This was the sound that he cher 
 ished, when alone, in the stillness of his rooms. He 
 sought and guarded the stillness, so that it might 
 prevail there till the inevitable sounds of life, once 
 more, comparatively coarse and harsh, should 
 smother and deaden it doubtless by the same pro 
 cess with which they would officiously heal the ache, 
 in his soul, that was somehow one with it. It deep 
 ened moreover the sacred hush that he couldn t 
 complain. He had given poor Kate her freedom. 
 
 The great and obvious thing, as soon as she stood 
 there on the occasion we have already named, was 
 that she was now in high possession of it. This 
 would have marked immediately the difference 
 had there been nothing else to do it between their 
 actual terms and their other terms, the character of 
 their last encounter in Venice. That had been his 
 
 43 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 idea, whereas her present step was her own; the few 
 marks they had in common were, from the first mo 
 ment, to his conscious vision, almost pathetically 
 plain. She was as grave now as before; she looked 
 around her, to hide it, as before; she pretended, as 
 before, in an air in which her words at the moment 
 itself fell flat, to an interest in the place and a curios 
 ity about his " things " ; there was a recall, in short, 
 in the way in which, after she had failed, a little, to 
 push up her veil symmetrically and he had said she 
 had better take it off altogether, she had acceded to 
 his suggestion before the glass. It was just these 
 things that were vain; and what was real was that his 
 fancy figured her after the first few minutes as liter 
 ally now providing the element of reassurance which 
 had previously been his care. It was she, supreme 
 ly, who had the presence of mind. She made in 
 deed, for that matter, very prompt use of it. " You 
 see I ve not hesitated this time to break your 
 seal." 
 
 She had laid on the table from the moment of her 
 coming in the long envelope, substantially filled, 
 which he had sent her enclosed in another of still 
 ampler make. He had, however, not looked at it 
 his belief being that he wished never again to do so; 
 besides which it had happened to rest with its ad 
 dressed side up. So he " saw " nothing, and it was 
 only into her eyes that her remark make him look, 
 without an approach to the object indicated. " It s 
 not * my seal, my dear ; and my intention which 
 
 43 1 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 my note tried to express was all to treat it to you as 
 not mine." 
 
 " Do you mean that it s to that extent mine 
 then?" " 
 
 " Well, let us call it, if we like, theirs that of the 
 good people in New York, the authors of our com 
 munication. If the seal is broken well and good; 
 but we might, you know," he presently added, " have 
 sent it back to them intact and inviolate. Only ac 
 companied," he smiled with his heart in his mouth, 
 " by an absolutely kind letter." 
 
 Kate took it with the mere brave blink with which 
 a patient of courage signifies to the exploring 
 medical hand that the tender place is touched. He 
 saw on the spot that she was prepared, and with 
 this signal sign that she was too intelligent not 
 to be, came a flicker of possibilities. She was 
 merely to put it at that intelligent enough for any 
 thing. " Is it what you re proposing we should 
 do?" 
 
 " Ah, it s too late to do it well, ideally. Now, 
 with that sign that we know ! " 
 
 " But you don t know," she said very gently. 
 
 " I refer," he went on without noticing it, "to 
 what would have been the handsome way. It s be 
 ing despatched again, with no cognisance taken but 
 one s assurance of the highest consideration, and the 
 proof of this in the state of the envelope that would 
 have been really satisfying." 
 
 She thought an instant. "The state of the en- 
 432 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 velope proving refusal, you mean, not to be based 
 on the insufficiency of the sum? " 
 
 Densher smiled again as for the play, however 
 whimsical, of her humour. " Well yes something 
 of that sort." 
 
 " So that if cognisance has been taken so far as 
 I m concerned it spoils the beauty? " 
 
 " It makes the difference that I m disappointed in 
 the hope which I confess I entertained that you d 
 bring the thing back to me as you had received it." 
 
 :< You didn t express that hope in your letter." 
 
 " I didn t want to. I wanted to leave it to your 
 self. I wanted oh yes, if that s what you wish to 
 ask me to see what you d do." 
 
 :< You wanted to measure the possibilities of my 
 departure from delicacy? " 
 
 He continued steady now; a kind of ease in the 
 presence, as in the air, of something he couldn t as 
 yet have named had come to him. " Well, I 
 wanted in so good a case to test you." 
 
 She was struck it showed in her face by his 
 expression. " It is a good case. I doubt if a bet 
 ter," she said with her eyes on him, " has ever been 
 known." 
 
 " The better the case then the better the test ! " 
 
 " How do you know," she asked in reply to this, 
 " what I m capable of? " 
 
 " I don t, my dear ! Only, with the seal unbrok 
 en, I should have known sooner." 
 
 " I see " she took it in. " But I myself shouldn t 
 
 VOL. II._a8 433 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 have known at all. And you wouldn t have known, 
 either, what I do know." 
 
 " Let me tell you at once," he returned, " that if 
 you ve been moved to correct my ignorance I very 
 particularly request you not to." 
 
 She just hesitated. " Are you afraid of the effect 
 of the corrections? Can you only do it by doing it 
 blindly?" 
 
 He waited a moment. " What is it that you 
 speak of my doing? " 
 
 " Why, the only thing in the world that I take you 
 as thinking of. Not accepting what she has done. 
 Isn t there some regular name in such cases? Not 
 taking up the bequest." 
 
 " There s something you forget in it," he said 
 after a moment. " My asking you to join with me 
 in doing so." 
 
 Her wonder but made her softer, yet didn t, at the 
 same time, make her less firm. " How can I join 
 in a matter with which I ve nothing to do? " 
 
 " How? By a single word." 
 
 "And what word?" 
 
 :< Your consent to my giving up." 
 
 " My consent has no meaning when I can t pre 
 vent you." 
 
 " You can perfectly prevent me. Understand 
 that well," he said. 
 
 She seemed to face a threat in it. " You mean 
 you won t give up if I don t consent? " 
 
 " Yes. I do nothing." 
 
 434 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 " That, as I understand, is accepting." 
 
 Densher paused. " I do nothing formal." 
 
 You won t, I suppose you mean, touch the 
 money." 
 
 " I won t touch the money." 
 
 It had a sound though he had been coming to it 
 that made for gravity. " Who then, in such an 
 event, will? " 
 
 " Any one who wants or who can." 
 
 Again, a little, she said nothing : she might say too 
 much. But by the time she spoke she had covered 
 ground. " How can I touch it but through you? " 
 
 You can t. Any more," he added, " than I can 
 renounce it except through you." 
 
 " Oh, ever so much less ! There s nothing," she 
 said, " in my power." 
 
 " I m in your power," Merton Densher returned. 
 
 " In what way? " 
 
 " In the way I show and the way I ve always 
 shown. When have I shown," he asked as with a 
 sudden cold impatience, " anything else? You 
 surely must feel so that you needn t wish to ap 
 pear to spare me in it how you have me." 
 
 " It s very good of you, my dear," she nervously 
 laughed, " to put me so thoroughly up to it ! " 
 
 " I put you up to nothing. I didn t even put you 
 up to the chance that, as I said a few moments ago, I 
 saw for you in forwarding that thing. Your liberty 
 is therefore in every way complete." 
 
 It had come to the point, really, that they showed 
 435 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 each other pale faces, and that all the unspoken be 
 tween them looked out of their eyes in a dim terror 
 of their further conflict. Something even rose be 
 tween them in one of their short silences some 
 thing that was like an appeal from each to the other 
 not to be too true. Their necessity was somehow 
 before them, but which of them must meet it first? 
 " Thank you ! " Kate said for his word about her 
 freedom, but taking for the minute no further action 
 on it. It was blessed at least that all ironies failed 
 them, and during another slow moment their very 
 sense of it cleared the air. 
 
 There was an effect of this in the way he soon 
 went on. " You must intensely feel that it s the 
 thing for which we worked together." 
 
 She took up the remark, however, no more than if 
 it were commonplace; she was already again occu 
 pied with a point of her own. " Is it absolutely true 
 for if it is, you know, it s tremendously interest 
 ing that you haven t so much as. a curiosity as to 
 what she has done for you ? " 
 
 " Would you like," he asked, " my formal oath 
 on it? " 
 
 " No but I don t understand. It seems to me 
 in your place " 
 
 " Ah," he couldn t help from breaking in, " what 
 do you know of my place? Pardon me," he imme 
 diately added; " my preference is the one I express." 
 
 She had in an instant, all the same, a curious 
 thought. " But won t the facts be published? " 
 
 43 6 
 
THE WKIGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 / 
 
 " Published ? "he winced. 
 " I mean won t you see them in the papers? " 
 " AK, never ! I shall know how to escape that." 
 It seemed to settle the subject, but she had, the 
 
 next minute, another insistence. " Your desire is 
 
 to escape everything? " 
 " Everything." 
 
 " And do you neea.> o more definite sense of what 
 it is that you ask me to he^ vou to renounce? " 
 
 " My sense is sufficient wuj, out being definite . 
 I m willing to believe that the ai..., lnt of money > s 
 not small." 
 
 " Ah, there you are ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "If she was to leave me a remembra^ 
 
 x 9 
 
 he quietly pursued, " it would inevitably not u 
 meagre." 
 
 Kate waited as for how to say it. " It s worthy 
 of her. It s what she was herself if you remem 
 ber what we once said that was." 
 
 He hesitated, as if there had been many things. 
 But he remembered one of them. " Stupendous? " 
 
 " Stupendous." A faint smile for it ever so 
 small had flickered in her face, but had vanished 
 before the omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had 
 shown themselves in his own. His eyes filled 
 but that made her continue. She continued gen 
 tly. " I think that what it really is must be that 
 you re afraid. I mean," she explained, " that you re 
 afraid of all the truth. If you re in love with her 
 without it, what indeed can you be more. And 
 
 437 
 
 \ 
 
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 ( 
 
 you re afraid it s wonderful! to be in love with 
 her." 
 
 " I never was in love with her," said Denser. 
 
 She took it, but after a little she met *t. " I be 
 lieve that now for the time she lived. I believe it 
 at least for the time you were there But your 
 change came as it might well ite day you last 
 saw her : she died for you tV- that y u mi g ht un 
 derstand her. From tV hour Y ou did " With 
 which Kate slowly/ * " And I do now. She did 
 it for us " DP - uer rose * ^ ace ^ er an< ^ s ^ e wen t 
 on with b*- Bought. " I used to call her, in my 
 stupid "- * or want f anything better a dove. 
 i she stretched out her wings, and it was to that 
 
 ey reached. They cover us." 
 
 * They cover us," Densher said. 
 
 " That s what I give you," Kate gravely wound 
 up. "That s what I ve done for you." 
 
 His look at her had a slow strangeness that had 
 dried, on the moment, his tears. " Do I under 
 stand then- ? " 
 
 " That I do consent?" She gravely shook her 
 head. " No for I see. You ll marry me without 
 the money; you won t marry me with it. If I don t 
 consent, you don t." 
 
 "You lose me?" He showed, though naming 
 it frankly, a sort of awe of her high grasp. " Well, 
 you lose nothing else. I make over to you every 
 penny." 
 
 Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no 
 438 
 
\ 
 
 I 
 
 THE WINGS OF THE DOVE 
 
 smile, this time, to spare. " Precise!}; so that I 
 must choose." 
 
 " You must choose." 
 
 Strange it was for him then that sh. stood in his 
 own rooms doing it, while, with an intensity now be 
 yond any that had ever made his breath come slow 
 to him, he waited for her act. " There s but one 
 thing that can save you from my choice." 
 
 " From your choice of my surrender to you? " 
 
 Yes " and she gave a nod at the long envelope 
 on the table " your surrender of that." 
 
 "What is it then!*" 
 
 " Your word of honour that you re not in love 
 with her memory." 
 
 " Oh her memory ! " 
 
 " Ah " she made a high gesture " don t speak 
 of it as if you couldn t be. / could, in your place; 
 and you re one for whom it will do. Her memory s 
 your love. You want no other." 
 
 He heard her out in stillness, watching her face, 
 but not moving. Then he only said : " I ll marry 
 you, mind you, in an hour." 
 
 " As we were? " 
 
 " As we were." 
 
 But she turned to the door, and her headshake 
 was now the end. " We shall never be again as we 
 were!" 
 
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