The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

'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, 'I'll 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 deceived, I can't contradict you.'

'No—of course not. But why,' Densher still risked, 'was he unfortunately the one person—? He's not really a bit intelligent.'

'Intelligent enough apparently to have seen a 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 appeared 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 appeared to Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remember 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 explicable 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 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 between 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 argument so conclusive as to permit on neither side a sequel. That made, while they faced each other over it without speech, the gravity of everything. It was as if there were almost danger, which the wrong word might start. Densher accordingly at last acted to better purpose: he drew, standing there before her, a pocket-book from the breast of his waistcoat and he drew from the pocket-book a folded letter to which her eyes attached themselves. He restored then the receptacle to its place and, with a movement not the less odd for being visibly instinctive and unconscious, carried the hand containing his letter behind him. What he thus finally spoke of was a different matter. 'Did I understand from Mrs. Lowder 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 pleading. 'It's all only that I'm as troubled for you. When did he come?'

'Three days ago—after he hadn't been near her for more than a year, after he had apparently, and not regrettably, ceased to remember her existence; and in a state which made it impossible not to take him in.'

Densher hesitated. 'Do you mean in such want—?'

'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?'