The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2

following some thought of her own, and he had been feeling the growth of something determinant even through the extravagance of much of the pleasantry, the warm, transparent irony, into which their livelier intimacy kept plunging like a confident swimmer. Suddenly she said to him with extraordinary beauty: 'I engage myself to you for ever.'

The beauty was in everything, and he could have separated nothing—couldn't have thought of her face as distinct from the whole joy. Yet her face had a new light. 'And I pledge you—I call God to witness!—every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life.' That was all, for the moment, but it was enough, and it was almost as quiet as if it were nothing. They were in the open air, in an alley of the Gardens; the great space, which seemed to arch just then higher and spread wider for them, threw them back into deep concentration. They moved by a common instinct to a spot, within sight, that struck them as fairly sequestered, and there, before their time together was spent, they had extorted from concentration every advance it could make them. They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other. They were to leave the place accordingly an affianced couple; but before they left it other things still had passed. Densher had declared his horror of bringing to a premature end her happy relation with her aunt; and they had worked round together to a high level of wisdom and patience. Kate's free profession was that she wished not to deprive him of Mrs. Lowder's countenance, which, in the long run, she was convinced he would continue to enjoy; and as, by a blessed turn, Aunt Maud had demanded of him no promise that would tie his hands, they should be able to cultivate their destiny in their own way and yet remain loyal. One difficulty alone stood out, which Densher named.

'Of course it will never do—we must remember that—from the moment you allow her to found hopes of you for any one else in particular. So long as her view is content to remain as general as at present appears, I don't see that we deceive her. At a given moment, you see, she must be undeceived: the only thing therefore is to be ready for the moment and to face it. Only, after all, in that case,' the young man observed, 'one doesn't quite make out what we shall have got from her.'

'What she'll have got from us?' Kate inquired with a smile. 'What she'll have got from us,' the girl went on, 'is her own affair—it's for her to measure. I asked her for nothing,' she added; 'I never put myself upon her. She must take her risks, and she surely understands them. What we shall have got from her is what we've already spoken of,' Kate further explained; 'it's that we shall have gained time. And so, for that matter, will she.'

Densher gazed a little at all this clearness; his gaze was not at the present hour into romantic obscurity. 'Yes; no doubt, in our particular situation, time's everything. And then there's the joy of it.'

She hesitated. 'Of our secret?'

'Not so much perhaps of our secret in itself, but of what's represented and, as we must somehow feel, protected and made deeper and closer by it.' And his fine face, relaxed into happiness, covered her with all his meaning. 'Our being as we are.'

It was as if for a moment she let the meaning sink into her. 'So gone?'

'So gone. So extremely gone. However,' he smiled, 'we shall go a good deal further.' Her answer to which was only the softness of her silence—a silence that looked out for them both at the far reach of their prospect. This was immense, and they thus took final possession of it. They were practically united and they were splendidly strong; but there were other things—things they were precisely strong enough to be able successfully to count with and safely to allow for; in consequence of which they would, for the present, subject to some better reason, keep their understanding to themselves. It was not indeed, however, till after one more observation of Densher's that they felt the question completely straightened out. 'The only thing of course is that she may any day absolutely put it to you.'

Kate considered. 'Ask me where, on my honour, we are? She may, naturally; but I doubt if in fact she will. While you're away she'll make the most of it. She'll leave me alone.'

'But there'll be my letters.'

The girl faced his letters. 'Very, very many?'

'Very, very, very many—more than ever; and you know what that is! And then,' Densher added, 'there'll be yours.'

'Oh, I shan't leave mine on the hall-table. I shall post them myself.'

He looked at her a moment. 'Do you think then I had best address you elsewhere?' After which, before she could quite answer, he added with some emphasis: 'I'd rather not, you know. It's straighter.'

She might again have just waited. 'Of course it's straighter. Don't be afraid I shan't be straight. Address me,' she continued, 'where you like. I shall be proud enough of its being known you write to me.'

He turned it over for the last clearness. 'Even at the risk of its really bringing down the inquisition?'

Well, the last clearness now filled her. 'I'm not afraid of the inquisition. If she asks if there's anything definite between us, I know perfectly what I shall say.'

'That I am, of course, 'gone' for you?'

'That I love you as I shall never in my life love any one else, and that she can make what she likes of that.' She said it out so splendidly that it was like a new profession of faith, the fulness of a tide breaking through; and the effect of that, in turn, was to make her companion meet her with such eyes that she had time again before he could otherwise speak. 'Besides, she's just as likely to ask you.'

'Not while I'm away.'

'Then when you come back.'

'Well then,' said Densher, 'we shall have had our particular joy. But what I feel is,' he candidly added, 'that, by an idea of her own, her superior policy, she won't ask me. She'll let me off. I shan't have to lie to her.'

'It will be left all to me?' asked Kate.

'All to you!' he tenderly laughed.

But it was, oddly, the very next moment as if he had perhaps been a shade too candid. His discrimination seemed to mark a possible, a natural reality, a reality not wholly disallowed by the account the girl had just given of her own intention. There was a difference in the air—even if none other than the