The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

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 accept—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 somebody 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 hadn't 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, nevertheless, 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 amounted to positive wrongdoing. She was moreover so acquainted with quite another sphere of usefulness 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 purpose? She could do so now only by the allusion she had been wishing not to make. 'Do you know I don't think 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—properly, and if I may say so honourably—for the best friend, 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 moment 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 something, 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.'

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 wasn't 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 point out. 'Because she's the handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, and because 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 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 asking?'

'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 intelligence she could pretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. 'I 'know' yes, that a particular person's 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.'

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's 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. I take it—' But Milly, with the positive tremor of her emphasis, pulled up.

'You take it from Kate?'

'From Kate herself.'