The Wings of the Dove, Volume 2

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 in the very degree of her having in Venice 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 solemnity, 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 Sunday, for his seeing them. Kate had thereafter wired him, without a signature, 'Come on Sunday before tea —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 hadn't 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 footman, to themselves, and there was a moment when, in spite of their wonderful system, in spite of the proscription 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, Mrs. Stringham 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'd 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 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 reluctance 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 attitude would become impossible to her. There would simply be a feeling uppermost, and the feeling 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 breaking out at him, should he go too far, with a wonderful: 'What horrors are you telling me?' It 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 at the same time he 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, wasn't strange? Nothing was so much so as his own behaviour—his 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 yourself, 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.'