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, lucidly12, 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 particularly likes us. She particularly likes you. I say, old boy, make something of that." He felt her dodging13 the ultimatum14 he had just made sharp, his definite reminder15 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 reverently16 to notice. She showed the effect of them in ways less trite17. 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 minor18 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 torment19 him—that again he didn't believe; but he had to come to the house in some discomfort20, so that he frowned a little at her calling it thus a luxury. Wasn't there an element in it of coming back into bondage21? The bondage might be veiled and varnished22, 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 blues23. 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 allusion24 to this that he had drawn25 from her acted on him now more directly, brought him closer still to the question. They were alone—it was all right: he took in anew the shut doors and the permitted privacy, the solid stillness of the great house. They connected themselves 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 inconvenient26 and elusive27. 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 intercourse28 independent. 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 qualified29 to his sense delightfully30 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 had 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 beautiful."
He hadn't come back to hear her talk of his believing 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 intensity31 that her manner of pleading with him had made, as happily appeared, irresistible32. 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 ever so intimately appreciable33 to him that he was keeping her. The long embrace in which they held each other was the rout34 of evasion35, and he took from it the certitude that what she had from him was real to her. It was stronger than an uttered vow36, and the name he was to give it in afterthought was that she had been sublimely37 sincere. That was all he asked—sincerity making a basis that would bear almost anything. This settled so much, and settled it so thoroughly38, that there was nothing left to ask her to swear to. Oaths and vows39 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 difference made by the passage just enacted40 was a difference in favour of her choice of means. Means 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 allude41. "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 attempting 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 should 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 months before, had measureably more to relinquish42. 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. Lowder was indifferent her indifference43 added in a manner 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 Sèvres, of complicated brass44, in which their boudoir expressed it. She said almost all in fact by saying, on this article of Aunt Maud, after 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 at this, "that there's any definite sign of her coming round? I'm not talking," he explained, "of mere45 hypocrisies46 in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after all, that supremely47 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 us to-day. I believe she's in her room, where she's keeping strictly48 to herself while you're here with me. But that isn't 'playing'—not a bit."
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 for a thing—why," said Kate, "she shrugs50, 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 brought out 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, applied51 itself for him, as also visibly for his companion, to the afterglow of their recent embrace.
Any confusion attaching to this adventure, 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 explained, "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."
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 every one."
"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 ironic52 gaiety for the implications of his "this," besides wishing to insist on a general prudence53. "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 anything, 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 'charming' to her, so far as I see, only by letting her suppose 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 reminding her how you enjoy our interviews."
Kate was for a moment checked. "What good does what—?"
"Does my pleasing her—does anything. I can't," he impatiently declared, "please her."
Kate looked at him hard again, disappointed at his want of consistency55; but it appeared to determine in her something better than a mere complaint. "Then I 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 entreaty56 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 reverted57 in the course of a few moments to one of her previous—and as positively58 seemed—her most precious ideas. "You accused me just now of saying that Milly's in love with 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 wondrous59 all round. "And what sort of a basis does it make for my seeing her?"
"Oh I don't mind!" Kate smiled.
"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 wondered. "Prevent her loving us?"
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. Meanwhile 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 brute61 of a humbug62 to her?"
Kate so possessed63 her facts, as it were, that she smiled at his violence. "You'll extraordinarily64 like her. She's exquisite65. And there are reasons. I mean others."
"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 fully11 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 kindling66 consequence. "Oh I shall naturally call again without delay. Yes," said Densher, "her being in love with me is nonsense; but I must, quite independently of that, make every acknowledgement 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 you 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 and I, ever so deep." And it was to confirm this that, as if it had flashed upon her that he was somewhere 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 otherwise represented it to her." She uttered at this such a sound of impatience67 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?"
"How?" Kate triumphantly69 asked. "Why exactly 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 you—by not having so much as suspected or heard of it. She'll get rid of it, as she believes, by ignoring 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 moment have allowed either to Mrs. Stringham or to Milly that I've in any way, as they say, distinguished70 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 complacent71 eye—for you show it, I think, always too much and too crudely. But nothing beyond that. I 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 resplendent. "Not where you are concerned. Beyond seeing 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."
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 I do?"
"Recognise the difference it must make if she thinks." But here in truth Kate faltered72. It was his silence alone that, for the moment, took up her apparent meaning; and before he again spoke68 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 repeated.
"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 privacy?"
"Try it—you'll see," the girl once more returned. "We must manage as we can."
"That's precisely73 what I feel. It strikes me we might manage better." His idea of this was a thing that made him 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 he was scarce generous in expecting her definitely to answer, and by 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 concession74 they could arrange she pressed him yet again on the subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment75. 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 wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who 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 impatience; 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 perverse76. "I verily believe I shall hate you if you spoil for me the beauty of what I see!"
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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dole
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| n.救济，（失业）救济金；vt.（out）发放，发给 | |
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cloyingly
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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dodging
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ultimatum
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| n.最后通牒 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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reverently
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trite
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minor
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torment
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discomfort
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bondage
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varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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drawn
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inconvenient
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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intercourse
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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intensity
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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rout
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evasion
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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sublimely
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thoroughly
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vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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enacted
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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relinquish
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| v.放弃，撤回，让与，放手 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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hypocrisies
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| n.伪善，虚伪( hypocrisy的名词复数 ) | |
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supremely
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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shrugs
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| n.耸肩（以表示冷淡，怀疑等）( shrug的名词复数 ) | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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60
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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62
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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63
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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66
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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68
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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69
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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72
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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73
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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