The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) š
- Author: Henry James
Book online Ā«The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) šĀ». Author Henry James
Odd enough was it certainly that the question originally before him, the question placed there by Kate, should so of a sudden find itself quite dislodged by another. This other, it was easy to see, came straight up with the fact of her beautiful delusion and her wasted charity; the whole thing preparing for him as pretty a case of conscience as he could have desired, and one at the prospect of which he was already wincing. If he was interesting it was because he was unhappy; and if he was unhappy it was because his passion for Kate had spent itself in vain; and if Kate was indifferent, inexorable, it was because she had left Milly in no doubt of it. That above all was what came up for himā āhow clear an impression of this attitude, how definite an account of his own failure, Kate must have given her friend. His immediate quarter of an hour there with the girl lighted up for him almost luridly such an inference; it was almost as if the other party to their remarkable understanding had been with them as they talked, had been hovering about, had dropped in to look after her work. The value of the work affected him as different from the moment he saw it so expressed in poor Milly. Since it was false that he wasnāt loved, so his right was quite quenched to figure on that ground as important; and if he didnāt look out he should find himself appreciating in a way quite at odds with straightness the good faith of Millyās benevolence. There was the place for scruples; there the need absolutely to mind what he was about. If it wasnāt proper for him to enjoy consideration on a perfectly false footing, where was the guarantee that, if he kept on, he mightnāt soon himself pretend to the grievance in order not to miss the sweet? Considerationā āfrom a charming girlā āwas soothing on whatever theory; and it didnāt take him far to remember that he had himself as yet done nothing deceptive. It was Kateās description of him, his defeated state, it was none of his own; his responsibility would begin, as he might say, only with acting it out. The sharp point was, however, in the difference between acting and not acting: this difference in fact it was that made the case of conscience. He saw it with a certain alarm rise before him that everything was acting that was not speaking the particular word. āIf you like me because you think she doesnāt, it isnāt a bit true: she does like me awfully!āā āthat would have been the particular word; which there were at the same time but too palpably such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldnāt it be virtually as indelicate to challenge her as to leave her deluded?ā āand this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would constitute a kind of betrayal. Kateās design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt himself shrink from the complications involved in judging it. Not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakesā āonce they had gone a certain lengthā āthat was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love. Loyalty was of course supremely prescribed in presence of any design on her part, however roundabout, to do one nothing but good.
Densher had quite to steady himself
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