The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
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To go with her was the thing, so far as she could herself go; which, from the moment her tenure of her loved palace stretched on, was possible but by his remaining near her. This remaining was of course on the face of it the most âmarkedâ of demonstrationsâ âwhich was exactly why Kate had required it; it was so marked that on the very evening of the day it had taken effect Milly herself hadnât been able not to reach out to him, with an exquisite awkwardness, for some account of it. It was as if she had wanted from him some name that, now they were to be almost alone together, they could, for their further ease, know it and call it byâ âit being, after all, almost rudimentary that his presence, of which the absence of the others made quite a different thing, couldnât but have for himself some definite basis. She only wondered about the basis it would have for himself, and how he would describe it; that would quite do for herâ âit even would have done for her, he could see, had he produced some reason merely trivial, had he said he was waiting for money or clothes, for letters or for orders from Fleet Street, without which, as she might have heard, newspaper men never took a step. He hadnât in the event quite sunk to that; but he had none the less had there with her, that night, on Mrs. Stringhamâs leaving them aloneâ âMrs. Stringham proved really prodigiousâ âhis acquaintance with a shade of awkwardness darker than any Milly could know. He had supposed himself beforehand, on the question of what he was doing or pretending, in possession of some tone that would serve; but there were three minutes of his feeling incapable of promptness quite in the same degree in which a gentleman whose pocket has been picked feels incapable of purchase. It even didnât help him, oddly, that he was sure Kate would in some way have spoken for himâ âor rather not so much in some way as in one very particular way. He hadnât asked her, at the last, what she might, in the connection, have said; nothing would have induced him to put such a question after she had been to see him: his lips were so sealed by that passage, his spirit in fact so hushed, in respect to any charge upon her freedom. There was something he could only therefore read back into the probabilities, and when he left the palace an hour afterwards it was with a sense of having breathed there, in the very air, the truth he had been guessing.
Just this perception it was, however, that had made him for the time ugly to himself in his awkwardness. It was horrible, with this creature, to be awkward; it was odious to be seeking excuses for the relation that involved it. Any relation that involved it was by the very fact as much discredited as a dish would be at dinner if one had to take medicine as a sauce. What Kate would have said in one of the young womenâs last talks was thatâ âif Milly absolutely must have the truth about itâ âMr. Densher was staying because she had really seen no way but to require it of him. If he stayed he didnât follow herâ âor didnât appear to her aunt to be doing so; and when she kept him from following her Mrs. Lowder couldnât pretend, in scenes, the renewal of which at this time of day was painful, that she after all didnât snub him as she might. She did nothing in fact but snub himâ âwouldnât that have been part of the story?â âonly Aunt Maudâs suspicions were of the sort that had repeatedly to be dealt with. He had been, by the same token, reasonable enoughâ âas he now, for that matter, well might; he had consented to oblige them, aunt and niece, by giving the plainest sign possible that he could exist away from London. To exist away from London was to exist away from Kate Croyâ âwhich was a gain, much appreciated, to the latterâs comfort. There was a minute, at this hour, out of Densherâs three, during which he knew the terror of Millyâs uttering some such allusion to their friendâs explanation as he must meet with words that wouldnât destroy it. To destroy it was to destroy everything, to destroy probably Kate herself, to destroy in particular by a breach of faith still uglier than anything else the beauty of their own last passage. He had given her his word of honour that if she would come to him he would act absolutely in her sense, and he had done so with a full enough vision of what her sense implied. What it implied for one thing was that tonight in the great saloon, noble in its half-lighted beauty, and straight in the white face of his young hostess, divine in her trust, or at any rate inscrutable in her mercyâ âwhat it implied was that he should lie with his lips. The single thing, of all things, that could save him from it would be Millyâs letting him off after having thus scared him. What made her mercy inscrutable was that if she had already more than once saved him it was yet apparently without knowing how nearly he was lost.
These were transcendent motions, not the less blest for being obscure; whereby yet once more he was to feel the pressure lighten. He was kept on his feet in short by the felicity of her not presenting him with Kateâs version as aversion to adopt. He couldnât stand up to lieâ âhe felt as
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