The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
Book online «The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ». Author Henry James
He hadnât pretended he did, but there was a purity of reproach in Mrs. Stringhamâs face and tone, a purity charged apparently with solemn meanings; so that for a little, small as had been his claim, he couldnât but feel that she exaggerated. He wondered what she did mean, but while doing so he defended himself. âI certainly donât know enormously muchâ âbeyond her having been most kind to me, in New York, as a poor bewildered and newly landed alien, and my having tremendously appreciated it.â To which he added, he scarce knew why, what had an immediate success. âRemember, Mrs. Stringham, that you werenât then present.â
âAh there you are!â said Kate with much gay expression, though what it expressed he failed at the time to make out.
âYou werenât present then, dearest,â Mrs. Lowder richly concurred. âYou donât know,â she continued with mellow gaiety, âhow far things may have gone.â
It made the little woman, he could see, really lose her head. She had more things in that head than any of them in any other; unless perhaps it were Kate, whom he felt as indirectly watching him during this foolish passage, though it pleased himâ âand because of the foolishnessâ ânot to meet her eyes. He met Mrs. Stringhamâs, which affected him: with her he could on occasion clear it upâ âa sense produced by the mute communion between them and really the beginning, as the event was to show, of something extraordinary. It was even already a little the effect of this communion that Mrs. Stringham perceptibly faltered in her retort to Mrs. Lowderâs joke. âOh itâs precisely my point that Mr. Densher canât have had vast opportunities.â And then she smiled at him. âI wasnât away, you know, long.â
It made everything, in the oddest way in the world, immediately right for him. âAnd I wasnât there long, either.â He positively saw with it that nothing for him, so far as she was concerned, would again be wrong. âSheâs beautiful, but I donât say sheâs easy to know.â
âAh sheâs a thousand and one things!â replied the good lady, as if now to keep well with him.
He asked nothing better. âShe was off with you to these parts before I knew it. I myself was off tooâ âaway off to wonderful parts, where I had endlessly more to see.â
âBut you didnât forget her!â Aunt Maud interposed with almost menacing archness.
âNo, of course I didnât forget her. One doesnât forget such charming impressions. But I never,â he lucidly maintained, âchattered to others about her.â
âSheâll thank you for that, sir,â said Mrs. Stringham with a flushed firmness.
âYet doesnât silence in such a case,â Aunt Maud blandly enquired, âvery often quite prove the depth of the impression?â
He would have been amused, hadnât he been slightly displeased, at all they seemed desirous to fasten on him. âWell, the impression was as deep as you like. But I really want Miss Theale to know,â he pursued for Mrs. Stringham, âthat I donât figure by any consent of my own as an authority about her.â
Kate came to his assistanceâ âif assistance it wasâ âbefore their friend had had time to meet this charge. âYouâre right about her not being easy to know. One sees her with intensityâ âsees her more than one sees almost anyone; but then one discovers that that isnât knowing her and that one may know better a person whom one doesnât âsee,â as I say, half so much.â
The discrimination was interesting, but it brought them back to the fact of her success; and
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