Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/113

 He wondered—as if it struck him. "What would you say?"

"Why, that you find you can't stand her, and that there's nothing for me but to bear with you as I best may."

He considered of this. "How much do you abuse me to her?"

"Exactly enough. As much as you see by her attitude."

Again he thought. "It doesn't seem to me I ought to mind her attitude."

"Well, then, just as you like. I'll stay and do my best for you."

He saw she was sincere, was really giving him a chance; and that of itself made things clearer. The feeling of how far he had gone came back to him not in repentance, but in this very vision of an escape; and it was not of what he had done, but of what Kate offered, that he now weighed the consequence. "Won't it make her—her not finding me here—be rather more sure there's something between us?"

Kate thought. "Oh, I don't know. It will of course greatly upset her. But you needn't trouble about that. She won't die of it."

"Do you mean she will?" Densher presently asked.

"Don't put me questions when you don't believe what I say. You make too many conditions."

She spoke now with a sort of rational weariness that made the want of pliancy, the failure to oblige 103