Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/226

 It was not ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may really consider that she doesn't. So successful have we been."

"Well," he presently said, "I take from you what you give me, and I suppose that, to be consistent—to stand on my feet where I do stand at all—I ought to thank you. Only, you know, what you give me seems to me, more than anything else, the larger and larger size of my job. It seems to me more than anything else what you expect of me. It never seems to me, somehow, what I may expect of you. There's so much you don't give me."

"And pray what is it?"

"I give you proof," said Densher. "You give me none."

"What then do you call proof?" she after a moment ventured to ask.

"Your doing something for me."

She considered with surprise. "Am I not doing this for you? Do you call this nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

"Ah, I risk, my dear, everything for it."

They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. "I thought you exactly contend that, with your aunt so beguiled, you risk nothing!"

It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that he had seen her at a loss. He judged the next instant moreover that she didn't like it—either the being so or the being seen, for 216