Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/237

 you'll be faithful to us—that you've not come for a mere foolish few days."

Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, without comfort, he was conscious, at this touch, in the artificial repose he had but half managed to induce. The way smooth ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese pictures, talked to plain, embarrassed working-men, engaged in an unprecedented sacrifice of time and of the opportunity of modest acquisition! The things they took for granted and the general misery of explaining! He couldn't tell them how he had tried to work, how it was partly what he had moved into rooms for, only to find himself, almost for the first time in his life, stricken and sterile; because that would give them a false view of the source of his restlessness, if not of the degree of it. It would operate indirectly perhaps, but infallibly, to add to that weight, on his heart, of conscious responsibility which these very moments with Mrs. Stringham caused more and more to settle. He had incurred it, conscious responsibility; the thing was done, and there was no use talking; again, again the cold breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best he floundered. "I'm afraid you won't understand when I say I've very tiresome things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The pinch, the pressure in London."

But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and the pressure and showed how they had 227