Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/238

 been her own very element. "Oh, the daily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No one knows better than I how they haunt one in the flight of the precious, deceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have given up? I've given up all to follow her. I wish you could feel as I do. And can't you," she inquired, "write about Venice?"

He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did; and he smiled for her kindly. "Do you write about Venice?"

"No; but I would—oh, wouldn't I?—if I hadn't so completely given up. She's, you know, my princess, and to one's princess"

"One makes the whole sacrifice?"

"Precisely. There you are!"

It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many places at once. "I quite understand that she's yours. Only, you see, she's not mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had the moral certainty that she wouldn't repeat it, least of all to Mrs. Lowder, who would find in it a disturbing implication. This was part of what he liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and that she gave him moreover a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt 228