Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/240

 His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm her discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Of course she's not. You must do something first."

Densher gave it his thought. "Wouldn't it be rather she who must?"

It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "I see. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her cheer was for the time in eclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as if in the wonder of what Milly could do. "And yet she has wanted to be kind."

It made him feel on the spot like a brute. "Of course she has. No one could be more charming. She has treated me as ifI were somebody. Call her my hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with you altogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do see that it's quite court life."

She promptly showed that this was almost all she wanted of him. "That's all I mean, if you under stand it of such a court as never was: one of the courts of heaven, the court of an angel. That will do perfectly."

"Oh well then, I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, you know," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay."

"Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beauty here; it's why she's the great and only princess. With her, at her court," said 230