Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/254

 this time that there's nothing Susan Shepherd won't do for you?"

He had in truth, after an instant, to take it in, so sharply it corresponded with the good lady's recent reception of him. It was queerer than anything again, the way they all came together round him. But that was an old story, and Kate's multiplied lights led him on and on. It was with a reserve, however, that he confessed this. "She's ever so kind. Only her view of the right thing may not be the same as yours."

"How can it be anything different if it's the view of serving you?"

Densher for an instant, but only for an instant, hung fire. "Oh, the difficulty is that I don't, upon my honour, even yet, quite make out how yours does serve me."

"It helps you—put it then," said Kate very simply—"to serve me. It gains you time."

"Time for what?"

"For everything!" She spoke at first, once more, with impatience; then, as usual, she qualified. "For anything that may happen."

Densher had a smile, but he felt it himself as strained. "You're cryptic, my love!"

It made her keep her eyes on him, and he could thus see that, by one of those incalculable motions in her without which she wouldn't have been a quarter so interesting, they half filled with tears from some source he had too roughly touched. "I'm 244