Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/286

 false motion might, either way, snap the coil. They helped him, it was true, these considerations, to a degree of eventual peace, for what they luminously amounted to was that he was to do nothing, and that fell in, after all, with the burden laid on him by Kate. He was only not to budge without the girl's leave—not, oddly enough, at the last, to move without it, whether further or nearer, any more than without Kate's. It was to this his wisdom reduced itself—to the need again simply to be kind. That was the same as being still—as creating, studiously, the minimum of vibration. He felt himself, as he smoked, shut up to a room, on the wall of which something precious was too precariously hung. A false step would bring it down, and it must hang as long as possible. He was aware when he walked away again that even Fleet Street, at this juncture, wouldn't successfully touch him. His manager might wire that he was wanted, but he could easily be deaf to his manager. His money, for the idle life, might be none to much; happily, however, Venice was cheap, and it was moreover the queer fact that Milly in a manner supported him. The greatest of his expenses really was to walk to the palace to dinner. He didn't want, in short, to give that up, and he could probably, he felt, be still enough.

He tried it then for three weeks, and with the sense, after a little, of not having failed. There had to be a delicate art in it, for he was not trying—quite the contrary—to be either distant or dull. 276