Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/33

 months before, had measurably more to relinquish. He easily saw how their meeting at Lancaster Gate gave more of an accent to that quantity than their meeting at stations or in parks; and yet, on the other hand, he couldn't urge this against it. If Mrs. Lowder was indifferent her indifference added in a manner to what Kate's taking him as he was would call on her to sacrifice. Such, in fine, was her art with him that she seemed to put the question of their still waiting into quite other terms than the terms of ugly blue, of florid Sèvres, of complicated brass, in which their boudoir expressed it. She said almost all in fact in saying, in respect to Aunt Maud, as to whom he had once more pressed her, that when he should see her, as must inevitably soon happen, he would understand. "Do you mean," he asked on this, "that there's any definite sign of her coming round? I'm not talking," he explained, "of mere hypocrisies in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after all, that supremely clever as we are, and as strong a team, I admit, as there is going—remember that she can play with us quite as much as we play with her."

"She doesn't want to play with me, my dear," Kate lucidly replied; "she doesn't want to make me suffer a bit more than she need. She cares for me too much, and everything she does, or doesn't do, has a value. This has a value—her being as she has been about to-day. I believe she's in her own room, where she's keeping strictly to herself while you're 23