Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/343

 might have taken a dose—except that the cue was pleasant in the taking.

That was why one could leave it to his tacit discretion, why, for the three or four days, again and again, Densher did so leave it; merely wondering a little, at the most, on the eve of Saturday, the announced term of the episode. Waiting once more, on this latter occasion, the Saturday morning, for Sir Luke's reappearance at the station, our friend had to recognise the drop of his own borrowed ease, the result, naturally enough, of the prospect of losing a support. The difficulty was that, on such lines as had served them, the support was Sir Luke's personal presence. Would he go without leaving some substitute for that?—and without breaking, either, his silence in respect to his errand? Densher was in still deeper ignorance than at the hour of his call, and what was truly prodigious at so supreme a moment was that—as was immediately to appear—no gleam of light on what he had been living with for a week found its way out of him. What he had been doing was proof of a huge interest as well as of a huge fee; yet when the Leporelli gondola again, and somewhat tardily, approached, his companion, watching from the water-steps, studied his fine closed face as much as ever in vain. It was like a lesson, from the highest authority, on the subject of the relevant, so that its blankness affected Densher, of a sudden, almost as a cruelty, feeling it quite awfully compatible, 333