Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/364

 gave them their most extraordinary moment. "Wait till she is dead! Mrs. Stringham," Kate added, "is to telegraph." After which, in a tone still different, "For what then," she asked, "did Milly send for you?"

"It was what I tried to make out before I went. I must tell you moreover that I had no doubt of its really being to give me, as you say, a chance. She believed, I suppose, that I might deny; and what, to my own mind, was before me in going to her was the certainty that she would put me to my test. She wanted from my own lips—so I saw it—the truth. But I was with her for twenty minutes, and she never asked me for it."

"She never wanted the truth"—Kate had a high headshake. "She wanted you. She would have taken from you what you could give her, and been glad of it even if she had known it false. You might have lied to her from pity, and she have seen you and felt you lie, and yet—since it was all for tenderness—she would have thanked you and blessed you and clung to you but the more. For that was your strength, my dear man—that she loves you with passion."

"Oh, my 'strength!'" Densher coldly murmured.

"What then, at least, since she had sent for you, was it to ask of you?" And then—quite without irony—as he waited a moment to say: "Was it just once more to look at you?" 354