Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/442

 my note tried to express—was all to treat it to you as not mine."

"Do you mean that it's to that extent mine then?"

"Well, let us call it, if we like, theirs—that of the good people in New York, the authors of our communication. If the seal is broken well and good; but we might, you know," he presently added, "have sent it back to them intact and inviolate. Only accompanied," he smiled with his heart in his mouth, "by an absolutely kind letter."

Kate took it with the mere brave blink with which a patient of courage signifies to the exploring medical hand that the tender place is touched. He saw on the spot that she was prepared, and with this signal sign that she was too intelligent not to be, came a flicker of possibilities. She was—merely to put it at that—intelligent enough for anything. "Is it what you're proposing we should do?"

"Ah, it's too late to do it—well, ideally. Now, with that sign that we know!"

"But you don't know," she said very gently.

"I refer," he went on without noticing it, "to what would have been the handsome way. It's being despatched again, with no cognisance taken but one's assurance of the highest consideration, and the proof of this in the state of the envelope—that would have been really satisfying."

She thought an instant. "The state of the 432