Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/445

 "That, as I understand, is accepting."

Densher paused. "I do nothing formal."

"You won't, I suppose you mean, touch the money."

"I won't touch the money."

It had a sound—though he had been coming to it—that made for gravity. "Who then, in such an event, will?"

"Any one who wants or who can."

Again, a little, she said nothing: she might say too much. But by the time she spoke she had covered ground. "How can I touch it but through you?"

"You can't. Any more," he added, "than I can renounce it except through you."

"Oh, ever so much less! There's nothing," she said, "in my power."

"I'm in your power," Merton Densher returned.

"In what way?"

"In the way I show—and the way I've always shown. When have I shown," he asked as with a sudden cold impatience, "anything else? You surely must feel—so that you needn't wish to appear to spare me in it—how you 'have' me."

"It's very good of you, my dear," she nervously laughed, "to put me so thoroughly up to it!"

"I put you up to nothing. I didn't even put you up to the chance that, as I said a few moments ago, I saw for you in forwarding that thing. Your liberty is therefore in every way complete."

It had come to the point, really, that they showed 435