Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/92

 Kate's account of her as too proud for pity, as fiercely shy about so personal a secret, came back to him; so that he rejoiced he could take a hint, especially when he wanted to. The question the girl had quickly disposed of—"Oh, it was nothing: I'm all right, thank you!"—was one he was glad enough to be able to banish. It was not at all, in spite of the appeal Kate had made to him on it, his affair; for his interest had been invoked in the name of compassion, and the name of compassion was exactly what he felt himself at the end of two minutes forbidden so much as to whisper. He had been sent to see her in order to be sorry for her, and how sorry he might be, quite privately, he was yet to make out. Didn't that signify, however, almost not at all?—inasmuch as, whatever his upshot, he was never to let her know it. Thus the ground was unexpectedly cleared; though it was not till a slightly longer time had passed that he made sure, at first with amusement and then with a sort of respect, of what had most operated. Extraordinarily, quite amazingly, he began to see that if his pity hadn't had to yield to still other things it would have had to yield quite definitely to her own. That was the way the case had turned round: he had made his visit to be sorry for her, but he would repeat it—if he did repeat it—in order that she might be sorry for him. His situation made him, she judged—when once one liked him—a subject for that tenderness: he felt this judgment in her, and felt it as something he should really, 82