"You said just now Miss Theale."
"I said she liked you--yes."
"Well, it comes to the same thing." With which, however, he pursued:
"Of course I ought to thank Mrs. Lowder in person. I mean for
_this_--as from myself."
"Ah but, you know, not too much!" She had an ironic gaiety for the
implications of his "this," besides wishing to insist on a general
prudence. "She'll wonder what you're thanking her for!"
Densher did justice to both considerations. "Yes, I can't very well
tell her all."
It was perhaps because he said it so gravely that Kate was again in a
manner amused. Yet she gave out light. "You can't very well 'tell' her
anything, and that doesn't matter. Only be nice to her. Please her;
make her see how clever you are--only without letting her see that
you're trying. If you're charming to her you've nothing else to do."
But she oversimplified too. "I can be 'charming' to her, so far as I
see, only by letting her suppose I give you up--which I'll be hanged if
I do! It _is_," he said with feeling, "a game."
"Of course it's a game. But she'll never suppose you give me up--or I
give _you_--if you keep reminding her how you enjoy our interviews."
"Then if she has to see us as obstinate and constant," Densher asked,
"what good does it do?"