"Then I explain." She was really fine; it came back to her essential
plea for her freedom of action and his beauty of trust. "I mean," she
added, "I _will_ explain."
"And what will I do?"
"Recognise the difference it must make if she thinks." But here in
truth Kate faltered. It was his silence alone that, for the moment,
took up her apparent meaning; and before he again spoke she had
returned to remembrance and prudence. They were now not to forget that,
Aunt Maud's liberality having put them on their honour, they mustn't
spoil their case by abusing it. He must leave her in time; they should
probably find it would help them. But she came back to Milly too. "Mind
you go to see her."
Densher still, however, took up nothing of this. "Then I may come
again?"
"For Aunt Maud--as much as you like. But we can't again," said Kate,
"play her _this trick_. I can't see you here alone."
"Then where?"
"Go to see Milly," she for all satisfaction repeated.
"And what good will that do me?"
"Try it and you'll see."
"You mean you'll manage to be there?" Densher asked. "Say you are, how
will that give us privacy?"
"Try it--you'll see," the girl once more returned. "We must manage as
we can."
"That's precisely what _I_ feel. It strikes me we might manage better."
His idea of this was a thing that made him an instant hesitate; yet he
brought it out with conviction. "Why won't you come to _me?_"
It was a question her troubled eyes seemed to tell him he was scarce
generous in expecting her definitely to answer, and by looking to him
to wait at least she appealed to something that she presently made him
feel as his pity. It was on that special shade of tenderness that he
thus found himself thrown back; and while he asked of his spirit and of
his flesh just what concession they could arrange she pressed him yet
again on the subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment. It
might have been irritating had she ever struck him as having in her
mind a stupid corner. "You'll see," she said, "the difference it will
make."
Well, since she wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who was
stupid--the proof of which was that he would do what she liked. But he
made a last effort to understand, her allusion to the "difference"
bringing him round to it. He indeed caught at something subtle but
strong even as he spoke. "Is what you meant a moment ago that the
difference will be in her being made to believe you hate me?"
Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of putting it, one of her
more marked shows of impatience; with which in fact she sharply closed
their discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, and she
accompanied him to the top of the stairs with an air of having so put
their possibilities before him that questions were idle and doubts
perverse. "I verily believe I _shall_ hate you if you spoil for me the
beauty of what I see!"