"No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask that
of you."
"Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little--!"
There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist
the impulse to take up. "I'm perfectly justified in what I've asked,"
she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes
again intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You're
not a bit unhappy."
"Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly.
"It doesn't practically show--which is enough for Aunt Maud. You're
wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want to
know whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectly
that I see it coming." With which, by a quick transition, as if she had
settled the case, she asked him the hour.
"Oh only twelve-ten"--he had looked at his watch. "We've taken but
thirteen minutes; we've time yet."
"Then we must walk. We must go toward them."
Densher, from where they had been standing, measured the long reach of
the Square. "They're still in their shop. They're safe for half an
hour."
"That shows then, that shows!" said Kate.
This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco,
always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber
of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the
middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse
after leaving the great mosque-like church. It rose now, domed and
pinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast
empty space, enclosed by its arcades, to which at that hour movement
and traffic were mostly confined. Venice was at breakfast, the Venice
of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for the
parties of importunate pigeons picking up the crumbs of perpetual
feasts, their prospect was clear and they could see their companions
hadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorged
by the lace-shop, in one of the _loggie_, where, shortly before, they
had left them for a look-in--the expression was artfully Densher's--at
Saint Mark's. Their morning had happened to take such a turn as brought
this chance to the surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, hadn't
been an overstatement of their general opportunity. The worst that
could be said of their general opportunity was that it was essentially
in presence--in presence of every one; every one consisting at this
juncture, in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly.
But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could become
special was furnished precisely by this view of the compatibility of
their comfort with a certain amount of lingering. The others had
assented to their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the least
the others could do. What had really helped them this morning was the
fact that, on his turning up, as he always called it, at the palace,
Milly had not, as before, been able to present herself. Custom and use
had hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day after
day--eight days had been now so conveniently marked--their friends,
Milly's and his, conveniently dispersed and left him to sit with her
till luncheon. Such was the perfect operation of the scheme on which he
had been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly there
was that amount of justification for Kate's vision of success. He
_had_, for Mrs. Lowder--he couldn't help it while sitting there--the
air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate
sufficiently deep to be alarming. He had failed their young hostess
each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day that
she hadn't been well enough to see him.
That had made a mark, all round; the mark was in the way in which,
gathered in the room of state, with the place, from the right time, all
bright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent,
they--the rest of them--simply looked at each other. It was
lurid--lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately--that they
had uttered no common regrets. It was strange for our young man above
all that, if the poor girl was indisposed to _that_ degree, the hush of
gravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort, should be the
most the case--that of the guests--could permit itself. The hush, for
that matter, continued after the party of four had gone down to the
gondola and taken their places in it. Milly had sent them word that she
hoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and this indeed had
produced a second remarkable look, a look as of their knowing, one
quite as well as the other, what such a message meant as provision for
the alternative beguilement of Densher. She wished not to have spoiled
his morning, and he had therefore, in civility, to take it as
pleasantly patched up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs.
Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their friend better than any
of them. She knew her so well that she knew herself as acting in
exquisite compliance with conditions comparatively obscure,
approximately awful to them, by not thinking it necessary to stay at
home. She had corrected that element of the perfunctory which was the
slight fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had invented a
preference for Mrs. Lowder and herself; she had remembered the fond
dreams of the visitation of lace that had hitherto always been brushed
away by accidents, and it had come up as well for her that Kate had,
the day before, spoken of the part played by fatality in her own
failure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher's
sense of Susan Shepherd's conscious intervention had by this time a
corner of his mind all to itself; something that had begun for them at
Lancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action,
ineffably discreet, had at all events a way of affecting him as for the
most part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own interest.
They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were too
many persons, at least three, and too many things, between them; but
meanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. He
scarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour when
it would be a service to do so, that she had all the while understood
him. He even had a presentiment of a juncture at which the
understanding of every one else would fail and this deep little
person's alone survive.
Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, that
hung about our young friends; these had been the small accidents and
quiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in some
sort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they
stayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had so
notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than
any equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness from
earshot, with solitude and security. It was as if, being in possession,
they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence
of that, each had an apprehension of what the other wanted to say. It
was most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated on
their lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for their
ears was the flutter of the doves, begot in the heart of each a fear.
There might have been a betrayal of that in the way Densher broke the
silence resting on her last words. "What did you mean just now that I
can do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if you will,
I don't see, from the moment I can't lie to her, what else there is but
lying."
Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome and
sincere to her about Milly--whom you honestly like so much. That
wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You
don't, you know, say much about her."
And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know,
speak of her at all."
"And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?" Then as the girl,
for answer, only seemed to bethink herself, "You must have
extraordinary conversations!" he exclaimed.