"None whatever. That, however," she added, "isn't his fault. Nothing's
any comfort."
"Certainly," Densher observed, "as I but too horribly feel, _I'm_ not."
"No. But I didn't come for that."
"You came for _me_."
"Well then call it that." But she looked at him a moment with eyes
filled full, and something came up in her the next instant from deeper
still. "I came at bottom of course--"
"You came at bottom of course for our friend herself. But if it's, as
you say, too late for me to do anything?"
She continued to look at him, and with an irritation, which he saw grow
in her, from the truth itself. "So I did say. But, with you here"--and
she turned her vision again strangely about her--"with you here, and
with everything, I feel we mustn't abandon her."
"God forbid we should abandon her."
"Then you _won't?_" His tone had made her flush again.
"How do you mean I 'won't,' if she abandons _me?_ What can I do if she
won't see me?"
"But you said just now you wouldn't like it."
"I said I shouldn't like it in the light of what you tell me. I
shouldn't like it only to see her as you make me. I should like it if I
could help her. But even then," Densher pursued without faith, "she
would have to want it first herself. And there," he continued to make
out, "is the devil of it. She _won't_ want it herself. She _can't!_"
He had got up in his impatience of it, and she watched him while he
helplessly moved. "There's one thing you can do. There's only that, and
even for that there are difficulties. But there _is_ that." He stood
before her with his hands in his pockets, and he had soon enough, from
her eyes, seen what was coming. She paused as if waiting for his leave
to utter it, and as he only let her wait they heard in the silence, on
the Canal, the renewed downpour of rain. She had at last to speak, but,
as if still with her fear, she only half-spoke. "I think you really
know yourself what it is."
He did know what it was, and with it even, as she said--rather!--there
were difficulties. He turned away on them, on everything, for a moment;
he moved to the other window and looked at the sheeted channel, wider,
like a river, where the houses opposite, blurred and belittled, stood
at twice their distance. Mrs. Stringham said nothing, was as mute in
fact, for the minute, as if she had "had" him, and he was the first
again to speak. When he did so, however, it was not in straight answer
to her last remark--he only started from that. He said, as he came back
to her, "Let me, you know, _see_--one must understand," almost as if he
had for the time accepted it. And what he wished to understand was
where, on the essence of the question, was the voice of Sir Luke
Strett. If they talked of not giving her up shouldn't _he_ be the one
least of all to do it? "Aren't we, at the worst, in the dark without
him?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Stringham, "it's he who has kept me going. I wired the
first night, and he answered like an angel. He'll come like one. Only
he can't arrive, at the nearest, till Thursday afternoon."
"Well then that's something."