"And _he_," she went on, "is an idiot of idiots."
"An idiot of idiots." For a moment, on it all, on the stupid doom in
it, they looked at each other. "Yet he's thought so awfully clever."
"So awfully--it's Maud Lowder's own view. And he was nice, in London,"
said Mrs. Stringham, "to _me_. One could almost pity him--he has had
such a good conscience."
"That's exactly the inevitable ass."
"Yes, but it wasn't--I could see from the only few things she first
told me--that he meant _her_ the least harm. He intended none whatever."
"That's always the ass at his worst," Densher returned. "He only of
course meant harm to me."
"And good to himself--he thought that would come. He had been unable to
swallow," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "what had happened on his other
visit. He had been then too sharply humiliated."
"Oh I saw that."
"Yes, and he also saw you. He saw you received, as it were, while he
was turned away."
"Perfectly," Densher said--"I've filled it out. And also that he has
known meanwhile for _what_ I was then received. For a stay of all these
weeks. He had had it to think of."
"Precisely--it was more than he could bear. But he has it," said Mrs.
Stringham, "to think of still."
"Only, after all," asked Densher, who himself somehow, at this point,
was having more to think of even than he had yet had--"only, after all,
how has he happened to know? That is, to know enough."
"What do you call enough?" Mrs. Stringham enquired.
"He can only have acted--it would have been his sole safety--from full
knowledge."
He had gone on without heeding her question; but, face to face as they
were, something had none the less passed between them. It was this
that, after an instant, made her again interrogative. "What do you mean
by full knowledge?"