"He won't leave her then"--Densher had turned it over--"while she
lives. He'll stay to the end. He's magnificent."
"I think _she_ is," said Kate.
It had made them again look at each other long; and what it drew from
him rather oddly was: "Oh you don't know!"
"Well, she's after all my friend."
It was somehow, with her handsome demur, the answer he had least
expected of her; and it fanned with its breath, for a brief instant,
his old sense of her variety. "I see. You would have been sure of it.
You _were_ sure of it."
"Of course I was sure of it."
And a pause again, with this, fell upon them; which Densher, however,
presently broke. "If you don't think Mrs. Stringham's news 'real' what
do you think of Lord Mark's?"