"Why for you."
"To tell her he lied?"
"To tell her he's mistaken."
Densher stared--he was stupefied; the "possible" thus glanced at by
Kate being exactly the alternative he had had to face in Venice and to
put utterly away from him. Nothing was stranger than such a difference
in their view of it. "And to lie myself, you mean, to do it? We _are_,
my dear child," he said, "I suppose, still engaged."
"Of course we're still engaged. But to save her life--!"
He took in for a little the way she talked of it. Of course, it was to
be remembered, she had always simplified, and it brought back his sense
of the degree in which, to her energy as compared with his own, many
things were easy; the very sense that so often before had moved him to
admiration. "Well, if you must know--and I want you to be clear about
it--I didn't even seriously think of a denial to her face. The question
of it--_as_ possibly saving her--was put to me definitely enough; but
to turn it over was only to dismiss it. Besides," he added, "it
wouldn't have done any good."
"You mean she would have had no faith in your correction?" She had
spoken with a promptitude that affected him of a sudden as almost glib;
but he himself paused with the overweight of all he meant, and she
meanwhile went on. "Did you try?"
"I hadn't even a chance."
Kate maintained her wonderful manner, the manner of at once having it
all before her and yet keeping it all at its distance. "She wouldn't
see you?"
"Not after your friend had been with her."