being poor where the other was rich. It is nothing
new indeed that generous young persons often ad
mire most what nature hasn't given them from
which it would appear, after all, that our friends
were both generous.

Merton Densher had repeatedly said to himself
and from far back that he should be a fool not
to marry a woman whose value would be in her
differences; and Kate Croy, though without hav
ing quite so philosophised, had quickly recognised
in the young man a precious unlikeness. He rep
resented what her life had never given her and cer
tainly, without some such aid as his, never would
give her; all the high, dim things she lumped to
gether as of the mind. It was on the side of the
mind that Densher was rich for her, and mysterious
and strong; and he had rendered her in especial
the sovereign service of making that element real.
She had had, all her days, to take it terribly on
trust; no creature she had ever encountered hav
ing been able in any degree to testify for it directly.
Vague rumours of its existence had made their
precarious way to her; but nothing had, on the
whole, struck her as more likely than that she should
live and die without the chance to verify them.
The chance had come it was an extraordinary one
on the day she first met Densher; and it was to
the girl's lasting honour that she knew on the spot
what she was in the presence of. That occasion
indeed, for everything that straightway flowered in

[[57]]

p056 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p057w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p058

v?