through her, and through her only, that I can help
her. That's what I mean," she again explained, " by
their turning me back."

The young man thought. " Your sister turns you
back too?"

"Oh, with a push!"

"But have you offered to live with your sister?"

"I would in a moment if she'd have me. That's
all my virtue a narrow little family feeling. I ve
a small stupid piety I don't know what to call
it." Kate bravely sustained it; she made it out.
"Sometimes, alone, I ve to smother my shrieks
when I think of my poor mother. She went through
things they pulled her down; I know what they
were now I didn't then, for I was a pig; and my
position, compared with hers, is an insolence of suc
cess. That's what Marian keeps before me; that's
what papa himself, as I say, so inimitably does. My
position's a value, a great value, for them both"
she followed and followed. Lucid and ironic, she
knew no merciful muddle. " It's the value the only
one they have."

Everything between our young couple moved to
day, in spite of their pauses, their margin, to a
quicker measure the quickness and anxiety play
ing lightning-like in the sultriness. Densher
watched, decidedly, as he had never done before.
"And the fact you speak of holds you!"

"Of course, it holds me. It's a perpetual sound
in my ears. It makes me ask myself if I ve any

[[80]]

p079 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p080w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p081

v?