secret to Kate of his having asked for a day to de
cide; and his account of that matter was that he
felt he owed it to her to speak to her first. She
assured him on this that nothing so much as that
scruple had yet shown her how they were bound
together; she was clearly proud of his letting a
thing of such importance depend on her; but she
was clearer still as to his instant duty. She re
joiced in his prospect and urged him to his task; she
should miss him intensely of course she should
miss him; but she made so little of it that she spoke
with jubilation of what he would see and would
do. She made so much of this last quantity that he
laughed at her innocence, though also with scarce
the heart to give her the real size of his drop in
the daily bucket. He was struck at the same time
with her happy grasp of what had really occurred
in Fleet Street all the more that it was his own
final reading. He was to pull the subject up
that was just what they wanted; and it would take
more than all the United States together, visit them
each as he might, to let him down. It was just
because he didn't nose about and wasn't the usual
gossipmonger that they had picked him out; it
was a branch of their correspondence with which
they evidently wished a new tone associated, such
a tone as, from now on, it would have always to
take from his example.

"How you ought indeed, when you understand
so well, to be a journalist's wife! " Densher ex-

[[97]]

p096 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p097w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p098

v?