vision. " I quite suspect her of believing that, if
the truth were known, she likes me literally better
than deep down you yourself do: wherefore she
does me the honour to think that I may be safely
left to kill my own cause. There, as I say, comes in
her margin. I'm not the sort of stuff of romance
that wears, that washes, that survives use, that re
sists familiarity. Once in any degree admit that,
and your pride and prejudice will take care of the
rest! the pride fed full, meanwhile, by the system
she means to practise with you, and the prejudice
excited by the comparison she ll enable you to
make, from which I shall come off badly. She likes
me, but she ll never like me so much as when she
succeeded a little better in making me look
wretched. For then you ll like me less."

Kate showed for this evocation a due interest,
but no alarm; and it was a little as if to pay his
tender cynicism back in kind that she after an in
stant replied: " I see, I see; what an immense affair
she must think me! One was aware, but you
deepen the impression."

"I think you ll make no mistake," said Densher,
"in letting it go as deep as it will."

He had given her indeed, she made no scruple of
showing, plenty to consider. " Her facing the
music, her making you boldly as welcome as you
say that's an awfully big theory, you know, and
worthy of all the other big things that, in one's
acquaintance with people, give her a place so apart."

[[100]]

p099 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p100w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p101

v?