to make his confession to a woman; women had,
in fact, for such differences, so much more imagina
tion. Kate showed at present all his case could re
quire; when she had had it from beginning to end
she declared that she now made out more than ever
yet of what she loved him for. She had herself,
as a child, lived with some continuity in the world
across the Channel, coming home again still a child;
and had participated after that, in her teens, in her
mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, to
Florence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts
at economy from which there stuck to her though
in general coldly expressed, through the instinctive
avoidance of cheap raptures the religion of for
eign things. When it was revealed to her how
many more foreign things were in Merton Densher
than he had hitherto taken the trouble to catalogue,
she almost faced him as if he were a map of the
continent or a handsome present of a delightful
new " Murray." He hadn't meant to swagger, he
had rather meant to plead, though with Mrs. Low-
der he had meant also a little to explain. His
father had been, in strange countries, in twenty set
tlements of the English, British chaplain, resident
or occasional, and had had for years the unusual
luck of never wanting a billet. His career abroad
had therefore been unbroken, and, as his stipend
had never been great, he had educated his children
at the smallest cost, in the schools nearest; which
was also a saving of railway fares. Densher's

[[103]]

p102 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p103w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p104

v?