mother, it further appeared, had practised on her
side a distinguished industry, to the success of which
so far as success ever crowned it this period of
exile had much contributed: she copied, patient
lady, famous pictures in great museums, having
begun with a happy natural gift and taking in be
times the scale of her opportunity. Copyists abroad
of course swarmed, but Mrs. Densher had had a
sense and a hand of her own, had arrived at a per
fection that persuaded, that even deceived, and that
made the disposal of her work blissfully usual. Her
son, who had lost her, held her image sacred, and
the effect of his telling Kate all about her, as well
as about other matters until then mixed and dim,
was to render his history rich, his sources full, his
outline anything but common. He had come
round, he had come back, he insisted abundantly, to
being a Briton: his Cambridge years, his happy
connection, as it had proved, with his father's col
lege, amply certified to that, to say nothing of his
subsequent plunge into London, which filled up
the measure. But brave enough though his descent
to English earth, he had passed, by the way, through
zones of air that had left their ruffle on his wings,
had been exposed to initiations ineffaceable. Some
thing had happened to him that could never be
undone.

When Kate Croy said to him as much he be
sought her not to insist, declaring that this indeed
was what was too much the matter with him, that

[[104]]

p103 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p104w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p105

v?