engaged with her own, she found herself suddenly
sunk in something quite intimate and humble and to
which these grandeurs were strange enough wit
nesses. It had come up, in the form in which she
had had to accept it, all suddenly, and nothing about
it, at the same time, was more marked than that she
had in a manner plunged into it to escape from some
thing else. Something else, from her first vision of
her friend's appearance three minutes before, had
been present to her even through the call made by
the others on her attention; something that was per
versely there, she was more and more uncomfortably
rinding, at least for the first moments and by some
spring of its own, with every renewal of their meet
ing. " Is it the way she looks to him? " she asked
herself the perversity being that she kept in re
membrance that Kate was known to him. It wasn't
a fault in Kate nor in him assuredly; and she had
a horror, being generous and tender, of treating
either of them as if it had been. To Densher him
self she couldn't make it up he was too far away;
but her secondary impulse was to make it up to Kate.
She did so now with a strange soft energy the im
pulse immediately acting. " Will you render me
to-morrow a great service?"

"Any service, dear child, in the world."

"But it's a secret one nobody must know. I
must be wicked and false about it."

"Then I'm your woman," Kate smiled, " for
that's the kind of thing I love. Do let us do some-

[[247]]

p246 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p247w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p248

v?