Kate, after a moment, made the best of this.
"Then when are we to come?"

It just pulled her friend up, for even while they
talked at least it was one of the reasons she stood
there suddenly, irrelevantly, in the light of her other
identity, the identity she would have for Mr. Den-
sher. This was always, from one instant to another,
an incalculable light, which, though it might go off
faster than it came on, necessarily disturbed. It
sprang, with a perversity all its own, from the fact
that, with the lapse of hours and days, the chances
themselves that made for his being named continued
so oddly to fail. There were twenty, there were
fifty, but none of them turned up. This, in particu
lar, was of course not a juncture at which the least
of them would naturally be present; but it would
make, none the less, Milly saw, another day practi
cally all stamped with avoidance. She saw in a
quick glimmer, and with it all Kate's unconscious
ness; and then she shook off the obsession. But it
had lasted long enough to qualify her response. No,
she had shown Kate how she trusted her; and that,
for loyalty, would somehow do. " Oh, dear thing,
now that the ice is broken I shan't trouble you again."

"You ll come alone?"

"Without a scruple. Only I shall ask you, please,
for your absolute discretion still."

Outside, before the door, on the wide pavement
of the great square, they had to wait again while
their carriage, which Milly had kept, completed a

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v?