pression of all her friend took for granted. The
contrast between this free quantity and the maze of
possibilities through which, for hours, she had her
self been picking her way, put on, in short, for the
moment, a grossness that even friendly forms scarce
lightened: it helped forward in fact the revelation
to herself that she absolutely had nothing to tell.
Besides which, certainly, there was something else
an influence, at the particular juncture, still more
obscure. Kate had lost, on the way upstairs, the
look -the look that made her young hostess so sub
tly think and one of the signs of which was that she
never kept it for many moments at once; yet she
stood there, none the less, so in her bloom and in her
strength, so completely again the " handsome girl"
beyond all others, the " handsome girl " for whom
Milly had at first gratefully taken her, that to meet
her now with the note of the plaintive would amount
somehow to a surrender, to a confession. She
would never in her life be ill; the greatest doctor
would keep her, at the worst, the fewest minutes;
and it was as if she had asked just with all this prac
tical impeccability for all that was most mortal in
her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly
danced their dance; but the vibration produced and
the dust kicked up had lasted less than our account
of them. Almost before she knew it she was answer
ing, and answering, beautifully, with no conscious
ness of fraud, only as with a sudden flare of the
famous " will-power " she had heard about, read

[[282]]

p281 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p282w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p283

v?