had never been so good, the beauty and the marvel
of it was that she had never really been so frank;
being a person of such a calibre, as Milly would have
said, that, even while " dealing " with you and there
by, as it were, picking her steps, she could let herself
go, could, in irony, in confidence, in extravagance,
tell you things she had never told before. That was
the impression that she was telling things, and
quite conceivably for her own relief as well; almost
as if the errors of vision, the mistakes of proportion,
the residuary innocence of spirit still to be remedied
on the part of her auditor had their moments of prov
ing too much for her nerves. She went at them just
now, these sources of irritation, with an amused
energy that it would have been open to Milly to re
gard as cynical and that was nevertheless called for
as to this the other was distinct by the way that
in certain connections the Ajnerican mind broke
down. It seemed at least the American mind as
sitting there thrilled and dazzled in Milly not to
understand English society without a separate con
frontation with all the cases. It couldn't proceed
by there was some technical term she lacked until
Milly suggested both analogy and induction, and
then, differently, instinct, none of which were right:
it had to be led up and introduced to each aspect of
the monster, enabled to walk all round it, whether for
the consequent exaggerated ecstasy or for the still
more as appeared to this critic disproportionate
shock. It might, the monster, Kate conceded, loom

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v?