after they had risen from table, in the apartment in
which they had lunched, making it thus easy for the
other guest and his entertainer to sit in the room ad
jacent. This, for the latter personage, was the
beauty; it was almost, on Kate's part, like a prayer
to be relieved. If she honestly liked better to be
"thrown with " Susan Shepherd than with their
other friend, why that said practically everything.
It didn't perhaps altogether say why she had gone
out with him for the morning, but it said, as one
thought, about as much as she could say to his face.

Little by little indeed, under the vividness of
Kate's behaviour, the probabilities fell back into
their order. Merton Densher was in love, and Kate
couldn't help it could only be sorry and kind:
wouldn't that, without wild flurries, cover every
thing? Milly at all events tried it as a cover, tried
it hard, for the time; pulled it over her, in the front,
the larger room, drew it up to her chin with energy.
If it didn t, so treated, do everything for her, it did
so much that she could herself supply the rest. She
made that up by the interest of her great question,
the question of whether, seeing him once more, with
all that, as she called it to herself, had come and
gone, her impression of him would be different from
the impression received in New York. That had
held her from the moment of their leaving the
museum; it kept her company through their drive
and during luncheon; and now that she was a quar
ter of an hour alone with him it became acute. She

[[325]]

p324 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p325w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p326

v?