For some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped out of her tone, which became sweet and sincere. "'Meet,' my dear man," she expressively echoed; "does it strike you that we get, after all, so very much out of our meetings?"
"On the contrary—they're starvation diet.
All I mean is—and it's all I've meant from the day I came—that we at least get more than Aunt Maud."
"Ah but you see," Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maud gets."
"Exactly so—and it's what I don't understand that keeps me so fascinated with the question.
She gives me no light; she's prodigious.
She takes everything as of a natural—!"
"She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my reflexions about you.
There's every appearance for her," Kate went on, "that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible; that what she had thought more likely than not to happen is happening.
The very essence of her, as you surely by this time have made out for yourself, is that when she adopts a view she—well, to her own sense, really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view any other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that.
I've often thought success comes to her"—Kate continued to study the phenomenon—"by the spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not to prove the right one.
One has seen it so again and again, in the face of everything, become the right one."
Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the largest response.
"Ah my dear child, if you can explain I of course needn't not 'understand.'
I'm condemned to that," he on his side presently explained, "only when understanding fails." He took a moment; then he pursued: "Does she think she terrorises us?" To which he added while, without immediate speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does she believe anything so stiff as that you've really changed about me?" He knew now that he was probing the girl deep—something told him so; but that was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that you dislike me?"
To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong.
"You could yourself easily put it there!"
He wondered.
"By telling her so?"
"No," said Kate as with amusement at his simplicity; "I don't ask that of you."
"Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little—!"
There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist the impulse to take up.
"I'm perfectly justified in what I've asked," she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes again intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You're not a bit unhappy."
"Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly.
"It doesn't practically show—which is enough for Aunt Maud.
You're wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want to know whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectly that I see it coming."
With which, by a quick transition, as if she had settled the case, she asked him the hour.
"Oh only twelve-ten"—he had looked at his watch.
"We've taken but thirteen minutes; we've time yet."
"Then we must walk.
We must go toward them."
Densher, from where they had been standing, measured the long reach of the Square.
"They're still in their shop.
They're safe for half an hour."
"That shows then, that shows!" said Kate.
This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse after leaving the great mosque-like church.
It rose now, domed and pinnacled, but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast empty space, enclosed by its arcades, to which at that hour movement and traffic were mostly confined.
Venice was at breakfast, the Venice of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for the parties of importunate pigeons picking up the crumbs of perpetual feasts, their prospect was clear and they could see their companions hadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorged by the lace-shop, in one of the loggie, where, shortly before, they had left them for a look-in—the expression was artfully Densher's—at Saint Mark's.
Their morning had happened to take such a turn as brought this chance to the surface; yet his allusion, just made to Kate, hadn't been an overstatement of their general opportunity.
The worst that could be said of their general opportunity was that it was essentially in presence—in presence of every one; every one consisting at this juncture, in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly.
But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could become special was furnished precisely by this view of the compatibility of their comfort with a certain amount of lingering.
The others had assented to their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the least the others could do.
What had really helped them this morning was the fact that, on his turning up, as he always called it, at the palace, Milly had not, as before, been able to present herself.
Custom and use had hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day after day—eight days had been now so conveniently marked—their friends, Milly's and his, conveniently dispersed and left him to sit with her till luncheon.
Such was the perfect operation of the scheme on which he had been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly there was that amount of justification for Kate's vision of success.
He had, for Mrs. Lowder—he couldn't help it while sitting there—the air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate sufficiently deep to be alarming.
He had failed their young hostess each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day that she hadn't been well enough to see him.
That had made a mark, all round; the mark was in the way in which, gathered in the room of state, with the place, from the right time, all bright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent, they—the rest of them—simply looked at each other.
It was lurid—lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately—that they had uttered no common regrets.
It was strange for our young man above all that, if the poor girl was indisposed to that degree, the hush of gravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort, should be the most the case—that of the guests—could permit itself.