Still, as she wasn't breaking down there was nothing for him but to continue.
"Is your going Mrs. Lowder's idea?"
"Very much indeed.
Of course again you see what it does for us. And I don't," she added, "refer only to our going, but to Aunt Maud's view of the general propriety of it."
"I see again, as you say," Densher said after a moment. "It makes everything fit."
"Everything."
The word, for a little, held the air, and he might have seemed the while to be looking, by no means dimly now, at all it stood for.
But he had in fact been looking at something else.
"You leave her here then to die?"
"Ah she believes she won't die.
Not if you stay. I mean," Kate explained, "Aunt Maud believes."
"And that's all that's necessary?"
Still indeed she didn't break down.
"Didn't we long ago agree that what she believes is the principal thing for us?"
He recalled it, under her eyes, but it came as from long ago.
"Oh yes.
I can't deny it." Then he added: "So that if I stay—"
"It won't"—she was prompt—"be our fault."
"If Mrs. Lowder still, you mean, suspects us?"
"If she still suspects us.
But she won't." Kate gave it an emphasis that might have appeared to leave him nothing more; and he might in fact well have found nothing if he hadn't presently found:
"But what if she doesn't accept me?"
It produced in her a look of weariness that made the patience of her tone the next moment touch him.
"You can but try."
"Naturally I can but try.
Only, you see, one has to try a little hard to propose to a dying girl."
"She isn't for you as if she's dying."
It had determined in Kate the flash of justesse he could perhaps most, on consideration, have admired, since her retort touched the truth.
There before him was the fact of how Milly to-night impressed him, and his companion, with her eyes in his own and pursuing his impression to the depths of them, literally now perched on the fact in triumph.
She turned her head to where their friend was again in range, and it made him turn his, so that they watched a minute in concert.
Milly, from the other side, happened at the moment to notice them, and she sent across toward them in response all the candour of her smile, the lustre of her pearls, the value of her life, the essence of her wealth.
It brought them together again with faces made fairly grave by the reality she put into their plan.
Kate herself grew a little pale for it, and they had for a time only a silence.
The music, however, gay and vociferous, had broken out afresh and protected more than interrupted them.
When Densher at last spoke it was under cover.
"I might stay, you know, without trying."
"Oh to stay is to try."
"To have for herself, you mean, the appearance of it?"
"I don't see how you can have the appearance more."
Densher waited.
"You think it then possible she may offer marriage?"
"I can't think—if you really want to know—what she may not offer!"
"In the manner of princesses, who do such things?"
"In any manner you like.
So be prepared."
Well, he looked as if he almost were.
"It will be for me then to accept.
But that's the way it must come."
Kate's silence, so far, let it pass; but she presently said:
"You'll, on your honour, stay then?"