"And she did tell you so?"
"Face-to-face, yes.
Personally, as she desired."
"And as you of course did."
"No, Kate," he returned with all their mutual consideration; "not as I did.
I hadn't desired it in the least."
"You only went to oblige her?"
"To oblige her.
And of course also to oblige you."
"Oh for myself certainly I'm glad."
"'Glad'?"—he echoed vaguely the way it rang out.
"I mean you did quite the right thing.
You did it especially in having stayed.
But that was all?"
Kate went on.
"That you mustn't wait?"
"That was really all—and in perfect kindness."
"Ah kindness naturally: from the moment she asked of you such a—well, such an effort.
That you mustn't wait—that was the point," Kate added—"to see her die."
"That was the point, my dear," Densher said.
"And it took twenty minutes to make it?"
He thought a little.
"I didn't time it to a second.
I paid her the visit—just like another."
"Like another person?"
"Like another visit."
"Oh!" said Kate.
Which had apparently the effect of slightly arresting his speech—an arrest she took advantage of to continue; making with it indeed her nearest approach to an enquiry of the kind against which he had braced himself. "Did she receive you—in her condition—in her room?"
"Not she," said Merton Densher.
"She received me just as usual: in that glorious great salone, in the dress she always wears, from her inveterate corner of her sofa." And his face for the moment conveyed the scene, just as hers equally embraced it. "Do you remember what you originally said to me of her?"
"Ah I've said so many things."
"That she wouldn't smell of drugs, that she wouldn't taste of medicine.
Well, she didn't."
"So that it was really almost happy?"
It took him a long time to answer, occupied as he partly was in feeling how nobody but Kate could have invested such a question with the tone that was perfectly right.
She meanwhile, however, patiently waited.
"I don't think I can attempt to say now what it was.
Some day—perhaps.
For it would be worth it for us."
"Some day—certainly." She seemed to record the promise.
Yet she spoke again abruptly. "She'll recover."
"Well," said Densher, "you'll see."
She had the air an instant of trying to.
"Did she show anything of her feeling?
I mean," Kate explained, "of her feeling of having been misled."
She didn't press hard, surely; but he had just mentioned that he would have rather to glide.
"She showed nothing but her beauty and her strength."
"Then," his companion asked, "what's the use of her strength?"
He seemed to look about for a use he could name; but he had soon given it up.
"She must die, my dear, in her own extraordinary way."