Yet she gave out light.
"You can't very well 'tell' her anything, and that doesn't matter.
Only be nice to her.
Please her; make her see how clever you are—only without letting her see that you're trying.
If you're charming to her you've nothing else to do."
But she oversimplified too.
"I can be 'charming' to her, so far as I see, only by letting her suppose I give you up—which I'll be hanged if I do!
It is," he said with feeling, "a game."
"Of course it's a game.
But she'll never suppose you give me up—or I give you—if you keep reminding her how you enjoy our interviews."
"Then if she has to see us as obstinate and constant," Densher asked, "what good does it do?"
Kate was for a moment checked.
"What good does what—?"
"Does my pleasing her—does anything. I can't," he impatiently declared, "please her."
Kate looked at him hard again, disappointed at his want of consistency; but it appeared to determine in her something better than a mere complaint.
"Then I can!
Leave it to me."
With which she came to him under the compulsion, again, that had united them shortly before, and took hold of him in her urgency to the same tender purpose.
It was her form of entreaty renewed and repeated, which made after all, as he met it, their great fact clear.
And it somehow clarified all things so to possess each other.
The effect of it was that, once more, on these terms, he could only be generous.
He had so on the spot then left everything to her that she reverted in the course of a few moments to one of her previous—and as positively seemed—her most precious ideas.
"You accused me just now of saying that Milly's in love with you.
Well, if you come to that, I do say it.
So there you are.
That's the good she'll do us.
It makes a basis for her seeing you—so that she'll help us to go on."
Densher stared—she was wondrous all round.
"And what sort of a basis does it make for my seeing her?"
"Oh I don't mind!" Kate smiled.
"Don't mind my leading her on?"
She put it differently.
"Don't mind her leading you."
"Well, she won't—so it's nothing not to mind.
But how can that 'help,'" he pursued, "with what she knows?"
"What she knows?
That needn't prevent."
He wondered.
"Prevent her loving us?"
"Prevent her helping you.
She's like that," Kate Croy explained.
It took indeed some understanding.
"Making nothing of the fact that I love another?"
"Making everything," said Kate.
"To console you."
"But for what?"
"For not getting your other."
He continued to stare.
"But how does she know—?"
"That you won't get her?