It had been, however, as if the thrill of their association itself pressed in him, as great felicities do, the sharp spring of fear.
"See here, you know: don't, don't—!"
"Don't what?"
"Don't fail me.
It would kill me."
She looked at him a minute with no response but her eyes.
"So you think you'll kill me in time to prevent it?"
She smiled, but he saw her the next instant as smiling through tears; and the instant after this she had got, in respect to the particular point, quite off. She had come back to another, which was one of her own; her own were so closely connected that Densher's were at best but parenthetic.
Still she had a distance to go.
"You do then see your way?"
She put it to him before they joined—as was high time—the others.
And she made him understand she meant his way with Milly.
He had dropped a little in presence of the explanation; then she had brought him up to a sort of recognition.
He could make out by this light something of what he saw, but a dimness also there was, undispelled since his return.
"There's something you must definitely tell me.
If our friend knows that all the while—?"
She came straight to his aid, formulating for him his anxiety, though quite to smooth it down.
"All the while she and I here were growing intimate, you and I were in unmentioned relation?
If she knows that, yes, she knows our relation must have involved your writing to me."
"Then how could she suppose you weren't answering?"
"She doesn't suppose it."
"How then can she imagine you never named her?"
"She doesn't.
She knows now I did name her.
I've told her everything.
She's in possession of reasons that will perfectly do."
Still he just brooded.
"She takes things from you exactly as I take them?"
"Exactly as you take them."
"She's just such another victim?"
"Just such another.
You're a pair."
"Then if anything happens," said Densher, "we can console each other?"
"Ah something may indeed happen," she returned, "if you'll only go straight!"
He watched the others an instant through the window.
"What do you mean by going straight?"
"Not worrying.
Doing as you like.
Try, as I've told you before, and you'll see.
You'll have me perfectly, always, to refer to."
"Oh rather, I hope!
But if she's going away?"
It pulled Kate up but a moment.
"I'll bring her back.
There you are.
You won't be able to say I haven't made it smooth for you."
He faced it all, and certainly it was queer. But it wasn't the queerness that after another minute was uppermost.
He was in a wondrous silken web, and it was amusing.
"You spoil me!"
He wasn't sure if Mrs. Lowder, who at this juncture reappeared, had caught his word as it dropped from him; probably not, he thought, her attention being given to Mrs. Stringham, with whom she came through and who was now, none too soon, taking leave of her.