Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his words; and he had taken it from her the next moment that he really needn't get into a state.
What in the world was the matter?
She asked it, with interest, for all answer.
"Isn't she better—if she's able to see you?"
"She assures me she's in perfect health."
Kate's interest grew.
"I knew she would." On which she added: "It won't have been really for illness that she stayed away last night."
"For what then?"
"Well—for nervousness."
"Nervousness about what?"
"Oh you know!"
She spoke with a hint of impatience, smiling however the next moment. "I've told you that."
He looked at her to recover in her face what she had told him; then it was as if what he saw there prompted him to say:
"What have you told her?"
She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered where they were, liable to surprise, talking with softened voices, even stretching their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite right feeling.
Milly's room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying things—!
For a moment, none the less, they kept it up.
"Ask her, if you like; you're free—she'll tell you.
Act as you think best; don't trouble about what you think I may or mayn't have told.
I'm all right with her," said Kate. "So there you are."
"If you mean here I am," he answered, "it's unmistakeable.
If you also mean that her believing in you is all I have to do with you're so far right as that she certainly does believe in you."
"Well then take example by her."
"She's really doing it for you," Densher continued.
"She's driving me out for you."
"In that case," said Kate with her soft tranquillity, "you can do it a little for her.
I'm not afraid," she smiled.
He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it and affected again, as he had already so often been, by more things in this face and in her whole person and presence than he was, to his relief, obliged to find words for.
It wasn't, under such impressions, a question of words.
"I do nothing for any one in the world but you.
But for you I'll do anything."
"Good, good," said Kate. "That's how I like you."
He waited again an instant.
"Then you swear to it?"
"To 'it'?
To what?"
"Why that you do 'like' me.
Since it's all for that, you know, that I'm letting you do—well, God knows what with me."
She gave at this, with a stare, a disheartened gesture—the sense of which she immediately further expressed.
"If you don't believe in me then, after all, hadn't you better break off before you've gone further?"
"Break off with you?"
"Break off with Milly.
You might go now," she said, "and I'll stay and explain to her why it is."
He wondered—as if it struck him.
"What would you say?"
"Why that you find you can't stand her, and that there's nothing for me but to bear with you as I best may."
He considered of this.
"How much do you abuse me to her?"
"Exactly enough.
As much as you see by her attitude."