78The Wings of the Dovewith which t

78
The Wings of the Dove
with which they evidently wished a new tone associated,
such a tone as, from now on, it would have always to take
from his example.
“How you ought indeed, when you understand so well,
to be a journalist’s wife!” Densher exclaimed in admiration
even while she struck him as fairly hurrying him off.
But she was almost impatient of the praise. “What do
you expect one not to understand when one cares for you?”
“Ah then I’ll put it otherwise and say ‘How much you
care for me!’ “
“Yes,” she assented; “it fairly redeems my stupidity. I
shall, with a chance to show it,” she added, “have some
imagination for you.”
She spoke of the future this time as so little contingent
that he felt a queerness of conscience in making her the
report that he presently arrived at on what had passed
for him with the real arbiter of their destiny. The way for
that had been blocked a little by his news from Fleet
Street; but in the crucible of their happy discussion this
element soon melted into the other, and in the mixture
that ensued the parts were not to be distinguished. The
young man moreover, before taking his leave, was to see
why Kate had spoken with a wisdom indifferent to that,
and was to come to the vision by a devious way that
deepened the final cheer. Their faces were turned to the
illumined quarter as soon as he had answered her question
on the score of their being to appearance able to
play patience, a prodigious game of patience, with success.
It was for the possibility of the appearance that she
had a few days before so earnestly pressed him to see her
aunt; and if after his hour with that lady it had not
struck Densher that he had seen her to the happiest purpose
the poor facts flushed with a better meaning as
Kate, one by one, took them up.
“If she consents to your coming why isn’t that everything?”
“It is everything; everything she thinks it. It’s the probability—
I mean as Mrs. Lowder measures probability—
that I may be prevented from becoming a complication
for her by some arrangement, any arrangement, through
which you shall see me often and easily. She’s sure of my
want of money, and that gives her time. She believes in