The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

from us,” the girl went on, “is her own affair⁠—it’s for her to measure. I asked her for nothing,” she added; “I never put myself upon her. She must take her risks, and she surely understands them. What we shall have got from her is what we’ve already spoken of,” Kate further explained; “it’s that we shall have gained time. And so, for that matter, will she.”

Densher gazed a little at all this clearness; his gaze was not at the present hour into romantic obscurity. “Yes; no doubt, in our particular situation, time’s everything. And then there’s the joy of it.”

She hesitated. “Of our secret?”

“Not so much perhaps of our secret in itself, but of what’s represented and, as we must somehow feel, protected and made deeper and closer by it.” And his fine face, relaxed into happiness, covered her with all his meaning. “Our being as we are.”

It was as if for a moment she let the meaning sink into her. “So gone?”

“So gone. So extremely gone. However,” he smiled, “we shall go a good deal further.” Her answer to which was only the softness of her silence⁠—a silence that looked out for them both at the far reach of their prospect. This was immense, and they thus took final possession of it. They were practically united and they were splendidly strong; but there were other things⁠—things they were precisely strong enough to be able successfully to count with and safely to allow for; in consequence of which they would, for the present, subject to some better reason, keep their understanding to themselves. It was not indeed, however, till after one more observation of Densher’s that they felt the question completely straightened out. “The only thing of course is that she may any day absolutely put it to you.”

Kate considered. “Ask me where, on my honour, we are? She may, naturally; but I doubt if in fact she will. While you’re away she’ll make the most of it. She’ll leave me alone.”

“But there’ll be my letters.”

The girl faced his letters. “Very, very many?”

“Very, very, very many⁠—more than ever; and you know what that is! And then,” Densher added, “there’ll be yours.”

“Oh, I shan’t leave mine on the hall-table. I shall post them myself.”

He looked at her a moment. “Do you think then I had best address you elsewhere?” After which, before she could quite answer, he added with some emphasis: “I’d rather not, you know. It’s straighter.”

She might again have just waited. “Of course it’s straighter. Don’t be afraid I shan’t be straight. Address me,” she continued, “where you like. I shall be proud enough of its being known you write to me.”

He turned it over for the last clearness. “Even at the risk of its really bringing down the inquisition?”

Well, the last clearness now filled her. “I’m not afraid of the inquisition. If she asks if there’s anything definite between us, I know perfectly what I shall say.”

“That I am, of course, ‘gone’ for you?”

“That I love you as I shall never in my life love anyone else, and that she can make what she likes of that.” She said it out so splendidly that it was like a new profession of faith, the fullness of a tide breaking through; and the effect of that, in turn, was to make her companion meet her with such eyes that she had time again before he could otherwise speak. “Besides, she’s just as likely to ask you.”

“Not while I’m away.”

“Then when you come back.”

“Well then,” said Densher, “we shall have had our particular joy. But what I feel is,” he candidly added, “that, by an idea of her own, her superior policy, she won’t ask me. She’ll let me off. I shan’t have to lie to her.”

“It will be left all to me?” asked Kate.

“All to you!” he tenderly laughed.

But it was, oddly, the very next moment as if he had perhaps been a shade too candid. His discrimination seemed to mark a possible, a natural reality, a reality not wholly disallowed by the account the girl had just given of her own intention. There was a difference in the air⁠—even if none other than the supposedly usual difference in truth between man and woman; and it was almost as if the sense of this provoked her. She seemed to cast about an instant, and then she went back a little resentfully to something she had suffered to pass a minute before. She appeared to take up rather more seriously than she need the joke about her freedom to deceive. Yet she did this too in a beautiful way. “Men are too stupid⁠—even you. You didn’t understand just now why, if I post my letters myself, it won’t be for anything so vulgar as to hide them.”

“Oh, you said⁠—for the pleasure.”

“Yes; but you didn’t, you don’t understand what the pleasure may be. There are refinements⁠—!” she more patiently dropped. “I mean of consciousness, of sensation, of appreciation,” she went on. “No,” she sadly insisted⁠—“men don’t know. They know, in such matters, almost nothing but what women show them.”

This was one of the speeches, frequent in her, that, liberally, joyfully, intensely adopted and, in itself, as might be, embraced, drew him again as close to her, and held him as long, as their conditions permitted. “Then that’s exactly why we’ve such an abysmal need of you!”

Book III I

The two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season, had been warned that their design was unconsidered, that the passes would not be clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns open⁠—the two ladies who, characteristically, had braved a good deal of possibly interested remonstrance were finding themselves, as their adventure turned out, wonderfully sustained. It was the judgment of the headwaiters and other functionaries on the Italian lakes that approved itself now as interested; they themselves had been conscious of impatiences, of bolder dreams⁠—at least the younger had; so that one of the