with Miss Theale impossible. He had talked with Kate of
this young woman's being "sacrificed," and that would have been one
way, so far as he was concerned, to sacrifice her. Such, however, had
not been the tune to which his at first bewildered view had, since the
night before, cleared itself up. It wasn't so much that he failed of
being the kind of man who "chucked," for he knew himself as the kind of
man wise enough to mark the case in which chucking might be the minor
evil and the least cruelty. It was that he liked too much every one
concerned willingly to show himself merely impracticable. He liked
Kate, goodness knew, and he also clearly enough liked Mrs. Lowder. He
liked in particular Milly herself; and hadn't it come up for him the
evening before that he quite liked even Susan Shepherd? He had never
known himself so generally merciful. It was a footing, at all events,
whatever accounted for it, on which he should surely be rather a muff
not to manage by one turn or another to escape disobliging. Should he
find he couldn't work it there would still be time enough. The idea of
working it crystallised before him in such guise as not only to promise
much interest--fairly, in case of success, much enthusiasm; but
positively to impart to failure an appearance of barbarity.

Arriving thus in Brook Street both with the best intentions and with a
margin consciously left for some primary awkwardness, he found his
burden, to his great relief, unexpectedly light. The awkwardness
involved in the responsibility so newly and so ingeniously traced for
him turned round on the spot to present him another face. This was
simply the face of his old impression, which he now fully
recovered--the impression that American girls, when, rare case, they
had the attraction of Milly, were clearly the easiest people in the
world. Had what had happened been that this specimen of the class was
from the first so committed to ease that nothing subsequent _could_
ever make her difficult? That affected him now as still more probable
than on the occasion of the hour or two lately passed with her in
Kate's society. Milly Theale had recognised no complication, to
Densher's view, while bringing him, with his companion, from the
National Gallery and entertaining them at luncheon; it was therefore
scarce supposable that complications had become so soon too much for
her. His pretext for presenting himself was fortunately of the best and
simplest; the leas