is to get off again
to a distance and see the situation from there. I shall keep it fresh,"
she wound up as if herself rather pleased with the ingenuity of her
statement--"I shall keep it fresh, by that prudence, for my return."

"Ah then you _will_ return? Can you promise one that?"

Her face fairly lighted at his asking for a promise; but she made as if
bargaining a little. "Isn't London rather awful in winter?"

He had been going to ask her if she meant for the invalid; but he
checked the infelicity of this and took the enquiry as referring to
social life. "No--I like it, with one thing and another; it's less of a
mob than later on; and it would have for _us_ the merit--should you
come here then--that we should probably see more of you. So do reappear
for us--if it isn't a question of climate."

She looked at that a little graver. "If what isn't a question--?"

"Why the determination of your movements. You spoke just now of going
somewhere for that."

"For better air?"--she remembered. "Oh yes, one certainly wants to get
out of London in August."

"Rather, of course!"--he fully understood. "Though I'm glad you've hung
on long enough for me to catch you. Try us at any rate," he continued,
"once more."

"Whom do you mean by 'us'?" she presently asked.

It pulled him up an instant--representing, as he saw it might have
seemed, an allusion to himself as conjoined with Kate, whom he was
proposing not to mention any more than his hostess did. But the issue
was easy. "I mean all of us together, every one you'll find ready to
surround you with sympathy."

It made her, none the less, in her odd charming way, challenge him
afresh. "Why do you say sympathy?"

"Well, it's doubtless a pale word. What we _shall_ feel for you will be
much nearer worship."

"As near then as you like!" With which at last Kate's name was sounded.
"The people I'd most come back for are the people you know. I'd do it
for Mrs. Lowder, who has been beautifully kind to me."

"So she has to _me_," said Densher. "I feel," he added as she at first
answered nothing, "that, quite contrary to anything I originally
expected, I've made a good friend of her."

"I didn't expect it either--its turning out as it has. But I did," said
Milly, "with Kate. I shall come back for her too. I'd do anything"--she
kept it up--"for Kate."

Looking at him as with conscious clearness while she spoke, she might
for the moment have effectively laid a trap for wha