te and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her
meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to
face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which the
warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again
feeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to the
quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two
women stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherd
had received their great doctor's visit, which had been clearly no
small affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, kept
in place, against communication and betrayal, as she now practically
confessed, the barrier of their invited guests. "You've been too dear.
With what I see you're full of you treated them beautifully. _Isn't_
Kate charming when she wants to be?"

Poor Susie's expression, contending at first, as in a high fine spasm,
with different dangers, had now quite let itself go. She had to make an
effort to reach a point in space already so remote. "Miss Croy? Oh she
was pleasant and clever. She knew," Mrs. Stringham added. "She knew."

Milly braced herself--but conscious above all, at the moment, of a high
compassion for her mate. She made her out as struggling--struggling in
all her nature against the betrayal of pity, which in itself, given her
nature, could only be a torment. Milly gathered from the struggle how
much there was of the pity, and how therefore it was both in her
tenderness and in her conscience that Mrs. Stringham suffered.
Wonderful and beautiful it was that this impression instantly steadied
the girl. Ruefully asking herself on what basis of ease, with the drop
of their barrier, they were to find themselves together, she felt the
question met with a relief that was almost joy. The basis, the
inevitable basis, was that she was going to be sorry for Susie, who, to
all appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a
manner to be sorry for _her_. Mrs. Stringham's sorrow would hurt Mrs.
Stringham, but how could her own ever hurt? She had, the poor girl, at
all events, on the spot, five minutes of exaltation in which she turned
the tables on her friend with a pass of the hand, a gesture of an
energy that made a wind in the air. "Kate knew," she asked, "that you
were full of Sir Luke Strett?"

"She spoke of nothing, but she was gentle and nice; she seemed to want
to help me through." Which the good