atality in her own
failure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher's
sense of Susan Shepherd's conscious intervention had by this time a
corner of his mind all to itself; something that had begun for them at
Lancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action,
ineffably discreet, had at all events a way of affecting him as for the
most part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own interest.
They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were too
many persons, at least three, and too many things, between them; but
meanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. He
scarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour when
it would be a service to do so, that she had all the while understood
him. He even had a presentiment of a juncture at which the
understanding of every one else would fail and this deep little
person's alone survive.

Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, that
hung about our young friends; these had been the small accidents and
quiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in some
sort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they
stayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had so
notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than
any equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness from
earshot, with solitude and security. It was as if, being in possession,
they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence
of that, each had an apprehension of what the other wanted to say. It
was most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated on
their lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for their
ears was the flutter of the doves, begot in the heart of each a fear.
There might have been a betrayal of that in the way Densher broke the
silence resting on her last words. "What did you mean just now that I
can do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if you will,
I don't see, from the moment I can't lie to her, what else there is but
lying."

Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome and
sincere to her about Milly--whom you honestly like so much. That
wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You
don't, you know, say much about her."

And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know,
speak of her at all."

"