een, or than
he should have, probably, when it came to that, just as he always would
be; whereas she, on her side, in comparison with her state of some
months before, had measureably more to relinquish. He easily saw how
their meeting at Lancaster Gate gave more of an accent to that quantity
than their meeting at stations or in parks; and yet on the other hand
he couldn't urge this against it. If Mrs. Lowder was indifferent her
indifference added in a manner to what Kate's taking him as he was
would call on her to sacrifice. Such in fine was her art with him that
she seemed to put the question of their still waiting into quite other
terms than the terms of ugly blue, of florid Sevres, of complicated
brass, in which their boudoir expressed it. She said almost all in fact
by saying, on this article of Aunt Maud, after he had once more pressed
her, that when he should see her, as must inevitably soon happen, he
would understand. "Do you mean," he asked at this, "that there's any
_definite_ sign of her coming round? I'm not talking," he explained,
"of mere hypocrisies in her, or mere brave duplicities. Remember, after
all, that supremely clever as we are, and as strong a team, I admit, as
there is going--remember that she can play with us quite as much as we
play with her."

"She doesn't want to play with _me_, my dear," Kate lucidly replied;
"she doesn't want to make me suffer a bit more than she need. She cares
for me too much, and everything she does or doesn't do has a value.
_This_ has a value--her being as she has been about us to-day. I
believe she's in her room, where she's keeping strictly to herself
while you're here with me. But that isn't 'playing'--not a bit."

"What is it then," the young man returned--"from the moment it isn't
her blessing and a cheque?"

Kate was complete. "It's simply her absence of smallness. There is
something in her above trifles. She _generally_ trusts us; she doesn't
propose to hunt us into corners; and if we frankly ask for a
thing--why," said Kate, "she shrugs, but she lets it go. She has really
but one fault--she's indifferent, on such ground as she has taken about
us, to details. However," the girl cheerfully went on, "it isn't in
detail we fight her."

"It seems to me," Densher brought out after a moment's thought of this,
"that it's in detail we deceive her"--a speech that, as soon as he had
uttered it, applied itself for him, as also visibly for his companion,
to the afterg