t, the expectation of performance; the
thing was done, and there was no use talking; again, again the cold
breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best he
floundered. "I'm afraid you won't understand when I say I've very
tiresome things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The
pinch, the pressure in London."

But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and the
pressure and showed how they had been her own very element. "Oh the
daily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No one
knows better than I how they haunt one in the flight of the precious
deceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have given up? I've
given up all to follow _her_. I wish you could feel as I do. And can't
you," she asked, "write about Venice?"

He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did;
and he smiled for her kindly. "Do _you_ write about Venice?"

"No; but I would--oh wouldn't I?--if I hadn't so completely given up.
She's, you know, my princess, and to one's princess--"

"One makes the whole sacrifice?"

"Precisely. There you are!"

It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many places
at once. "I quite understand that she's yours. Only you see she's not
mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had the
moral certainty she wouldn't repeat it and least of all to Mrs. Lowder,
who would find in it a disturbing implication. This was part of what he
liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave
him a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in
itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent
and elastic for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could
see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it all
was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Kate
wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, in so different a
way and from a motive so different, even though scarce less deep. Then
Mrs. Lowder wanted, by so odd an evolution of her exuberance, exactly
what each of the others did; and he was between them all, he was in the
midst. Such perceptions made occasions--well, occasions for fairly
wondering if it mightn't be best just to consent, luxuriously, to _be_
the ass the whole thing involved. Trying not to be and yet keeping in
it was of the two things the more asinine. He was glad there was no
male witness; it w