reaty renewed and repeated, which made after all, as he met
it, their great fact clear. And it somehow clarified _all_ things so to
possess each other. The effect of it was that, once more, on these
terms, he could only be generous. He had so on the spot then left
everything to her that she reverted in the course of a few moments to
one of her previous--and as positively seemed--her most precious ideas.
"You accused me just now of saying that Milly's in love with you. Well,
if you come to that, I do say it. So there you are. That's the good
she'll do us. It makes a basis for her seeing you--so that she'll help
us to go on."

Densher stared--she was wondrous all round. "And what sort of a basis
does it make for my seeing _her?_"

"Oh I don't mind!" Kate smiled.

"Don't mind my leading her on?"

She put it differently. "Don't mind her leading _you_."

"Well, she won't--so it's nothing not to mind. But how can that
'help,'" he pursued, "with what she knows?"

"What she knows? That needn't prevent."

He wondered. "Prevent her loving us?"

"Prevent her helping you. She's _like_ that," Kate Croy explained.

It took indeed some understanding. "Making nothing of the fact that I
love another?"

"Making everything," said Kate. "To console you."

"But for what?"

"For not getting your other."

He continued to stare. "But how does she know--?"

"That you _won't_ get her? She doesn't; but on the other hand she
doesn't know you will. Meanwhile she sees you baffled, for she knows of
Aunt Maud's stand. _That_"--Kate was lucid--"gives her the chance to be
nice to you."

"And what does it give _me_," the young man none the less rationally
asked, "the chance to be? A brute of a humbug to her?"

Kate so possessed her facts, as it were, that she smiled at his
violence. "You'll extraordinarily like her. She's exquisite. And there
are reasons. I mean others."

"What others?"

"Well, I'll tell you another time. Those I give you," the girl added,
"are enough to go on with."

"To go on to what?"

"Why, to seeing her again--say as soon as you can: which, moreover, on
all grounds, is no more than decent of you."

He of course took in her reference, and he had fully in mind what had
passed between them in New York. It had been no great quantity, but it
had made distinctly at the time for his pleasure; so that anything in
the nature of an appeal in the name of it could have a slight kindling
consequence. "Oh I shall natu