then fairly perceived that--even putting their purity of motive at its
highest--it was neither Kate nor he who made his strange relation to
Milly, who made her own, so far as it might be, innocent; it was
neither of them who practically purged it--if practically purged it
was. Milly herself did everything--so far at least as he was
concerned--Milly herself, and Milly's house, and Milly's hospitality,
and Milly's manner, and Milly's character, and, perhaps still more than
anything else, Milly's imagination, Mrs. Stringham and Sir Luke indeed
a little aiding: whereby he knew the blessing of a fair pretext to ask
himself what more he had to do. Something incalculable wrought for
them--for him and Kate; something outside, beyond, above themselves,
and doubtless ever so much better than they: which wasn't a reason,
however--its being so much better--for them not to profit by it. Not to
profit by it, so far as profit could be reckoned, would have been to go
directly against it; and the spirit of generosity at present engendered
in Densher could have felt no greater pang than by his having to go
directly against Milly.

To go _with_ her was the thing, so far as she could herself go; which,
from the moment her tenure of her loved palace stretched on, was
possible but by his remaining near her. This remaining was of course on
the face of it the most "marked" of demonstrations--which was exactly
why Kate had required it; it was so marked that on the very evening of
the day it had taken effect Milly herself hadn't been able not to reach
out to him, with an exquisite awkwardness, for some account of it. It
was as if she had wanted from him some name that, now they were to be
almost alone together, they could, for their further ease, know it and
call it by--it being, after all, almost rudimentary that his presence,
of which the absence of the others made quite a different thing,
couldn't but have for himself some definite basis. She only wondered
about the basis it would have for himself, and how he would describe
it; that would quite do for her--it even would have done for her, he
could see, had he produced some reason merely trivial, had he said he
was waiting for money or clothes, for letters or for orders from Fleet
Street, without which, as she might have heard, newspaper men never
took a step. He hadn't in the event quite sunk to that; but he had none
the less had there with her, that night, on Mrs. Stringham's leaving
them