other a
catastrophe. He was mixed up in her fate, or her fate, if that should
be better, was mixed up in _him_, so that a single false motion might
either way snap the coil. They helped him, it was true, these
considerations, to a degree of eventual peace, for what they luminously
amounted to was that he was to do nothing, and that fell in after all
with the burden laid on him by Kate. He was only not to budge without
the girl's leave--not, oddly enough at the last, to move without it,
whether further or nearer, any more than without Kate's. It was to this
his wisdom reduced itself--to the need again simply to be kind. That
was the same as being still--as studying to create the minimum of
vibration. He felt himself as he smoked shut up to a room on the wall
of which something precious was too precariously hung. A false step
would bring it down, and it must hang as long as possible. He was aware
when he walked away again that even Fleet Street wouldn't at this
juncture successfully touch him. His manager might wire that he was
wanted, but he could easily be deaf to his manager. His money for the
idle life might be none too much; happily, however, Venice was cheap,
and it was moreover the queer fact that Milly in a manner supported
him. The greatest of his expenses really was to walk to the palace to
dinner. He didn't want, in short, to give that up, and he should
probably be able, he felt, to stay his breath and his hand. He should
be able to be still enough through everything.

He tried that for three weeks, with the sense after a little of not
having failed. There had to be a delicate art in it, for he wasn't
trying--quite the contrary--to be either distant or dull. That would
not have been being "nice," which in its own form was the real law.
That too might just have produced the vibration he desired to avert; so
that he best kept everything in place by not hesitating or fearing, as
it were, to let himself go--go in the direction, that is to say, of
staying. It depended on where he went; which was what he meant by
taking care. When one went on tiptoe one could turn off for retreat
without betraying the manoeuvre. Perfect tact--the necessity for which
he had from the first, as we know, happily recognised--was to keep all
intercourse in the key of the absolutely settled. It was settled thus
for instance that they were indissoluble good friends, and settled as
well that her being the American girl was, just in time and f