rally call again without delay. Yes," said
Densher, "her being in love with me is nonsense; but I must, quite
independently of that, make every acknowledgement of favours received."

It appeared practically all Kate asked. "Then you see. I shall meet you
there."

"I don't quite see," he presently returned, "why she should wish to
receive you for it."

"She receives me for myself--that is for _her_ self. She thinks no end
of me. That I should have to drum it into you!"

Yet still he didn't take it. "Then I confess she's beyond me."

Well, Kate could but leave it as she saw it. "She regards me as
already--in these few weeks--her dearest friend. It's quite separate.
We're in, she and I, ever so deep." And it was to confirm this that, as
if it had flashed upon her that he was somewhere at sea, she threw out
at last her own real light. "She doesn't of course know I care for
_you_. She thinks I care so little that it's not worth speaking of."
That he had been somewhere at sea these remarks made quickly clear, and
Kate hailed the effect with surprise. "Have you been supposing that she
does know--?"

"About our situation? Certainly, if you're such friends as you show
me--and if you haven't otherwise represented it to her." She uttered at
this such a sound of impatience that he stood artlessly vague. "You
_have_ denied it to her?"

She threw up her arms at his being so backward. "'Denied it'? My dear
man, we've never spoken of you."

"Never, never?"

"Strange as it may appear to your glory--never."

He couldn't piece it together. "But won't Mrs. Lowder have spoken?"

"Very probably. But of _you_. Not of me."

This struck him as obscure. "How does she know me but as part and
parcel of you?"

"How?" Kate triumphantly asked. "Why exactly to make nothing of it, to
have nothing to do with it, to stick consistently to her line about it.
Aunt Maud's line is to keep all reality out of our relation--that is
out of my being in danger from you--by not having so much as suspected
or heard of it. She'll get rid of it, as she believes, by ignoring it
and sinking it--if she only does so hard enough. Therefore _she_, in
her manner, 'denies' it if you will. That's how she knows you otherwise
than as part and parcel of me. She won't for a moment have allowed
either to Mrs. Stringham or to Milly that I've in any way, as they say,
distinguished you."

"And you don't suppose," said Densher, "that they must have made it out
for the