beset too by other things.
"Then _you_ know--"

"Of his dreadful visit?" She stared. "Why it's what has done it."

"Yes--I understand that. But you also know--"

He had faltered again, but all she knew she now wanted to say. "I'm
speaking," she said soothingly, "of what he told her. It's _that_ that
I've taken you as knowing."

"Oh!" he sounded in spite of himself.

It appeared to have for her, he saw the next moment, the quality of
relief, as if he had supposed her thinking of something else.
Thereupon, straightway, that lightened it. "Oh you thought I've known
it for _true!_"

Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw that he had betrayed
himself. Not, however, that it mattered, as he immediately saw still
better. There it was now, all of it at last, and this at least there
was no postponing. They were left with her idea--the one she was
wishing to make him recognise. He had expressed ten minutes before his
need to understand, and she was acting after all but on that. Only what
he was to understand was no small matter; it might be larger even than
as yet appeared.

He took again one of his turns, not meeting what she had last said; he
mooned a minute, as he would have called it, at a window; and of course
she could see that she had driven him to the wall. She did clearly,
without delay, see it; on which her sense of having "caught" him became
as promptly a scruple, which she spoke as if not to press. "What I mean
is that he told her you've been all the while engaged to Miss Croy."

He gave a jerk round; it was almost--to hear it--the touch of a lash;
and he said--idiotically, as he afterwards knew--the first thing that
came into his head. "All _what_ while?"

"Oh it's not I who say it." She spoke in gentleness. "I only repeat to
you what he told her."

Densher, from whom an impatience had escaped, had already caught
himself up. "Pardon my brutality. Of course I know what you're talking
about. I saw him, toward the evening," he further explained, "in the
Piazza; only just saw him--through the glass at Florian's--without any
words. In fact I scarcely know him--there wouldn't have been occasion.
It was but once, moreover--he must have gone that night. But I knew he
wouldn't have come for nothing, and I turned it over--what he would
have come for."

Oh so had Mrs. Stringham. "He came for exasperation."

Densher approved. "He came to let her know that he knows better than
she for whom it was she had a