so without a hope."

"Ah that, certainly."

"Then it _was_ mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the
bargain," the young man asked--"didn't he, weeks before, see her, judge
her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a
few months to live?"

Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and
it gave more force to what she then remarkably added. "He has doubtless
been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been aware."

"He has wanted her, you mean, just _because_--?"

"Just because," said Susan Shepherd.

"The hound!" Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a
hot face, as soon as he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in
his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once more
taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion.
"Shall we have lights--a lamp or the candles?"

"Not for me."

"Nothing?"

"Not for me."

He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a
thought. "He _will_ have proposed to Miss Croy. That's what has
happened."

Her reserve continued. "It's you who must judge."

"Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done so too--only _she_, poor
lady, wrong. Miss Croy's refusal of him will have struck him"--Densher
continued to make it out--"as a phenomenon requiring a reason."

"And you've been clear to him _as_ the reason?"

"Not too clear--since I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact
to make his descent on Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has
believed," said Densher bravely, "that I may have been a reason at
Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same time have been up to something in
Venice."

Mrs. Stringham took her courage from his own. "'Up to' something? Up to
what?"

"God knows. To some 'game,' as they say. To some deviltry. To some
duplicity."

"Which of course," Mrs. Stringham observed, "is a monstrous
supposition." Her companion, after a stiff minute--sensibly long for
each--fell away from her again, and then added to it another minute,
which he spent once more looking out with his hands in his pockets.
This was no answer, he perfectly knew, to what she had dropped, and it
even seemed to state for his own ears that no answer was possible. She
left him to himself, and he was glad she had declined, for their
further colloquy, the advantage of lights. These would have been an
advantage mainly to herself. Yet she got her be