nefit too even from the
absence of them. It came out in her very tone when at last she
addressed him--so differently, for confidence--in words she had already
used. "If Sir Luke himself asks it of you as something you can do for
_him_, will you deny to Milly herself what she has been made so
dreadfully to believe?"

Oh how he knew he hung back! But at last he said: "You're absolutely
certain then that she does believe it?"

"Certain?" She appealed to their whole situation. "Judge!"

He took his time again to judge. "Do _you_ believe it?"

He was conscious that his own appeal pressed her hard; it eased him a
little that her answer must be a pain to her discretion. She answered
none the less, and he was truly the harder pressed. "What I believe
will inevitably depend more or less on your action. You can perfectly
settle it--if you care. I promise to believe you down to the ground if,
to save her life, you consent to a denial."

"But a denial, when it comes to that--confound the whole thing, don't
you see!--of exactly what?"

It was as if he were hoping she would narrow; but in fact she enlarged.
"Of everything."

Everything had never even yet seemed to him so incalculably much. "Oh!"
he simply moaned into the gloom.

IV

The near Thursday, coming nearer and bringing Sir Luke Strett, brought
also blessedly an abatement of other rigours. The weather changed, the
stubborn storm yielded, and the autumn sunshine, baffled for many days,
but now hot and almost vindictive, came into its own again and, with an
almost audible paean, a suffusion of bright sound that was one with the
bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed and plashed and
called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the
scattered pinks, yellows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of
vivid stuffs, a laying-down of fine carpets. Densher rejoiced in this
on the occasion of his going to the station to meet the great doctor.
He went after consideration, which, as he was constantly aware, was at
present his imposed, his only, way of doing anything. That was where
the event had landed him--where no event in his life had landed him
before. He had thought, no doubt, from the day he was born, much more
than he had acted; except indeed that he remembered thoughts--a few of
them--which at the moment of their coming to him had thrilled him
almost like adventures. But anything like his actual state he had not,
as to the prohibiti