ty they might claim. He could scarce
have said if the visitor's manner less showed the remembrance that
might have suggested expectation, or made shorter work of surprise in
presence of the fact.

Sir Luke had clean forgotten--so Densher read--the rather remarkable
young man he had formerly gone about with, though he picked him up
again, on the spot, with one large quiet look. The young man felt
himself so picked, and the thing immediately affected him as the proof
of a splendid economy. Opposed to all the waste with which he was now
connected the exhibition was of a nature quite nobly to admonish him.
The eminent pilgrim, in the train, all the way, had used the hours as
he needed, thinking not a moment in advance of what finally awaited
him. An exquisite case awaited him--of which, in this queer way, the
remarkable young man was an outlying part; but the single motion of his
face, the motion into which Densher, from the platform, lightly stirred
its stillness, was his first renewed cognition. If, however, he had
suppressed the matter by leaving Victoria he would at once suppress
now, in turn, whatever else suited. The perception of this became as a
symbol of the whole pitch, so far as one might one's self be concerned,
of his visit. One saw, our friend further meditated, everything that,
in contact, he appeared to accept--if only, for much, not to trouble to
sink it: what one missed was the inward use he made of it. Densher
began wondering, at the great water-steps outside, what use he would
make of the anomaly of their having there to separate. Eugenio had been
on the platform, in the respectful rear, and the gondola from the
palace, under his direction, bestirred itself, with its attaching
mixture of alacrity and dignity, on their coming out of the station
together. Densher didn't at all mind now that, he himself of necessity
refusing a seat on the deep black cushions beside the guest of the
palace, he had Milly's three emissaries for spectators; and this
susceptibility, he also knew, it was something to have left behind. All
he did was to smile down vaguely from the steps--they could see him,
the donkeys, as shut out as they would. "I don't," he said with a sad
headshake, "go there now."

"Oh!" Sir Luke Strett returned, and made no more of it; so that the
thing was splendid, Densher fairly thought, as an inscrutability quite
inevitable and unconscious. His friend appeared not even to make of it
that he supposed it