quite firmly," he pursued as if to be plainer, "took
hold of it."

"Then where is it?"

"Oh I have it here."

"And you've brought it to show me?"

"I've brought it to show you."

So he said with a distinctness that had, among his other oddities,
almost a sound of cheer, yet making no movement that matched his words.
She could accordingly but offer again her expectant face, while his
own, to her impatience, seemed perversely to fill with another thought.
"But now that you've done so you feel you don't want to."

"I want to immensely," he said. "Only you tell me nothing."

She smiled at him, with this, finally, as if he were an unreasonable
child. "It seems to me I tell you quite as much as you tell me. You
haven't yet even told me how it is that such explanations as you
require don't come from your document itself." Then as he answered
nothing she had a flash. "You mean you haven't read it?"

"I haven't read it."

She stared. "Then how am I to help you with it?"

Again leaving her while she never budged he paced five strides, and
again he was before her. "By telling me _this_. It's something, you
know, that you wouldn't tell me the other day."

She was vague. "The other day?"

"The first time after my return--the Sunday I came to you. What's he
doing," Densher went on, "at that hour of the morning with her? What
does his having been with her there mean?"

"Of whom are you talking?"

"Of that man--Lord Mark of course. What does it represent?"

"Oh with Aunt Maud?"

"Yes, my dear--and with you. It comes more or less to the same thing;
and it's what you didn't tell me the other day when I put you the
question."

Kate tried to remember the other day. "You asked me nothing about any
hour."

"I asked you when it was you last saw him--previous, I mean, to his
second descent at Venice. You wouldn't say, and as we were talking of a
matter comparatively more important I let it pass. But the fact
remains, you know, my dear, that you haven't told me."

Two things in this speech appeared to have reached Kate more distinctly
than the others. "I 'wouldn't say'?--and you 'let it pass'?" She looked
just coldly blank. "You really speak as if I were keeping something
back."

"Well, you see," Densher persisted, "you're not even telling me now.
All I want to know," he nevertheless explained, "is whether there was a
connexion between that proceeding on his part, which was
practically--oh beyond all doubt!--the sho