n of more mingled
things, all difficult, than he could speak. Then bending his head he
applied his lips to her cheek. He fell, after this, away for an
instant, resuming his unrest, while she kept the position in which, all
passive and as a statue, she had taken his demonstration. It didn't
prevent her, however, from offering him, as if what she had had was
enough for the moment, a further indulgence. She made a quiet lucid
connexion and as she made it sat down again. "I've been trying to place
exactly, as to its date, something that did happen to me while you were
in Venice. I mean a talk with him. He spoke to me--spoke out."

"Ah there you are!" said Densher who had wheeled round.

"Well, if I'm 'there,' as you so gracefully call it, by having refused
to meet him as he wanted--as he pressed--I plead guilty to being so.
Would you have liked me," she went on, "to give him an answer that
would have kept him from going?"

It made him a little awkwardly think. "Did you know he was going?"

"Never for a moment; but I'm afraid that--even if it doesn't fit your
strange suppositions--I should have given him just the same answer if I
had known. If it's a matter I haven't, since your return, thrust upon
you, that's simply because it's not a matter in the memory of which I
find a particular joy. I hope that if I've satisfied you about it," she
continued, "it's not too much to ask of you to let it rest."

"Certainly," said Densher kindly, "I'll let it rest." But the next
moment he pursued: "He saw something. He guessed."

"If you mean," she presently returned, "that he was unfortunately the
one person we hadn't deceived, I can't contradict you."

"No--of course not. But _why_," Densher still risked, "was he
unfortunately the one person--? He's not really a bit intelligent."

"Intelligent enough apparently to have seen a mystery, a riddle, in
anything so unnatural as--all things considered and when it came to the
point--my attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and on his
conviction he acted."

Densher seemed for a little to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it
were a blot on the face of nature. "Do you mean because you had
appeared to him to have encouraged him?"

"Of course I had been decent to him. Otherwise where _were_ we?"

"'Where'--?"

"You and I. What I appeared to him, however, hadn't mattered. What
mattered was how I appeared to Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remember
that he has had all along his impre