absolutely _desire_ me to take it?"

"I absolutely desire you to take it."

"To do what I like with it?"

"Short of course of making known its terms. It must remain--pardon my
making the point--between you and me."

She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke it. "Trust me."
Taking from him the sacred script she held it a little while her eyes
again rested on those fine characters of Milly's that they had shortly
before discussed. "To hold it," she brought out, "is to know."

"Oh I _know!_" said Merton Densher.

"Well then if we both do--!" She had already turned to the fire, nearer
to which she had moved, and with a quick gesture had jerked the thing
into the flame. He started--but only half--as to undo her action: his
arrest was as prompt as the latter had been decisive. He only watched,
with her, the paper burn; after which their eyes again met. "You'll
have it all," Kate said, "from New York."

It was after he had in fact, two months later, heard from New York that
she paid him a visit one morning at his own quarters--coming not as she
had come in Venice, under his extreme solicitation, but as a need
recognised in the first instance by herself, even though also as the
prompt result of a missive delivered to her. This had consisted of a
note from Densher accompanying a letter, "just to hand," addressed him
by an eminent American legal firm, a firm of whose high character he
had become conscious while in New York as of a thing in the air itself,
and whose head and front, the principal executor of Milly Theale's
copious will, had been duly identified at Lancaster Gate as the
gentleman hurrying out, by the straight southern course, before the
girl's death, to the support of Mrs. Stringham. Densher's act on
receipt of the document in question--an act as to which and to the
bearings of which his resolve had had time to mature--constituted in
strictness, singularly enough, the first reference to Milly, or to what
Milly might or might not have done, that had passed between our pair
since they had stood together watching the destruction, in the little
vulgar grate at Chelsea, of the undisclosed work of her hand. They had
at the time, and in due deference now, on his part, to Kate's mention
of her responsibility for his call, immediately separated, and when
they met again the subject was made present to them--at all events till
some flare of new light--only by the intensity with which it mutely
expressed its ab