sence. They were not moreover in these weeks to meet
often, in spite of the fact that this had, during January and a part of
February, actually become for them a comparatively easy matter. Kate's
stay at Mrs. Condrip's prolonged itself under allowances from her aunt
which would have been a mystery to Densher had he not been admitted, at
Lancaster Gate, really in spite of himself, to the esoteric view of
them. "It's her idea," Mrs. Lowder had there said to him as if she
really despised ideas--which she didn't; "and I've taken up with my
own, which is to give her her head till she has had enough of it. She
_has_ had enough of it, she had that soon enough; but as she's as proud
as the deuce she'll come back when she has found some reason--having
nothing in common with her disgust--of which she can make a show. She
calls it her holiday, which she's spending in her own way--the holiday
to which, once a year or so, as she says, the very maids in the
scullery have a right. So we're taking it on that basis. But we shall
not soon, I think, take another of the same sort. Besides, she's quite
decent; she comes often--whenever I make her a sign; and she has been
good, on the whole, this year or two, so that, to be decent myself, I
don't complain. She has really been, poor dear, very much what one
hoped; though I needn't, you know," Aunt Maud wound up, "tell _you_,
after all, you clever creature, what that was."

It had been partly in truth to keep down the opportunity for this that
Densher's appearances under the good lady's roof markedly, after
Christmas, interspaced themselves. The phase of his situation that on
his return from Venice had made them for a short time almost frequent
was at present quite obscured, and with it the impulse that had then
acted. Another phase had taken its place, which he would have been
painfully at a loss as yet to name or otherwise set on its feet, but of
which the steadily rising tide left Mrs. Lowder, for his desire, quite
high and dry. There had been a moment when it seemed possible that Mrs.
Stringham, returning to America under convoy, would pause in London on
her way and be housed with her old friend; in which case he was
prepared for some apparent zeal of attendance. But this danger
passed--he had felt it a danger, and the person in the world whom he
would just now have most valued seeing on his own terms sailed away
westward from Genoa. He thereby only wrote to her, having broken, in
this res