ry in the dark blindness
of each other's arms the knowledge of each other that they couldn't
undo.

Save indeed that the sense in which it was in these days a question of
arms was limited, this might have been the intimate expedient to which
they were actually resorting. It had its value, in conditions that made
everything count, that thrice over, in Battersea Park--where Mrs.
Lowder now never drove--he had adopted the usual means, in sequestered
alleys, of holding her close to his side. She could make absences, on
her present footing, without having too inordinately to account for
them at home--which was exactly what gave them for the first time an
appreciable margin. He supposed she could always say in Chelsea--though
he didn't press it--that she had been across the town, in decency, for
a look at her aunt; whereas there had always been reasons at Lancaster
Gate for her not being able to plead the look at her other relatives.
It was therefore between them a freedom of a purity as yet untasted;
which for that matter also they made in various ways no little show of
cherishing as such. They made the show indeed in every way but the way
of a large use--an inconsequence that they almost equally gave time to
helping each other to regard as natural. He put it to his companion
that the kind of favour he now enjoyed at Lancaster Gate, the wonderful
warmth of his reception there, cut in a manner the ground from under
their feet. He was too horribly trusted--they had succeeded too well.
He couldn't in short make appointments with her without abusing Aunt
Maud, and he couldn't on the other hand haunt that lady without tying
his hands. Kate saw what he meant just as he saw what she did when she
admitted that she was herself, to a degree scarce less embarrassing, in
the enjoyment of Aunt Maud's confidence. It was special at present--she
was handsomely used; she confessed accordingly to a scruple about
misapplying her licence. Mrs. Lowder then finally had found--and all
unconsciously now--the way to baffle them. It wasn't however that they
didn't meet a little, none the less, in the southern quarter, to point
for their common benefit the moral of their defeat. They crossed the
river; they wandered in neighbourhoods sordid and safe; the winter was
mild, so that, mounting to the top of trams, they could rumble together
to Clapham or to Greenwich. If at the same time their minutes had never
been so counted it struck Densher that by a s