. She won't smell, as it were, of drugs. She won't
taste, as it were, of medicine. No one will know."

"Then what," he demanded, frankly mystified now, "are we talking about?
In what extraordinary state _is_ she?"

Kate went on as if, at this, making it out in a fashion for herself. "I
believe that if she's ill at all she's very ill. I believe that if
she's bad she's not a _little_ bad. I can't tell you why, but that's
how I see her. She'll really live or she'll really not. She'll have it
all or she'll miss it all. Now I don't think she'll have it all."

Densher had followed this with his eyes upon her, her own having
thoughtfully wandered, and as if it were more impressive than lucid.
"You 'think' and you 'don't think,' and yet you remain all the while
without an inkling of her complaint?"

"No, not without an inkling; but it's a matter in which I don't want
knowledge. She moreover herself doesn't want one to want it: she has,
as to what may be preying upon her, a kind of ferocity of modesty, a
kind of--I don't know what to call it--intensity of pride. And then and
then--" But with this she faltered.

"And then what?"

"I'm a brute about illness. I hate it. It's well for you, my dear,"
Kate continued, "that you're as sound as a bell."

"Thank you!" Densher laughed. "It's rather good then for yourself too
that you're as strong as the sea."

She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish gladness of their
young immunities. It was all they had together, but they had it at
least without a flaw--each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the
personal virtue, love and desire of the other. Yet it was as if that
very consciousness threw them back the next moment into pity for the
poor girl who had everything else in the world, the great genial good
they, alas, didn't have, but failed on the other hand of this. "How
we're talking about her!" Kate compunctiously sighed. But there were
the facts. "From illness I keep away."

"But you don't--since here you are, in spite of all you say, in the
midst of it."

"Ah I'm only watching--!"

"And putting me forward in your place? Thank you!"

"Oh," said Kate, "I'm breaking you in. Let it give you the measure of
what I shall expect of you. One can't begin too soon."

She drew away, as from the impression of a stir on the balcony, the
hand of which he had a minute before possessed himself; and the warning
brought him back to attention. "You haven't even an idea if it's a