ell, to be a
journalist's wife!" Densher exclaimed in admiration, even while she
struck him as fairly hurrying him off.

But she was almost impatient of the praise. "What do you expect one
_not_ to understand when one cares for you?"

"Ah then, I'll put it otherwise and say 'How much you care for me!'"

"Yes," she assented; "it fairly redeems my stupidity. I _shall,_ with a
chance to show it," she added, "have some imagination for you."

She spoke of the future this time as so little contingent, that he felt
a queerness of conscience in making her the report that he presently
arrived at on what had passed for him with the real arbiter of their
destiny. The way for that had been blocked a little by his news from
Fleet Street; but in the crucible of their happy discussion this
element soon melted into the other, and in the mixture that ensued the
parts were not to be distinguished. The young man moreover, before
taking his leave, was to see why Kate had just spoken of the future as
if they now really possessed it, and was to come to the vision by a
devious way that deepened the final cheer. Their faces were turned to
the illumined quarter as soon as he had answered her question in
respect to the appearance of their being able to play a waiting game
with success. It was for the possibility of that appearance that she
had, a few days before, so earnestly pressed him to see her aunt; and
if after his hour with that lady it had not struck Densher that he had
seen her to the happiest purpose the poor facts flushed with a better
meaning as Kate, one by one, took them up.

"If she consents to your coming, why isn't that everything?"

"It _is_ everything; everything _she_ thinks it. It's the
probability--I mean as Mrs. Lowder measures probability--that I may be
prevented from becoming a complication for her by some arrangement,
_any_ arrangement, through which you shall see me often and easily.
She's sure of my want of money, and that gives her time. She believes
in my having a certain amount of delicacy, in my wishing to better my
state before I put the pistol to your head in respect to sharing it.
The time that will take figures for her as the time that will help her
if she doesn't spoil her chance by treating me badly. She doesn't at
all wish moreover," Densher went on, "to treat me badly, for I believe,
upon my honour, funny as it may sound to you, that she personally
rather likes me, and that if you weren't in question