more than ever yet of what she loved him for. She had herself, as a
child, lived with some continuity in the world across the Channel,
coming home again still a child; and had participated after that, in
her teens, in her mother's brief but repeated retreats to Dresden, to
Florence, to Biarritz, weak and expensive attempts at economy from
which there stuck to her--though in general coldly expressed, through
the instinctive avoidance of cheap raptures--the religion of foreign
things. When it was revealed to her how many more foreign things were
in Merton Densher than he had hitherto taken the trouble to catalogue,
she almost faced him as if he were a map of the continent or a handsome
present of a delightful new "Murray." He hadn't meant to swagger, he
had rather meant to plead, though with Mrs. Lowder he had meant also a
little to explain. His father had been, in strange countries, in twenty
settlements of the English, British chaplain, resident or occasional,
and had had for years the unusual luck of never wanting a billet. His
career abroad had therefore been unbroken, and, as his stipend had
never been great, he had educated his children at the smallest cost, in
the schools nearest; which was also a saving of railway fares.
Densher's mother, it further appeared, had practised on her side a
distinguished industry, to the success of which--so far as success ever
crowned it--this period of exile had much contributed: she copied,
patient lady, famous pictures in great museums, having begun with a
happy natural gift and taking in betimes the scale of her opportunity.
Copyists abroad of course swarmed, but Mrs. Densher had had a sense and
a hand of her own, had arrived at a perfection that persuaded, that
even deceived, and that made the disposal of her work blissfully usual.
Her son, who had lost her, held her image sacred, and the effect of his
telling Kate all about her, as well as about other matters until then
mixed and dim, was to render his history rich, his sources full, his
outline anything but common. He had come round, he had come back, he
insisted abundantly, to being a Briton: his Cambridge years, his happy
connection, as it had proved, with his father's college, amply
certified to that, to say nothing of his subsequent plunge into London,
which filled up the measure. But brave enough though his descent to
English earth, he had passed, by the way, through zones of air that had
left their ruffle on his wings, had