The Wings of the Dove, Henry James [thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

in other words, in this time-saving way, a relation with it; and the relation was the special trophy that, for the hour, she bore off. It was like an absolute possession, a new resource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tucked away under the arm of memory. She hadn’t had it when she went in, and she had it when she came out; she had it there under her cloak, but dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again faced Kate Croy. That young lady had of course awaited her in another room, where, as the great man was to absent himself, no one else was in attendance; and she rose for her with such a face of sympathy as might have graced the vestibule of a dentist. “Is it out?” she seemed to ask as if it had been a question of a tooth; and Milly indeed kept her in no suspense at all.

“He’s a dear. I’m to come again.”

“But what does he say?”

Milly was almost gay. “That I’m not to worry about anything in the world, and that if I’ll be a good girl and do exactly what he tells me, he’ll take care of me forever and ever.”

Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. “But does he allow then that you’re ill?”

“I don’t know what he allows, and I don’t care. I shall know, and whatever it is it will be enough. He knows all about me, and I like it. I don’t hate it a bit.”

Still, however, Kate stared. “But could he, in so few minutes, ask you enough⁠—?”

“He asked me scarcely anything⁠—he doesn’t need to do anything so stupid,” Milly said. “He can tell. He knows,” she repeated; “and when I go back⁠—for he’ll have thought me over a little⁠—it will be all right.”

Kate, after a moment, made the best of this. “Then when are we to come?”

It just pulled her friend up, for even while they talked⁠—at least it was one of the reasons⁠—she stood there suddenly, irrelevantly, in the light of her other identity, the identity she would have for Mr. Densher. This was always, from one instant to another, an incalculable light, which, though it might go off faster than it came on, necessarily disturbed. It sprang, with a perversity all its own, from the fact that, with the lapse of hours and days, the chances themselves that made for his being named continued so oddly to fail. There were twenty, there were fifty, but none of them turned up. This, in particular, was of course not a juncture at which the least of them would naturally be present; but it would make, none the less, Milly saw, another day practically all stamped with avoidance. She saw in a quick glimmer, and with it all Kate’s unconsciousness; and then she shook off the obsession. But it had lasted long enough to qualify her response. No, she had shown Kate how she trusted her; and that, for loyalty, would somehow do. “Oh, dear thing, now that the ice is broken I shan’t trouble you again.”

“You’ll come alone?”

“Without a scruple. Only I shall ask you, please, for your absolute discretion still.”

Outside, before the door, on the wide pavement of the great square, they had to wait again while their carriage, which Milly had kept, completed a further turn of exercise, engaged in by the coachman for reasons of his own. The footman was there, and had indicated that he was making the circuit; so Kate went on while they stood. “But don’t you ask a good deal, darling, in proportion to what you give?”

This pulled Milly up still shorter⁠—so short in fact that she yielded as soon as she had taken it in. But she continued to smile. “I see. Then you can tell.”

“I don’t want to ‘tell,’ ” said Kate. “I’ll be as silent as the tomb if I can only have the truth from you. All I want is that you shouldn’t keep from me how you find out that you really are.”

“Well then, I won’t, ever. But you see for yourself,” Milly went on, “how I really am. I’m satisfied. I’m happy.”

Kate looked at her long. “I believe you like it. The way things turn out for you⁠—!”

Milly met her look now without a thought of anything but the spoken. She had ceased to be Mr. Densher’s image; she was all her own memento and she was none the less fine. Still, still, what had passed was a fair bargain, and it would do. “Of course I like it. I feel⁠—I can’t otherwise describe it⁠—as if I had been, on my knees, to the priest. I’ve confessed and I’ve been absolved. It has been lifted off.”

Kate’s eyes never quitted her. “He must have liked you.”

“Oh⁠—doctors!” Milly said. “But I hope,” she added, “he didn’t like me too much.” Then as if to escape a little from her friend’s deeper sounding, or as impatient for the carriage, not yet in sight, her eyes, turning away, took in the great stale square. As its staleness, however, was but that of London fairly fatigued, the late hot London with its dance all danced and its story all told, the air seemed a thing of blurred pictures and mixed echoes, and an impression met the sense⁠—an impression that broke, the next moment, through the girl’s tightened lips. “Oh, it’s a beautiful big world, and everyone, yes, everyone⁠—!” It presently brought her back to Kate, and she hoped she didn’t actually look as much as if she were crying as she must have looked to Lord Mark among the portraits at Matcham.

Kate at all events understood. “Everyone wants to be so nice?”

“So nice,” said the grateful Milly.

“Oh,” Kate laughed, “we’ll pull you through! And won’t you now bring Mrs. Stringham?”

But Milly after an instant was again clear about that. “Not till I’ve seen him once more.”

She was to have found this preference, two days later, abundantly justified; and yet when, in prompt accordance with what had passed