into the sense, possibly just, of having
affected her as flip pant, perhaps even as low. He had been looked at
so, in blighted moments of presumptuous youth, by big cold public men,
but never, so far as he could recall, by any private lady. More than
anything yet it gave him the measure of his companion's subtlety, and
thereby of Kate's possible career. "Don't be _too_ impossible!"--he
feared from his friend, for a moment, some such answer as that; and
then felt, as she spoke otherwise, as if she were letting him off
easily. "I want her to marry a great man." That was all; but, more and
more, it was enough; and if it hadn't been her next words would have
made it so. "And I think of her what I think. There you are."

They sat for a little face to face upon it, and he was conscious of
something deeper still, of something she wished him to understand if he
only would. To that extent she did appeal--appealed to the intelligence
she desired to show she believed him to possess. He was meanwhile, at
all events, not the man wholly to fail of comprehension. "Of course I'm
aware how little I can answer to any fond, proud dream. You've a
view--a magnificent one; into which I perfectly enter. I thoroughly
understand what I'm not, and I'm much obliged to you for not reminding
me of it in any rougher way." She said nothing--she kept that up; it
might even have been to let him go further, if he was capable of it, in
the way of poorness of spirit. It was one of those cases in which a man
couldn't show, if he showed at all, save for poor; unless indeed he
preferred to show for asinine. It was the plain truth: he _was_--on
Mrs. Lowder's basis, the only one in question--a very small quantity,
and he did know, damnably, what made quantities large. He desired to be
perfectly simple; yet in the midst of that effort a deeper apprehension
throbbed. Aunt Maud clearly conveyed it, though he couldn't later on
have said how. "You don't really matter, I believe, so much as you
think, and I'm not going to make you a martyr by banishing you. Your
performances with Kate in the Park are ridiculous so far as they're
meant as consideration for me; and I had much rather see you
myself--since you're, in your way, my dear young man, delightful--and
arrange with you, count with you, as I easily, as I perfectly should.
Do you suppose me so stupid as to quarrel with you if it's not really
necessary? It won't--it would be too absurd!--_be_ necessary. I can
bit