elp me very much. And I absolutely trust you. So there we are." There
they were, then, since Kate had so to take it; but there, Milly felt,
she herself in particular was; for it was just the point at which she
had wished to arrive. She had wanted to prove to herself that she
didn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve; and what better proof
could there be than this quite special confidence? If she desired to
show Kate that she really believed the latter liked her, how could she
show it more than by asking her for help?

XII

What it really came to, on the morrow, this first time--the time Kate
went with her--was that the great man had, a little, to excuse himself;
had, by a rare accident--for he kept his consulting-hours in general
rigorously free--but ten minutes to give her; ten mere minutes which he
yet placed at her service in a manner that she admired even more than
she could meet it: so crystal-clean the great empty cup of attention
that he set between them on the table. He was presently to jump into
his carriage, but he promptly made the point that he must see her
again, see her within a day or two; and he named for her at once
another hour--easing her off beautifully too even then in respect to
her possibly failing of justice to her errand. The minutes affected her
in fact as ebbing more swiftly than her little army of items could
muster, and they would probably have gone without her doing much more
than secure another hearing, had it not been for her sense, at the
last, that she had gained above all an impression. The impression--all
the sharp growth of the final few moments--was neither more nor less
than that she might make, of a sudden, in quite another world, another
straight friend, and a friend who would moreover be, wonderfully, the
most appointed, the most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection,
inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character scientifically,
ponderably, proveably--not just loosely and sociably. Literally,
furthermore, it wouldn't really depend on herself, Sir Luke Strett's
friendship, in the least; perhaps what made her most stammer and pant
was its thus queerly coming over her that she might find she had
interested him even beyond her intention, find she was in fact launched
in some current that would lose itself in the sea of science. At the
same time that she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there was
a moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, of