to the American--was what had had the arresting power. This
arresting power, at the same time--and that was the marvel--had already
sharpened almost to pain, for in the very act of judging the bared head
with detachment she felt herself shaken by a knowledge of it. It was
Merton Densher's own, and he was standing there, standing long enough
unconscious for her to fix him and then hesitate. These successions
were swift, so that she could still ask herself in freedom if she had
best let him see her. She could still reply to that that she shouldn't
like him to catch her in the effort to prevent this; and she might
further have decided that he was too preoccupied to see anything had
not a perception intervened that surpassed the first in violence. She
was unable to think afterwards how long she had looked at him before
knowing herself as otherwise looked at; all she was coherently to put
together was that she had had a second recognition without his having
noticed her. The source of this latter shock was nobody less than Kate
Croy--Kate Croy who was suddenly also in the line of vision and whose
eyes met her eyes at their next movement. Kate was but two yards
off--Mr. Densher wasn't alone. Kate's face specifically said so, for
after a stare as blank at first as Milly's it broke into a far smile.
That was what, wonderfully--in addition to the marvel of their
meeting--passed from her for Milly; the instant reduction to easy terms
of the fact of their being there, the two young women, together. It was
perhaps only afterwards that the girl fully felt the connection between
this touch and her already established conviction that Kate was a
prodigious person; yet on the spot she none the less, in a degree, knew
herself handled and again, as she had been the night before, dealt
with--absolutely even dealt with for her greater pleasure. A minute in
fine hadn't elapsed before Kate had somehow made her provisionally take
everything as natural. The provisional was just the charm--acquiring
that character from one moment to the other; it represented happily so
much that Kate would explain on the very first chance. This left
moreover--and that was the greatest wonder--all due margin for
amusement at the way things happened, the monstrous oddity of their
turning up in such a place on the very heels of their having separated
without allusion to it. The handsome girl was thus literally in control
of the scene by the time Merton Densher was rea