n as they met, but immediately adding to it: "So as to make
up your mind how to take her. I know pretty well what she'll say to
you."

"Then will you kindly tell me?"

She thought a little. "I can't do that. I should spoil it. She'll do
the best for her own idea."

"Her idea, you mean, that I'm a sort of a scoundrel; or, at the best,
not good enough for you?"

They were side by side again in their penny chairs, and Kate had
another pause. "Not good enough for _her."_

"Oh, I see. And that's necessary."

He put it as a truth rather more than as a question; but there had been
plenty of truths between them that each had contradicted. Kate,
however, let this one sufficiently pass, only saying the next moment:
"She has behaved extraordinarily."

"And so have we," Densher declared. "I think, you know, we've been
awfully decent."

"For ourselves, for each other, for people in general, yes. But not for
_her._ For her," said Kate, "we've been monstrous. She has been giving
us rope. So if she does send for you," the girl repeated, "you must
know where you are."

"That I always know. It's where _you_ are that concerns me."

"Well," said Kate after an instant, "her idea of that is what you'll
have from her." He gave her a long look, and whatever else people who
wouldn't let her alone might have wished, for her advancement, his long
looks were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. What
she felt was that, whatever might happen, she must keep them, must make
them most completely her possession; and it was already strange enough
that she reasoned, or at all events began to act, as if she might work
them in with other and alien things, privately cherish them, and yet,
as regards the rigour of it, pay no price. She looked it well in the
face, she took it intensely home, that they were lovers; she rejoiced
to herself and, frankly, to him, in their wearing of the name; but,
distinguished creature that, in her way, she was, she took a view of
this character that scarce squared with the conventional. The character
itself she insisted on as their right, taking that so for granted that
it didn't seem even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her, found
himself moved to wonder at her simplifications, her values. Life might
prove difficult--was evidently going to; but meanwhile they had each
other, and that was everything. This was her reasoning, but meanwhile,
for _him,_ each other was what they didn't have, an