The Wings of the Dove - Henry James (classic literature books TXT) 📗

this rate that I am?” Oh she understood him, for all she might so bravely disguise it, and that made him feel straighter than if she hadn’t. Deep, always, was his sense of life with her⁠—deep as it had been from the moment of those signs of life that in the dusky London of two winters ago they had originally exchanged. He had never taken her for unguarded, ignorant, weak; and if he put to her a claim for some intenser faith between them this was because he believed it could reach her and she could meet it. “I can go on perhaps,” he said, “with help. But I can’t go on without.”

She looked away from him now, and it showed him how she understood. “We ought to be there⁠—I mean when they come out.”

“They won’t come out⁠—not yet. And I don’t care if they do.” To which he straightway added, as if to deal with the charge of selfishness that his words, sounding for himself, struck him as enabling her to make: “Why not have done with it all and face the music as we are?” It broke from him in perfect sincerity. “Good God, if you’d only take me!”

It brought her eyes round to him again, and he could see how, after all, somewhere deep within, she felt his rebellion more sweet than bitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold her an instant. “We’ve gone too far,” she none the less pulled herself together to reply. “Do you want to kill her?”

He had an hesitation that wasn’t all candid. “Kill, you mean, Aunt Maud?”

“You know whom I mean. We’ve told too many lies.”

Oh at this his head went up. “I, my dear, have told none!”

He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he had naturally, none the less, to take the look it made her give him. “Thank you very much.”

Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had already risen to his lips. “Rather than lay myself open to the least appearance of it I’ll go this very night.”

“Then go,” said Kate Croy.

He knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that what was in the air for him, and disconcertingly, was not the violence, but much rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her. They walked on together, and it was for a minute as if their difference had become of a sudden, in all truth, a split⁠—as if the basis of his departure had been settled. Then, incoherently and still more suddenly, recklessly moreover, since they now might easily, from under the arcades, be observed, he passed his hand into her arm with a force that produced for them another pause. “I’ll tell any lie you want, any your idea requires, if you’ll only come to me.”

“Come to you?”

“Come to me.”

“How? Where?”

She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his uncertainty, a wonder in her being so equal to him. “To my rooms, which are perfectly possible, and in taking which, the other day, I had you, as you must have felt, in view. We can arrange it⁠—with two grains of courage. People in our case always arrange it.” She listened as for the good information, and there was support for him⁠—since it was a question of his going step by step⁠—in the way she took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He had in truth not expected of her that particular vulgarity, but the absence of it only added the thrill of a deeper reason to his sense of possibilities. For the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely to see her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for him in all the light of the day and of his admirable merciless meaning. Her mere listening in fact made him even understand himself as he hadn’t yet done. Idea for idea, his own was thus already, and in the germ, beautiful. “There’s nothing for me possible but to feel that I’m not a fool. It’s all I have to say, but you must know what it means. With you I can do it⁠—I’ll go as far as you demand or as you will yourself. Without you⁠—I’ll be hanged! And I must be sure.”

She listened so well that she was really listening after he had ceased to speak. He had kept his grasp of her, drawing her close, and though they had again, for the time, stopped walking, his talk⁠—for others at a distance⁠—might have been, in the matchless place, that of any impressed tourist to any slightly more detached companion. On possessing himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that they faced afresh to Saint Mark’s, over the great presence of which his eyes moved while she twiddled her parasol. She now, however, made a motion that confronted them finally with the opposite end. Then only she spoke⁠—“Please take your hand out of my arm.” He understood at once: she had made out in the shade of the gallery the issue of the others from their place of purchase. So they went to them side by side, and it was all right. The others had seen them as well and waited for them, complacent enough, under one of the arches. They themselves too⁠—he argued that Kate would argue⁠—looked perfectly ready, decently patient, properly accommodating. They themselves suggested nothing worse⁠—always by Kate’s system⁠—than a pair of the children of a supercivilised age making the best of an awkwardness. They didn’t nevertheless hurry⁠—that would overdo it; so he had time to feel, as it were, what he felt. He felt, ever so distinctly⁠—it was with this he faced Mrs. Lowder⁠—that he was already in a sense possessed of what he wanted. There was more to come⁠—everything; he had by no means, with his companion, had it all out. Yet what he was possessed of was real⁠—the fact that she hadn’t thrown over his lucidity the