There was at last, with everything that made for it, an occasion when he got from Kate, on what she now of as his eternal refrain, an answer of which he was to measure afterwards the effect. His eternal refrain was the way he came back to the of Mrs. Lowder's view of her profit—a view so hard to reconcile with the chances she gave them to meet. Impatiently, at this, the girl denied the chances, wanting to know from him, with a fine that him rather straight, whether he felt their opportunities as anything so grand. He looked at her deep in the eyes when she had sounded this note; it was the least he could let her off with for having made him visibly flush. For some reason then, with it, the sharpness dropped out of her tone, which became sweet and sincere. "'Meet,' my dear man," she echoed; "does it strike you that we get, after all, so very much out of our meetings?"  
"On the contrary—they're starvation diet. All I mean is—and it's all I've meant from the day I came—that we at least get more than Aunt Maud."
 
"Ah but you see," Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maud gets."
 
"Exactly so—and it's what I don't understand that keeps me so fascinated with the question. She gives me no light; she's . She takes everything as of a natural—!"
 
"She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my reflexions about you. There's every appearance for her," Kate went on, "that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible; that what she had thought more likely than not to happen is happening. The very essence of her, as you surely by this time have made out for yourself, is that when she adopts a view she—well, to her own sense, really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view any other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that. I've often thought success comes to her"—Kate continued to study the phenomenon—"by the spirit in her that dares and defies her idea not to prove the right one. One has seen it so again and again, in the face of everything, become the right one."
 
Densher had for this, as he listened, a smile of the largest response. "Ah my dear child, if you can explain I of course needn't not 'understand.' I'm to that," he on his side presently explained, "only when understanding fails." He took a moment; then he pursued: "Does she think she terrorises us?" To which he added while, without speech, Kate but looked over the place: "Does she believe anything so stiff as that you've really changed about me?" He knew now that he was probing the girl deep—something told him so; but that was a reason the more. "Has she got it into her head that you dislike me?"
 
To this, of a sudden, Kate's answer was strong. "You could yourself easily put it there!"
 
He wondered. "By telling her so?"
 
"No," said Kate as with amusement at his ; "I don't ask that of you."
 
"Oh my dear," Densher laughed, "when you ask, you know, so little—!"
 
There was a full irony in this, on his own part, that he saw her resist the impulse to take up. "I'm in what I've asked," she quietly returned. "It's doing beautifully for you." Their eyes again intimately met, and the effect was to make her proceed. "You're not a bit unhappy."
 
"Oh ain't I?" he brought out very roundly.
 
"It doesn't practically show—which is enough for Aunt Maud. You're wonderful, you're beautiful," Kate said; "and if you really want to know whether I believe you're doing it you may take from me perfectly that I see it coming." With which, by a quick transition, as if she had settled the case, she asked him the hour.
 
"Oh only twelve-ten"—he had looked at his watch. "We've taken but thirteen minutes; we've time yet."
 
"Then we must walk. We must go toward them."
 
Densher, from where they had been , measured the long reach of the Square. "They're still in their shop. They're safe for half an hour."
 
"That shows then, that shows!" said Kate.
 
This had taken place in the middle of San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed of , to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse after leaving the great mosque-like church. It rose now, and , but a little way behind them, and they had in front the vast empty space, enclosed by its , to which at that hour movement and traffic were mostly confined. Venice was at breakfast, the Venice of the visitor and the possible acquaintance, and, except for the parties of pigeons picking up the of perpetual feasts, their was clear and they could see their companions hadn't yet been, and weren't for a while longer likely to be, disgorged by the lace-shop, in one of the loggie, where, shortly before, they had left them for a look-in—the expression was artfully Densher's—at Saint Mark's. Their morning had happened to take such a turn as brought this chance to the surface; yet his , just made to Kate, hadn't been an overstatement of their general opportunity. The worst that could be said of their general opportunity was that it was in presence—in presence of every one; every one consisting at this , in a peopled world, of Susan Shepherd, Aunt Maud and Milly. But the proof how, even in presence, the opportunity could become special was furnished by this view of the compatibility of their comfort with a certain amount of lingering. The others had to their not waiting in the shop; it was of course the least the others could do. What had really helped them this morning was the fact that, on his turning up, as he always called it, at the palace, Milly had not, as before, been able to present herself. Custom and use had hitherto seemed fairly established; on his coming round, day after day—eight days had been now so conveniently marked—their friends, Milly's and his, conveniently and left him to sit with her till . Such was the perfect operation of the scheme on which he had been, as he phrased it to himself, had out; so that certainly there was that amount of for Kate's vision of success. He had, for Mrs. Lowder—he couldn't help it while sitting there—the air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate deep to be alarming. He had failed their young hostess each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day that she hadn't been well enough to see him.
 
That had made a mark, all round; the mark was in the way in which, gathered in the room of state, with the place, from the right time, all bright and cool and beflowered, as always, to receive her descent, they—the rest of them—simply looked at each other. It was lurid—lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately—that they had uttered no common regrets. It was strange for our young man above all that, if the poor girl was indisposed to that degree, the of gravity, of , of significance of some sort, should be the most the case—that of the guests—could permit itself. The hush, for that matter, continued after the party of four had gone down to the and taken their places in it. Milly had sent them word that she hoped they would go out and enjoy themselves, and this indeed had produced a second look, a look as of their knowing, one quite as well as the other, what such a message meant as provision for the alternative of Densher. She wished not to have spoiled his morning, and he had therefore, in civility, to take it as pleasantly patched up. Mrs. Stringham had helped the affair out, Mrs. Stringham who, when it came to that, knew their friend better than any of them. She knew her so well that she knew herself as in with conditions comparatively obscure, approximately awful to them, by not thinking it necessary to stay at home. She had corrected that element of the perfunctory which was the slight fault, for all of them, of the occasion; she had invented a preference for Mrs. Lowder and herself; she had remembered the fond dreams of the visitation of lace that had hitherto always been brushed away by accidents, and it had come up as well for her that Kate had, the day before, spoken of the part played by in her own failure of real acquaintance with the inside of Saint Mark's. Densher's sense of Susan Shepherd's conscious had by this time a corner of his mind all to itself; something that had begun for them at Lancaster Gate was now a sentiment clothed in a shape; her action, , had at all events a way of affecting him as for the most part subtly, even when not superficially, in his own interest. They were not, as a pair, as a "team," really united; there were too many persons, at least three, and too many things, between them; but meanwhile something was preparing that would draw them closer. He scarce knew what: probably nothing but his finding, at some hour when it would be a service to do so, that she had all the while understood him. He even had a of a juncture at which the understanding of every one else would fail and this deep little person's alone survive.
 
Such was to-day, in its freshness, the moral air, as we may say, that hung about our young friends; these had been the small accidents and quiet forces to which they owed the advantage we have seen them in some sort enjoying. It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they stayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had so notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than any equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness from earshot, with and security. It was as if, being in possession, they could say what they liked; and it was also as if, in consequence of that, each had an apprehension of what the other wanted to say. It was most of all for them, moreover, as if this very quantity, seated on their lips in the bright historic air, where the only sign for their ears was the flutter of the doves, in the heart of each a fear. There might have been a betrayal of that in the way Densher broke the silence resting on her last words. "What did you mean just now that I can do to make Mrs. Lowder believe? For myself, stupidly, if you will, I don't see, from the moment I can't lie to her, what else there is but lying."
 
Well, she could tell him. "You can say something both handsome and sincere to her about Milly—whom you honestly like so much. That wouldn't be lying; and, coming from you, it would have an effect. You don't, you know, say much about her."
 
And Kate put before him the fruit of observation. "You don't, you know, speak of her at all."
 
"And has Aunt Maud," Densher asked, "told you so?" Then as the girl, for answer, only seemed to bethink herself, "You must have extraordinary conversations!" he exclaimed.
 
Yes, she had bethought herself. "We have extraordinary conversations."
 
His look, while their eyes met, marked him as disposed to hear more about them; but there was something in her own, , that defeated the opportunity. He questioned her in a moment on a different matter, which had been in ............