She was good enough, as it proved, for him to put to her that evening, and with further ground for it, the next sharpest question that had been on his lips in the morning—which his other preoccupation had then, to his consciousness, crowded out. His opportunity was again made, as befell, by his learning from Mrs. Stringham, on arriving, as usual, with the close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail them again at dinner, but would to all appearance be able to come down later. He had found Susan Shepherd alone in the great saloon, where even more candles than their friend's large common allowance—she grew daily more splendid; they were all struck with it and chaffed her about it—lighted up the mystery of Style. He had thus five minutes with the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and Kate appeared—minutes illumined indeed to a longer reach than by the number of Milly's candles.  
"May she come down—ought she if she isn't really up to it?"
 
He had asked that in the wonderment always stirred in him by glimpses—rare as were these—of the inner truth about the girl. There was of course a question of health—it was in the air, it was in the ground he trod, in the food he tasted, in the sounds he heard, it was everywhere. But it was everywhere with the effect of a request to him—to his very , to the common of others as well as his own—that no to it should be made. There had practically been none, that morning, on her explained non-appearance—the absence of it, as we know, quite and awkward; and this passage with Mrs. Stringham offered him his first licence to open his eyes. He had gladly enough held them closed; all the more that his doing so performed for his own spirit a useful function. If he wanted not to be brought up with his nose against Milly's facts, what better proof could he have that his conduct was marked by straightness? It was perhaps pathetic for her, and for himself was perhaps even ridiculous; but he hadn't even the amount of curiosity that he would have had about an ordinary friend. He might have shaken himself at moments to try, for a sort of dry , to have it; but that too, it appeared, wouldn't come. In what therefore was the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feelings—it being so established that he had none at all. They were all for Kate, without a feather's weight to spare. He was for Kate—not, by the of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn't have been passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short to-night of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse—it was as if she had wished to give him that; and it was as if, for himself, on current terms, he could oblige her by accepting it. She not only permitted, she fairly invited him to open his eyes. "I'm so glad you're here." It was no answer to his question, but it had for the moment to serve. And the rest was to come.
 
He smiled at her and presently found himself, as a kind of consequence of communion with her, talking her own language. "It's a very wonderful experience."
 
"Well"—and her raised face shone up at him—"that's all I want you to feel about it. If I weren't afraid," she added, "there are things I should like to say to you."
 
"And what are you afraid of, please?" he encouragingly asked.
 
"Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Besides, I don't, you know, seem to have the chance. You're always, you know, with her."
 
He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his smile; which was the more fixed as he felt in these last words an exact description of his course. It was an odd thing to have come to, but he was always with her. "Ah," he none the less smiled, "I'm not with her now."
 
"No—and I'm so glad, since I get this from it. She's ever so much better."
 
"Better? Then she has been worse?"
 
Mrs. Stringham waited. "She has been marvellous—that's what she has been. She is marvellous. But she's really better."
 
"Oh then if she's really better—!" But he checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to the point of mystification. "We shall miss her the more at dinner."
 
Susan Shepherd, however, was all there for him. "She's keeping herself. You'll see. You'll not really need to miss anything. There's to be a little party."
 
"Ah I do see—by this ."
 
"Well, it is lovely, isn't it? I want the whole thing. She's for the first time as she ought, from her type, to be; and doing it—I mean bringing out all the glory of the place—makes her really happy. It's a Veronese picture, as near as can be—with me as the , the small blackamoor, put into a corner of the foreground for effect. If I only had a or a hound or something of that sort I should do the scene more honour. The old , the woman in charge here, has a big red cockatoo that I might borrow and on my thumb for the evening." These explanations and others Mrs. Stringham gave, though not all with the result of making him feel that the picture closed him in. What part was there for him, with his attitude that lacked the highest style, in a composition in which everything else would have it? "They won't, however, be at dinner, the few people she expects—they come round afterwards from their respective hotels; and Sir Luke Strett and his niece, the principal ones, will have arrived from London but an hour or two ago. It's for him she has wanted to do something—to let it begin at once. We shall see more of him, because she likes him; and I'm so glad—she'll be glad too—that you're to see him." The good lady, in connexion with it, was urgent, was almost bright. "So I greatly hope—!" But her hope fairly lost itself in the wide light of her cheer.
 
He considered a little this appearance, while she let him, he thought, into still more knowledge than she uttered. "What is it you hope?"
 
"Well, that you'll stay on."
 
"Do you mean after dinner?" She meant, he seemed to feel, so much that he could scarce tell where it ended or began.
 
"Oh that, of course. Why we're to have music—beautiful instruments and songs; and not Tasso declaimed as in the guide-books either. She has arranged it—or at least I have. That is Eugenio has. Besides, you're in the picture."
 
"Oh—I!" said Densher almost with the gravity of a real protest.
 
"You'll be the grand young man who surpasses the others and holds up his head and the wine-cup. What we hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "is that you'll be faithful to us—that you've not come for a foolish few days."
 
Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, without comfort, he was conscious, at this touch, in the artificial he had in his anxiety about them but half-managed to induce. The way smooth ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese pictures, talked to plain embarrassed working-men, engaged in an sacrifice of time and of the opportunity for modest acquisition! The things they took for granted and the general of explaining! He couldn't tell them how he had tried to work, how it was partly what he had moved into rooms for, only to find himself, almost for the first time in his life, stricken and ; because that would give them a false view of the source of his restlessness, if not of the degree of it. It would operate, perhaps, but infallibly, to add to that weight as of expected performance which these very moments with Mrs. Stringham caused more and more to settle on his heart. He had it, the expectation of performance; the thing was done, and there was no use talking; again, again the cold breath of it was in the air. So there he was. And at best he floundered. "I'm afraid you won't understand when I say I've very things to consider. Botherations, necessities at home. The pinch, the pressure in London."
 
But she understood in perfection; she rose to the pinch and the pressure and showed how they had been her own very element. "Oh the daily task and the daily wage, the golden guerdon or reward? No one knows better than I how they haunt one in the flight of the precious deceiving days. Aren't they just what I myself have given up? I've given up all to follow her. I wish you could feel as I do. And can't you," she asked, "write about Venice?"
 
He very nearly wished, for the minute, that he could feel as she did; and he smiled for her . "Do you write about Venice?"
 
"No; but I would—oh wouldn't I?—if I hadn't so completely given up. She's, you know, my princess, and to one's princess—"
 
"One makes the whole sacrifice?"
 
". There you are!"
 
It pressed on him with this that never had a man been in so many places at once. "I quite understand that she's yours. Only you see she's not mine." He felt he could somehow, for honesty, risk that, as he had the moral certainty she wouldn't repeat it and least of all to Mrs. Lowder, who would find in it a disturbing implication. This was part of what he liked in the good lady, that she didn't repeat, and also that she gave him a delicate sense of her shyly wishing him to know it. That was in itself a hint of possibilities between them, of a relation, beneficent and for him, which wouldn't engage him further than he could see. Yet even as he afresh made this out he felt how strange it all was. She wanted, Susan Shepherd then, as appeared, the same thing Kate wanted, only wanted it, as still further appeared, in so different a way and from a so different, even though scarce less deep. Then Mrs. Lowder wanted, by so odd an evolution of her , exactly what each of the others did; and he was between them all, he was in the midst. Such perceptions made occasions—well, occasions for fairly wondering if it mightn't be best just to consent, , to be the the whole thing involved. Trying not to be and yet keeping in it was of the two things the more . He was glad there was no male witness; it was a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked a man to see him. He only had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir Luke Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in London had spoken of Milly as in commerce with, and whose renewed at such a distance, just announced to him, required some for. He had a vision of great London surgeons—if this one was a surgeon—as all round; so that he should perhaps after all not wholly escape the attention of his own sex. The most he might be able to do was not to care; while he was trying not to he could take that in. It was a train, however, that brought up the vision of Lord Mark as well. Lord Mark had caught him twice in the fact—the fact of his absurd ; and that made a second male. But it was comparatively easy not to mind Lord Mark.
 
His companion had before this taken him up, and in a tone to confirm her discretion, on the matter of Milly's not being his princess. "Of course she's not. You must do something first."
 
Densher gave it his thought. "Wouldn't it be rather she who must?"
 
It had more than he intended the effect of bringing her to a stand. "I see. No doubt, if one takes it so." Her cheer was for the time in eclipse, and she looked over the place, avoiding his eyes, as in the wonder of what Milly could do. "And yet she has wanted to be kind."
 
It made him on the spot feel a . "Of course she has. No one could be more charming. She has treated me as if I were somebody. Call her my hostess as I've never had nor imagined a hostess, and I'm with you altogether. Of course," he added in the right spirit for her, "I do see that it's quite court life."
 
She showed how this was almost all she wanted of him. "That's all I mean, if you understand it of such a court as never was: one of the courts of heaven, the court of a , a sort of a vice-queen of an angel. That will do ."
 
"Oh well then I grant it. Only court life as a general thing, you know," he observed, "isn't supposed to pay."
 
"Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book. That's just the beauty here; it's why she's the great and only princess. With her, at her court," said Mrs. Stringham, "it does pay." Then as if she had quite settled it for him: "You'll see for yourself."
 
He waited a moment, but said nothing to discourage her. "I think you were right just now. One must do something first."
 
"Well, you've done something."
 
"No—I don't see that. I can do more."
 
Oh well, she seemed to say, if he would have it so! "You can do everything, you know."
 
"Everything" was rather too much for him to take up gravely, and he modestly let it alone, speaking the next moment, to , of a different but a related matter. "Why has she sent for Sir Luke Strett if, as you tell me, she's so much better?"
 
"She hasn't sent. He has come of himself," Mrs. Stringham explained. "He has wanted to come."
 
"Isn't that rather worse then—if it means he mayn't be easy?"
 
"He was coming, from the first, for his holiday. She has known that these several weeks." After which Mrs. Stringham added: "You can make him easy."
 
"I can?" he wondered. It was truly the circle of petticoats. "What have I to do with it for a man like that?"
 
"How do you know," said his friend, "what he's like? He's not like any one you've ever seen. He's a great beneficent being."
 
"Ah then he can do without me. I've no call, as an outsider, to ."
 
"Tell him, all the same," Mrs. Stringham urged, "what you think."
 
"What I think of Miss Theale?" Densher stared. It was, as they said, a large order. But he found the right note. "It's none of his business."
 
It did seem a moment for Mrs. Stringham too the right note. She fixed him at least with an expression still bright, but searching, that showed almost to excess what she saw in it; though what this might be he was not to make out till afterwards. "Say that to him then. Anything will do for him as a means of getting at you."
 
"And why should he get at me?"
 
"Give him a chance to. Let him talk to you. Then you'll see."
 
All of which, on Mrs. Stringham's part, sharpened his sense of in an element rather more strangely than agreeably warm—a sense that was moreover, during the next two or three hours, to be fed to by several other impressions. Milly came down after dinner, half a dozen friends—objects of interest mainly, it appeared, to the ladies of Lancaster Gate—having by that time arrived; and with this call on her attention, the further call of her musicians by Eugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and the opportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came last of all, he felt her in wide warm waves the spell of a general, a mildness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for some than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that he seemed to stand in it up to his neck. He moved about in it and it made no plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it, and they were all together, for that matter, like fishes in a crystal pool. The effect of the place, the beauty of the scene, had probably much to do with it; the golden grace of the high rooms, of art in themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their Baedekers, at their and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something that made them more finely ; so that if the Veronese picture of which he had talked with Mrs. Stringham was not quite constituted, the comparative prose of the previous hours, the traces of insensibility by "beating down," were at last almost nobly disowned. There was perhaps something for him in the accident of his seeing her for the first time in white, but she hadn't yet had occasion—circulating with a clearness intensified—to strike him as so happily pervasive. She was different, younger, fairer, with the colour of her braided hair more than ever a not altogether lucky challenge to attention; yet he was loth wholly to explain it by her having quitted this once, for some obscure yet doubtless charming reason, her almost monastic, her hitherto black. Much as the change did for the value of her presence, she had never yet, when all was said, made it for him; and he was not to fail of the further amusement of judging her in the matter by Sir Luke Strett's visit. If he could in this connexion have felt jealous of Sir Luke Strett, whose strong face and type, less assimilated by the scene perhaps than any others, he was anon to study from the other side of the saloon, that would doubtless have been most amusing of all. But he couldn't be invidious, even to profit by so high a tide; he felt himself too much "in" it, as he might have said: a moment's reflexion put him more in than any one. The way Milly neglected him for other cares while Kate and Mrs. Lowder, without so much as the of a joke, introduced him to English ladies—that was itself a proof; for nothing really of so close a communion had up to this time passed between them as the single bright look and the three gay words (all ostensibly of the last lightness) with which her confessed consciousness brushed by him.
 
She was herself to-night as hostess, he could see, under some supreme idea, an inspiration which was half her nerves and half an inevitable harmony; but what he especially recognised was the character that had already several times broken out in her and that she so oddly appeared able, by choice or by , to keep down or to display. She was the American girl as he had originally found her—found her at certain moments, it was true, in New York, more than at certain others; she was the American girl as, still more than then, he had seen her on the day of her meeting him in London and in Kate's company. It him as a large though queer social resource in her—such as a man, for instance, to his , would never in the world be able to command; and he wouldn't have known whether to see it in an extension or a of "personality," taking it as he did most directly for a confounding extension of surface. Clearly too it was the right thing this evening all round: that came out for him in a word from Kate as she approached him to on him a second introduction. He had under cover of the music melted away from the lady toward whom she had first pushed him; and there was something in her to affect him as telling evasively a tale of their talk in the . To what did she want to him as a form of penalty for what he had done to her there? It was thus in contact uppermost for him that he had done something; not only caused her perfect intelligence to act in his interest, but left her unable to get away, by any mere private effort, from his inattackable . With him thus in presence, and near him—and it had been as unmistakeable through dinner—there was no getting away for her at all, there was less of it than ever: so she could only either deal with the question straight, either yield or ineffectually struggle or insincerely argue, or else merely express herself by following up the advantage she did possess. It was part of that advantage for the hour—a brief fallacious makeweight to his pressure—that there were plenty of things left in which he must feel her will. They only told him, these indications, how much she was, in such close quarters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again that her very aspect, as great a variation in its way as Milly's own, gave him back the sense of his action. It had never yet in life been granted him to know, almost materially to taste, as he could do in these minutes, the state of what was vulgarly called conquest. He had lived long enough to have been on occasion "liked," but it had never begun to be allowed him to be liked to any such in any such quarter. It was a greater than Milly's—or it would be: he felt it in him to answer for that. So at all events he read the case while he that Kate was somehow—for Kate—wanting in . As a striking young presence she was practically ; of the mildness that Milly she had assimilated all her share; she might fairly have been dressed to-night in the little black frock, superficially indistinguishable, that Milly had laid aside. This represented, he perceived, the opposite pole from such an effect as that of her wonderful entrance, under her aunt's eyes—he had never forgotten it—the day of their younger friend's failure at Lancaster Gate. She was, in her accepted effacement—it was actually her acceptance that made the beauty and repaired the damage—under her aunt's eyes now; but whose eyes were not effectually ? It struck him none the less certainly that almost the first thing she said to him showed an attempt to appear if not unconvinced at least self-possessed.
 
"Don't you think her good enough now?" Almost heedless of the danger of freedoms, she eyed Milly from where they stood, noted her in renewed talk, over her further wishes, with the members of her little orchestra............