THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
present as well as his past. He could but do as he must. "Has Sir Luke Strett," he asked, "gone back to her?"
"I believe he's there now."
"Then," said Densher, "it's the end."
She took it in silence for whatever he deemed it to be; but she spoke otherwise after a minute. "You won't know, unless you've perhaps seen him yourself, that Aunt Maud has been to him."
"Oh!" Densher exclaimed, with nothing to add to it.
"For real news," Kate herself after an instant added.
"She hasn't thought Mrs. Stringham's real?"
"It's perhaps only I who haven't. It was on Aunt Maud's trying again, three days ago, to see him, that she heard, at his house, of his having gone. He had started, I believe, some days before."
"And won't then by this time be back?"
Kate shook her head. "She sent yesterday to know."
"He won't leave her then"—Densher had turned it over—"while she lives. He'll stay to the end. He's magnificent."
"I think she is," said Kate.
It had made them again look at each other long; and what it drew from him, rather oddly, was: "Oh, you don't know!"
"Well, she's after all my friend."
It was somehow, with her handsome demur, the
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