THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
volving compunction in the spectator, so, by the same stroke, that became the very fact of her relation with her companions there, such a fact as filled him at once, oddly, both with certainty and with suspense. If he himself, on this brief vision, felt her as alien and as, ever so unwittingly, ironic, how must they not feel her, and how, above all, must she not feel them?
Densher could ask himself that even after she had presently lighted the tall candles on the mantelshelf. This was all their illumination but the fire, and she had proceeded to it with a quiet dryness that yet left play, visibly, to her implication, between them, in their trouble, and in default of anything better, of the presumably genial Christmas hearth. So far as the genial went this had, in strictness, given their conditions, to be all their geniality. He had told her in his note nothing but that he must promptly see her and that he hoped she might be able to make it possible; but he understood, from the first look at her, that his promptitude was already having for her its principal reference. "I was prevented, this morning, in the few minutes," he explained, "asking Mrs. Lowder if she had let you know, though I rather gathered she had; and it's what I've been in fact, since then, assuming. It was because I was so struck at the moment with your having, as she did tell me, so suddenly come here."
"Yes, it was sudden enough." Very neat and fine in the contracted firelight, with her hands in her
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