THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
mystery, a riddle, in anything so unnatural as—all things considered, and when it came to the point—my attitude. So he gouged out his conviction, and on his conviction he acted."
Densher seemed, for a little, to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it were a blot on the face of nature. "Do you mean because you had appeared to him to have encouraged him?"
"Of course I had been decent to him. Otherwise where were we?"
"'Where'———?"
"You and I. What I appeared to him, however, hadn't mattered. What mattered was how I appeared to Aunt Maud. Besides, you must remember that he has had all along his impression of you. You can't help it," she said, "but you're after all—well, yourself."
"As much myself as you please. But when I took myself to Venice and kept myself there—what," Densher asked, "did he make of that?"
"Your being in Venice and liking to be—which is never on any one's part a monstrosity—was explicable for him in other ways. He was quite capable moreover of seeing it as dissimulation."
"In spite of Mrs. Lowder?"
"No," said Kate, "not in spite of Mrs. Lowder now. Aunt Maud, before what you call his second descent, hadn't convinced him—all the more that my refusal of him didn't help. But he came back convinced." And then as her companion still
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