The Wings of the Dove, Volume II

Just this perception it was, however, that had made him for the time ugly to himself in his awkwardness. It was horrible, with this creature, to _be_ awkward; it was odious to b...

She made now, alone, the full circuit of the place, noble and peaceful while the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain or an outer blind, breathed into its veiled spaces...

She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke it. "Trust me." Taking from him the sacred script she held it a little while her eyes again rested on those fine characters of...

Densher had quite to steady himself not to be awestruck at the immensity of the good his own friend must on all this evidence have wanted to do him. Of one thing indeed meanwhil...

He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it and affected again, as he had already so often been, by more things in this face and in her whole person and...

"That I shall really tell you?" With which, as she hesitated and it affected him, he brought out in a groan a doubting "Oh, oh!" It turned him from her to the place itself, whic...

Densher's more private and particular shabby realities turned, without comfort, he was conscious, at this touch, in the artificial repose he had in his anxiety about them but ha...

But poor Susie had recovered herself. "What I mean is that if it's there I shall know in time. He's considering, but I can trust him for it--because he does, I feel, trust me. H...

"It would have been simple, my dear"--and he continued to smile--"if it had been, one way or the other, only a question of 'wanting.' It took, I admit it, the idea of what I had...

Action, for him, on coming to the point, it appeared, carried with it a certain complexity. We should have known, walking by his side, that his final prime decision hadn't been...

The weather, from early morning, had turned to storm, the first sea-storm of the autumn, and Densher had almost invidiously brought him down the outer staircase--the massive asc...

Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus promptly, easily and above all amusingly met him with, would have been found, should it have come to an analy...

The result of it was the oddest consciousness as of a blest calm after a storm. He had been trying for weeks, as we know, to keep superlatively still, and trying it largely in s...

"I say, you know, Kate--you _did_ stay!" had been Merton Densher's punctual remark on their adventure after they had, as it were, got out of it; an observation which she not les...

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 alw...

By this time she had turned from their window to make a diversion, had walked him through other rooms, appealing again to the inner charm of the place, going even so far for tha...

Densher was to feel sure afterwards that Kate had had in these pleasantries no conscious, above all no insolent purpose of making light of poor Susan Shepherd's property in thei...

It was thanks to her pure talent for life, verily, that he was just where he was and that he was above all just _how_ he was. The proof of a decent reaction in him against so mu...

"Ah then," he laughed, "you're in luck. The end of everything is far off. This, you know, I'm hoping," said Sir Luke, "is only the beginning." And the next question he risked mi...

He had verily after an instant to take it in, so sharply it corresponded with the good lady's recent reception of him. It was queerer than anything again, the way they all came...

He was really, notwithstanding, to hear more from her of what she saw; and the very next occasion had for him still other surprises than that. He received from Mrs. Lowder on th...

He took in for a little the way she talked of it. Of course, it was to be remembered, she had always simplified, and it brought back his sense of the degree in which, to her ene...

Densher had said nothing about his appreciation: hadn't his behaviour since the hour itself sufficiently shown it? But he presently said--he couldn't help going so far: "I don't...

He had taken it for certain she hadn't--the thing being after all but a shade more strange than his having himself, with Milly, never for six weeks mentioned the young lady in q...

If she laughed for this--and her spirits seemed really high--it was because of the opportunity that, at the hotel, he had most shown himself as enjoying. "Your idea's beautiful...

"Stupendous." A faint smile for it--ever so small--had flickered in her face, but had vanished before the omen of tears, a little less uncertain, had shown themselves in his own...