This qualification of it as a policy or a remedy was straightway for his friend, he saw, a light that her own light could answer. "It has been best. I've wondered for you. But it has been best," she said again.
"Yet it has done no good?"
"I don't know. I've been afraid you were gone." Then as he gave a headshake which, though slow, was deeply mature: "You won't go?"
"Is to 'go,'" he asked, "to be still?"
"Oh I mean if you'll stay for me."
"I'll do anything for you. Isn't it for you alone now I can?"
She thought of it, and he could see even more of the relief she was taking from him. His presence, his face, his voice, the old rooms themselves, so meagre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been to him—these things counted for her, now she had them, as the help she had been wanting: so that she still only stood there taking them all in. With it however popped up characteristically a throb of her conscience. What she thus tasted was almost a personal joy. It told Densher of the three days she on her side had spent. "Well, anything you do for me—is for her too. Only, only—!"
"Only nothing now matters?"
She looked at him a minute as if he were the fact itself that he expressed. "Then you know?"
"Is she dying?" he asked for all answer.