“He was struck at the same time with her happy grasp of what had really occurred in Fleet Street — all the more that it was his own final reading… It was just because he didn’t nose about and wasn’t the usual gossipmonger that they had picked him out; it was a branch of their correspondance with which they evidently wished a new tone associated, such a tone as, from now on, it would have always to take from his example.

‘How you ought, indeed, when you understand so well, to be a journalist’s wife!’ Densher exclaimed in admiration, even while she struck him as fairly hurrying him off.

But she was almost impatient of the praise. ‘What do you expect one not to understand when one cares for you?’

‘Ah, then, I’ll put it otherwise and say “How much you care for me!”’

‘Yes,’ she assented, ‘it fairly redeems my stupidity. I shall, with a chance to show it,’ she added, ‘have some imagination for you.’