Susan appears, big with the motive that has brought her. This visit
of hers is an appeal to Densher, so much is clear in all her looks and
tones. There is only one way to save Milly, to restore to Milly, not
indeed her life, but her desire of it. Densher has it in his power to
make her wish to live again, and that is all that he or any one else
could achieve for her. The thought is between him and the good woman
as they talk; the dialogue, with its allusions and broken phrases,
slowly shapes itself to the form of the suppressed appeal. It hangs in
the air, almost visibly, before it is uttered at all; and by that time
a word is enough, one stroke, and the nature of the appeal and all its
implications are in view. The scene has embodied it; the cheerless
little room and the falling light and Densher's uneasy movements and
Susan's flushed, rain-splashed earnestness have all contributed; the
broken phrases, without touching it, have travelled about it and
revealed its contour. Densher might tell Milly that she is wrong,
might convince her that he and Kate have not beguiled and misled her
as she supposes; Densher, in other words, might mislead her again, and
Mrs. Stringham entreats him to do so. That is why she has come, and
such is the image which has been gradually created, and which at last
is actual and palpable in the scene. It has not appeared as a
statement or an announcement; Susan's appeal and Densher's tormented
response to it are _felt_, establishing their presence as matters
which the reader has lived with for the time.
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