IV

He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and

we have just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention

on hearing from her of the young man’s absence. It was not moreover

only the assurance so given that prompted him; it was the need of

causing his conduct to square with another profession still—the motive

he had described to her as his sharpest for now getting away. If he was

to get away because of some of the relations involved in staying, the

cold attitude toward them might look pedantic in the light of lingering

on. He must do both things; he must see Chad, but he must go. The more

he thought of the former of these duties the more he felt himself make

a subject of insistence of the latter. They were alike intensely

present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little café into which he

had dropped on quitting Maria’s entresol. The rain that had spoiled his

evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if his evening

_had_ been spoiled—though it mightn’t have been wholly the rain. It was

late when he left the café, yet not too late; he couldn’t in any case

go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the Boulevard

Malesherbes—rather far round—on his way home. Present enough always was

the small circumstance that had originally pressed for him the spring

of so big a difference—the accident of little Bilham’s appearance on

the balcony of the mystic troisième at the moment of his first visit,

and the effect of it on his sense of what was then before him. He

recalled his watch, his wait, and the recognition that had proceeded

from the young stranger, that had played frankly into the air and had

presently brought him up—things smoothing the way for his first

straight step. He had since had occasion, a few times, to pass the

house without going in; but he had never passed it without again

feeling how it had then spoken to him. He stopped short to-night on

coming to sight of it: it was as if his last day were oddly copying his

first. The windows of Chad’s apartment were open to the balcony—a pair

of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken up little

Bilham’s attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could see leaned

on the rail and looked down at him. It denoted however no reappearance

of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in the tempered

darkness as Chad’s more solid shape; so that Chad’s was the attention

that after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he

easily engaged; Chad’s was the voice that, sounding into the night with

promptness and seemingly with joy, greeted him and called him up.

That the young man had been visible there just in this position

expressed somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he

had been absent and silent; and our friend drew breath on each

landing—the lift, at that hour, having ceased to work—before the

implications of the fact. He had been for a week intensely away, away

to a distance and alone; but he was more back than ever, and the

attitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more than a

return—it was clearly a conscious surrender. He had arrived but an hour

before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no matter

where—though the visitor’s fancy, on the staircase, liked to fill it

out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold

clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the

circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air

again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether’s approach in

what might have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his

life!—Strether paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather

breathless sense of what Chad’s life was doing with Chad’s mother’s

emissary. It was dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of

the rich; it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it

was transforming beyond recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently

uniform thing that had anciently passed with him for a life of his own.

Why should it concern him that Chad was to be fortified in the pleasant

practice of smoking on balconies, of supping on salads, of feeling his

special conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of finding

reassurance in comparisons and contrasts? There was no answer to such a

question but that he was still practically committed—he had perhaps

never yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his

railway-ticket—feeling, no doubt, older—the next day; but he had

meanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and

without a lift, for Chad’s life. The young man, hearing him by this

time, and with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that

Strether had before him in full visibility the cause in which he was

labouring and even, with the troisième fairly gained, panting a little.

Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the

formal—so far as the formal was the respectful—handsomely met; and

after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the

night Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been

called, to what had lately happened. If he had just thought of himself

as old Chad was at sight of him thinking of him as older: he wanted to

put him up for the night just because he was ancient and weary. It

could never be said the tenant of these quarters wasn’t nice to him; a

tenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to

work it all still more thoroughly. Our friend had in fact the

impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to

keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own

possibilities seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to

stay—so why didn’t that happily fit? He could enshrine himself for the

rest of his days in his young host’s _chambre d’ami_ and draw out these

days at his young host’s expense: there could scarce be greater logical

expression of the countenance he had been moved to give. There was

literally a minute—it was strange enough—during which he grasped the

idea that as he _was_ acting, as he could only act, he was

inconsistent. The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung

together would be that—in default always of another career—he should

promote the good cause by mounting guard on it. These things, during

his first minutes, came and went; but they were after all practically

disposed of as soon as he had mentioned his errand. He had come to say

good-bye—yet that was only a part; so that from the moment Chad

accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal affirmation gave way

to something else. He proceeded with the rest of his business. “You’ll

be a brute, you know—you’ll be guilty of the last infamy—if you ever

forsake her.”

That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was

full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he

had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been

spoken. It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and the

effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have called

the key. Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none the less

been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had had fears

and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was disturbed, as it were,

only _for_ him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let

him down—if it wasn’t indeed rather to screw him up—the more gently.

Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good

humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely

made out was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious

assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor remained;

so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer keen

to agree to everything. It couldn’t be put too strongly for him that

he’d be a brute. “Oh rather!—if I should do anything of _that_ sort. I

hope you believe I really feel it.”

“I want it,” said Strether, “to be my last word of all to you. I can’t

say more, you know; and I don’t see how I can do more, in every way,

than I’ve done.”

Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. “You’ve seen

her?”

“Oh yes—to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I tell

you—”

“She’d have cleared up your doubt?” Chad understood—“rather”—again! It

even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up. “She must have been

wonderful.”

“She _was_,” Strether candidly admitted—all of which practically told

as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of the

previous week.

They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out

still more in what Chad next said. “I don’t know what you’ve really

thought, all along; I never did know—for anything, with you, seemed to

be possible. But of course—of course—” Without confusion, quite with

nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up. “After all, you

understand. I spoke to you originally only as I _had_ to speak. There’s

only one way—isn’t there?—about such things. However,” he smiled with a

final philosophy, “I see it’s all right.”

Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it

that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so

renewedly, so substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it

was—it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself

said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said

something quite different. “You _have_ really been to a distance?”

“I’ve been to England.” Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no

further account of it than to say: “One must sometimes get off.”

Strether wanted no more facts—he only wanted to justify, as it were,

his question. “Of course you do as you’re free to do. But I hope, this

time, that you didn’t go for _me_.”

“For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,” Chad

laughed, “what _wouldn’t_ I do for you?”

Strether’s easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had

exactly come to profit by. “Even at the risk of being in your way I’ve

waited on, you know, for a definite reason.”

Chad took it in. “Oh yes—for us to make if possible a still better

impression.” And he stood there happily exhaling his full general

consciousness. “I’m delighted to gather that you feel we’ve made it.”

There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied

and keeping to the point, didn’t take up. “If I had my sense of wanting

the rest of the time—the time of their being still on this side,” he

continued to explain—“I know now why I wanted it.”

He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard,

and Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. “You wanted

to have been put through the whole thing.”

Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away,

and they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer

air. “I shall learn from the Bank here where they’re now having their

letters, and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which

they’re expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.” The

light of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his

companion’s face as he again met it; and he completed his

demonstration. He pursued indeed as if for himself. “Of course I’ve

first to justify what I shall do.”

“You’re justifying it beautifully!” Chad declared.

“It’s not a question of advising you not to go,” Strether said, “but of

absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking of it.

Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.”

Chad showed a surprise. “What makes you think me capable—?”

“You’d not only be, as I say, a brute; you’d be,” his companion went on

in the same way, “a criminal of the deepest dye.”

Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. “I don’t

know what should make you think I’m tired of her.”

Strether didn’t quite know either, and such impressions, for the

imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the

spot their warrant. There was none the less for him, in the very manner

of his host’s allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a slight

breath of the ominous. “I feel how much more she can do for you. She

hasn’t done it all yet. Stay with her at least till she has.”

“And leave her _then?_”

Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of

dryness. “Don’t leave her _before_. When you’ve got all that can be

got—I don’t say,” he added a trifle grimly. “That will be the proper

time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always be

something to be got, my remark’s not a wrong to her.” Chad let him go

on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid

curiosity for this sharper accent. “I remember you, you know, as you

were.”

“An awful ass, wasn’t I?”

The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a

ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to

meet it. “You certainly then wouldn’t have seemed worth all you’ve let

me in for. You’ve defined yourself better. Your value has quintupled.”

“Well then, wouldn’t that be enough—?”

Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. “Enough?”

“If one _should_ wish to live on one’s accumulations?” After which,

however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as

easily dropped it. “Of course I really never forget, night or day, what

I owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of honour,” he

frankly rang out, “that I’m not a bit tired of her.” Strether at this

only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and

again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable

of much; yet he spoke of being “tired” of her almost as he might have

spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner. “She has never for a

moment yet bored me—never been wanting, as the cleverest women

sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact—as even

they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it. She has never had

it more”—he handsomely made the point—“than just lately.” And he

scrupulously went further. “She has never been anything I could call a

burden.”

Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his

shade of dryness deepened. “Oh if you didn’t do her justice—!”

“I _should_ be a beast, eh?”

Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; _that_, visibly,

would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat,

however, repetition was no mistake. “You owe her everything—very much

more than she can ever owe you. You’ve in other words duties to her, of

the most positive sort; and I don’t see what other duties—as the others

are presented to you—can be held to go before them.”

Chad looked at him with a smile. “And you know of course about the

others, eh?—since it’s you yourself who have done the presenting.”

“Much of it—yes—and to the best of my ability. But not all—from the

moment your sister took my place.”

“She didn’t,” Chad returned. “Sally took a place, certainly; but it was

never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one—with us—will

ever take yours. It wouldn’t be possible.”

“Ah of course,” sighed Strether, “I knew it. I believe you’re right. No

one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I

am,” he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of

this truth. “I was made so.”

Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might

for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured

the fact. “_You_ have never needed any one to make you better. There

has never been any one good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man

declared.

His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They _have_.”

Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?”

Strether—though a little dimly—smiled at him. “Women—too.”

“‘Two’?”—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I don’t believe, for such work,

in any more than one! So you’re proving too much. And what _is_

beastly, at all events,” he added, “is losing you.”

Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he

paused. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid—?”

“Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.” Before Chad could speak,

however, he had taken himself up. “I _am_, certainly,” he laughed,

“prodigious.”

“Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid—!” This might have been, on

Chad’s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant;

but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it

carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of

performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his

friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and

guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a

noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him,

while they walked, to the next corner and the next. “You needn’t tell

me, you needn’t tell me!”—this again as they proceeded, he wished to

make Strether feel. What he needn’t tell him was now at last, in the

geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He

knew, up to the hilt—that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,

recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their

walk to Strether’s hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter

took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to

give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou. But there was

just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed disposed

slightly to bargain. His companion needn’t, as he said, tell him, but

he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art

of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement

while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken

him, with strange inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all

events to have been looking into the question and had encountered a

revelation. Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as

the great new force. “It really does the thing, you know.”

They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first

night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. “Affects, you mean, the

sale of the object advertised?”

“Yes—but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had

supposed. I mean of course when it’s done as one makes out that in our

roaring age, it _can_ be done. I’ve been finding out a little, though

it doubtless doesn’t amount to much more than what you originally, so

awfully vividly—and all, very nearly, that first night—put before me.

It’s an art like another, and infinite like all the arts.” He went on

as if for the joke of it—almost as if his friend’s face amused him. “In

the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold. With

the right man to work it _c’est un monde_.”

Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a

pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step. “Is what you’re thinking

of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right

man?”

Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into

an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up

and down. “Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for

when you first came out?”

Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. “Oh yes,

and there’s no doubt that, with your natural parts, you’d have much in

common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret

of trade. It’s quite possible it will be open to you—giving the whole

of your mind to it—to make the whole place hum with you. Your mother’s

appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that’s exactly the strength of

her case.”

Chad’s fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.

“Ah we’ve been through my mother’s case!”

“So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?”

“Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind up where

we began, my interest’s purely platonic. There at any rate the fact

is—the fact of the possible. I mean the money in it.”

“Oh damn the money in it!” said Strether. And then as the young man’s

fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange: “Shall you give your

friend up for the money in it?”

Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his

attitude. “You’re not altogether—in your so great ‘solemnity’—kind.

Haven’t I been drinking you in—showing you all I feel you’re worth to

me? What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death?

The only thing is,” he good-humouredly explained, “that one can’t but

have it before one, in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in.

Don’t be afraid for _that_. It’s pleasant to a fellow’s feelings,” he

developed, “to ‘size-up’ the bribe he applies his foot to.”

“Oh then if all you want’s a kickable surface the bribe’s enormous.”

“Good. Then there it goes!” Chad administered his kick with fantastic

force and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if

they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what

really concerned him. “Of course I shall see you tomorrow.”

But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the

impression—not the slighter for the simulated kick—of an irrelevant

hornpipe or jig. “You’re restless.”

“Ah,” returned Chad as they parted, “you’re exciting.”

V

He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had

sent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to

breakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the

cool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at

the back of the house, with a view of a scrap of old garden that had

been saved from modern ravage; and though he had on more than one other

occasion had his legs under its small and peculiarly polished table of

hospitality, the place had never before struck him as so sacred to

pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a neatness

that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess

before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter;

which was somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one’s eyes were

held and comforted. Strether’s were comforted at all events now—and the

more that it was the last time—with the charming effect, on the board

bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small old

crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial pieces happily

disposed about the room. The specimens of vivid Delf, in particular had

the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst of them that

our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even with a certain

philosophic humour. “There’s nothing more to wait for; I seem to have

done a good day’s work. I’ve let them have it all round. I’ve seen

Chad, who has been to London and come back. He tells me I’m ‘exciting,’

and I seem indeed pretty well to have upset every one. I’ve at any rate

excited _him_. He’s distinctly restless.”

“You’ve excited _me_,” Miss Gostrey smiled. “_I’m_ distinctly

restless.”

“Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I’ve rather got you

out of it. What’s this,” he asked as he looked about him, “but a haunt

of ancient peace?”

“I wish with all my heart,” she presently replied, “I could make you

treat it as a haven of rest.” On which they fronted each other, across

the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.

Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them

up. “It wouldn’t give me—that would be the trouble—what it will, no

doubt, still give you. I’m not,” he explained, leaning back in his

chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon—“in real harmony

with what surrounds me. You _are_. I take it too hard. You _don’t_. It

makes—that’s what it comes to in the end—a fool of me.” Then at a

tangent, “What has he been doing in London?” he demanded.

“Ah one may go to London,” Maria laughed. “You know _I_ did.”

Yes—he took the reminder. “And you brought _me_ back.” He brooded there

opposite to her, but without gloom. “Whom has Chad brought? He’s full

of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah,” he added, “the first thing this

morning. So I’m square. I’m ready for them.”

She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.

“Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings

of an immense man of business.”

“There it is. He’s the son of his father!”

“But _such_ a father!”

“Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn’t his father

in him,” Strether added, “that troubles me.”

“What is it then?” He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently

of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only

after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark

that he’d answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him

and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon

reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the article

produced at Woollett. “Do you remember our talking of it in London—that

night at the play?” Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to

him for other matters. Did he remember, did he remember—this and that

of their first days? He remembered everything, bringing up with humour

even things of which she professed no recollection, things she

vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great interest of

their early time, the curiosity felt by both of them as to where he

would “come out.” They had so assumed it was to be in some wonderful

place—they had thought of it as so very _much_ out. Well, that was

doubtless what it had been—since he had come out just there. He was

out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must now rather

bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the image of

his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at

Berne. _They_ came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their

little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too

had jigged his little course—him too a modest retreat awaited. He

offered now, should she really like to know, to name the great product

of Woollett. It would be a great commentary on everything. At this she

stopped him off; she not only had no wish to know, but she wouldn’t

know for the world. She had done with the products of Woollett—for all

the good she had got from them. She desired no further news of them,

and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge,

lived exempt from the information he was ready to supply. She had never

consented to receive it, though she would have taken it, under stress,

from Mrs. Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared

to have had little to say—never sounding the word—and it didn’t signify

now. There was nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified

now—save one sharp point, that is, to which she came in time. “I don’t

know whether it’s before you as a possibility that, left to himself,

Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that it _is_ more or less so

before you, from what you just now said of him.”

Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing

what was to follow this. “I don’t think it will be for the money.” And

then as she seemed uncertain: “I mean I don’t believe it will be for

that he’ll give her up.”

“Then he _will_ give her up?”

Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a

little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive

and unspoken ways for patience and understanding. “What were you just

about to ask me?”

“Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?”

“With Mrs. Newsome?”

Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was

only in her face; but she added with it: “Or is there anything he can

do that would make _her_ try it?”

“To patch it up with me?” His answer came at last in a conclusive

headshake. “There’s nothing any one can do. It’s over. Over for both of

us.”

Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. “Are you so sure for her?”

“Oh yes—sure now. Too much has happened. I’m different for her.”

She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. “I see. So that as she’s

different for _you_—”

“Ah but,” he interrupted, “she’s not.” And as Miss Gostrey wondered

again: “She’s the same. She’s more than ever the same. But I do what I

didn’t before—I _see_ her.”

He spoke gravely and as if responsibly—since he had to pronounce; and

the effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed

“Oh!” Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next words

an acceptance of his statement. “What then do you go home to?”

He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of

the matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that

he soon found himself on his feet. He was affected in advance by what

he believed might come from her, and he would have liked to forestall

it and deal with it tenderly; yet in the presence of it he wished still

more to be—though as smoothly as possible—deterrent and conclusive. He

put her question by for the moment; he told her more about Chad. “It

would have been impossible to meet me more than he did last night on

the question of the infamy of not sticking to her.”

“Is that what you called it for him—‘infamy’?”

“Oh rather! I described to him in detail the base creature he’d be, and

he quite agrees with me about it.”

“So that it’s really as if you had nailed him?”

“Quite really as if—! I told him I should curse him.”

“Oh,” she smiled, “you _have_ done it.” And then having thought again:

“You _can’t_ after that propose—!” Yet she scanned his face.

“Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?”

She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out. “I’ve never believed, you

know, that you did propose. I always believed it was really she—and, so

far as that goes, I can understand it. What I mean is,” she explained,

“that with such a spirit—the spirit of curses!—your breach is past

mending. She has only to know what you’ve done to him never again to

raise a finger.”

“I’ve done,” said Strether, “what I could—one can’t do more. He

protests his devotion and his horror. But I’m not sure I’ve saved him.

He protests too much. He asks how one can dream of his being tired. But

he has all life before him.”

Maria saw what he meant. “He’s formed to please.”

“And it’s our friend who has formed him.” Strether felt in it the

strange irony.

“So it’s scarcely his fault!”

“It’s at any rate his danger. I mean,” said Strether, “it’s hers. But

she knows it.”

“Yes, she knows it. And is your idea,” Miss Gostrey asked, “that there

was some other woman in London?”

“Yes. No. That is I _have_ no ideas. I’m afraid of them. I’ve done with

them.” And he put out his hand to her. “Good-bye.”

It brought her back to her unanswered question. “To what do you go

home?”

“I don’t know. There will always be something.”

“To a great difference,” she said as she kept his hand.

“A great difference—no doubt. Yet I shall see what I can make of it.”

“Shall you make anything so good—?” But, as if remembering what Mrs.

Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.

He had sufficiently understood. “So good as this place at this moment?

So good as what _you_ make of everything you touch?” He took a moment

to say, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her

offer—which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care,

for the rest of his days—might well have tempted. It built him softly

round, it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection.

And what ruled selection was beauty and knowledge. It was awkward, it

was almost stupid, not to seem to prize such things; yet, none the

less, so far as they made his opportunity they made it only for a

moment. She’d moreover understand—she always understood.

That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. “There’s nothing,

you know, I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Oh yes—I know.”

“There’s nothing,” she repeated, “in all the world.”

“I know. I know. But all the same I must go.” He had got it at last.

“To be right.”

“To be right?”

She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear

for her. “That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole

affair, to have got anything for myself.”

She thought. “But with your wonderful impressions you’ll have got a

great deal.”

“A great deal”—he agreed. “But nothing like _you_. It’s you who would

make me wrong!”

Honest and fine, she couldn’t greatly pretend she didn’t see it. Still

she could pretend just a little. “But why should you be so dreadfully

right?”

“That’s the way that—if I must go—you yourself would be the first to

want me. And I can’t do anything else.”

So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. “It

isn’t so much your _being_ ‘right’—it’s your horrible sharp eye for

what makes you so.”

“Oh but you’re just as bad yourself. You can’t resist me when I point

that out.”

She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. “I can’t

indeed resist you.”

“Then there we are!” said Strether.