Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/136

130 might amuse her had given Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help him with his splendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus creating in his comrade's mind, even in a world of irrelevance, the possibility of a relation? What was it but a relation to be regarded as so decorative, and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be whirled away, amid flounces and feathers, in a coupé lined, by what Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade? He himself had never been whirled away—never, at least, in a coupé and behind a footman. He had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs. Pocock a few times in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated cart, and occasionally, in the mountains, on a buckboard; but his friend's actual adventure transcended his personal experience. He now showed his companion soon enough, indeed, how inadequate, as a general monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel itself.

"What game under the sun is he playing?" He signified the next moment that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes, on whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion. "When shall I really catch him?"

Little Bilham, in meditation, regarded him with a kindness almost paternal. "Don't you like it over here?"

Strether laughed out, for the tone was indeed droll. He let himself go. "What has that to do with it? The only thing I've any business to like is to feel that I'm moving him. That's why I ask you whether you believe I am. Is the creature"—and he did his best to show that he simply wished to ascertain—"honest?"

His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small, dim smile. "What creature do you mean?"

It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. "Is it untrue that he's free? How, then," Strether asked, wondering, "does he arrange his life?"

"Is the creature you mean Chad himself?" little Bilham said.