Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/140

134 believe it—their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting difficulties."

"They're dying to see you?" Miss Gostrey asked.

"Dying. Of course," said Strether, "they're the virtuous attachment." He had already told her about that—had seen her the day after his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing of the revelation. She had helped him to put into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly deficient. Strether had not pressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which he had, in the quest of the quite other article, worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; desiring to make the great point, with this, that Chad's virtuous attachments were none of his business. He had not wanted, from the first, to think too much of his dignity; but that was not a reason for not allowing it any little benefit that might turn up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever he could that he didn't interfere. That had of course, at the same time, not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which, however, he had reduced to some order before communicating his knowledge. When he had done this at last, it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey might, like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on reflection that such an account of the matter did, after all, fit the confirmed appearances. Nothing, certainly, on all the indications, could have been a greater change for him than a virtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the "word," as the French called it, of that change, little Bilham's announcement—though so long and so oddly delayed—would serve as well as another. She had assured Strether in fact, after a pause, that the more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her assurance had not so weighed with him as that, before they parted, he had not ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn't she believe the attachment was virtuous?—he had