Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/209

Rh Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. "How can I make out such things?"

She remained perfectly good-natured. "Ah, but they're beautiful little things, and you make out—don't pretend—everything in the world. " [sic]Haven't you," she asked, "been talking with her?"

"Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much."

"Oh, you don't require 'much'!" she reassuringly declared. But she immediately changed her ground. "I hope you remember your promise of the other day."

"To 'save' you, as you called it?"

"I call it so still. You will?" she insisted. "You haven't repented?"

He hesitated. "No—but I've been thinking what I meant."

She wondered. "And not, a little, what I did?"

"No—that's not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant myself."

"And don't you know," she asked, "by this time?"

Again he had a pause. "I think you ought to leave it to me. But how long," he added, "do you give me?"

"It seems to me much more a question of how long you give me. Doesn't our friend here himself, at any rate," she went on, "perpetually make me present to you?"

"Not," Strether replied, "by ever speaking of you to me."

"He never does that?"

"Never."

She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. "No, he wouldn't. But do you need that?"

Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he looked at her longer now. "I see what you mean."

"Of course you see what I mean."

Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep. " I've before me what he owes you."

"Admit, then, that that's something," she said, yet still with the same discretion in her pride.

He took in this note, but he went straight on. "You've