Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/214

208 vulgar or coarse. And, bless us and save us, it isn't! It's, upon my word, the very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished."

Strether, from beside him, and leaning back with him as he leaned, dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of which he took no notice. He only gazed before him with intent participation. "Of course what it has done for him," Strether, at all events, presently pursued, "of course what it has done for him—that is as to how it has so wonderfully worked—is not a thing I pretend to understand. I've to take it as I find it. There he is."

"There he is!" little Bilham echoed. "And it's really and truly she. I don't understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity. But I'm like you," he added; "I can admire and rejoice even when I'm a little in the dark. You see I've watched it for some three years, and especially for this last. He wasn't so bad before it as I seem to have made out that you think"

"Oh, I don't think anything now!" Strether impatiently broke in: "that is but what I do think! I mean that, originally, for her to have cared for him"

"There must have been stuff in him. Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you know," the young man in all fairness developed, "there was room for her, and that's where she came in. She saw her chance, and she took it. That's what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course he liked her first."

"Naturally," said Strether.

"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere—I believe in some American house—and she, without in the least then intending it, made her impression. Then, with time and opportunity, he made his; and after that she was as bad as he."

Strether vaguely took it up. "As 'bad'?"

"She began, that is, to care—to care very much. Alone, and in her horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest. It was, it is, an interest; and it did—it continues to do a lot for herself as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact," said little Bilham thoughtfully, "more."