Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/242

236 "So you've already more than once told me. I should certainly like to see her."

Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and the enviability of his state. "See her then by all means. And consider, too," Strether went on, "that you really give your sister a lift in letting her come to you. You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I'm sure she wants but the pretext to visit."

Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. "She has had it—the pretext—these several years, yet she has never taken it."

"Do you mean you?" Strether after an instant inquired.

"Certainly—the lone exile. And whom do you mean?" said Chad.

"Oh, I mean me. I'm her pretext. That is—for it comes to the same thing—I'm your mother's."

"Then why," Chad asked, "doesn't mother come herself?"

His friend gave him a long look. "Should you like her to?" And then, as he for the moment said nothing: "It's perfectly open to you to cable for her."

Chad continued to think. "Will she come if I do?"

"Quite possibly. But try, and you'll see."

"Why don't you try?" Chad after a moment asked.

"Because I don't want to."

Chad hesitated. "Don't desire her presence here?"

Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic. "Don't put it off, my dear boy, on me!"

"Well—I see what you mean. I'm sure you'd behave beautifully, but you don't want to see her. So I won't play you that trick."

"Ah," Strether declared, "I shouldn't call it a trick. You've a perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you." Then he added in a different tone, "You'd have, moreover, in the person of Mme. de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her."

Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but