Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/248

 XVIII

four o'clock the same afternoon Strether had still not seen his old friend, but he was then, as to make up for that, engaged in talk about him with Miss Gostrey. He had kept away from home all day, given himself up to the town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless and absorbed—and all with the present climax of a rich little welcome to the Quartier Marbœuf. "Waymarsh has been, 'unbeknown' to me, I'm convinced"—for Miss Gostrey had inquired—"in communication with Woollett, the consequence of which was, last night, the loudest possible call for me."

"Do you mean a letter to bring you home?"

"No; a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket—a 'Come back by the first ship.'"

Strether's hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing colour. Reflection arrived but in time, and established a provisional serenity. It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with duplicity, "And you're going?"

"You almost deserve it when you abandon me so."

She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. "My absence has helped you—as I've only to look at you to see. It was my calculation, and I'm justified. You're not where you were. And the thing," she smiled, "was for me not to be there either. You can go of yourself."

"Oh, but I feel to-day," he comfortably declared, "that I shall want you yet."

She took him all in again. "Well, I promise you not again to leave you, but it will only be to follow you. You've got your momentum, and you can toddle alone."

He intelligently accepted it. "Yes, I suppose I can toddle. It's the sight of that, in fact, that has upset our friend. He can bear it—the way I strike him as going— 242