Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/249

Rh no longer. That's only the climax of his original feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written to Woollett that I'm in peril of perdition."

"Ah, good!" she murmured. "But is it only your supposition?"

"I make it out. It explains."

"Then he denies?—or you haven't asked him?"

"I've not had time," Strether said. "I made it out but last night, putting various things together, and I've not been since then face to face with him."

She wondered. "Because you're too disgusted—you can't trust yourself?"

He settled his glasses on his nose. "Do I look in a great rage?"

"You look exquisite!"

"There's nothing," he went on, "to be angry about. He has done me, on the contrary, a service."

She made it out. "By bringing things to a head?"

"How well you understand!" he almost groaned. "Waymarsh won't in the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience, and after wakeful nights. He'll recognise that he's fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite together again—bridge the dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall have at last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk about."

She was silent a little. "How wonderfully you take it! But you're always wonderful."

He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a complete admission. "It's quite true. I'm extremely wonderful just now. I dare say, in fact, I'm quite fantastic, and I shouldn't be at all surprised if I were mad."

"Then tell me!" she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him, she presented herself where it was easier to meet her. "What will Mr. Waymarsh exactly have done?"