Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/258

252 On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. "What do you, in particular, call its work?"

"Well, to see me through."

"But through what?" She liked to get it all out of him.

"Why, through this experience." That was all that would come.

It regularly gave her, none the less, the last word. "Don't you remember how, in those first days of our meeting, it was I who was to see you through?"

"Remember? Tenderly, deeply." He always rose to it. "You're just doing your part in letting me maunder to you thus."

"Ah, don't speak as if my part were small, since whatever else fails you"

"You won't—ever, ever, ever?" He thus took her up. "Oh, I beg your pardon. You necessarily, you inevitably will. Your conditions—that's what I mean—won't allow me anything to do for you."

"Let alone—I see what you mean—that I'm drearily, dreadfully old. I am; but there's a service possible for you to render—that I know, all the same, I shall think of."

"And what will it be?"

This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. "You shall hear only if your smash takes place. As that is really out of the question, I won't expose myself"—a point at which, for reasons of his own, Strether ceased to press.

He came round, for publicity—it was the easiest thing—to the idea that his smash was out of the question, and this rendered idle the discussion of what might follow it. He attached an added importance, as the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a shameful sense of waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly. He accused himself of making believe to his own mind that Sarah's presence, her impression, her judgment would simplify and harmonise; he accused himself of being so afraid of what they might do, that he sought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury. He had abundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he had not at present the smallest ground. His clearest vision was