Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/269

Rh of the Pococks—Mme. de Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really bribable. The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so, it being evident enough that her character would make, rather, for every possible difference. This idea of his own bribability set him apart for himself, with the further mark, in fact, that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was not only that he was bribable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The only difficulty was that he couldn't quite have said with what. It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn't somehow got the cash. That, however, was what, characteristically, would happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic. While he thought of these things, at any rate, he reminded Chad of the truth they mustn't lose sight of—the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high, firm, definite purpose. "She hasn't come out, you know, to be beguiled. We may all be ravishing—nothing perhaps can be more easy for us; but she hasn't come out to be ravished. She has come out just simply to take you home."

"Oh well, with her I'll go," said Chad good-humouredly. "I suppose you'll allow that." And then as, for a minute, Strether said nothing: "Or is your idea that when I've seen her I won't want to go?" As this question, however, again left his friend silent, he presently went on: "My own idea, at any rate, is that they shall have, while they're here, a good time."

It was at this that Strether spoke. "Ah, there you are! I think if you really wanted to go!"

"Well?" said Chad to bring it out.

"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time. You wouldn't care what sort of a time we have."

Chad could always take, in the easiest way in the world, an ingenious suggestion. "I see. But can I help it? I'm too nice."

"Yes, you're too nice!" Strether heavily sighed. And