Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/288

282 "Oh, I've not let myself go very far," Strether answered, feeling quite as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians could talk. "I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let myself go far enough. I've taken a good deal of time, but I must quite have had the air of not budging from one spot." He looked at Sarah in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under Mme. de Vionnet's protection, as it were, his first personal point. "What has really happened has been that all the while I've done what I came out for."

Yet it only at first gave Mme. de Vionnet a chance immediately to take him up. "You've renewed acquaintance with your friend; you've learned to know him again." She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and pledged to mutual aid.

Waymarsh at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned from the window. "Oh yes, Countess, he has renewed acquaintance with me, and he has, I guess, learned something about me, though I don't know how much he has liked it. It's for Strether himself to say whether he has felt it justifies his course."

"Oh, but you," said the Countess gaily, "are not in the least what he came out for—is he really, Strether?—and I hadn't you at all in my mind. I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with whom precisely Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take up threads. What a pleasure for you both!" Mme. de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.

Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to accept no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She required no patronage and no support, which were but other names for a false position. She would show in her own way what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a dry glitter that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning. "I've never wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We've many things to think of at home and great responsibilities and occupations, and our home is not an impossible place. We've plenty of reasons," Sarah pursued a little piercingly, "for everything we do"; and in short she wouldn't give