Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/29

Rh highest advantage. "That's a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you."

Nothing could have been finer than, on this, Waymarsh's sombre glow, "Have you come out on purpose?"

"Well—very largely."

"I thought, from the way you wrote, there was some thing back of it."

Strether hesitated. "Back of my desire to be with you?"

"Back of your prostration."

Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his head. "There are all the causes of it!"

"And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?"

Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. "Yes. One. There is a matter that has had much to do with my coming out."

Waymarsh waited a little. "Too private to mention?"

"No, not too private—for you. Only rather complicated."

"Well," said Waymarsh, who had waited again. "I may lose my mind over here, but I don't know as I've done so yet."

"Oh, you shall have the whole thing. But not to-night."

Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. "Why not—if I can't sleep?"

"Because, my dear man, I can!"

"Then where's your prostration?"

"Just in that—that I can put in eight hours"; and Strether brought it out that if Waymarsh didn't "gain" it was because he didn't go to bed: the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist upon his really getting settled. Strether, with a kind of coercive hand for it, assisted him to this consummation, and again found his own part in their relation auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his