Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/30

24 covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it. He hovered for vague pity, in fine, while his companion challenged him out of the bedclothes. "Is she really after you? Is that what's behind?"

Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's vision, but he played a little at uncertainty. "Behind my coming out?"

"Behind your prostration, or whatever. It's generally felt, you know, that she follows you up pretty close."

Strether's candour was never very far off. "Oh, it has occurred to you that I'm literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?"

"Well, I haven't known but what you are. You're a very attractive man, Strether. You've seen for yourself," said Waymarsh, "what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed," he rambled on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, "it's you that are after her. Is Mrs. Newsome over here?" He spoke as with a droll dread of her.

It made his friend—though rather dimly—smile. "Dear no; she's safe, thank goodness, as I think I more and more feel, at home. She thought of coming, but she gave it up. I've come in a manner instead of her; and come, to that extent—for you're right in your inference—on her business. So you see there is plenty of connection."

Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. "Involving accordingly the particular connection I've referred to?"

Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his companion's blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. "Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But don't be afraid—you shall have them from me; you'll probably find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with. I shall—if we keep together—very much depend on your impression of some of them."

Waymarsh's acknowledgment of this tribute was characteristically indirect. "You mean to say you don't believe we will keep together?"

"I only glance at the danger," Strether paternally said,