Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/305

Rh "Ah," she quietly replied, "to whom do you say it?" And then more quietly still: "He's capable of anything."

Strether more than reaffirmed. "Oh, he's excellent. I more and more like," he insisted, "to see him with them"; though the oddity of this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that, more than ever yet, he might have been on the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the whole business than he had yet received from her. The occasion almost forced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close standpoint. The moment, in fact, however, passed, giving way to more present history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of the happy truth. "It's a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust him." And then again while, for a little, she said nothing—as if, after all, to her trust there might be a special limit: "I mean for making a good show to them."

"Yes," she thoughtfully returned, "but if they shut their eyes to it!"

Strether for an instant had his own thought. "Well, perhaps that won't matter!"

"You mean because he probably—do what they will—won't like them?"

"Oh, 'do what they will'! They won't do much, especially if Sarah hasn't more—well, more than one has yet made out—to give."

Mme. de Vionnet weighed it. "Ah, she has all her grace!" It was a statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether, the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. "She may be persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of him," she wound up—"well, as neither you nor I have."

"Yes, she may," and now Strether smiled. "But he has spent all his time each day with Jim. He's still showing Jim round."