Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/342

336 consider that he should? Because if you do"—he kept it up—"I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way."

"Help you by thinking he should not marry?"

"Not marry, at all events, Mamie."

"And who then?"

"Ah," Strether returned, "that I'm not obliged to say. But Mme. de Vionnet—I suggest—when he can."

"Oh!" said little Bilham with some sharpness.

"Oh precisely! But he needn't marry at all—I'm at any rate not obliged to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I am."

Little Bilham was amused. "Obliged to provide for my marrying?"

"Yes—after all I've done to you!"

The young man weighed it. "Have you done as much as that?"

"Well," said Strether, thus challenged, "of course I must remember what you've also done to me. We may perhaps call it square. But, all the same," he went on, "I wish awfully you'd marry Mamie Pocock yourself."

Little Bilham laughed out. "Why, it was only the other night, in this very place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether."

"Mlle. de Vionnet?" Well, Strether easily confessed it. "That, I admit, was a vain image. This is practical politics. I want to do something good for both of you—I wish you each so well; and you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the same stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she's splendid."

Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped plate. "What do I console her for?"

It just made his friend impatient. "Oh, come; you know!"

"And what proves for you that she likes me?"

"Why, the fact that I found her, three days ago, stopping at home alone all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you would come to her, and hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don't know what you want more."