Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/349

Rh choice of his doing so from humility or from pride. "Yet she inclines to believe I shall come out."

"Oh, I incline to believe too you'll come out!"—Miss Barrace, with her laugh, was not to be behind. "Only the question's about where, isn't it? However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere at all it must be very far on, mustn't it? To do us justice, I think, you know," she laughed, "we do, among us all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes," she repeated in her quick, droll way; "we want you very, very far on!" After which she wished to know why he had thought it better Maria shouldn't be present.

"Oh," he replied, "it was really her own idea. I should have wished it. But she dreads responsibility."

"And isn't that a new thing for her?"

"To dread it? No doubt—no doubt. But her nerve has given way."

Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. "She has too much at stake." Then less gravely: "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."

"Luckily for me too"—Strether came back to that. "My own isn't so firm, my appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more the merrier.' If we are so merry, it's because Chad has understood so well."

"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace.

"It's wonderful!"—Strether anticipated for her.

"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face over it, they simply and recklessly laughed. But she presently added, "Oh, I see the principle. If one didn't one would be lost. But when once one has got hold of it"

"It's as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do something"

"A crowd"—she took him straight up—"was the only thing? Rather, rather; a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing. Mrs. Pocock's built in, or built out—which ever you call it; she's packed so tight she can't move. She's in splendid isolation"—Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.

Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. "Yet with everyone in the place successively introduced to her."