Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/351

Rh "Oh, you were a trophy—one of the spoils of conquest? But why, in that case, since you do 'compromise'"

"Don't I compromise him as well? I do compromise him as well," Miss Barrace smiled. "I compromise him as hard as I can. But for Mr. Waymarsh it isn't fatal. It's—so far as his wonderful relation with Mrs. Pocock is concerned—favourable." And then as he still seemed slightly at sea: "The man who had succeeded with me, don't you see? For her to get him from me was such an added incentive."

Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. "It's 'from' you then that she has got him?"

She was amused at his momentary muddle. "You can fancy my fight! She believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy."

"Oh, her joy!" Strether sceptically murmured.

"Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what is to-night, for her, but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock's really good."

"Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis," Strether went on, "there's nothing but heaven. For Sarah there's only to-morrow."

"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?"

"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night—on her behalf—too good to be true. She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of having it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won't be another left for her. Certainly I haven't one. It can only, at the best, be Chad." He continued to make it out as for their common entertainment. "He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet it's borne in upon me that if he had"

"He wouldn't"—she quite understood—"have taken all this trouble? I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much hope he won't take any more. Of course I won't pretend now," she added, "not to know what it's a question of."

"Oh, everyone knows, I think, now," poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; "and it's strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody here at this very moment knowing and watching and waiting."