Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/363

Rh all things considered, quickly. I hope you'll have a lovely time in the Alps."

Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them. "I don't know as I ought really to go."

It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh, it was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him, and breathed a greater boldness. "Let yourself, on the contrary, go—in all agreeable directions. These are precious hours—at our age they mayn't recur. Don't have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next winter, that you hadn't courage for them." And then as his comrade queerly stared: "Live up to Mrs. Pocock."

"Live up to her?"

"You're a great help to her."

Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were certainly true and that it was yet ironical to say. "It's more then than you are."

"That's exactly your own chance and advantage. Besides," said Strether, "I do in my way contribute. I know what I'm about."

Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the door, his last look, beneath the shade of it, had turned again to darkness and warning. "So do I! See here, Strether."

"I know what you're going to say. Quit it all!"

"Quit it all!" But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it remained; it went out of the room with him.