Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/366

360 had been in fact precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled, with a crash and a splash, on the floor. The form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within the twenty-four hours. "He'll go in a moment if you give him the word—he assures me on his honour he'll do that": this came in its order, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had occurred. It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel that he was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed—the time he was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of putting it, on her brother's part, left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn't at all funny at last—she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was strong—strong for herself. It had not yet so come home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in an interest grander and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining force. She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he needn't in the least be uneasy for her. What would, once more, have been distinct to him had he tried to make it so, was that, as Mrs. Newsome was essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element was almost identical with her own presence. It wasn't perhaps that he felt he was dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been straight with him. She was reaching him, somehow, by the lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take her into account. But he was not reaching her in turn, not making her to take him; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him. "Something has clearly passed between you and Chad," he presently said, "that I think I ought to know something more about. Does he put it all," he smiled, "on me?"

"Did you come to Paris," she asked, "to put it all on him?"

But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying, "Oh, it's all right. Chad, I mean, is all right in having said to you—well anything he may have said.