Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/371

Rh well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed shouldn't stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have reestablished his communications with Chad. Still, he could always speak for the woman he had so definitely promised to "save." This wasn't quite, for her, the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened, what did it become but a reminder that one might, at the worst, perish with her? And it was simple enough—it was rudimentary; not, not to give her away. "I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience with my counting over. And do you know," he inquired, "the effect you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It's as if you had some motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and so shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side comes up, to get rid of the other. I don't, you must allow me to say, see how you can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side nearest you."

"Near me—that sort of thing?" And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head that well might have placed a penalty on any active approach.

It kept her friend himself at a distance, and he respected for a moment the interval. Then, with a last persuasive effort, he bridged it. "You don't, on your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate development?"

"Fortunate?" she echoed again. And indeed she was ready. "I call it hideous."

Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was already at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of which she delivered herself of this judgment. It rang out so loud as to produce for the time the hush of everything else. Strether quite, as an effect of it, breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but simply enough. "Oh, if you think that!"

"Then all's at an end? So much the better. I do think that!" She passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court, beyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the porte-cochère, the low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up. She made for it with decision, and the manner