Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/379

Rh they should come. And they greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared.

"Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad.

His companion did himself presently the same justice. "So have I. I tried even this very morning—while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that."

Chad took a deeper interest. "Was she very, very nasty?"

Strether debated. "Well, she was the important thing—she was definite. She was—at last—crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw that they must have come."

"Oh, I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for that!"—Chad's own remorse was as small.

This appeared almost all Strether wanted. "Isn't your having seen them for yourself then the thing, beyond all others, that has come of their visit?"

Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so. "Don't you count it as anything that you're dished—if you are dished? Are you, my dear man, dished?"

It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and Strether, for a minute, but smoked and smoked. "I want to see her again. I must see her."

"Of course you must." Then Chad hesitated. "Do you mean—a—mother herself?"

"Oh, your mother—that will depend."

It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off. Chad, however, endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place. "What do you mean it will depend on?"

Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. "I was speaking of Sarah. I must positively—though she quite cast me off—see her again. I can't part with her that way."

"Then she was awfully unpleasant?"

Again Strether exhaled. "She was what she had to be. I mean that from the moment they're not delighted they can only be—well, what I admit she was. We gave them," he went on, "their chance to be delighted, and they've