Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/382

376 that Sally was after all not the woman to have made the mistake of not being. "Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I got so, from the first," he sagaciously observed, "the start of her."

"You mean she has taken so much from you?"

"Well, I couldn't, of course, in common decency, give less; only she hadn't expected, I think, that I would give nearly so much. And she began to take it before she knew it."

"And she began to like it," said Strether, "as soon as she began to take it!"

"Yes, she has liked it—also more than she expected." After which Chad observed: "But she doesn't like me. In fact she hates me."

Strether's interest grew. "Then why does she want you at home?"

"Because when you hate, you want to triumph; and if she should get me neatly stuck there she would triumph."

Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. "Certainly—in a manner. But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled, feeling her dislike, and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of your own, you should, on the spot, make yourself unpleasant to her."

"Ah," said Chad, "she can bear me—could bear me, at least, at home. It's my being there that would be her triumph. She hates me in Paris."

"She hates in other words"

"Yes, that's it!" Chad had quickly understood this understanding; which formed, on the part of each, as near an approach as they had yet made to naming Mme. de Vionnet. The limitations of their distinctness didn't, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated. It added one more touch, moreover, to their established recognition of the rare intimacy of Chad's association with her. He had himself never yet so twitched away the last veil from this phenomenon as in presenting himself as confounded and submerged in the sentiment she had engendered at Woollett. "And I'll tell you who hates me too," he immediately went on.