Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/392

386 a sudden a still sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her. "I want you here."

She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case. "Thank you," she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little harder, "Thank you very much," she repeated.

It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk, and it held him a moment longer. "Why, two months ago, or whenever, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you gave me for keeping away three weeks at that time was not the real one."

She recalled. "I never supposed you believed it was. Yet," she continued, "if you didn't guess it, that was just what helped you."

He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space permitted, in one of his slow absences. "I've often thought of it, but never to feel that I could guess it. And you see the consideration with which I've treated you in never asking you till now."

"Now then—why do you ask?"

"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does for me."

"It doesn't seem to have done," she laughed, "all it might! However," she added, "if you've never really guessed the truth, I'll tell you."

"I've never guessed it," Strether declared.

"Never?"

"Never."

"Well, then, I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my detriment."

He looked, however, as if he still doubted. "You even then would have had to face it on your return."

"Oh, if I had found reason to believe it something very bad, I would have left you altogether."

"So then," he continued, "it was only on guessing she had been on the whole merciful that you ventured back?"

Maria kept it together. "I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation, she didn't separate us. That's one of my reasons," she went on, "for admiring her so."