Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/402

396 far-off things and as if they had spent weeks at the places she named.

"It's just what you're doing."

"Ah, but the worst—since you've left such a margin—may be still to come. You may yet break down."

"Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me?"

He had hesitated, and she waited. "Take you?"

"For as long as I can bear it."

She also debated. "Mr. Newsome and Mme. de Vionnet may, after all, as we were saying, leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without them?"

Strether's reply to this was at first another question. "Leave it, you mean, in order to get away from me?"

Her answer had an abruptness. "Don't find me rude if I say I should think they'd want to!"

He looked at her hard again—seemed even for an instant to have an intensity of thought under which his colour changed. But he smiled. "You mean after what they've done to me?"

"After what Marie has."

At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again. "Ah, but she hasn't done it yet!"