Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/446

440 were busy with; that she was hit was our great affair. But somehow I couldn't think of her as down in the dust. And as put there by our little Chad!"

"Yet wasn't your little Chad just your miracle?"

Strether admitted it. " Of course I moved among miracles. It was all phantasmagoric. But the great fact was that so much of it was none of my business—as I saw my business. It isn't even now."

His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet again with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could bring her personally. "I wish she could hear you!"

"Mrs. Newsome?"

"No—not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn't matter now what Mrs. Newsome hears. Hasn't she heard everything?"

"Practically—yes." He had thought a moment, but he went on. "You wish Mme. de Vionnet could hear me?"

"Mme. de Vionnet." She had come back to him. "She thinks just the contrary of what you say. That you judge her differently now."

He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him seemed to give it. "She might have known!"

"Might have known you don't?" Miss Gostrey asked, as he let it drop. "She was sure you judged her at first," she pursued as he said nothing; "she took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position would. Nothing else could occur to her. But after that she changed her mind; she believed you believed"

"Well?"—he was curious.

"Why, in her sublimity. And that belief had remained with her, I make out, till the accident of the other day opened your eyes. For that it did," said Maria, "open them"

"She can't really help"—he had taken it up—"being aware? No," he mused, "I can see that she must have liked better the other idea."

"Then you had the other idea. There you are! However, if you still see her as the most charming woman in the world, it comes to the same thing. And if you'd like me