Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/454

448 perhaps also a candid curiosity, for this sensibly sharper emphasis. "I remember you, you know, as you were."

"An awful ass, wasn't I?"

The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to meet it. "Certainly, you wouldn't then have seemed worth all you've let me in for. Your value has quintupled."

"Well then wouldn't that be enough?"

Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. "Enough? "

"If one should wish to live on one's accumulations?" After which, however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as easily dropped it. "Of course I really never forget, night or day, what I owe her. I owe her everthingeverything [sic]. I give you my word of honour," he frankly rang out, "that I'm not a bit tired of her." Strether, at this, only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable of much; yet he spoke of being "tired" of her almost as he might have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner. "She has never for a moment yet bored me—never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact—as even they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it. She has never had it more"—he handsomely made the point—"than just lately." And he scrupulously went further. "She has never been anything whatever that I could call a burden."

Strether, for a moment, said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with a return of his dryness. "Oh, if you didn't do her justice!"

"I should be a beast, eh?"

Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; that, visibly, would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however, repetition was no mistake. "You owe her everything—very much more than she can ever owe you. You've in other words duties to her of the most positive sort; and I don't see what other duties—as the others are presented to you—can be held to go before them."