Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/459

Rh I've rather got you out of it. What's this," he asked, as he looked about him, "but perfect peace?"

"I wish with all my heart," she presently replied, "I could make you find it so." And they faced each other on it, across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.

Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up. "It wouldn't give me—that would be the trouble—what it will, no doubt, still give you. I'm not," he explained, leaning back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe, round melon—"in real harmony with what surrounds me. You are. I take it too hard. You don't. It makes—that's what it comes to in the end—a fool of me." Then at a tangent, "What has he been doing in London?" he demanded.

"Ah, one may go to London," Maria laughed. "You know I did."

Yes—he took the reminder. "And you brought me back." He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom. "Whom has Chad brought? He's full of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah," he added, "the first thing this morning. So I'm square. I'm ready for them."

She neglected portions of this speech in the interest of others. "A certain person said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of an immense man of business."

"There it is. He's the son of his father!"

"But such a father!"

"Ah, just the right one, from that point of view! But it isn't his father in him," Strether added, "that troubles me."

"What is it, then?" He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of the luscious melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this that he met her question. Then, moreover, it was but to remark that he would answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett. "Do you remember our talking of it in London—that night at the play?" Before he could say yes,