Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/55

Rh and failures, my one presentable little scrap of an identity."

She looked at him an instant, on this, as if to say many things; but what she at last simply said was, "She likes to see it there. You're the bigger swell of the two," she immediately continued, "because you think you're not one. She thinks she is one. However," Miss Gostrey added, "she thinks you're one too. You're at all events the biggest she can get hold of." She embroidered, she abounded. "I don't say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one" Strether had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity; and her flight, meanwhile, was already higher. "Therefore close with her"

"Close with her?" he asked, as she seemed to hang poised.

"Before you lose your chance."

Their eyes, with it, met a moment. "What do you mean by closing?"

"And what do I mean by your chance? I'll tell you when you tell me all the things you don't. Is it her greatest fad?" she briskly pursued.

"The Review?" He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This resulted, however, but in a sketch. "It's her tribute to the ideal."

"I see. You go in for tremendous things."

"We go in for the unpopular side—that is, so far as we dare."

"And how far do you dare?"

"Well, she very far. I much less. I don't begin to have her faith. She provides," said Strether, "three-fourths of that. And she provides, as I've confided to you, all the money."

It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey's eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. "I hope then you make a good thing"

"I never made a good thing!" he promptly declared.

She just waited. "Don't you call it a good thing to be loved?"