er."

"Ah no," said Strether, "that's not the way it works."

But she had already taken him up. "The way it works--you needn't tell
me!--is of course that you efface yourself."

"With my name on the cover?" he lucidly objected.

"Ah but you don't put it on for yourself."

"I beg your pardon--that's exactly what I do put it on for. It's
exactly the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself. It seems to
rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the
refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little
scrap of an identity."

On this she looked at him as 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 met over it. "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 at once returned.

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

"Oh we're not loved. We're not even hated. We're only just sweetly
ignored."

She had another pause. "You don't trust me!" she once more repeated