d mentioned things--! Then,
however, with all the sound it could have, "Who in the world's Jim
Pocock?" she asked.

"Why Sally's husband. That's the only way we distinguish people at
Woollett," he good-humoredly explained.

"And is it a great distinction--being Sally's husband?"

He considered. "I think there can be scarcely a greater--unless it may
become one, in the future, to be Chad's wife."

"Then how do they distinguish YOU?"

"They DON'T--except, as I've told you, by the green cover."

Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant. "The
green cover won't--nor will ANY cover--avail you with ME. You're of a
depth of duplicity!" Still, she could in her own large grasp of the
real condone it. "Is Mamie a great parti?"

"Oh the greatest we have--our prettiest brightest girl."

Miss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child. "I know what they CAN be.
And with money?"

"Not perhaps with a great deal of that--but with so much of everything
else that we don't miss it. We DON'T miss money much, you know,"
Strether added, "in general, in America, in pretty girls."

"No," she conceded; "but I know also what you do sometimes miss. And do
you," she asked, "yourself admire her?"

It was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways of
taking; but he decided after an instant for the humorous. "Haven't I
sufficiently showed you how I admire ANY pretty girl?"

Her interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce left
her freedom, and she kept close to the facts. "I supposed that at
Woollett you wanted them--what shall I call it?--blameless. I mean
your young men for your pretty girls."

"So did I!" Strether confessed. "But you strike there a curious
fact--the fact that Woollett too accommodates itself to the spirit of
the age and the increasing mildness of manners. Everything changes,
and I hold that our situation precisely marks a date. We SHOULD prefer
them blameless, but we have to make the best of them as we find them.
Since the spirit of the age and the increasing mildness send them so
much more to Paris--"

"You've to take them back as they come. When they DO come. Bon!" Once
more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought. "Poor Chad!"

"Ah," said Strether cheerfully "Mamie will save him!"

She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with
impatience and almost as if he hadn't understood her. "YOU'LL save
him. That's who'll save him