trether now because clearly she had
some trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean that her trouble
was deep. He couldn't help it; it wasn't his fault; he had done
nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow made their encounter
a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of things that were
not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the
high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in
the court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by
matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp
of her hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most
natural when her eyes were most fixed. "You count upon me of course
for something really much greater than it sounds."

"Oh it sounds great enough too!" she laughed at this.

He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as
Miss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said
something else instead. "What was it Chad's idea then that you should
say to me?"

"Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is--to put every
effort off on the woman."

"The 'woman'--?" Strether slowly echoed.

"The woman he likes--and just in proportion as he likes her. In
proportion too--for shifting the trouble--as she likes HIM."

Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: "How much do
you like Chad?"

"Just as much as THAT--to take all, with you, on myself." But she got
at once again away from this. "I've been trembling as if we were to
stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I'm even now," she went
on wonderfully, "drawing a long breath--and, yes, truly taking a great
courage--from the hope that I don't in fact strike you as impossible."

"That's at all events, clearly," he observed after an instant, "the way
I don't strike YOU."

"Well," she so far assented, "as you haven't yet said you WON'T have
the little patience with me I ask for--"

"You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don't understand
them," Strether pursued. "You seem to me to ask for much more than you
need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I
after all do? I can use no pressure that I haven't used. You come
really late with your request. I've already done all that for myself
the case admits of. I've said my say, and here I am."

"Yes, here you are, fortunately!" Madame de Vionnet laughed. "Mrs.
News