ome," she added in another tone, "didn't think you can do so
little."

He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. "Well, she thinks
so now."

"Do you mean by that--?" But she also hung fire.

"Do I mean what?"

She still rather faltered. "Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm
saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn't I? Besides, doesn't
it properly concern us to know?"

"To know what?" he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she
had again dropped.

She made the effort. "Has she given you up?"

He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.
"Not yet." It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed--had
expected still more of her freedom. But he went straight on. "Is that
what Chad has told you will happen to me?"

She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. "If you mean if
we've talked of it--most certainly. And the question's not what has
had least to do with my wishing to see you."

"To judge if I'm the sort of man a woman CAN--?"

"Precisely," she exclaimed--"you wonderful gentleman! I do judge--I
HAVE judged. A woman can't. You're safe--with every right to be.
You'd be much happier if you'd only believe it."

Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a
cynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were
strange to him. "I try to believe it. But it's a marvel," he
exclaimed, "how YOU already get at it!"

Oh she was able to say. "Remember how much I was on the way to it
through Mr. Newsome--before I saw you. He thinks everything of your
strength."

"Well, I can bear almost anything!" our friend briskly interrupted.
Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of
making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily
enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything
done but that? It had been all very well to think at moments that he
was holding her nose down and that he had coerced her: what had he by
this time done but let her practically see that he accepted their
relation? What was their relation moreover--though light and brief
enough in form as yet--but whatever she might choose to make it?
Nothing could prevent her--certainly he couldn't--from making it
pleasant. At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense
that she was--there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative
form--one of the rare women he had so