bear up, and we get on beautifully. I'm very strange; I'm like
that; and often I can't explain. There are people who are supposed
interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and
then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what anybody
sees in them--in whom I see no end of things." Then after she had
smoked a moment, "He's touching, you know," she said.

"'Know'?" Strether echoed--"don't I, indeed? We must move you almost
to tears."

"Oh but I don't mean YOU!" she laughed.

"You ought to then, for the worst sign of all--as I must have it for
you--is that you can't help me. That's when a woman pities."

"Ah but I do help you!" she cheerfully insisted.

Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause: "No you don't!"

Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. "I help you with
Sitting Bull. That's a good deal."

"Oh that, yes." But Strether hesitated. "Do you mean he talks of me?"

"So that I have to defend you? No, never.'

"I see," Strether mused. "It's too deep."

"That's his only fault," she returned--"that everything, with him, is
too deep. He has depths of silence--which he breaks only at the
longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it's always
something he has seen or felt for himself--never a bit banal THAT would
be what one might have feared and what would kill me But never." She
smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency, appreciated her
acquisition. "And never about you. We keep clear of you. We're
wonderful. But I'll tell you what he does do," she continued: "he
tries to make me presents."

"Presents?" poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that HE hadn't
yet tried that in any quarter.

"Why you see," she explained, "he's as fine as ever in the victoria; so
that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours--he likes it
so--at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come
out, to know my carriage away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a
change, he goes with me into the shops, and then I've all I can do to
prevent his buying me things."

"He wants to 'treat' you?" Strether almost gasped at all he himself
hadn't thought of. He had a sense of admiration. "Oh he's much more
in the real tradition than I. Yes," he mused, "it's the sacred rage."

"The sacred rage, exactly!"--and Miss Barrace, who hadn't before heard
this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemm