seen, where he was, and
his being proof against everything was only another attestation that he
meant to stay there. "I couldn't, without my own impression, realise.
She's a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an
extraordinary charm on top of it all--the charm we surely all of us
this evening know what to think of. It isn't every clever brilliant
capable woman that has it. In fact it's rare with any woman. So there
you are," Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham's benefit
alone. "I understand what a relation with such a woman--what such a
high fine friendship--may be. It can't be vulgar or coarse,
anyway--and that's the point."

"Yes, that's the point," said little Bilham. "It can't be vulgar or
coarse. And, bless us and save us, it ISn't! It's, upon my word, the
very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished."

Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned,
dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of
which he took no notice. He only gazed before him with intent
participation. "Of course what it has done for him," Strether at all
events presently pursued, "of course what it has done for him--that is
as to HOW it has so wonderfully worked--isn't a thing I pretend to
understand. I've to take it as I find it. There he is."

"There he is!" little Bilham echoed. "And it's really and truly she. I
don't understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity.
But I'm like you," he added; "I can admire and rejoice even when I'm a
little in the dark. You see I've watched it for some three years, and
especially for this last. He wasn't so bad before it as I seem to have
made out that you think--"

"Oh I don't think anything now!" Strether impatiently broke in: "that
is but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared
for him--"

"There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed,
and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you
know," the young man in all fairness developed, "there was room for
her, and that's where she came in. She saw her chance and took it.
That's what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course," he
wound up, "he liked her first."

"Naturally," said Strether.

"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere--I believe in some
American house--and she, without in the least then intending it, made
her impression. Then with ti