te admission. "It's quite true. I'm extremely
wonderful just now. I dare say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I
shouldn't be at all surprised if I were mad."

"Then tell me!" she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time
answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him,
she presented herself where it was easier to meet her. "What will Mr.
Waymarsh exactly have done?"

"Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He
has told them I want looking after."

"And DO you?"--she was all interest.

"Immensely. And I shall get it."

"By which you mean you don't budge?"

"I don't budge."

"You've cabled?"

"No--I've made Chad do it."

"That you decline to come?"

"That HE declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him round.
He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready--ready, I
mean, to return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he
wouldn't."

Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. "Then you've STOPPED him?"

Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. "I've stopped him. That
is for the time. That"--he gave it to her more vividly--"is where I
am."

"I see, I see. But where's Mr. Newsome? He was ready," she asked, "to
go?"

"All ready."

"And sincerely--believing YOU'D be?"

"Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid
on him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping
him still."

It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh. "Does he
think the conversion sudden?"

"Well," said Strether, "I'm not altogether sure what he thinks. I'm
not sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more I've seen
of him the less I've found him what I originally expected. He's
obscure, and that's why I'm waiting."

She wondered. "But for what in particular?"

"For the answer to his cable."

"And what was his cable?"

"I don't know," Strether replied; "it was to be, when he left me,
according to his own taste. I simply said to him: 'I want to stay, and
the only way for me to do so is for you to.' That I wanted to stay
seemed to interest him, and he acted on that."

Miss Gostrey turned it over. "He wants then himself to stay."

"He half wants it. That is he half wants to go. My original appeal
has to that extent worked in him. Nevertheless," Strether pursued, "he
won't go. Not, at least, so long as I'm here."

"But you can't," his companion sugges