ather--especially if Sarah
triumphs and she comes in for a view of it."

"How well you know us!" Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.

"No--it seems to me it's we that I know. I know Sarah--it's perhaps on
that ground only that my feet are firm. Waymarsh will take her round
while Chad takes Jim--and I shall be, I assure you delighted for both
of them. Sarah will have had what she requires--she will have paid her
tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same. In Paris
it's in the air--so what can one do less? If there's a point that,
beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that she didn't come out to
be narrow. We shall feel at least that."

"Oh," she sighed, "the quantity we seem likely to 'feel'! But what
becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?"

"Of Mamie--if we're all provided? Ah for that," said Strether, "you
can trust Chad."

"To be, you mean, all right to her?"

"To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He
wants what Jim can give him--and what Jim really won't--though he has
had it all, and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own
personal impression, and he'll get it--strong. But as soon as he has
got it Mamie won't suffer."

"Oh Mamie mustn't SUFFER!" Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.

But Strether could reassure her. "Don't fear. As soon as he has done
with Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you'll see."

It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then
"Is she really quite charming?" she asked.

He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves.
"I don't know; I'm watching. I'm studying the case, as it were--and I
dare say I shall be able to tell you."

She wondered. "Is it a case?"

"Yes--I think so. At any rate I shall see.'

"But haven't you known her before?"

"Yes," he smiled--"but somehow at home she wasn't a case. She has
become one since." It was as if he made it out for himself. "She has
become one here."

"So very very soon?"

He measured it, laughing. "Not sooner than I did."

"And you became one--?"

"Very very soon. The day I arrived."

Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. "Ah but the day you
arrived you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?"

He paused again, but he brought it out. "Hasn't she met Chad?"

"Certainly--but not for the first time. He's an old friend." At which
Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her