kindness. "Yes--if it weren't for that!"

"And you help me to wait," she said. "However," she went on, "I've
really something for you that will help you to wait and which you shall
have in a minute. Only there's something more I want from you first. I
revel in Sarah."

"So do I. If it weren't," he again amusedly sighed, "for THAT--!"

"Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem to
keep you going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great."

"She IS" Strether fully assented: "great! Whatever happens, she
won't, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain."

Miss Gostrey had a pause. "You mean she has fallen in love?"

"I mean she wonders if she hasn't--and it serves all her purpose."

"It has indeed," Maria laughed, "served women's purposes before!"

"Yes--for giving in. But I doubt if the idea--as an idea--has ever up
to now answered so well for holding out. That's HER tribute to the
ideal--we each have our own. It's her romance--and it seems to me
better on the whole than mine. To have it in Paris too," he
explained--"on this classic ground, in this charged infectious air,
with so sudden an intensity: well, it's more than she expected. She
has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
affinity--and with everything to enhance the drama."

Miss Gostrey followed. "Jim for instance?"

"Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr.
Waymarsh. It's the crowning touch--it supplies the colour. He's
positively separated."

"And she herself unfortunately isn't--that supplies the colour too."
Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow--! "Is HE in love?"

Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;
then came a little nearer. "Will you never tell any one in the world
as long as ever you live?"

"Never." It was charming.

"He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear," Strether hastened to
add.

"Of her being affected by it?"

"Of HIS being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. He's
helping her, he's floating her over, by kindness."

Maria rather funnily considered it. "Floating her over in champagne?
The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is
crowding to profane delights, and in the--well, in the great temple, as
one hears of it, of pleasure?"

"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted--"and all of a
supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish ho