as I hope I shall, I think she'll like me
enough--for she seemed to like me to-day--to want me to tell her."

"And SHALL you?"

"Perfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants
only too much to do right. To do right for her, naturally," said
Mamie, "is to please."

"Her mother, do you mean?"

"Her mother first."

Strether waited. "And then?"

"Well, 'then'--Mr. Newsome."

There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this
reference. "And last only Monsieur de Montbron?"

"Last only"--she good-humouredly kept it up.

Strether considered. "So that every one after all then will be suited?"

She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a
moment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him
about what was between them. "I think I can speak for myself. I shall
be."

It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help
him, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might
make of it toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and
trustfully, she had nothing to do--it so fully achieved all this that
he appeared to himself simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last
frankness of admiration. Admiration was of itself almost accusatory,
but nothing less would serve to show her how nearly he understood. He
put out his hand for good-bye with a "Splendid, splendid, splendid!"
And he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.

Book Tenth

I

Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his
interview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed
together on the first occasion of our friend's meeting Madame de
Vionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes,
where his position affirmed itself again as ministering to an easy
exchange of impressions. The present evening had a different stamp; if
the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the ideas set
in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that
the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a
protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them
to-night, and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it.
Only a few of Chad's guests had dined--that is fifteen or twenty, a few
compared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o'clock;
but number and mass, quantity and quality, lig