here was no use in having arrived now with little
Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he could pitch
everything into the pot. "You who sat where you could see her, what
does she make of it all? By which I mean on what terms does she take
it?"

"Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is
more than ever justified."

"She isn't then pleased with what he has to show?"

"On the contrary; she's pleased with it as with his capacity to do this
kind of thing--more than she has been pleased with anything for a long
time. But she wants him to show it THERE. He has no right to waste it
on the likes of us."

Strether wondered. "She wants him to move the whole thing over?"

"The whole thing--with an important exception. Everything he has
'picked up'--and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty in that.
She'd run the show herself, and she'll make the handsome concession
that Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the better for it. Not
that it wouldn't be also in some ways the better for Woollett. The
people there are just as good."

"Just as good as you and these others? Ah that may be. But such an
occasion as this, whether or no," Strether said, "isn't the people.
It's what has made the people possible."

"Well then," his friend replied, "there you are; I give you my
impression for what it's worth. Mrs. Pocock has SEEN, and that's
to-night how she sits there. If you were to have a glimpse of her face
you'd understand me. She has made up her mind--to the sound of
expensive music."

Strether took it freely in. "Ah then I shall have news of her."

"I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However,"
little Bilham continued, "if I'm of the least use to you to hold on
by--!"

"You're not of the least!"--and Strether laid an appreciative hand on
him to say it. "No one's of the least." With which, to mark how gaily
he could take it, he patted his companion's knee. "I must meet my fate
alone, and I SHALL--oh you'll see! And yet," he pursued the next
moment, "you CAN help me too. You once said to me"--he followed this
further--"that you held Chad should marry. I didn't see then so well as
I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock. Do you still
consider that he should? Because if you do"--he kept it up--"I want
you immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way."

"Help you by thinking he should NOT marry?"

"Not marry