or even trying, or still even hoping, to be able to care
for Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the job. "I'll do
anything in the world for you!"

"Well," Strether smiled, "anything in the world is all I want. I don't
know anything that pleased me in her more," he went on, "than the way
that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and
feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall
house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young
man. It was somehow so the note I needed--her staying at home to
receive him."

"It was Chad of course," said little Bilham, "who asked the next young
man--I like your name for me!--to call."

"So I supposed--all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural
manners. But do you know," Strether asked, "if Chad knows--?" And
then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: "Why where she has come
out."

Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look--it was as
if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. "Do you know
yourself?"

Strether lightly shook his head. "There I stop. Oh, odd as it may
appear to you, there ARE things I don't know. I only got the sense
from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was
keeping all to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she
HAD kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out
that there was a person with whom she would have shared it. I had
thought she possibly might with ME--but I saw then that I was only half
in her confidence. When, turning to me to greet me--for she was on the
balcony and I had come in without her knowing it--she showed me she had
been expecting YOU and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of
the tail of my conviction. Half an hour later I was in possession of
all the rest of it. You know what has happened." He looked at his
young friend hard--then he felt sure. "For all you say, you're up to
your eyes. So there you are."

Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. "I assure you she
hasn't told me anything."

"Of course she hasn't. For what do you suggest that I suppose her to
take you? But you've been with her every day, you've seen her freely,
you've liked her greatly--I stick to that--and you've made your profit
of it. You know what she has been through as well as you know that she
has dined here to-night--which must have put her, by the wa