n't
be present.

"Oh," he replied, "it was really her own idea. I should have wished
it. But she dreads responsibility."

"And isn't that a new thing for her?"

"To dread it? No doubt--no doubt. But her nerve has given way."

Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. "She has too much at stake." Then
less gravely: "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."

"Luckily for me too"--Strether came back to that. "My own isn't so
firm, MY appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't
felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more the merrier.'
If we ARE so merry it's because Chad has understood so well."

"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace.

"It's wonderful--Strether anticipated for her.

"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face
over it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added:
"Oh I see the principle. If one didn't one would be lost. But when
once one has got hold of it--"

"It's as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do something--"

"A crowd"--she took him straight up--"was the only thing? Rather,
rather: a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing. Mrs. Pocock's
built in, or built out--whichever you call it; she's packed so tight
she can't move. She's in splendid isolation"--Miss Barrace embroidered
the theme.

Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. "Yet with every one in
the place successively introduced to her."

"Wonderfully--but just so that it does build her out. She's bricked
up, she's buried alive!"

Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a
sigh. "Oh but she's not dead! It will take more than this to kill
her."

His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. "No, I can't
pretend I think she's finished--or that it's for more than to-night."
She remained pensive as if with the same compunction. "It's only up to
her chin." Then again for the fun of it: "She can breathe."

"She can breathe!"--he echoed it in the same spirit. "And do you
know," he went on, "what's really all this time happening to
me?--through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in
short of our revel and the felicity of your wit? The sound of Mrs.
Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other. It's
literally all I hear."

She focussed him with her clink of chains. "Well--!" she breathed ever
so kindly.

"Well, what?"

"She IS free from her ch