in up," she mused; "and that WILL be enough for
her."

"It will be enough for me!" Strether ruefully laughed. "Waymarsh has
really," he then asked, "brought her to see you?"

"Yes--but that's the worst of it. I could do you no good. And yet I
tried hard."

Strether wondered. "And how did you try?"

"Why I didn't speak of you."

"I see. That was better."

"Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent," she lightly
wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any one but you."

"That shows"--he was magnanimous--"that it's something not in you, but
in one's self. It's MY fault."

She was silent a little. "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's. It's the fault of
his having brought her."

"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring her?"

"He couldn't afford not to."

"Oh you were a trophy--one of the spoils of conquest? But why in that
case, since you do 'compromise'--"

"Don't I compromise HIM as well? I do compromise him as well," Miss
Barrace smiled. "I compromise him as hard as I can. But for Mr.
Waymarsh it isn't fatal. It's--so far as his wonderful relation with
Mrs. Pocock is concerned--favourable." And then, as he still seemed
slightly at sea: "The man who had succeeded with ME, don't you see?
For her to get him from me was such an added incentive."

Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. "It's
'from' you then that she has got him?"

She was amused at his momentary muddle. "You can fancy my fight! She
believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy.

"Oh her joy!" Strether sceptically murmured.

"Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what's to-night for her
but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock's really good."

"Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,"
Strether went on, "there's nothing BUT heaven. For Sarah there's only
to-morrow."

"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?"

"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night--on her behalf--too good to
be true. She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of having
it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won't be
another left for her. Certainly I haven't one. It can only, at the
best, be Chad." He continued to make it out as for their common
entertainment. "He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet it's
borne in upon me that if he had--"

"He wouldn't"--she quite understood--"have taken all THI